Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio. All right, Matt, it is
Speaker 1: never too early to get the little ones to start
Speaker 1: loving veggies big.
Speaker 2: Time, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, It's a daunting task, right, I think, how long
Speaker 3: has your daughter? I read a stat on the Tiny
Speaker 3: Organics in a Tiny Organics Analyst report that said only
Speaker 3: ten percent of kids eat the recommended amount of veggies,
Speaker 3: and I definitely didn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't even know if I still do. No anyway,
Speaker 1: So let's get to it. It's really really important. So
Speaker 1: let's enter into a conversation with Tiny organ or Tiny Organics.
Speaker 1: They are a partner by the way of Michelle Obama's
Speaker 1: veggies early and often I love that, and a member
Speaker 1: of the Food and Nutrition Innovation Council at the Freedman
Speaker 1: School of Nutrition, Science and Policy at Tufts University. So
Speaker 1: joining us on Zoom in New York City being of
Speaker 1: Boston is the co founders of Tiny Organics, Sophia Laurel
Speaker 1: and Carolyn Botitski. She is Carolyn, by the way, a CEO,
Speaker 1: Sofia is CEO. I'm rushing, rushing because I want to
Speaker 1: get to you. We see you. Welcome to Bloomberg. Tell
Speaker 1: us about your company.
Speaker 3: It's taken a long time to get them on this program.
Speaker 2: We're thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for having us.
Speaker 1: All right, well, tell us about it, tell us and
Speaker 1: how it came to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, we'll keep it short because we know we only
Speaker 4: have so much time.
Speaker 2: But I'm originally from Finland.
Speaker 4: There's an invention back home called the Finished Baby Box,
Speaker 4: and I saw a first time the impact that it
Speaker 4: had for families and families with children in particular, and
Speaker 4: moved to New York about thirteen years ago. We started
Speaker 4: the company with Carolyn. About five years ago. The idea
Speaker 4: evolved into food. We realized we could have the biggest
Speaker 4: impact in child.
Speaker 2: Of development through food.
Speaker 5: And I formerly am from Fiji Water and Beyond Meat
Speaker 5: and some of those experiences really defined my ethos around
Speaker 5: healthy food and making it accessible to people, which is
Speaker 5: really important to us to get. Like you said, only
Speaker 5: ten percent of children right now are getting enough vegetables,
Speaker 5: and we really want.
Speaker 2: That to be all children.
Speaker 1: Matt, you've tried it.
Speaker 5: I have.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: I met Sophia through my sister in law. A couple
Speaker 3: of years ago, and at the time, I had a
Speaker 3: one year old baby who was not a picky eater.
Speaker 3: Like she definitely liked bread and meat, but she wasn't
Speaker 3: really into veggies. And so we were also traveling around,
Speaker 3: you know, moving from Berlin to New York, and it
Speaker 3: was just a difficult time to prep meals and take
Speaker 3: the time that you need for baby lead weaning and
Speaker 3: all these other things. So I instantly spotted Sofia's product
Speaker 3: as a solution to my issue, right because it comes
Speaker 3: in these little boxes, it's easily portable, you know, you
Speaker 3: just heat it up and give it to the kid.
Speaker 3: And my daughter loved them straight away.
Speaker 1: So tell us about I'm curious about how you guys
Speaker 1: kind of come up with the recipes the nutrition that's
Speaker 1: in there. Talk us a little bit about that process.
Speaker 5: Definitely, all of the food is organic, it's plant based,
Speaker 5: it's allergen friends, so no major allergens, and we really
Speaker 5: lean into savory forward, specifically a ton of veggies, veggies, fruits,
Speaker 5: grains and beans, all of the good stuff that's really nutrientents.
Speaker 5: We have worked with a neonatal nutritionist from the very
Speaker 5: beginning to help kind of guide these recipes and it's
Speaker 5: really a wide variety of different products that we have available.
Speaker 2: One of the best things that you can do for.
Speaker 5: Your diet is have a wide variety of nutrients, specifically vegetables.
Speaker 1: I want these in my fridge, Like it would be
Speaker 1: a great little snacky your snack. How much do they
Speaker 1: cost and how does it work? Like, how do people
Speaker 1: get it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Absolutely so so far we've just been directed consumer. We're
Speaker 4: just entering retail, which is really exciting. The price point
Speaker 4: is between like three point thirty six and five ninety nine.
Speaker 4: And like you said, we eat the food often as well,
Speaker 4: in we won't have time for our rent.
Speaker 2: But the rent is that baby food.
Speaker 4: Actually, as you think about it today, you know perade
Speaker 4: shelf stable of sometimes very sweet in the supermarket in particular.
Speaker 4: It's invented in the nineteen twenties. And there's really no reason,
Speaker 4: definitely no scientific reason that our children should be starting
Speaker 4: their food journey this way. So trying to introduce, as
Speaker 4: I Caroly mentioned, veggie's in a friendly and fun a way,
Speaker 4: and they have funny and punny names so otmg and
Speaker 4: apple pie oat meal and baby bereatable currier.
Speaker 1: Some of our michell My broccoli bell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love the apple pie oat meal. That's like
Speaker 3: the first one I had. So talk to us about
Speaker 3: the business as it stands right now. You have some
Speaker 3: kind of famous backers. Gary vaynercheck I know is one,
Speaker 3: and you're starting to get into retail. What is the
Speaker 3: what stage are you in terms of funding? And how
Speaker 3: long until the IPO?
Speaker 2: Great questions, Matt.
Speaker 4: So, we're post Series A and I have been in
Speaker 4: market about three and a half years. We've delivered over
Speaker 4: three million meals so far. Really, as mentioned, the growth
Speaker 4: unlocks for us, our sales channel expansions, so going into retail,
Speaker 4: Callen I share a little bit more about those efforts,
Speaker 4: but really almost ninety percent of our customers would like
Speaker 4: to see us in retail, also etail, Amazon and others.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Again, so far we've only sold on Janieaganics dot com.
Speaker 4: But this product is something that I think works well
Speaker 4: both having a online option to buy online and option
Speaker 4: to buy in store. And then the other growth unlocked
Speaker 4: for us is really aging up, so growing alongside the child.
Speaker 4: So some most requests that item is meals for later stage.
Speaker 4: So we actually think there's a really big opportunity between
Speaker 4: the three and seven rages and ultimately hopefully reinventing school
Speaker 4: lunches as well.
Speaker 1: I want the Wizard of Orzo right now, Zucchini pa
Speaker 1: chickpe orzo pasta.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the great opportunity to create like a
Speaker 3: healthy alternative to lunchables, right, Carolyn, how is your experience
Speaker 3: at Beyond Meat and other companies? These helped you informed
Speaker 3: you in this business because some of them have had
Speaker 3: a pretty tough time of getting off the ground, right
Speaker 3: they have.
Speaker 5: But as mentioning, I formerly ran ran operations in supply
Speaker 5: chain app Beyond Meat. It was pre IPO, but very
Speaker 5: much kind of defined my how I feel about especially
Speaker 5: plant based but generally.
Speaker 2: Healthy food, the you know messaging.
Speaker 5: At the time, it was a new category and we're
Speaker 5: inventing a new category as well.
Speaker 2: Baby food traditionally isn't in the freezer. We're going to
Speaker 2: be one of the first products there.
Speaker 5: So showing people that you can find healthy food in
Speaker 5: a different way and in a different part of the
Speaker 5: grocery store. Like we were saying, you don't need to
Speaker 5: give your baby shelf stable food generally higher in sugar.
Speaker 5: They can have fresh and frozen and the next best
Speaker 5: thing to fresh those options just.
Speaker 2: Like adults can have.
Speaker 1: So when you talk about the retail side of the business,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm shark tank all of a sudden.
Speaker 1: But is it you know, Kroger.
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 1: The regular Supers? Is good? Whole Foods? Like, where is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think natural channel first. Okay, definitely makes sense. But
Speaker 4: accessibility is absolutely key for us. We don't want to
Speaker 4: build a company just for the one percent, So I
Speaker 4: think for us if you think about there's actually a
Speaker 4: program called WICK, which is a food stamps.
Speaker 2: Right women and children.
Speaker 4: Over fifty percent of parents in the USR on WICK.
Speaker 4: So that's another one of our north stars. You know
Speaker 4: later on it's a state by state effort OBUs a
Speaker 4: multi year effort to get onto WICK. But because we
Speaker 4: are frozen, if there's a food desert that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 4: have a the supermarket doesn't have a big fresh aisle,
Speaker 4: we could still be merchandise in the freezer asle.
Speaker 1: So are you guys profitable?
Speaker 2: Not yet but close close.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting And Matt, did you know kind of
Speaker 1: tease at the beginning, what is the end game? I mean,
Speaker 1: there's lots of capital or we used to talk there
Speaker 1: was lots of capital out there. There's lots of money
Speaker 1: on the side, we know, but no, I'm just curious,
Speaker 1: do you guys want to stay private in terms of
Speaker 1: growing it out or is it the endgame to go
Speaker 1: public or potentially you know, link up with some other
Speaker 1: big consumer products company, a consumer food COPT.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great questions.
Speaker 4: We're open to all options, but probably the latter makes
Speaker 4: more sense. Stay private, and then you know, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of innovation that the big CpG companies aren't currently
Speaker 4: able to do as well as we could be. So
Speaker 4: we see that as an opportunity definitely. And there was
Speaker 4: a lot of M and A activity in this space
Speaker 4: in the late two thousands.
Speaker 2: Three baby food companies.
Speaker 4: Sold back then, and you know, very little innovation in
Speaker 4: terms of the pouch was the last big innovation in
Speaker 4: the in the category about ten fifteen years ago. So
Speaker 4: we definitely see the opportunity.
Speaker 3: But we're starting to see more. I mean, Bobby has
Speaker 3: come up out recently, which is baby formula that's you know,
Speaker 3: healthier than you tip traditionally get in America, And so
Speaker 3: the whole segment I think is kind of exploding, isn't
Speaker 3: it or is it just because I had a baby.
Speaker 1: I just have to say I've never mad for a
Speaker 1: long time, twenty five years and like you know, twenty
Speaker 1: five years ago, none of this stuff would have come
Speaker 1: out of his mouth. It's really charming, really cool. You've
Speaker 1: got to come back. Are you still doing subscription based?
Speaker 1: Just really quickly, like ten seconds.
Speaker 5: We are, yes, tiny organics dot com. We're still available
Speaker 5: on subscription. You can get product delivered directory door.
Speaker 1: I want this for lunch. Get it all right, Stay
Speaker 1: in touch, let's know how you're doing in terms of growth,
Speaker 1: and come back soon. Sophia Laurel and Carolyn Botitski. She
Speaker 1: tiny organg Tiny Organics. I love it.