Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: I love talking with those who have founded a small business.
Speaker 2: It really is the backbone of our US economy. So
Speaker 2: with us, let's get right to it. Is Lauren Berger
Speaker 2: and Marla Felton. They have created their own business. They
Speaker 2: are the co founders of Real Cookies, founded in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, and they join us in studio.
Speaker 3: And you founded in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, wow, So it's young. It's very young.
Speaker 3: And that's like smack dad in the middle of a
Speaker 3: year when you weren't allowed to be hanging out.
Speaker 1: How did you or is that why you did it?
Speaker 2: Tom?
Speaker 1: Did it quarantine together? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Ah, that makes perfect sense. Now, quarantine together.
Speaker 1: A lot of people did it. So take us back,
Speaker 1: either of you kick off.
Speaker 4: It till We've been friends for over twenty years, and
Speaker 4: we met when our daughters were sixteen months old. They're
Speaker 4: now about twenty three, and over this time, we've had
Speaker 4: so many people in our family and so many friends
Speaker 4: that developed different dietary restrictions, and they weren't the same
Speaker 4: dietary restriction. They were all different. So we would get
Speaker 4: together all the time developing all these different desserts, and
Speaker 4: we love feeding our family and celebrating and getting together,
Speaker 4: but we couldn't find a dessert that tasted good, that
Speaker 4: met the needs of everyone in our family. And so
Speaker 4: that's really how we started Real Cookies, and we started
Speaker 4: during the pandemic. I at the time had a yoga
Speaker 4: studio and we closed during COVID and Marlon and I
Speaker 4: had been wanting to start this business for a long time,
Speaker 4: but we didn't really have the time and this was
Speaker 4: the perfect opportunity for us to perfect our recipes.
Speaker 3: So wait, some people, I guess were gluten what do
Speaker 3: you call it, celiac? Some people were lactose.
Speaker 1: Intolerant, dairy free.
Speaker 3: Okay, and love sugar exactly. I'm trying to cut out
Speaker 3: sugar right now.
Speaker 1: You were like when they walked in, You're like, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, Wait a minute.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I said, I eat things with added sugar, and
Speaker 3: these have I guessed maple syrup as a as a
Speaker 3: sweetener in them. So how did you, how did Marla?
Speaker 3: How did you guys come to this idea? Because I'm
Speaker 3: assuming neither one of you is like a master chef, right, well.
Speaker 5: We've always cooked for our families and we both love
Speaker 5: to entertain, and we both really love cookies and desserts,
Speaker 5: and honestly, when we'd go to the shopping to the markets,
Speaker 5: we'd go down the aisles, we'd bring in the healthy
Speaker 5: cookies for our families and for us, and there was
Speaker 5: nothing that was worth eating. And we said, there's got
Speaker 5: to be away. We've got to create a cookie that's
Speaker 5: healthy and tastes delicious and is real because a lot
Speaker 5: of the gluten free cookies, if you look at what's
Speaker 5: in them, they're filled with junk. They actually have a
Speaker 5: lot of sugar, they have soy, they have corn, they
Speaker 5: have a lot of sneaky substitutes. So we were determined,
Speaker 5: and we had the time during the pandemic to come
Speaker 5: up with these restles.
Speaker 2: Can I just tell you I do this all the time.
Speaker 2: My daughter who's twenty, she does the same thing. We
Speaker 2: turn around, we look at ingredients and we're always like,
Speaker 2: I have no idea what this stuff.
Speaker 1: This stuff is.
Speaker 2: Your ingredients makes sense to talk to us a little bit,
Speaker 2: learn about what's in there.
Speaker 4: We have a very very short ingredradient list and our
Speaker 4: bases almond flour, and coconut flour. We use real vanilla
Speaker 4: maple syrup which has a lower glycemic index than sugar,
Speaker 4: and just very very simple ingredients. We have no gluten,
Speaker 4: no grain, no soy, no corn, but most importantly, we
Speaker 4: wanted it to taste good.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm gonna say I've sampled Matt can't talk right now.
Speaker 3: Because they're very good chocolate chip minis, and they're delicious.
Speaker 2: But a small business, it's a crowded marketplace, so tell
Speaker 2: us about building this business.
Speaker 1: You bootstrapped it yourself.
Speaker 5: We did, yes, and we run a very lean machine.
Speaker 5: We're very frugal. We both really put our hearts and
Speaker 5: souls and uh everything into it.
Speaker 1: And we what's the growth like, talk to us a
Speaker 1: little bit about that. Well, we've grown and we've.
Speaker 3: Started only I'm going to go a lemon blueberry minis
Speaker 3: are so good you have to but I'm going.
Speaker 2: To go a Shark Tank on you because I'm obsessed
Speaker 2: with that show. I love small businesses. But tell us
Speaker 2: about you know, costs, money, supply chains like this is
Speaker 2: all real.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, we've grown significantly just in our second year,
Speaker 4: over seventy five percent, but it is very new.
Speaker 1: The level blueberry minis are really good in terms of costs.
Speaker 4: We wanted to make sure that we started with a
Speaker 4: gross margin of fifty percent, and we know that there
Speaker 4: were a lot of costs that we couldn't even think
Speaker 4: about at the time that we were developing the product, right,
Speaker 4: and we really just went out and started selling. And
Speaker 4: we started with a single serve two pack because we
Speaker 4: had yes, yes, because we wanted to encourage trial, and
Speaker 4: so we did. Originally we went to ski resorts, to hotels,
Speaker 4: they're in hotel mini bars, they're in about forty airports.
Speaker 1: And we just started selling.
Speaker 4: And when we started to get some validation, we thought
Speaker 4: we would make a product that was appropriate for the
Speaker 4: grocery shelves, which is when we came out with our
Speaker 4: pouch of mini cookies.
Speaker 1: We call them poppers.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And one of the big breaks for us actually
Speaker 4: was CBS took the product into two hundred and seventy
Speaker 4: five stores and they did at tech and they liked
Speaker 4: what they saw, so they just expanded to fifteen hundred store.
Speaker 1: That's a big deal, a very big deal. Are you
Speaker 1: just profitable?
Speaker 4: Are we profitable? We are have a very good gross margin.
Speaker 2: Okay, oh yeah, cost especially in today when with supply
Speaker 2: chains are still.
Speaker 1: A little tricky.
Speaker 3: Where do you make them? By the way, you guys
Speaker 3: are out of grantitche right, yes, yes, So where do
Speaker 3: you make the cookies pure? You don't make them in
Speaker 3: your yoga studio.
Speaker 5: Right, So we produce both in New Jersey and in Michigan.
Speaker 1: We have too.
Speaker 3: So one of our producers was looking at the ingredients
Speaker 3: and was like, these ingredients look great, but difficult supply chain,
Speaker 3: Like for example, almonds, Uh, the price of that must
Speaker 3: go up substantially.
Speaker 4: You know, the prices have changed significantly in the wrong ingredients.
Speaker 4: And so one of the parts of our mission was
Speaker 4: to try and find more than one supplier for each
Speaker 4: of our ingredients. And we also knew during COVID that
Speaker 4: we needed to plan for supply chain issues, which we
Speaker 4: have had many, especially with cartons and almonds and chips.
Speaker 4: But we did try and plan ahead, and we're not
Speaker 4: buying huge volumes yet, so it was a little bit
Speaker 4: easier for us.
Speaker 3: Did you have any advisors, Like, what did you guys
Speaker 3: do before before?
Speaker 5: He was a lawyer, right, so I've been one or less.
Speaker 5: I was a y I was a lawyer, and I
Speaker 5: also run a nonprofit.
Speaker 1: So I mean these guys and you were in the
Speaker 1: consumer food.
Speaker 4: I do marketing for a Dive of Chocolate, and so
Speaker 4: we had a little bit of experience. But we've worked
Speaker 4: so well together that we just love brainstorming and building
Speaker 4: upon ideas.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know this is what you have a
Speaker 1: little one, you know, young daughter.
Speaker 3: Two and a half year old daughter Edna, and she's
Speaker 3: going to have some of these cookies tonight, she is.
Speaker 2: And I think about We certainly thought about it, raising
Speaker 2: our daughter a lot of organic and very careful.
Speaker 1: So you're in the right space.
Speaker 2: What do you think about when it comes to the
Speaker 2: next six to twelve months, like what's on your radar
Speaker 2: in terms of growth or.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well you had mentioned investment and getting on the
Speaker 4: grocery shelves is a huge investment and that is where
Speaker 4: a majority of our budget is going now. So we
Speaker 4: are getting approved for supermarket chains. We just got into
Speaker 4: Albertson's in the South. It's a big deal, a very
Speaker 4: big deal, and so we are making those investments. We're
Speaker 4: talking to Whole Foods and Sprouts and the large national
Speaker 4: natural chains.
Speaker 3: So you don't have to do a fundraising round or.
Speaker 1: Would you like to We would like to, We would
Speaker 1: like to.
Speaker 5: We would also like partners you know that have synergy
Speaker 5: with us always let's see investment space.
Speaker 2: Like now, we just got about twenty five seconds. I mean,
Speaker 2: are you reaching out and are people receptive?
Speaker 5: Like we haven't really reached out so much. We are
Speaker 5: building relationships with other we're just.
Speaker 1: Putting a deck together now.
Speaker 4: But we did also just do some recipe development with
Speaker 4: Upfield and we're working with them. They have a lot
Speaker 4: of great plant based products and so we just developed
Speaker 4: a tremendous amount of learning working with them.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a space we talk a lot about the
Speaker 2: healthier food space. It's definitely a trend that just keeps
Speaker 2: on growing. So we'd love to have you guys come
Speaker 2: back and let us.
Speaker 1: We would love to thank you so much and thanks
Speaker 1: for the cookies, Matt, You've made that very happy. We
Speaker 1: probably finish this on the way.
Speaker 2: Lauren Berger and Marla Felton, co founders, are real cookies
Speaker 2: here on Bloomberg BusinessWeek