The Startup CPG Podcast

In this bonus episode of the Startup CPG podcast, Grace sits down with Alison Cayne, the founder of Haven's Kitchen, to discuss the transformation of her business from a cooking school to a thriving CPG brand. Alison shares the challenges and lessons learned during this journey, touching on topics like sustainable packaging, navigating new food industry categories, and the strategic launch of a line of aiolis. She offers valuable insights into effective, cost-efficient marketing strategies and the importance of staying flexible in a rapidly changing market. They also cover the impact of the pandemic on fresh food products, consumer behavior, and the mental challenges of being a founder.

Tune in to learn from Alison's experience and gain practical tips for growing a successful CPG brand. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed the episode!

Listen in as they share about:
  • Haven's Kitchen's Origin
  • Challenges in Scaling
  • Sustainability and Packaging
  • Launch of Aiolis
  • Industry Insights
  • Product Evolution and Innovation
  • Challenges in Business
  • Marketing Strategies
  • Social Media and Brand Positioning
  • Retail Success and Future Outlook
  • Advice for Founders


Episode Links:
Haven's Kitchen Website
Alison Cayne LinkedIn


Don't forget to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode. For potential sponsorship opportunities or to join the Startup CPG community, visit http://www.startupcpg.com.


Show Links:

Transcripts of each episode are available on the Transistor platform that hosts our podcast here (click on the episode and toggle to “Transcript” at the top)

Creators & Guests

Host
Grace Kennedy

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.

Alison Cayne
We're not a cool kid brand. We're like a helper in your kitchen. But I think what makes us special is, like, we have an open rate that's umpteen times higher than average because we really provide. Like, we're truly an educational platform. We approach it as you have a problem in the kitchen, and we're here to help you solve it and feel like we've just saved you time and energy and money and, like, despair.

00:40
Grace Kennedy
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Grace, and I'm here with another founder feature. Today I'm talking to Allie, the founder of Haven's Kitchen. Allie started Haven's kitchen over a decade ago as a kitchen cooking school and event space, but she later pivoted to a CPG brand after so many of her students asked her to sell the sauces she was teaching them to make at home. They now have a line of delicious flavor shortcuts, including their new aiolis. Having been in the industry for so long, Ally is a wealth of knowledge. We talk all about pivoting products, the nitty gritty details about sustainable packaging, the mental challenges that come with being a founder, and so much more. I hope you enjoy this episode, and as always, let me know what you think.

01:30
Grace Kennedy
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the startup CPG podcast. This is Grace, and I am here with another founder feature. Today I'm talking to Allie, the founder of Haven's Kitchen. Haven's Kitchen makes better for you. Flavor shortcuts for busy people, and they recently launched a line of delicious aiolis. So welcome to the show, Allie.

01:52
Alison Cayne
Thank you, Grace. Happy to be here.

01:55
Grace Kennedy
Yes, so excited to have you here. So I'd love to begin with Haven's Kitchen's origin story. I know you began as a kitchen cooking school over a decade ago, so can you walk us through how you began Haven's kitchen and then also how it became what it is today, which I know that's a long story because like I said, it's over a decade ago, but some of the origin.

02:20
Alison Cayne
Yes, well, I was born, and it is a long story and I'm long winded, but I'll try to be concise. Basically, I went back to get a master's degree in food systems and sustainability, food policy, gastronomy, everything kind of related to food called food studies. As part of that, I had to get an internship, which was funny because I had five kids under ten at the time, and ended up as the head of the education station at the Union Square Green market, which was kind of perfect and amazing. And I had been teaching cooking to friends and friends of friends, starting even back in college. So now I was also teaching farm labor practices in agriculture and the difference between local and organic and biodynamic and all of these really fun things. And this was 2010.

03:15
Alison Cayne
And then I basically decided, you know, I want to kind of combine my love of cooking with all of this stuff that I feel like people should know, because home cooking is good for your community, the environment, really, the planet. And those connections were just starting to form with Michael Pollan and Alice Waters. Even Instagram was starting to make food and cooking kind of sexy again. So I ended up opening a brick and mortar cooking school, not for professional cooks, but just for people who wanted to come and learn how to make dinner. I took people on farmers market tours, and we would bring back the things that we bought at the market and be like, what do you think we should make with this? And just get people kind of comfortable. And we ended up having a cafe and a private event space.

04:05
Alison Cayne
We did, like, 300 events a year. What we ended up doing and being really good at were these were called activations, which I had never heard of for all these brands, you know, everything from siggys to Instacart to L'Oreal to care of away, Casper, you name it, we had events, and they were sort of, how do you take a brand and sort of channel it into, you know, a experience, really? And were quite good at it. So I was starting to get exposed to CPG through the cooking school and then wrote a cookbook in 2017. And basically, I guess our students kept saying, you know, we've subscribed to these meal kits. We keep unsubscribing. They're not helping us. I don't like the feeling of this. I do like the sauces.

05:01
Alison Cayne
And the other sort of big data point was, you know, okay, now I understand how to, like, grill a piece of fish or make some vegetables. But this chimichurri that you've taught me is just a lot of ingredients and mincing, and I'm not quite sure what the acid salt balance should be. And can you just put these in court containers and sell them to us? So we did. We sold pesto Romesco, like a peanut Thai sauce, a chimichurri, all of these different sauces in this little refrigerator in the front cafe. And, you know, someone along the way was like, you should package these. And I did. And then were in 14 Whole Foods and fresh direct with them in 2018. And then went national with Whole Foods the first week of the pandemic in 2020, which was fascinating.

05:57
Alison Cayne
And then I closed the cooking school, and now we're a CPG company. Wow.

06:04
Grace Kennedy
And that.

06:04
Alison Cayne
Yes, that was all. That was a twelve year journey.

06:08
Grace Kennedy
Yeah. You've seen a lot, probably. You've seen a lot of changes.

06:13
Alison Cayne
Yeah, yeah.

06:14
Grace Kennedy
Throughout the industry, outside of the industry, just in food in general, probably. And I do love that concept of the sauces themselves because it's so true sometimes you're like, I would love an herby sauce, but am I really going to buy and chop four different herbs?

06:31
Alison Cayne
Right? Yeah. A lot of what gets in the way, you know, when you have. I don't know. I mean, seven classes a week, 14 people in a class, you start to learn why people cook, why people don't cook, what their ears are, what their concerns are. It's really time. It's time. It's a little confidence. You know, I'm going to buy those herbs and I'm going to mince them all and I'm going to have to deal with the cleanup. But what if it doesn't taste great and I don't know how to fix it? There's fear of sort of putting energy into something that doesn't work. So that's our whole mission, is like that sweet spot where someone decides not to cook because they don't want to do that little last mile wear. The last mile.

07:26
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, I love that. That's a great way to put that, too. I'm sure is super helpful for so many consumers. So one thing I wanted to return to is when you decided to actually start packaging and selling these sauces, you know, you were selling them from Haven's kitchen, the brick and mortar maybe out of these core containers or whatever. How did you transition then from this sort of, like, ad hoc we're selling these sauces to. Okay, no, this is a full. This is a full thing. Now, how did that transition work?

07:58
Alison Cayne
You know, it's funny because now there are resources like you. I started a podcast like the month that I had my first PO in 2018, because no one taught us how to do this stuff, and there wasn't a ton of information available. So I think I was in a really fortunate situation where Chobani had their incubator party at Havens. Sir. Kensingtons had done product launches at Havens Kitchen. I knew enough to be able to sort of reach out to a couple of these folks and just start asking questions. I was also really lucky that John Lawson from Whole Foods found us and championed us. Because once I figured out, I knew enough to know that because of my sustainability background, obviously a court container was not a good choice is a package, but neither were glass jars or bottles.

08:58
Alison Cayne
Like, I know enough to know that. So, you know, I ended up researching pouch packaging, lifecycle studies on pouch packaging. It's just a much like lower impact packaging option. So I knew that finding pouches, finding pouch pillars, learning about high pressure pasteurization, you know, because I wanted as fresh and clean of a product as possible, and it just wasn't being done. So at the beginning it was, you know, were making it in an incubator kitchen. We were putting it on a cold truck to a HPP facility in New Jersey. Like, the margins were not good, but, you know, you learn. It was, there was just a lot of research to be done. And I remember John actually saying, okay, I get the pouch.

09:49
Alison Cayne
I think it's good, but they're going to tip over on the shelf, so you need to put it in a corrugate, you know, so it just sits on the shelf. And I was like, what is that? Like? I, he was like, you know, the chocolate bars on the count, you know, I mean, it was all just learn. And then you kind of go, you know, everything in this industry, I think, is like, you do a little, you see if it works. If it works, you go to the next step. And if you go to the next step, then you. Every next step has to be a little bit of like improvement in margins, improvement in systems. You know, efficiency is the name of the game, but it was a long journey.

10:29
Grace Kennedy
Totally. And it's so true that you do just have to ask questions and you do have to be okay with getting incrementally better with each step and knowing that it's not going to be some zero to 100, like zero to nothing to 100. Perfect. It's going to be step by step asking questions, people helping you. And one thing I wanted to return to, because I see a lot of CPG brands that are delicious, but they do come in glass jars and they often, you know, I'm a shelfie's judge, sometimes they'll arrive and they'll have been shattered. Always a bummer. And.

11:00
Grace Kennedy
But I'd love to hear more about that distinction between the pouch and like a glass jar, for example, and why the pouch is more sustainable and maybe even better for efficiencies on your end because, yeah, I see a lot of brands starting with glass jars and I always going to be like, maybe don't.

11:18
Alison Cayne
I mean, you know, we live in a really reductive culture, right? So we've been taught over the last 30 years, plastic is bad. Glass is good. Glass is, you know, indefinitely recyclable. You never, ever have to throw glass out because you can use it in your house for everything. I'm curious as to how many people actually take those glass jars that they use and, like, have them all over their home filled with thumbtacks and things like that. You know, maybe one yogurt jar here and there. You know, the problem is that about 20% of glass actually gets recycled municipally. And so to be clear, we are not even talking about hard plastic jars because those are absolutely the worst. They're just bad. They're bad for everything. They're easy squeezy, and that's fun. And consumers really like them.

12:14
Alison Cayne
But I wouldn't ever put anything in a hard plastic.

12:17
Grace Kennedy
Yeah.

12:18
Alison Cayne
When you look at sort of like, the overall sustainability of a package, right. It's very easy to say, is it recyclable, quote unquote, you know, yes or no. But really what you have to do is look at the life cycle. So that just is a kind of fancy word for saying, like, what are the inputs that go into making this? How much energy, how much water, what's used for it, right. And then what are the inputs into shipping it?

12:46
Alison Cayne
And this is where glass really fails, because if you just think about the weight of the package and how bulky it is and then how much you need to wrap it to make sure that they're not, you know, clinking against each other and breaking, as you said, you end up with, like, 80% fewer emissions just caused by the trucks that transport volume to volume of pouch to glass.

13:11
Grace Kennedy
Wow.

13:12
Alison Cayne
So just think about the amount of fuel you need to use and then the emissions that you produce. We also, because, you know, of my background, we found a company called terracycle. If you, as a consumer, wants to guarantee that your pouch is converted into a park bench or a dock, you simply email terracycle. You type in havens kitchen, they send you an envelope. You put your pouches in. We guarantee 100%. But right now, pouch packaging is not basically recycled by municipal plants because they don't get the money that they would like for it. We're behind. Obviously, Europe is filled with pouch packaging, even Asia, which isn't necessarily, like, on the cutting edge of environmental policy. But I think part of it is also because it's lightweight, because it doesn't break. There's less food waste. It's easier for the consumer, certainly easier for e.com.

14:15
Alison Cayne
So I'm really bullish on it. I think right now it's a very long supply chain and it's a lot more expensive than glass. And I, you don't get credit for it from the consumer in terms of, like, the premium that you might pay for something organic or that's sort of one of my values that just doesn't, unfortunately, I know too much about.

14:40
Grace Kennedy
Totally. Yeah. And you kind of can't close your eyes once, you know. And that was definitely a big eye opener for me as a consumer, just seeing how little of what we put in our recycling bins gets recycled. And that was a depressing moment. But, you know, can help us make some better choices. And I think it's really useful to hear, like, some of the things we're taught that are better are not. It's not as black and white.

15:06
Alison Cayne
No. And the reality is there are some products that are better probably in glass than in a pouch. You know, I'm never gonna say it's the best for everything because I don't think that way, but I will say that a lot ends up in landfill. Right. Like, if you're just, and 80 plus percent of what you throw out ends up in landfill and you want to think about how much space in landfill. Right. It's taking up. And the smaller the better. So the thinner the better. The flimsier, the better. It's nothing great, you know, but it's what we've got.

15:47
Grace Kennedy
Totally. Yeah. And I appreciate, too, even on your website, that you guys are so transparent about your choices and why you're doing what you're doing and just all the different decisions that go into these things so that consumers can understand why and what they're consuming.

16:04
Alison Cayne
Yeah.

16:05
Grace Kennedy
So sort of in another direction than the pouches and the packaging. You started with these flavor sauces, different herby chimichurri, things like that. But like we mentioned in the beginning, you have recently launched a line of aiolis. So I'd love to hear one. Why did you decide to get into the aioli? I love aioli, so I'm thrilled about it. But what was the decision? Started with these sauces. Now we're going to bring in Aiolis. How did that come about?

16:36
Alison Cayne
Yeah, I mean, you know, necessity, really. So, you know, when we launched the fresh sauces, the world was a little different. It was 2018. If you looked at every major grocer, they were really leaning into what was called fresh convenience. They knew that people wanted more global, they wanted cleaner ingredient panels, they wanted easy, they wanted convenient, they wanted not your mom's flavor sauce. And they wanted fresh because that's where, you know, when e commerce first really getting started. They rightly predicted that consumers were probably going to be focused on the perimeter of the store during their shopping experiences. Because I can just buy bulk rice from whatever.com or Amazon.

17:24
Alison Cayne
You know, there were some grocery stores that predicted that they would have no center store, that they would have smaller footprints, much more fresh, and that everything center store and shelf stable would be basically on e.com. So they were trying to find incrementality in addition to sort of solving consumer problems. And so were right on. We had everything that you looked in, sort of like, what are the trends that are happening with the consumer in grocery? We just nailed it. Part of the challenge for us was that there was no category. So one of the things that I always say to people who ask about starting a new CPG brand is, where's it going to go on the shelf? Who's it next to in the store?

18:11
Alison Cayne
And if your answer is, well, it could be here, or it could be here, or it kind of could go in a couple different places because there isn't anything like it. You're basically like category busting and you need a lot of money and a lot of time to do that. Case in point, health aid, kombucha. Perfect bar, right? It took them ten to twelve years to create those categories. And arguably people are still like, why is a bar in the refrigerator? So for us, sometimes were produce, sometimes were dairy, sometimes were vegan. Sometimes we're like the fermented food. No one knew where to put us. Which means that two things. One, we don't understand our sort of category review calendar very well because it's confusing and there isn't one. A buyer from produce can very easily say, I love this, it's great.

19:04
Alison Cayne
But you know what? It should go in dairy. And the dairy buyer then is like, you know what? It should go in the deli. Right? So it's, you know, from a retailer perspective, it's challenging. But I think most importantly is you cannot expect consumers to hunt for you. And this is the thing that, like founders do all the time. We make the mistake of the spotlight effect. Someone's going to fall in love with my thing. And wherever they go, they're going to just be like, I got to find my thing. Right? And that's not how people shop. They're used to. This is next to the cottage cheese, this is next to the chickpea pasta. And we are in totally different places. Even within some retailers, we're indifferent. So couple that with a pandemic that basically everything became like, what is shelf stable?

20:00
Alison Cayne
What survives an apocalypse? What can I buy in bulk? What is going to give me comfort? What's going to just get me dinner fast on the table? And we had some tailwinds because people were trying our sauces because they were so bored of what they were making. But for the most part, that sort of, like bigger picture moved to fresh, got waylaid. It also requires more frequent resets, which requires more labor in the store. Right. If you just think it's a harder lift. So for us, all of that coupled with we have 56 unique ingredients in our fresh skews. We have a refrigerated supply chain, which anyone will tell you is a little challenging. We have a six month shelf life, which is better than a lot of fresh, but still hard.

20:47
Alison Cayne
And so we sort of sat down with ourselves and were like, all right, is this scalable? Can this be a hundred million dollar business? Because that's what it needs to get to for this to really, you know, be a contender in a lot of ways. And I am not sure. You know, I think it's a beautiful product. I think it's a little niche, it's a great natural channel product. But we had a little distribution in target. We lost that distribution because it just didn't sell well to that set. We were next to honey mamas and so people were confused. So what we decided to do was, you know, take all of the good parts. You know, it's globally inspired, it's super clean ingredient, it's delicious, you know, it helps people make their meals better.

21:35
Alison Cayne
It's that shortcut, that last mile of flavor, all of those things. But we kind of also mitigated for the problems. We need something stable. We need something that has a category that's large and potentially growing. We need to be consistent where we are on the shelf. We need fewer ingredients, we need simple use case like all of the stuff that we could learn from a, we put into b. And so here we are.

22:02
Grace Kennedy
Wow, I love that. And I think it's a great lesson to any founder who's listening as well, that it's okay to love your first product and also recognize that there are problems in it. And to pivot even without saying goodbye to your first product, just adding something new and solving for some of those problems that were there. And I love that you were willing to kind of acknowledge and take active steps to address and make a new product and change, because that's not an easy or simple thing to do.

22:34
Alison Cayne
I'm sure it took a while. I'm not sure if this is just, like, folklore or if it's real, but apparently, kind bar was like, okay, for the first five years, and then I think it was, like, folklore. But an intern who was like, why don't we put some chocolate in there? And then all of a sudden, it was like, the kind bar that we know today, and you just, you know, you have to be willing to have certain things that you. I. My value system is intact. I was very clear on, like, the must haves, but you can't have everything as a must have. And you have to be willing to look at your product square in the eye and say, okay, we're not going forward here. We keep building velocity in whole foods because I think people really love it.

23:27
Alison Cayne
But is that enough to be a business? I mean, it's a small business. Could it be a profitable business? Maybe. But is that the kind of business that I want to grow? And so it's time to add to the family, and as long as the first product is, like, doing well and chugging along and doesn't require a ton of resources, and we can focus on this second project, you know, then, you know, it felt like a good plan.

23:57
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And what has been the response so far to, in terms of, like, the retailers you work with or even customers who, you know and love haven's kitchen, what's their response been like to the aiolis?

24:09
Alison Cayne
It's been overwhelmingly wonderful, I have to say. It was like, I knew that were bringing something really cool into the world. You know, it's a vegan aquafaba based aioli. It has, like, real jalapeno and cilantro and Ajia Murillo. And, like, real ingredients, beautiful, bold flavors that we're known for, but in this really creamy, viscous, nice mayo like base that happens to be vegan and also keto and also gluten free and non gmo, like, all of the things. And I think we must be onto something. Kraft launched a line of aioli. Primal launched a line of dipping sauces. Chosen. Right. Like, we're not the only people that saw that the consumer is really looking for not just heat, but complexity. And they love condiments, and they like a creamy texture to make their food more palatable and more delicious.

25:17
Alison Cayne
And so when we launched it, you know, I knew that I knew target was taking it. I knew whole Foods was taking it. I knew, you know, a couple of our, like, friendly Bristol farms and things like that. So I was able to launch with customers, which, you know, is for me and for your listeners, like, rule number one, don't build it. And they will come because you don't have the cash to do that. So if you do have the cash to do that, Mazel tov. But no one does. So, yeah, you need a customer so that you can have, you know, real demand right from the beginning, and you can get the right moqs and all that. So I knew that the customers were there. The consumers, I think, were overwhelmingly excited and positive. We can market in a different way.

26:06
Alison Cayne
Expo west was, like, electrifying. We also launched at a time where there was just this new mintel report about how little innovation there is right now, like, true innovation. And we really made something that hasn't existed. And so it's not just another thing. It's like we knew to the world. So it's been really fun, so exciting.

26:31
Grace Kennedy
And, yeah, I think the favorite one I tried was the Herbie Yuzu aioli. That was delicious. And anybody who's listening, you should check them out. But something I wanted touch on that you mentioned is the marketing side of these things. And particularly, again, as you're saying, with cash is tight and paid, ads continue to get more and more expensive and harder to navigate. So how have you been approaching, you know, getting haven's kitchen in front of customers and in their faces with social media, with marketing in general?

27:05
Alison Cayne
Yeah. So this is another thing that I would heavily advise just based on experience. You know, there's this funnel, right? Top of the funnel is sort of like a blimp or an ad on Instagram to, you know, New York. Right. That's top of the funnel. Bottom of the funnel is, you know, a sign on your product at checkout that says, buy two, get one, and here's a free recipe. Or bottom of the funnel is like a Instacart banner ad where people are already shopping for food, but they see chicken and they see our sauce on it. We have only spent on bottom of the funnel, like, there's no reason with a fresh product that does not have any d two c capability that is not widely distributed to spend on awareness, because what you end up having is a lot of frustrated people.

28:04
Alison Cayne
Our number one complaint in our inbox is, I can't find you. I don't know where to find you. And it's, like, very upsetting. To get, you know, even I don't have. I'm in a whole foods and I don't see you know, like, it's a really tough.

28:19
Grace Kennedy
Yeah.

28:20
Alison Cayne
So, you know, that was another reason why shelf stable opens up a world of opportunity for us. Because the minute that we launched shelf stable, we also launched it on Amazon, which is we do through our shopify, so that we have sort of the first party data that you would get with d two c. But we also have the awareness building that you get with Amazon. And now we can actually spend a little on that sort of top of funnel stuff because we have a click, one click away from an Amazon cart. But I would say still 85% to 90% of our spend is on. Right, where someone's already doing grocery shopping, where we know they can find our product, where they can just add it to their cart. That's the money for us.

29:07
Alison Cayne
And I think I would advise, you know, it's very fun and sexy to do the big stuff, to get a billboard. You know, it's fun to see your products that big. But it's just not, in my opinion, sort of the best use of money if you are primarily distributed through retail, not through your own direct.

29:31
Grace Kennedy
No, that makes a lot of sense. And I think is probably, you know, applicable to so many CPG brands that are not really, because I would say I feel like most CBG brands I talk to are not as focused on their DTC. Right. They're more focused on retail, even when they say, you know, like, Amazon can be great for awareness, but even then, it's probably not the bulk of your sales. Right. So I think that's great advice. And another thing I wanted to ask about was just, like, your approach to social media in general. I think a lot of founders are like, what do I do on social media? And so your approach on your own account, obviously haven's kitchen, but also, have you worked with any, like, you know, UGC worked with any influencers or creators?

30:12
Grace Kennedy
How have you approached, like, social media marketing for heaven's kitchen?

30:16
Alison Cayne
So just to be clear, I am not a social media expert. I am, like, squarely middle aged. And I don't have Instagram or TikTok or anything myself. I have someone on my team, Ashley, who runs all of that, and she's amazing at it and just seems to know, yeah, she, like, started work and got us, like, 40,000 TikTok followers, like, the next. And, you know, I'm a little bit like, you know, I don't even know what it all means. But I do know that the idea of brand love, right? Mike Gelb talks about brand love. The idea that there's this groundswell of appreciation for. For your product, right? I mean, I think everyone knows Graza just, like, knocked that one out of the park from the minute that they were in the world. And I think that's Kendall is just like a freaking guru.

31:14
Alison Cayne
But, you know, I don't know. I think for us, we're not a cool kid brand. We're like a helper in your kitchen. And we've always approached things like, you know, it's not okay if you use our sauce. That makes you somehow cool. Right. We approach it as you have a problem in the kitchen and we're here to help you solve it and feel like we've just saved you time and energy and money and, like, despair. And, you know, I don't think that translates to virality or, you know, oh, I've got to follow this beauty brand kind of thing. But I think what makes us special is, like, we have 60,000 people on our email list and we have, like, an open rate that's like, umpteen times higher than average because we really provide, like, we're truly an educational platform.

32:21
Alison Cayne
And, you know, I think that the social stuff is going to better told by people who love your product and use it. So we do love UGC. We just don't pay for it. We build relationships with content creators. We send them products, we feature them, but we've just never been the type of company to go spend $10,000 on someone who's a celebrity of some sort to, say, use this sauce. Like, I don't think it works like that for us. So finding what does work for us and which channels do work for us, we have 200,000 followers on Pinterest. You know, that was sort of a leftover of being a cooking school and a wedding venue in a lot of ways, but we've managed to channel those people into our mailing list and, you know, it's a little different.

33:18
Alison Cayne
But we're, you know, I don't think everyone can compete in that TikTok world. And again, I say that from my perspective, which is like Gen X, everyone's crazy.

33:31
Grace Kennedy
Totally. You know, and I think it. I think it is good advice, though, to know. Know your purpose, right? Like, you're the education. You're like, hey, we have recipes for you to use, and here's how to use our sauces. And here's the different ways that, like, we can help you versus the, like, a status symbol of having this product or having that thing. And I think that's so important to recognize in your approach to social media and your approach to marketing in general. Like, it makes sense to me that Pinterest would be huge for you guys also, because that's where a lot of people go for recipes. That's where you say all these different things. So that makes a lot of sense.

34:07
Grace Kennedy
And it's cool to hear the different avenues that are available to brands, no matter where you fall on the spectrum of helper or status or niche or whatever. So that makes a lot of sense. Thinking as we are sort of nearing the end, a question I always love to ask every founder is just what has been one of the biggest challenges of starting havens kitchen? Running Havens Kitchen? I'm sure there are many, but I think it's helpful for people to hear that no matter how long you're in this business, there's always challenges. So, yeah, what's been one of the biggest challenges in running haven's kitchen?

34:46
Alison Cayne
Yeah, I think founders in general, I've met hundreds of them over the last however many years. We like to be good at stuff. We like to create things that haven't existed in the world before because we believe that the world will better with them. We almost have to have an irrational sort of optimism because we're entering an industry that is. There's no one's kidding anybody. Like, this is a hard industry to be in, and it's gotten much harder in the last 18 months. You know, everything kind of got a little covered up when there was a lot of money flowing into it. Now you're supposed to be, you know, growth and profitable and appeal to young people and appeal to old people. Have a great unit economics on e comm, but also know how to have a great price sloping mechanism for distribution.

35:47
Alison Cayne
You're supposed to be everything everywhere all at once. And in general, I would say you get punched in the face seven times in a row and then you get a win, you know, and right now it's more like you're getting punched in the face nine times in a row and you're getting a win, you know, and the win used to feel better, and now the win is just kind of like, okay, great. We had a lift on our promo, you know, super. So I think for me, the biggest challenge, you know, there's challenges with everything, but I think the biggest challenge is a mental one.

36:22
Alison Cayne
And I can say wholeheartedly that I have gone through some weeks where I just don't know if I'm depressed or if I'm burnt out or if I'm just bad at my job or if I'm just climbing up an impossible mountain and getting hit in the face by, like, the trees. And the only way that I have learned to mitigate that is by having a very close set of three or four other founders in different categories who you meet religiously with every month or two months. And you are 100% honest, you're not going to be able to be 100% honest with your team, your family. They love you. They do not want to hear. They just don't. They say they're interested. They say they support you, and they do. They don't want to hear it at dinner. They want you to be present.

37:23
Alison Cayne
Your partner, if they are not in this industry, will look at you like you are absolutely off your rocker. Marriages breakup, right? And so your friends don't know what you do. No one knows what we do. It's like the number of decisions we make in a day would just confound people. So it is overwhelming. It is exhausting. And then layer on top of it, our job is like, chief fundraiser, cheerleader, visionary team leader, head of sales. We're supposed to also be good at excel. Like, it's just too much for a person and the ones that are. And then you add to it sort of this shiny, happy media version that you see and can make you feel really bad about yourself and really doubt everything that you've ever come to believe, really.

38:24
Alison Cayne
But that group of people, that is the first thing you do to get yourself sane. You find them, you trust them, they can trust you. And my group of that has changed everything because there are days where I am absolutely sure that I don't want to do this anymore. And then there are days where I'm like, oh, my gosh, we've just made something miraculous and people love it. And that's to be expected. There's just no straight line.

38:55
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, I think so. Useful for founders to hear and knowing you're not alone. And I think really great advice to have that little support group of fellow founders that you meet with. And they need to start at like, founders Anonymous, where you can go anywhere in the country, meet in person, but. Or you can just find your own little group. But that's really great advice and useful, I think, for people to hear. But so on the flip side, as we wrap up, what are you most excited about? About Haven's kitchen coming down the pipeline in the second half of this year and wrapping up this year. I guess the year keeps going faster and faster, but yeah. What are you most excited about for haven's kitchen?

39:39
Alison Cayne
Well, I'm going into review season, so that's my. I love meeting my retailers. I love showing them our velocity. I love showing them sort of category trends, consumer behavior. I love it. So I'm jazz. I get really kind of, like, sad and cranky when I don't have any reviews. I'm just like, yeah, waiting. I would say that, you know, the company right now, the product that we have right now, that's taking off, the product we have right behind it, that's formulated, ready to go. When we have the cash and the customer, we're really in a unique position as a pantry platform that isn't of one region or of one type of sauce or of. We can be kind of anywhere. And I just don't see a Betty Crocker for home cooks out there.

40:43
Alison Cayne
You know, there's a lot of great sauces and condiments, and I love playing with all of them. And I'm like, I really love being in this world because it's not a zero sum or a winner take all. Like, we all play well together, which makes me really happy. And, you know, if you just picture haven's kitchen in your kitchen, we can be sort of that helper, like we said at the beginning, for busy people who want better for you, who want big flavor, who want convenient anywhere, whenever they're making anything. And I think we've never been better poised to be that platform brand. So I'm excited.

41:24
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that's super exciting. And I think it's true. Like, we don't have a one stop shop of pantry items and so exciting to see what else you might be coming up with and behind the scenes. But where can people find havens kitchen if they want to learn more or if they want to buy your sauces or aiolis?

41:41
Alison Cayne
Well, the fun thing is we just launched and everyone's going to be like the margin, but we just launched single skus, so we have single pouches on Amazon. You can try one. You don't have to buy a case of four. You don't have to spend 30 some odd dollars. You can buy one pouch and give it a shot on Amazon, which is really exciting. That's brand new. We haven't even talked about that on social yet. We're at about 650 targets nationally on the west coast. We're in Bristol anyway, a couple of retailers on the west coast and then in Florida Whole Foods, the northeast Whole Foods. And obviously we have a store locator on our website. Yeah, we're really proud. Really, really proud. It's delicious. I use the sunshine chili every single night. I just love it.

42:32
Grace Kennedy
Amazing. Well, yeah, everybody should check it out, either on Amazon or if they have a store nearby. Follow Haven's kitchen on social media. Maybe they'll see some of Ashley the social media maven's work on there. And yeah, it was so much fun to chat with you, Allie.

42:47
Alison Cayne
Thank you for having me. It's this great resource, so it's really good stuff.

42:51
Grace Kennedy
People need this. Awesome. All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode of the podcast, it would help us out so much if you left a five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I am Grace Kennedy, the editor for startup CPG, so feel free to add me on LinkedIn or reach out to me on Slacken. Always on the hunt for new and exciting brands to feature. And if you're a potential sponsor that 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 and you can sign up via our website, startupcpg.com.