The Startup CPG Podcast

Lauryn Bodden
I think a big chunk of this brand is about community, so it's just making it more accessible to a lot more people. Potato chips are over a quarter of the industry. I felt like that was kind of where we wanted to dive into. There's a lot of puffs on the market, a lot of crackers, different pretzels, but, like, I love potato chips. I know America loves potato chips, but there wasn't really anything disrupting that category. A lot of this is just because it's what I had to do to get to the next step, fully knowing that I would never be able to produce the kind of snack that I wanted from home.

00:51
Daniel Scharff
Welcome to the Startup CPG podcast. I am usually your host, Daniel Scharff, but today we have a different host for you. I'm introducing our editor, Grace Kennedy. We're really excited to launch a new series on our podcast called Founder Fridays, where Grace will interview some of the most exciting brands from our community. And you guessed it, these episodes drop on Fridays. I'm so excited for this first one featuring Snoods, the winners of our 2024 alley rally, selected by the attendees as the brand to win a free booth at Expo West 2025. I hope you love this new podcast series to go behind the scenes on so many more brands. Enjoy.

01:32
Grace Kennedy
Hello. Welcome to a bonus episode of the Startup CPG podcast. My name is Grace. I am the startup CPG editor, and we are joined by Lauren, the founder of Snoods, which we are so excited to feature. They were the winner of our alley rally backpack brands, so they will have a free booth at next year's Expo West 2025. And if you haven't tried their snacks, they are so good. But I will let you introduce yourself. Lauren, welcome.

02:06
Lauryn Bodden
Hi. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me. My company is snoods. We are noodle chips. Each of our flavors is inspired by a different bowl of noodles from around the world. Each chip is a different noodle shape, leaning both italian, asian, really. If there's a noodle bowl, we're all about it. And then sauce via the seasoning. They're gluten free, they're vegan, they're delicious.

02:30
Grace Kennedy
They really are. And even before Ally rally, Kiki, the startup CPG social media manager, was like, grace, if you haven't tried snoods, you need to go try snoods at alley rally. So I was hooked, but yeah. So just to kick us off, I'd love to hear, like, the snood's origin story. How did you come up with this idea? It's so innovative and new. There's literally nothing like this on the market, I feel like. So, yeah, what is the snood's origin story? How did it come to be?

03:00
Lauryn Bodden
Well, I have to say, first off, I love Kiki. I love the startup CPG family in general. They're just huge advocates of snoods. But then, I mean, just every obviously startup there is, so. Wouldn't be possible without you guys. First off, I had to say that snoods came about because I found myself on a Netflix cooking competition. My background is kind of all over hospitality. I've worked in restaurants, I've done recipe development. I've worked for a meal kit, doing procurement, kind of all across the board. I've worked as an editor as well. And so I used all of these different experiences and put them towards making snoods on the show. And I won with this concept on the Netflix show, Snack versus Chef.

03:47
Lauryn Bodden
And so seeing everyone's kind of reaction on the show, as well as after the show came out, it felt very much like something I needed to pursue. It also felt like something that was the culmination of everything I've done in my career. So it was a bit of a passion project, a very expensive passion project. But, yeah. So I just went full steam ahead. I kind of silently launched. This past fall, I actually got a booth grant from startup CPG for Expo east, and that was kind of my jumping point for the brand. It helped me really test market validation that I hadn't really been able to do just yet. It allowed me to meet my current co manufacturer. It allowed me to meet different sales advisors that I work with now. Startup CPG really helped set me up for success.

04:38
Lauryn Bodden
And so from there, I also made a lot of contacts with different buyers. We tested the water this past December and January with a couple retail partners, including pop up grocer in New York, as well as Foxtrot, as part of their up and comer finalists. And then again, startup CPG, you guys are constantly throughout my story. I got connected with, naturally, New York and participated in their fairway find pitch. And so this end of the April and beginning of May, we'll be launching in all the fairways shop rights, gourmet garages with a really nice marketing push from their team. So just a lot of exciting stuff happening, and, yeah, I just feel really grateful for the startup CPG team because of that.

05:23
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, I love that. Okay. So very exciting about fairway, and I'd love to hear about what you guys are doing, you know, as you're launching in these bigger stores and you're still relatively new. What are you guys doing to sort of make sure that you don't just launch and then nobody buys snoods from fairway. How are you guys making sure that people actually go and buy it?

05:49
Lauryn Bodden
Right, so, and I will say, when I continually say we, it is very much a me team. I have a couple of people that are helping me as advisors, but day to day it's me. And so I think I constantly have to remind myself that and just keep that in mind because there's only so much I can do. And so I think part of being a founder is giving yourself grace and just recognizing that so that way you can keep going forward. I think with these smaller retail partners like pop up grocer and Foxtrot that kind of lean into startups and are really helpful when you're trying to set up this distribution and you're still trying to figure out your consumers and your competitors and all these things in the retail landscape are extremely helpful because you do mess up.

06:36
Lauryn Bodden
No matter what you do, you mess up in the beginning. It's inevitable. So taking a lot of those findings from consumer feedback as well as we sent out a lot of samples when we officially launched this past February to media and buyers as well, and just listening, hearing their unfiltered responses, a lot of people initially thought that snooze were just freeze dried or dehydrated noodles that were then seasoned or ready to eat noodles. So taking a lot of that and figuring out how do we make changes that are tangible, really sifting through that feedback and finding things that you can make changes on and that are consistent, I think that there's, like, a lot of feedback that is really biased and so finding the consistency through it all. So because of that, we did a lot of packaging changes.

07:30
Lauryn Bodden
We changed from a stand up pouch, which was kind of more luxury, good leaning, and I think put that mindset of ready to eat noodles in people's minds and then also changing the formulation. We were leaning into this crunch category, but finding the right balance of that, especially with this product that is so different from everything that's on the market, we can kind of do whatever we want in that regard, but that also makes it very difficult in trying to locate what is that sweet spot. So taking all of those findings and really, you know, wanting to crush this much larger campaign that we have the resources to really excel from. So I think also being really transparent with my buyers from a lot of my past experiences and telling them so that they know. We've heard this from people.

08:18
Lauryn Bodden
So it's helpful when your employees are also talking about the brand or for placement in the retail stores. So I think, yeah, just. Just listening and just knowing what your pain points are and being honest about that.

08:33
Grace Kennedy
Yeah. And working to iterate based on those pain points.

08:37
Lauryn Bodden
Right?

08:37
Grace Kennedy
Definitely. When I first heard of you guys, I was like, oh, cool, like a noodle that's become a chip. So I can imagine that it's like some consumer, like, education or communication that needs to happen to make sure people understand, really, you know, what they are buying. And that is important to people right now, too, especially as people want to know what they're eating, what they're buying, etcetera. So in terms of the actual development, it sounds like you did a few different iterations, but how did you sort of figure out, you know, what flavors you wanted to use and what sort of grains you wanted to use? I know it's gluten free, and so what was the actual, like, development of the product itself?

09:18
Lauryn Bodden
Like, it was such a long road. I think the flavors actually were the easiest part. I knew that I wanted some kind of tomato sauce element. So that's our rigatoni basil pomodoro. I knew I wanted a cheesy flavor that feels like you always need that in your launching flavors. Three is the nice, round number that I learned from a lot of other brands that is good to launch with three skews. So you have kind of some. A lot of different options, but it's not too much to handle. And then I wanted to lean into asian flavors because it's how I like to cook. But also, I didn't want us to be pigeonholed into just this italian market.

10:00
Lauryn Bodden
So we also have our spicy miso, ramen, and spice became so prevalent during the pandemic, whether it was just like these rich, kind of more deeper flavors or spices and heat. So that also felt necessary. The hardest part was nailing down these textures. Gluten free, for me, was important, not because I'm celiac or gluten free myself, but I'm also someone that just likes to be invited to the party. So we just wanted everyone to be able to. Able to be invited to the snack party, and it just opens up a lot of doors for me, selfishly, to be able to sell. But I think a big chunk of this brand is about community, so it's just making it more accessible to a lot more people. Potato chips are over a quarter of the industry.

10:46
Lauryn Bodden
I felt like, that was kind of where we wanted to dive into. There's a lot of puffs on the market, a lot of crackers, different pretzels, but, like, I love potato chips. I know America loves potato chips, but there wasn't really anything disrupting that category. So potato flour is a big part of our formulation. And then toying with, like, a lot of different other things. Chickpea flour is very prevalent in a lot of different noodles. Lentil flour is used in a lot of gluten free noodle bases as well. Now, rice flour is also really great because it kind of gives that crispy texture when frying. So we toyed it with a lot of different flours, a lot of different ratios of flours.

11:26
Lauryn Bodden
I started off making snooze from my home kitchen with kitchenaid pasta maker, fully knowing that this is not how I would ever be able to scale. I went into commercial kitchen. A lot of this is just because it's what I had to do to get to the next step, fully knowing that I would never be able to produce the kind of snack that I wanted from home or from a commercial kitchen. You really need this industrial equipment. So even moving from my commercial kitchen to my man, it took several months for us to continue to fine tune every single thing, even using different equipment, different shapes. It was a lot of different testing, but I am so stoked for where we landed. Xo was kind of our launching point for this new formulation, and it was just met with nonstop excitement. So.

12:19
Lauryn Bodden
So a jazz to just have it out in the world.

12:22
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, I did try it at expos, as I said, and I think the miso ramen was definitely my favorite, so I'm glad you included that one, selfishly. So, sort of. Also, speaking of these, like, different steps you have to take. Right. I know that, you know, you're launching in fairway soon, which is such a bigger sort of retail launch, but I also know, you know from your website that you've been in some of these smaller, like, pop up grocers, foxtrots. So can you talk a little bit about those, like, step by steps in terms of getting into retail and breaking into retail? Because, yeah, it's definitely not like you have zero stores, and then suddenly you're in every store across the country.

13:00
Lauryn Bodden
Right. And I think for everyone, it's so exciting when you get your first store and then they just start racking up. But there's so many different things that you have to be mindful of and realize you have to be able to manage those relationships, you have to make sure that the product is moving so that you get the reorders from those retailers, but also that you're making money. You have to also keep in mind that if you're working with a lot of independent retailers, you're going to have to ship directly to those, which seemed very financially great for the company initially. But then once you start racking up all these independent stores, as everyone I'm sure knows, startup, CBT, it just, it racks up and it's a lot to keep track of and just a lot more liability in the end.

13:50
Lauryn Bodden
So I think I knew that going into it and I kind of knew that I would work with some of these more local stores testing the product and just seeing how it did in the wild and then kind of pulled back a little bit. Dipped my toe in again, pulled back a little bit. So definitely working with independents early on is extremely helpful for getting a lot of that feedback, both from consumers and from buyers, but then also just getting your footing, understanding what it's like working with any kind of retailer and what is required of you. So that way when we do make this next step and we do go into setting up our distributors and getting into these big, larger scale markets, we're ready and we know kind of what it takes to keep that growth going.

14:38
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And have you guys started working with a distributor now or are you still sort of self distributing?

14:45
Lauryn Bodden
We are setting up our distribution this month in April. So I'm really excited. It's a dream to be able to offload some of the work. Obviously, there's still a lot to be done and I mean, that said, it takes a lot for you to be set up financially as well as production wise. There's so much that goes into being able to work with a distributor. So I'm very grateful that we're at that point. But yes, we have some more so northeast coast distributors because I'm really focusing, I'm in New York, I'm really focusing in this region. So that way I can be kind of boots on the ground with a lot of these retailers, including fairway, and understand a lot of our data points that again will help us set ourselves up for more growth.

15:31
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And definitely something that I've heard echoed by many other founders is it takes a lot, but then it's also exciting. And sort of looking at maybe a more broad scale question, but what are you sort of with these next few launches in this coming year, what are you sort of hoping to see with snoods over the next year, and then obviously next year you'll be at Expo West 2025. But where are you hoping to sort of be by that point with snoods?

16:05
Lauryn Bodden
I would love to have people on my team to have, yeah, just a set of individuals that I really can trust and can give some of this work to not only make my life easier, but I think to really, again, be able to grow efficiently and write. There's just so much to keep track of as an individual. And so I know that there's things that are falling through the cracks, there's emails that are unanswered in my inbox that I need to get to, but it's just really hard as a solo founder.

16:40
Lauryn Bodden
So I think getting to that place, getting the funding that we need to make a lot of these things happen, including growing the team, a lot of the marketing things that we need to do within our retail spaces, but also a lot of brand awareness that needs to happen, the brand education into what our snack is. There's so many different fees that kind of add up week by week, if not day by day.

17:04
Lauryn Bodden
So I think connecting with a lot more of these investors and feeling more confident in the financial side of things because I don't know if you ever feel confident with the financials running a CPG company, because everything's kind of always up in the air, but getting the funding we need, getting the team that we need and then, yeah, just getting the product to the place that we have really key retail partners in both metro markets that we're currently targeting, but also bigger chains like say Target or Kroger or Walmart. Once we find those right relationships that make sense for the brand at the point that it's at right now. Yeah, absolutely.

17:46
Grace Kennedy
And sort of thinking about funding, what is your approach to getting investors or meeting with investors? Obviously, you got the initial funding from winning that tv show, but what is your approach now to sort of seeking out funding?

18:00
Lauryn Bodden
Yeah, initially I did a Kickstarter, actually, and that really helped me show kind of the sales and the buzz that was kind of coming off of the show to investors as well as, I think, retailers. And there's so many numbers that you have to use throughout this fundraising process that I feel like I talked to so many people and it's like the chicken and the egg problem. How do you get the numbers that you need to get the traction that you need to make all the things happen? So I am working in so many different facets of the industry. I'm really fortunate to know so many incredible individuals. So I have someone that's helping me with my fundraising strategy. We're really targeting key angel investors right now.

18:47
Lauryn Bodden
We're in this pre seed phase, so we're really early, kind of too early for a lot of VC's, which is understandable. And I kind of, I mean, the ideal situation, I think, for anyone is to have less people in the room for the goal that we're raising for. But I mean, I think we take each conversation day by day and we're kind of seeing where things fall. But we're talking to a couple key angel investors right now that were really excited to set us up for the rest of this year.

19:20
Grace Kennedy
That's awesome. Well, knock on wood, hope those are exactly what you need and they give you all the money. So thinking about sort of some of these challenges that you do face as a solo founder, as a new business, as a CPG founders, all the different, many challenges, what has been, I guess I'll say the biggest challenge and how did you overcome it? Or how are you sort of working to overcome it to this day?

19:49
Lauryn Bodden
Yeah, I mean, going back to fundraising, the chicken and the egg situation, to making a product that, again, is kind of this first to market product that has a lot of nuances, that was a huge issue, figuring out how am I going to make this, going to different comb manufacturers, saying, well, this is how I'm making in my home kitchen. I fully know this is not how we would make it in your facility, but can you help me? Can we talk about this? And a lot of people were just wrote me off right away saying, this is too much for me to take on right now to the fact that we're gluten free. So finding all the right partners in the creation of this was really difficult and landing on that right formulation, the right process for how we wanted to make it.

20:36
Grace Kennedy
It was a very long road.

20:37
Lauryn Bodden
So I'm very happy that we gotten to where we are today. And I think that in of itself, constantly trying to, like, push through everything again, as a solo founder, you're taking on a lot of things, and I do have a lot of experience in hospitality, but that's not CPG. I've worked as a food editor before, and I've interviewed a lot of founders, so I do understand different points of the process, but there was a lot of different learning curves that I had to get over. And, yeah, it was just putting in the work and the research and putting my pride aside a lot of times and not feeling uncomfortable asking a lot of questions.

21:18
Lauryn Bodden
I think that took me a while to get past the point where I felt like I was being stupid if I asked a manufacturer something or I asked an advisor something, because it is kind of overwhelming to see all these other people that are. They seem to be thriving, but I think everyone is really struggling with a lot of the same issues. So just putting myself out there and being vulnerable as well.

21:44
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's good advice too, is like, just keep asking questions and, you know, put your ego to the side and just keep going. So sort of the returning to your. You talking about seeking out partners, asking those questions, how did you sort of, like, find the right partners? Because I feel like that's a question I hear a lot from brands, is like, how do I know who to work with? And like, how do I know they're going to be a match for my business specifically? Right. Because just because a partner comes to you and wants to work with you doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be the perfect fit. So how did you sort of go through that process of figuring out the people that would be the right fit for snoods?

22:22
Lauryn Bodden
I mean, I think it's all about finding the people that are wrong for snooze and learning from that. Honestly, I found myself really deep in a lot of conversations that either ended up leaving a really sour taste in my mouth or was just honestly, a really long waste of time. I mean, again, I give yourself grace. I'm still very new to a lot of things, so I think, you know, being constructive about every experience, not feeling regret, and that happens, we're gonna just take our findings and move on, utilizing the startup CPG space, constantly just pinging people, connecting with them. I've connected with so many different founders. I don't care if you're in dog food or, I don't know, coffee, and you have nothing to do with my company. It's just still so great learning from every individual.

23:18
Lauryn Bodden
You'll take some piece of knowledge, whether it's from fundraising, from talking with co manufacturers, from understanding different contracts. So, yeah, I've done so much googling, and I think I've tapped into a lot of different communities that have gave me a lot of these resources. And again, I have no shame in just constantly pinging people and talking to anyone that will let me talk to them.

23:44
Grace Kennedy
Absolutely. I think that's such the way a to do it, though, right? There's no other way. You don't learn unless you ask. And so there is so much that you need to learn. And I feel like you sometimes where I'm like, I only interview CPG founders. And sometimes I joke to myself, like, I basically could start a CPG brand at this point. But then I think about it and I'm like, no, I couldn't. Like, there's still so much that I don't know, just from talking to you guys. And, you know, it's such a massive undertaking, so massive. Props to you and to everybody who takes it on because it's a lot.

24:18
Grace Kennedy
But, you know, and sort of within that, though, of the, like, all the challenges, all of the questions, things, the learning, everything, what's sort of something that amidst all those challenges, you're like, okay, I can keep going. Like, what's. It could be a moment or, you know, a general feeling, but what's something that helps you understand, like, I'm doing the right thing. I should keep going.

24:42
Lauryn Bodden
Honestly, anytime I'm around other people, I, like, get out of my hole where it's just me working alone, being at different startup CPG events, being at expos, just getting any kind of feedback, because honestly, I feel like anytime I put the product out there, I get such a great response. And so that just tells me every single time, okay, we do have something here. We need to keep going, getting the response back from different buyers and just. Yeah, just talking with people, that just gives me really everything that I need to keep pushing forward. I think that I'm a very stubborn individual, and so in the end, I will make this work because I will not let it fail. But I want to make something that people enjoy and people seem to really love snooze. So I love that for me.

25:33
Grace Kennedy
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like, too, hearing feedback, people like what you're creating. It's like, that's the best news ever.

25:41
Lauryn Bodden
Right, right.

25:41
Grace Kennedy
So last few questions before we kind of wrap up, but one, just being a founder, were to come to you, right, maybe where you were a year or so ago, and, like, asked you know, what advice would you give me if I want to be where you are a year from now? Obviously, it's a huge question, but what's, like, one piece of advice you might give them? Yeah, I have it already.

26:04
Lauryn Bodden
One of my advisors who was actually a judge on the show, Helen park, she told me last spring when I was still. I kept talking to her, and I was like, I just don't know where to start. There's just so many things to think about. I don't know how I'm going to make this. And she was like, honestly, you just have to get out there and start effing up. You're going to mess up regardless. But at least once it's out there, you have a place that you know that you can build on and you're going to start getting the feedback, you're going to start understanding things, but you'll never get to that point unless you just put the product out there. So just start doing the things. It's not going to be great in the beginning, but it will get there.

26:43
Lauryn Bodden
And people are also much nicer than you think that they will be. So don't be afraid.

26:50
Grace Kennedy
I love that. I think that's great advice. And so last sort of bits is how can anyone who's listening to this or anyone in the startup CPG community, how can we support you? And you know what, ask would you like to put out to our community?

27:03
Lauryn Bodden
Oh, gosh, I think that's a much bigger question. It's so hard because honestly, I feel just so supported from the startup CPG team already. You all offer so many different kinds of webinars and grants and all the resources that are so vital for small companies to just get off the ground. So I think just keep being supportive and kind to people and check in on your friends. That's really what we need. We need the positive reinforcement.

27:35
Grace Kennedy
Absolutely. Check in on your CPG founder friends, please. So then where can people buy snoods? And where can people learn more about snoods?

27:44
Lauryn Bodden
So you can find us on eatsnoods.com as well as Instagram. We're currently available d two c online as well as Foxtrot. We'll be launching in fairway shoprite gourmet garage in May. And we have another big retailer announcement coming at the end of May as well that will take us even more nationally. So stay tuned.

28:05
Grace Kennedy
Amazing. Well, I'm personally very excited you're going to be in shoprite because there are lots of shop rates in Philadelphia where I am so looking forward to that. But yeah, this was so much fun, Lauren and I hope everybody tries snoods or reaches out to Lauren and asks her a million questions as she told you to do.

28:24
Lauryn Bodden
My inbox, please.

28:26
Grace Kennedy
Exactly. Exactly. But be kind. She might not respond right away, but yeah, this was so much fun. And yeah, everybody buys snoods.

28:35
Speaker 4
All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast today, it would really help us out if you can leave a five star review on Apple podcasts or Spotify. I am Daniel Scharff I'm the host and founder of Startup CPG. Please feel free to reach out or add me on LinkedIn. If you're a potential sponsor that would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnershipstartupcpg.com and reminder to all of you out there, we would love to have you join the community. You can sign up at our website to learn about our webinars events and slack channel. If you enjoyed today's music, you can check out my band it's the super fantastics on Spotify music. On behalf of the entire startup CPG team, thank you so much for listening and your support. See you next time.