The Startup CPG Podcast

Marilyn Yang
And so, you know, the economics of digital advertising weren't at all the same when we finally launched. Neither was the competitive landscape. And so while we initially launched, I guess in 2022, planning to be really D2C within I think a month, were like, okay, this doesn't really make sense anymore. Not only because the economic, but the world opened back up. There were opportunities now in retail and farmers markets and weren't gonna close ourselves off to that, obviously, but that did require us to actually do a number of changes or make a number of changes to our product. So our original launch was in 2022, but I would say our more retail appropriate product wasn't launched until 2023.

00:52
Marilyn Yang
And so that's kind of how the shift happened from I think, us thinking that we would be D2C to us now being over 90% of our business is retail.

01:04
Grace Kennedy
Hello everyone and welcome back to the start of CPG podcast. This is Grace and I'm here with another founder feature. Today I'm talking to Marilyn Yang, the co founder of Papadelic's crunchy mushroom chips. Papadelics takes shiitake mushrooms and reimagines them for the modern superfood snacker, creating mushroom chips with three delicious flavors. Truffle parm, thy Thai chili, and rosemary and salt. Papadelics launched in 2022 and they are now in over 3,000 stores. From Whole Foods to CVS and an airport chain. We chat all about their road to retail, bootstrapping, their early stage business, and so much more. I hope you enjoy this episode and as always, let me know what you think. Hello everyone and welcome back to the startup CPG podcast. This is Grace and I'm joined by Marilyn, the founder of Papadelics. Welcome to the show, Marilyn.

02:04
Marilyn Yang
Yeah, thanks again Grace for having me.

02:06
Grace Kennedy
So excited to have you. I'm a fan of Papadelics but for our listeners who are not so well acquainted, I'd love for you to introduce yourself and your brand to our community.

02:16
Marilyn Yang
Awesome. Well, I'm Marilyn Yang. I'm the co founder and CEO of Papadelics. We're a super crunchy shiitake mushroom trip. We're trying to reimagine mushrooms for the modern snacker and in particular we're trying to appeal to people who don't like mushrooms. The texture tends to be number one. We pride ourselves on having a killer crunch and also tripping flavors on. All of our flavors are vegan, gluten free and non GMO and kosher. We are first of a kind in most of the stores that we're in. So typically you see a lot of kale chips, you see a lot of beet chips, maybe seaweed, but before us, really no mushroom chips. So we're excited to be the first of our kind. And again, most of the stores we're in.

02:52
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, you definitely are. Because I feel like when I think of mushrooms, I either think of the, like, dried ones you get to, like, put in a stove stock or something to, you know, with flavor. You get like an H mart or you think of a fresh mushroom. And at first when it was a mushroom chip, I was like, how did they do this? Like, what is this? But I tried it, and I think my favorite flavor was the rosemary one. That one was my favorite. It was so good and savory. And I definitely ate the whole bag very quickly and could have eaten a few more.

03:19
Marilyn Yang
We designed them to be single serve so you don't have to feel guilty, too, about eating the whole pack.

03:24
Grace Kennedy
I know. I really appreciated that, actually. And they're kind of perfect, too, for, like, on the go or like a little snack just for afternoon or whatever. But yeah, so I'm a fan. And the other rosemary is my favorite, but I haven't. Actually, there's one more I haven't tried yet. I tried the truffle one. Delicious, but I haven't tried.

03:39
Marilyn Yang
Yeah. The twisted Thai chili is our third flavor. It's our spicy flavor. So if you happen to like spicy food.

03:44
Grace Kennedy
I do like spicy food, so I'm excited. Maybe I've just been, like, holding it out because I don't want to be done. I pick my samples. But yeah, very excited to learn more about, like, how did you come up with this idea? And why did you decide to create this first of a kind, you know, crunchy mushroom chip?

04:01
Marilyn Yang
It's kind of crazy because I guess it's. In terms of coming up with the idea, it's probably coming on five years now, which doesn't feel like it's been that long. It was a Covid story, as many founders, I think, during the past five years, I guess, have been. But I found a company with my husband, and were in New York City at the time. We live in Miami, Florida now. But back in New York City, you know, especially being stuck in locked lockdown in a small apartment, you get bored with not much else to do. And so the highlight of our weeks or days is to go to the grocery store. And we've both always been longtime health food enthusiasts. We're lifelong mushroom lovers. I was made Fun of as a kid for liking mushrooms.

04:37
Marilyn Yang
So a lot of personal validation when you started seeing more mushroom products out there. So even before COVID you started seeing the mushroom coffees and teas as well. And so that was kind of in the back of our heads. And I think the first time we thought of the idea was kind of on a whole foods trip. We were just in the. What they call the functional snacks aisles, where they have the kale chips, the beet chips, et cetera. And it just kind of hit us, like, oh, why isn't there a mushroom chip? It just started us as consumers, were wanting to buy and eat a mushroom chip. And were just curious because we saw all these other vegetables but no mushrooms. And that got the creative wheels turning, because then went online, and we still couldn't find mushroom chips really online.

05:15
Marilyn Yang
I mean, there were mushroom chips, but they were largely foreign imports. A lot of them didn't have flavors, really. It was kind of like what you were mentioning earlier. They were meant for cooking, you know, literal dried mushrooms meant really more for a culinary purpose. And. Or the branding just looked kind of sketchy. I think that was really that first moment where were like, okay, there's nothing like this out there, really, at least not in the form were thinking, right? We were thinking of fun, modern brand with more exciting flavors that appeal to maybe a younger demographic, and we just didn't find that out there. And I think it was always kind of in the back of our heads to want to do something entrepreneurial.

05:50
Marilyn Yang
We both come from finance backgrounds and, you know, kind of wanted to escape the grind of the finance life in New York and combine that with being stuck at home during COVID And I think what really pushed us over the edge on top of, I think just. I don't think we would have done it if it hadn't been the break, I guess, that Covid provided. But it was not just seeing the white space, but seeing that there was truly, for the first, probably for the first time, meaningful demand and interest in mushrooms. Because, like I said, growing up, I was kind of ostracized for liking mushrooms. But all of a sudden, you started seeing, even before our product. Right. All these mushroom products. And the timing just felt right, because that's the big thing, too, with any new product.

06:27
Marilyn Yang
You don't want to be too early, but also you want to catch the wave early enough to where you can be kind of the pioneer in the space. And I think all of those things came together, and we decided to go for it. And can't believe it's been five years at least since the ideation. Obviously it then took us quite a while to launch the product. We were talking before the show, I guess, what exactly our launch date was. And I feel like we've had a few different launch dates, but I would say the. The first launch date of physical product was in 2022. So obviously it took us a while to go from the idea to finally having a product as well. So it's been a pretty long. But also feels like quick journey from there.

07:01
Grace Kennedy
Totally. I feel like, I mean a. The life of a founder is so busy. So I feel like time goes by quickly. But also just like the last five years since COVID have gone by like Weir so quickly that I feel like I'm like, wait, that was five years ago. Like, where has the time gone? But I would love to hear a little bit like, obviously you guys weren't coming from the CPG background. And so when you decided to create this product and enter into the CPG space, where did you start? Did you have any, like people you reached out to help or what were some of your first steps?

07:32
Marilyn Yang
Yeah, so I guess one benefit that we had coming from finance is that I guess one thing that teaches you is to know what you don't know. And so, and that I think one thing, especially for me, coming from private equity, we use a lot of consultants for a lot of things. And so we just knew conceptually that there are people out there to help. Like, we didn't have to be the ones ourselves to figure out a lot of stuff. And I think, namely, I mean, with any food product, you need the food product itself. And I think that was the big first, big information gap we had because we barely even cook. Because coming living in New York City, we eat out a lot. We're big foodies. Like I said, we like to eat, but we've never really been big into cooking ourselves.

08:09
Marilyn Yang
And so we wouldn't have known where to start with developing a product to the end phase of where it became. And we had a really good idea for what we wanted it to end up like, because, you know, we've eaten comparable snacks with different vegetables that were crunchy, but still kept the same structure of the original vegetable. It wasn't, you know, just mashed up into a chip. And so we knew it was hypothetically possible at least with other vegetables. And you know, like I said online, like there were other dried mushroom type stuff out there. So we knew hypothetically it wasn't like it was developing something like biotech where you didn't know would ever work. And we just didn't know how to get there. And so that's the number one thing we did. We actually. The power of Google.

08:49
Marilyn Yang
I feel like we would have benefited from ChatGPT, but this was before ChatGPT even. And so we just googled a bunch of R and D consulting firms, basically food R and D, because we figured that would have existed. And we actually interviewed quite a few before we settled on the one we ended up working with, which was a bit more startup focused. But it kind of surprised us how many, I guess, firms like that were out there, and not necessarily all of them were, because were thinking, oh, they're only going to be super big companies, but there are a lot of smaller companies willing to work with people like us because were just two people with an idea at that point. So, yeah, I think, you know, it was pretty promising, at least early on, that there were resources like that out there.

09:28
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, totally. That makes sense. You're like, I don't have these skills. I must get these skills. Another thing I was thinking about as you were talking is your flavors and how you decided on these three flavors and these three skews to start with, because obviously there's a million different directions. I feel like you could go with mushrooms, but, yeah, I'm curious how you landed on these three.

09:48
Marilyn Yang
Yeah. So I wish it was a more scientific story than it actually was, but it was really as simple as these are three flavors that are very different from each other. I think were focused on three because that gives enough variety. So if someone doesn't like one flavor, there's bound to be another one that maybe they gravitate to more. And three just looks good in a row, I guess, because two is kind of like. Doesn't seem like enough when you're on shelf, I guess. But three, there's something there. And so that was kind of how we settled on how many flavors in terms of what the flavors were. It was as simple as they're some of my personal favorite culinary flavors. And the first flavor we actually came up with was the rad rosemary and salt flavor. So this was actually inspired by.

10:25
Marilyn Yang
We were just thinking of foods we liked that included mushrooms. And so it was actually inspired by Italian stuffed mushrooms. And so it has a lot of those breadcrumby notes that you can find in a stuffed mushroom dish. And so that was the easiest flavor. And then we knew we needed a spicy flavor because, you know, I feel like spice is just in. And also I think were inspired because there's a lot of spicy flavors that are out there that just aren't really spicy. And so we wanted to actually have something that actually had a kick to it, unlike a lot of the other flavors that claim to be spicy but don't really seem to be spicy.

10:55
Marilyn Yang
And then the trippin truffle parm, I think we just couldn't miss the opportunity to go what we call double mushroom on it because it's a mushroom flavored mushroom, I guess. And also another going back to the culinary dishes that use mushrooms, I think truffle parm as a flavor seasoning was just really big and still is very big. You know, truffle parm fries, I eat those all the time. And so it just felt like it just felt right for a mushroom themed brand and product. So that's really how it came about. I think it was really based off of our personal palates. That's kind of how we eventually taste tested to what we ended up with as well.

11:27
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, I love that. And it makes sense. I mean, obviously you're creating the product. You also want to like the product that you're creating. But I love that idea of thinking of dishes that use mushrooms and kind of using that as your inspiration. I'm curious when you guys set about to create like the branding for papadelics, which I love by the way, because so bright and so like filled with personality and kind of a little bit edgy with. It's like nod to psychedelics, even though they're not psychedelic mushrooms. But I'm curious how you guys came up with that. And was that another area where you sort of collaborated with outside like marketers or designers, or was that something you created yourself or your husband created?

12:06
Marilyn Yang
I wish we could take credit for the branding esthetic and the name, but we. This is another area where we actually worked with a marketing and branding agency. And actually, I think this is an interesting story because we didn't start out thinking we would go immediately to the agency route. So we actually had a. Initially we had a prototype product and brand or not product, I guess more branding created by just a freelancer for just a couple hundred bucks. And went down that path for a period of time. But I think the more we heard from other founders, but also we started speaking with some of these marketing branding agencies, I think it became really clear to us even early on before we. Because this was still an R and D, we didn't have a physical product yet.

12:44
Marilyn Yang
Eventually we would probably need to upgrade. And I think that was also probably the biggest risk we took in those early days to. Because it wasn't cheap, right, to hire a proper marketing and branding agency. So that was definitely a big financial risk, but also just in general risk, right, because we didn't know what even the product was going to taste like yet. And so but I think looking back on it was a big risk. But I think where we ended up, we wouldn't. I don't think we would have gotten to where we are today without the branding and without the. Both the visuals, the just the name, you know, all of it. I don't think we would have gone to anywhere close if we had stuck with that original aesthetic.

13:20
Marilyn Yang
And I think the reason went the direction we did is so the how the agency we worked is they gave us a few kind of mood boards, let's say, and we actually ended up combining a couple mood boards. But we definitely chose to go the edgier, popular, I guess, no pun intended route. And I think part of that is because we are in such a new and disruptive kind of industry because there hasn't been a product like ours before. And we really wanted to create something that got people who have preconceived notions about not liking mushrooms so interested. So someone might visually see our product and be like, oh, I hate mushrooms, but that looks kind of interesting. And that's what were really going for.

13:58
Marilyn Yang
And then I think for part of our broader brand ethos, like I said, I was made fun of as a kid for liking mushrooms. I think it's bringing more attention to what we call an under loved veggie like mushrooms and not just culinary mushrooms. But around the same time we developed the product, I think more and more research and attention had been put on psychedelics as well. As part of that, we really wanted the whole brand ethos to be about making all mushrooms mainstream. So not just shiitake mushrooms, but also maybe psilocybin. And obviously our products are just culinary mushrooms, although we like saying that our flavors are out of this world. But we too, when we created the company and the brand, we do have a charitable foundation that we establish simultaneously as well.

14:38
Marilyn Yang
And so we actually do support indirectly research into the use of psilocybin in treating mental health disorders and things of that nature. And so kind of ties everything together, I guess, in a bit more kind of holistic of a way. But that's really our goal, I think as a broader level to just make mushrooms a bit more at the forefront of general people's minds.

14:58
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And I do think you're so right that over the last few years mushrooms have really become more of this like forefront, like health thing. And I have to say, I don't like mushroom coffee. You know, I tried it, but it's not for me. But some people love it.

15:13
Marilyn Yang
I mean, some of it that doesn't taste too mushroomy.

15:16
Grace Kennedy
But I do love mushrooms generally. And so I'm excited to see that, yeah, there are more people innovating with what mushrooms can do and across the board. And that's awesome that you guys also have your charitable foundation going back a little bit or maybe going forward, I guess, but to your actual launch in 2022. How did you decide to roll out and bring Papadelics to market? Was it like an online launch in person, farmers market? What was your approach?

15:44
Marilyn Yang
Yeah, so this was also a weird Covid residual, I guess, because when we created the product, when were in R and D, when were gearing up for launch, it was the depths of COVID and lockdowns. And so going into grocery or any sort of in person market just wasn't even really an option. And so I think almost by circumstance were kind of forced into plan, at least planning for an E Comm launch. It seemed like that's what a lot of other upstart businesses at the time were doing. They were launching online. And because R and D took quite a while because of COVID supply chain issues and also we sending back and forth samples, weren't able to physically go to the R and D lab. So it took just a longer process.

16:20
Marilyn Yang
We didn't have a final product until over a year and a half in we'd been planning for the launch right during that whole time. But during that period of time, the world opened, backed up. And so not only did the world open back up, but also E commerce became much more competitive because a lot of other people had the similar ideas to us to launch businesses during COVID And in particular you had to effectively launch online. And so, you know, the economics of digital advertising weren't at all the same when we finally launched. Neither was the competitive landscape. It was just everyone had launched not just CBG products, but all sorts of, you know, D2C products.

16:53
Marilyn Yang
And so while we initially launched, I guess in 2022, planning to be really D2C within I think a month, were like, okay, this doesn't really make sense anymore. Not only because the economics, but the world opened back up. There were Opportunities now in retail and farmers markets. And weren't going to close ourselves off to that obviously. But that did require us to actually do a number of changes or make a number of changes to our product. And so that's why I like to say we have multiple launch dates. So our original launch was in 2022, but I would say our more retail appropriate product wasn't launched until 2023. And so that's kind of the how the shift happened from I think us thinking that we would be due to see to us now being over 90% of our business is retail.

17:37
Grace Kennedy
What changes did you have to make it more retail appropriate?

17:40
Marilyn Yang
The first one is the pack size. So we used to actually have a multi pack or a multi serving pack. Now we have a single serve pack that's a smaller package. And the reason for that is essentially for E commerce economics to make sense, you know, it had to be a high enough dollar value product and also it needed to be enough products so we're not just shipping air to people. And so we kind of came up with a pack size really with E. Comm in mind.

18:05
Marilyn Yang
But then when you looked at retail our product was the pack size which is was then a bit too big or it's kind of in this awkward space where it wasn't like a big enough to be club size for like Costco, but it was a bit too big for maybe a new kind of first time someone trying it version of a product in just a normal retail shelf. And so we first big thing we did was making the pack size smaller which actually sounds more ends up being much more complicated than it sounds. That actually took a while because we already had already produced product in the bigger packs. And then secondarily we made a number of ingredient changes to really double down on the natural market.

18:42
Marilyn Yang
And so we for example we swapped out palm oil at the time that took a while to swap out just because we already had production going. And then we also shifted to organic seasonings, seasoning blends and tried to shift most of our ingredients as much as we could to organic and a number of other small things just from an ingredient standpoint. And so that also took a period of time and then finally I guess getting the certifications because especially getting into some of these natural retailers, they care a lot about things like non GMO project. And so we are a non GMO project and kosher certified.

19:14
Marilyn Yang
But both of those things it took a while just from a paperwork, you know, getting our ducks in a row and we needed to get some of these ingredient changes made first before we could then go down the path with those certifications.

19:25
Grace Kennedy
Totally. It's funny.

19:26
Marilyn Yang
Yeah.

19:27
Grace Kennedy
Like, when you say that was like, you know, a minute long of you. But, I mean, how long did it actually take to make all those changes?

19:32
Marilyn Yang
About a year. That's why our second launch, so to speak, wasn't until 2023, and it was almost exactly a year later. And I would say that's us working as quickly as we could, but we had to work through old product. Even then, were still kind of working through some old ingredients. And so there. There were some intermediate, I guess, versions of our product as well, to now finally the version of our product today, which is probably, if you think about every little iteration, probably like V7 or V8.

19:59
Grace Kennedy
Yeah. It's crazy to think about what version of a product, you know, that I'm used to now as a CPG consumer. And I, you know, after interviewing so many founders, I'm like, oh, this is probably like the 15th version of this exact same thing. And I have no idea that they've made these changes because it tastes the same to me, but they've probably made some minuscule change to something somewhere that I have no idea. And it always takes so long. So a year kind of makes sense. Once you decided to really pivot to retail, and I know you said that about 90% of your business is now in retail, how did you approach, like, what was your strategy like, of sort of rolling out into different stores? Who were you targeting and who are you now in or.

20:38
Grace Kennedy
And like, are you further expanding now?

20:40
Marilyn Yang
Yeah. So initially we, I would like to say we got a few lucky breaks. I think that gave us the confidence we needed to really double down on retail. So I guess, again, the benefit of having launched after Covid, even though we started working on it during COVID is that were at some of the very first trade shows that happened after Covid. And so, for example, we had the first iteration of our product in June of 22. We were at Summer Fancy Food show, which was the first time Summer Fancy Food show was back since COVID which actually was a good place to be as a new product because everyone hadn't gone to trade shows in two, three years or whatever it was.

21:13
Marilyn Yang
And so we got a number of strong leads from that show that I think gave us the confidence, like I said, to then really double down. And we really went old school with that. So we doubled down on trade shows where we could. I think the benefit of being at the time in New York City is that there's a lot of events like that and then also in person markets. So I think from that experience we saw that people really responded well, trying our product physically and at the same time, you know, on the consumer side, farmers markets, you know, festivals, food festivals were coming back, so we started to do a lot of those. But yes, interestingly, some of our first lucky breaks were not in grocery retail.

21:49
Marilyn Yang
So the first retailer that we actually got a big order from was actually from Urban Outfitters, but we actually leveraged that into grocery as well. And actually, I guess full circle moment, when we first did quote unquote R and D, I said were, you know, looking at Whole Foods. And we actually just launched in Whole Foods last summer actually. And we have side by side pictures that we put in our deck. But it's kind of an exciting moment because we have a picture of what we took when we first did market research. And we are, our product is now on that same shelf, you know, say four years or so later, which is kind of crazy to think about, but yeah, so I think that's how it all came about. And actually we initially met with Whole Foods also at summer fancy food show.

22:25
Marilyn Yang
Obviously it took almost four years for us to finally get on shelf with them, but. But that's where the conversation with them started as well. And so a lot of things I think happened at that very first trade show went to. And in some ways we probably weren't even fully prepared for, but I think we got a lot of validation and I think it was just very good timing for it having been the first one after Covid.

22:45
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, totally. And I love that story of, you know, going to Whole Foods or market research and now you're on that exact shelf just where you are meant to be. But now that you are sort of so heavily in retail, how do you approach to selling out of retail and getting people to actually buy your product now that it's there?

23:06
Marilyn Yang
We're really big on getting people to try the product. So in store demos is definitely where we focus most of our marketing dollars. We're still a self funded brand and so we're very prudent with where we spend our marketing dollars. And we don't actually spend anything online paid ads. We maintain a very active organic social media presence. So, you know, we're very active on Instagram, TikTok, et cetera, putting out content. But in terms of paid meta ads, we don't do any of it. And that's really to Be able to reserve maximum dollars to be able to fund in store demos. So obviously starting out, me and my husband did most of them ourselves. But as we started to grow and you know, now that we're in so many states, we have a outsourced team that we leverage to do most of those demos.

23:47
Marilyn Yang
And so because of that we're. It doesn't sound like a lot because we would love to do more, but we're doing somewhere like 40 to 50 demos across the country every month. And we see that direct result too. So one of our best demos, I mean this was in conjunction with like a big consumer event, but we sold 50 units in a kind of a three hour kind of period. This was at actually fresh time in the Chicago area at one of their consumer events. And so people just respond very well when they try it because I get it, people haven't tried a mushroom chip before and they don't know what it will be like, especially if people are a bit more skeptical about mushrooms. And so breaking that barrier initially is definitely something we're looking to do.

24:24
Marilyn Yang
And then hopefully as we continue to grow, more people have just tried it already. And so there's more of that network effect of oh, my friend tried that before.

24:31
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, totally. And at youth. You bringing up the dollars to go into the demoing just made me think about how you guys are approaching your funding for this brand. Obviously you both came from finance, so I imagine the nitty gritty of the money is never far from your mind. So what has been your approach to keeping the lights on for Papadelics?

24:50
Marilyn Yang
It's kind of funny being investors ourselves. Although we never invest in a cpg, we are somewhat skeptical of institutional investors because we know how bureaucratic and how stifling it can be, especially for early stage brands. So I think the biggest thing for us is that we didn't want to lose creative control too early in the product and we wanted to stay nimble enough to make changes without answering to anyone. So I can only imagine when were shifting from E. Comm to retail, if we had third parties of any kind involved that would have just made what it was a one year process into maybe even a five year process. Right? Because you would have had to run everything, every little thing by every other person.

25:27
Marilyn Yang
I think that on top of really personally believing in the idea, even from investor lens, so we almost viewed it as investing in ourselves as our own angel investors. We made a very concerted effort to self fund the business, especially in those early first few years. We are actually Interesting though now at a point where we are starting to think about outside capital and have started that process in the early stages there. And I think we're in a position now because we've already kind of have demonstrated traction. I think our product of this SKU is, or our current three SKUs kind of are what they are.

26:01
Marilyn Yang
I mean, there's obviously minor tweaks that can be made, but we've already kind of come to a sellable product and you know, some proof of concept and I think it's more appropriate as a, from a stage perspective anyway to talk to investors, especially in a CVG space where as we've learned, things just take time. And you know, for an investor, you know, I could see how when, if we had approached people and we just had the idea, people would be so skeptical right about all of this. And so now that we have at least some data and traction, it makes more sense. But also we're at that stage where I think the additional dollars actually matter more. So for example, now we actually have more to put it to. We have more demo, we're already in over 3,000 stores.

26:42
Marilyn Yang
We can do more demos, we can fund more launches. It was very expensive for us to do the free fills on some of the launches we've done and we could have done more and more quickly if we had weren't worried about production and that sort of thing.

26:53
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. How are you preparing? You know, I know you're in early stages of like thinking about seeking outside funding, but how are you preparing to begin those conversations?

27:03
Marilyn Yang
Well, actually, one thing I did, although this isn't probably a normal way to prepare, is I was on the YouTube show entrepreneur elevator Pitch. It just so happened that they film in Fort Lauderdale and like I said, we live in Miami now. And a casting agent reached out last summer and that was a great opportunity to obviously practice a pitch because you by nature of the show, you're preparing a one minute pitch. It's on YouTube, but it's kind of Shark Tank esque, I guess. But you're. The idea is it's you're in a physical elevator and you get a minute to pitch to the investors and they get to vote whether you go up or down in the elevator and then you get to do Q and A with them. And so that was a fun experience just from a general experience standpoint.

27:39
Marilyn Yang
But that was right around when this was last year, right around when were thinking like, oh, is now the time appropriate time to start thinking about outside capital. And I think this was Another kind of like our initial trade show kind of gave us the validation we needed that okay, there will be people interested investing. I ended up getting a, I guess a verbal investment or investor on board from that show and experience. And I think again, you know, that gave us the validation that okay, if we can get one out of three people on this reality show to be interested, then we're bound to find others as well.

28:10
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, and great practice. I hear from so many founders that they're just like the more you practice your pitch the better because you're only gonna improve and become like tighter and more concise and better at getting the point across. Do you have any advice for founders who are working on crafting their pitch right now?

28:26
Marilyn Yang
I would say to really focus on the, I guess a few different versions of it. So depending on the context. Right. I think it's important to have like a 1 minute version, a 5 minute version and maybe even a 10 minute version if you're in a longer conversation. And then also, I guess I think this is very common advice. But know your audience as well because we have a different pitch for retailers as we do for potential investors because they care about different things. Things both in terms of the physical pitch deck, visual pitch deck as well as the verbal pitch. So I think also making sure you don't just have one blanket pitch for everything which you know, sometimes you can use a lot of overlapping information. I think ours are probably like 70% the same. Right.

29:03
Marilyn Yang
But the order at which you present things may be a bit different.

29:07
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, no, I think that's great advice and important to sort of have them all in your wheelhouse. It's almost like learning a script too. But you don't want it to sound too scripted, like you're just reading off cards. But you gotta have the different versions of your script at hand and ready to like perform because you never know who you might meet at any of these events. Another question I like to ask that's a little bit bigger but you know, I think it always helps for founders to hear about other founders struggles. And I'm curious what has been one of the hardest elements or times or parts of growing papadelics these last few years.

29:40
Marilyn Yang
I think just getting a calibration on how the industry works and I think the timeframe at which it works. I feel like not coming from the CPG space and you know, I've been involved with, you know, more industrial type businesses where there's, you know, bureaucracy and things take a period of time. But I feel like the CPG industry, as a brand owner, it can sometimes feel like a bit of a black box, especially in those early days. So, for example, like I said, it took Whole Foods four years of conversations to finally put us on shelf. But that makes it sound like were talking to them every week. But it was sporadic meetings, you know, maybe once every six months at a trade show for maybe five to 10 minutes at a time. And in between months at a time of radio silence.

30:23
Marilyn Yang
And it feels like a one sided relationship, right. You're sending them emails every week and you maybe get a reply from them once every 10 emails or something. And so I feel like in the early days it's very. I feel like it can sometimes feel like you're getting nowhere even though you're putting in all this effort and follow up and then you start of feeling like you're feeling annoying or being annoying from following up so much. Right. So striking that balance, but then also appreciating that they're busy and they probably get so many brands outreach or reaching out to them. And so we get that too.

30:54
Marilyn Yang
But at the same time, that makes it hard from an operational perspective too because it kind of branches out from there in terms of if we are on track to launch, you know, how quickly are we going to have to ramp up production and all of those things. And we got put into some pretty tight situations over the past year. I mean, you would think just hearing like, oh, we want you to launch in cbs. We also launched in CBS CVS last year or Whole Foods or whatever it is would be exciting news. And it was, but then it was like, oh, no, right. Like we're gonna have to somehow produce all this product in a month or whatever it is. And so the timeline is just, it's very hot and cold, which was just difficult to manage.

31:30
Marilyn Yang
I, I think just for a variety of reasons.

31:33
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. It's so hard to know. And it makes sense that it would feel hot and cold and it's like a toxic relationship where it's pretty much one minute it's hot, one minute it's cold, and then you're in for life. But you don't mess up because then they'll break up with you.

31:48
Marilyn Yang
Pretty much, yeah.

31:49
Grace Kennedy
One thought I had when you were saying you're launching in cvs, I was like, I want you guys to be at the airport. I want to be able to buy papadelics from the like, you know, little convenience stores at the airport so I can have it on the plane.

32:00
Marilyn Yang
We're Actually, in one of the airport stores, actually. It's funny. It's actually a massage parlor. It's called, I think, even, like the Minute. I think. I'm not sure if I'm thinking of the right one. It might be like, Minute Wellness or something. But it's sometimes in some of the airports, right. They have, like, the little massage parlor type pools, but then they also have the massage parlor places. They also have, like, better for you snacks and beauty products and whatnot. So we are in one of those chains. I've definitely seen us in Atlanta airport. I know we're in, I think, jfk. So, yeah, I mean, I think we would love to get into more airport stores. Yeah.

32:31
Grace Kennedy
Well, if anyone's listening, who. Who can get them in to more airport stores, let Marilyn know, because I personally would like to be able to have that as my snack at the airport. But as a final question, I'd love to hear a little bit about, like, what you're hoping or, like what you're seeing down the pipeline for Papadelics and what your priorities are this next year and how you're hoping to see pupadelics grow over the next, you know, months and years.

32:53
Marilyn Yang
Yeah. So throughout last year, like I said, were just managing the launches and getting the products for the launches. And so I feel like this year, especially the first half of this year, we're really wanting to breathe and kind of focus on now that were in on shelf, really focus on those stores and like I said, ramping up demos, ramping up maybe promotional programs and that sort of thing. And we are working now on some other leads in the background. I think a big thing, too, that we didn't even touch too deeply on is getting onboarded with the distributors. Right. As part of this whole process. But now that we are finally in particular in KEHE and Unifi and we're part of both of their internal incubator programs called KE Elevate and UNFI up next.

33:32
Marilyn Yang
That has opened more doors for us as well along the way, which we are now able to leverage because we're already in their DCs. And so it becomes a bit easier of a conversation with any incremental retailer. But it's still a lot of work and considerations because we now have had a taste of free fills and the challenges logistically of launch. And so we're more mindful now, I think, of how many of those we take on. But like I said, the process can be hot and cold, so we. We always want some of that going on. In the background.

34:01
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, definitely. Well, that's really exciting and makes sense that you would want to spend a lot of this year kind of like going deeper on the stores that you've recently launched in. Where can our listeners follow along on Papadelic's journey? And where can they buy Papadelics if they want to buy it, or even find a store where they can buy it? But where can they learn more?

34:20
Marilyn Yang
Yes, our website's probably the best central hub for everything, so it's papadelics.com p o p A D E L I C S. We do have a store locator on there. You can order online on there. We are available on Amazon as well if you prefer to order on Amazon. But other than that, we do pop up a good amount at Whole Foods in terms of in store sampling and in Sprouts as well. So if you happen to live near a Sprouts and or Whole Foods location, maybe just keep your eyes peeled.

34:47
Grace Kennedy
Amazing. Well, lucky for me I've got a Sprouts and a Whole Foods in Philadelphia. Well, two Whole Foods, but I've also got a Sprouts. So I'm in luck, but awesome. Well, this was so much fun. Marilyn, thanks so much for coming on the show.

34:59
Marilyn Yang
It's so great to chat. Thanks again.

35:03
Grace Kennedy
All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, it would help us out so much if you left a 5 star review on ratethispodcast.com startupcpg I am Grace Kennedy, the host of the Founder Feedback feature series. So feel free to add me on LinkedIn or reach out to me on Slack. I'm always on the hunt for new and exciting brands to feature. And if you're a potential sponsor who would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnershipsartupcpg.com and finally, as a reminder for anyone listening, if you haven't already, we would love for you to join our community on Slack. You can sign up via our website startupcpg dot.