Founder Feature: Jen Liao of MìLà

In this bonus episode of the Startup CPG podcast, Grace Kennedy is joined by Jen Liao, co-founder of MìLà, a brand renowned for its delicious frozen Chinese soup dumplings. Jen reveals the fascinating journey of transforming MìLà from a local restaurant into a thriving direct-to-consumer brand amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges of developing recipes for freezing, the complexities of shipping frozen products, and the ongoing process of product refinement.

Jen also delves into the strategic moves that have fueled MìLà's growth, including successful fundraising, high-profile collaborations with celebrities like Simu Liu, and expansion into major retailers such as Whole Foods and Costco. She shares invaluable insights on navigating both business and personal obstacles, including managing a significant facility relocation and balancing work with family life.

Don’t miss out on this engaging conversation full of entrepreneurial wisdom and behind-the-scenes stories. Tune in now!

Listen in as they share about:

• Background of Miele
• Transition from Restaurant to DTC Frozen Products
• Recipe Development
• Challenges in Frozen Food Logistics
• Advice for Other Frozen Brands
• Scaling and Planning
• Celebrity Endorsement and Fundraising Strategy
• Retail Expansion and Future Plans

Episode Links:

MìLà Website
MìLà Instagram @eat.mila
Jennifer Liao LinkedIn

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Episode music by Super Fantastics

Creators & Guests

Host

Grace Kennedy

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

A podcast from Startup CPG - highlighting stories from founders working towards a better food system and industry insights from experts to give you a better chance at success.

Jen Liao
Because we haven't come from the CPG background or food world. We did things that other people maybe wouldn't have done to begin with, like manufacturing your own food or shipping frozen food at all is just not really a thing that normally happens. But for us, we're like, yeah, I don't know. Why not? Okay, we've encountered a roadblock. How do we uncover this? How do we unblock it? And instead of looking around and saying, okay, there's a reason why, none of these companies exist. Why is that the case? Should we abandon this choice? And I think we just went kind of step by step to figure it out.

00:50
Grace Kennedy
Hello, startup CPG listeners, and welcome back to the podcast. This is Grace, and I am here with another founder feature. Today I talk to Jen, the co founder of Mila, which is a frozen chinese food brand. As you'll hear in the episode, I am kind of a little bit, a lot obsessed with Mila's frozen soup dumplings. They are so delicious. But Jen also has so much to offer listeners from an operational standpoint, we cover everything from navigating frozen logistics to how to have conversations with investors and so much more. I hope you enjoy the episode, and as always, let me know what you think. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to the startup CPG podcast. This is Grace, and today I'm so excited to be joined by Jen, the co founder of Miele, which is a restaurant at home chinese food brand.

01:47
Grace Kennedy
I personally have tried their pork soup dumplings and the pork shrimp dumplings I believe you have as well. And they are so good. We had friends over, and everybody inhaled them within minutes. And my cat was then also, like, going into the steamer basket trying to see if there were any leftovers. So all in all, the soup dumplings were a huge hit. But, Jen, welcome to the show. I'd love for you just to introduce yourself and Mila to our listeners. Perfect.

02:15
Jen Liao
Thank you so much for having me on here. So, my name is Jen. I'm one of the co founders, and we started Miele about four years ago in 2020 during the pandemic. So we actually started as a restaurant October 2018, and we served this specialty street food item called a shenzhen bao, which is a pan fried soup bao. It's delicious. And we really couldn't find a good version of it in the US, which is why we wanted to open the restaurant and just eat it ourselves. That was the only motivation when we had started this whole thing. And then during COVID we had shut down the restaurant for a few weeks, regrouped on what we could potentially do.

02:57
Jen Liao
And we started to make these soup dumplings, froze it, and we literally sent out Google forms and PayPal links for anyone who potentially might want to try. And it started from there. And from the get go, we saw really great demand and a lot of people telling their friends, requesting from further and away. And so by the end of 2020, were nationwide d to c for frozen soup dumplings. And that's kind of how we got started.

03:26
Grace Kennedy
Wow. That is quite a turnaround, though. You know, you only shut the restaurant for a couple weeks, and then you're now doing a DDC operation. So what was that process like of going from cooking in a restaurant to then, you know, a mere few months later, you're shipping nationwide. How did you guys sort of corral the forces to get that in order?

03:51
Jen Liao
So I think Covid was good and bad, good, bad in the sense of what everyone owes, and good in the sense that there were lots of empty spaces for us to unofficially occupy. So essentially, we started to make it in the back of the kitchen, and then we spilled out to the side, and then there was, like, another central kitchen that had been closed in a mall that had a food court. And they allowed us to go in there for a few months as well to make it. So were just kind of, like, taking whatever we could get and making it out of the back of whichever areas to fulfill demand. And we actually eventually moved into our first factory, July 2021. So that's when we started to set up our official formal production line and team and all of that.

04:45
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, totally. And, you know, sounds like you guys are pretty scrappy at first, but it also sounds like a very common story of every other CPG business and founder I've ever talked to, where you take what you can get, and then all of a sudden, you're like, oh, I'm a fully fledged business, and we have our own facility. So when you guys decided to really take this pivot into frozen soup, dumplings and the frozen products, I know you have other products in your line now as well. How did you go about developing the recipes and also specifically developing the recipes to be frozen, right. Not to be served at your restaurant, for example, where people can get it fresh right there. How did you develop it specifically for this DTC shipping operation?

05:34
Jen Liao
Yeah. So the first item that I mentioned we served in our restaurant is a cousin of the soup dumpling. So a lot of the fundamentals are still there in terms of dough, the filling, the seasoning. I think, taste wise, they taste very different as an end product, but a lot of those fundamentals, were able to at least apply. And for that first product, we had sent our chef, who actually used to be a project manager at Microsoft, and he kind of took the leap with us. And we sent him to China for a few months, and he was just tasting this every single day and working in kitchens that we could also find for him to go learn from and be mentored in. And we did not book a return flight. After a few months, he said, I think I've got it.

06:20
Jen Liao
And he had come back. We tasted it. We're like, okay, I think we're in business. So at that point, we hadn't contemplated soup dumplings, but he had many of them while he was in Shanghai. And so were able to take that base formula and start to transform it. And kind of like what you alluded to, the frozen piece was the hardest to get right where we really needed to get the dough correct and make sure that it was thin enough that it felt like a true soup dumpling, but also, did nothing crack during freezing, which happens a lot for frozen dumplings or frozen soup dumplings before that point.

06:56
Jen Liao
And so we just tried a lot of different recipes to try to get that right and strike that balance of the thinness, plus no cracking or leaking of the soup when you actually have it at home. And I think for us, it was just a bar of, would we eat it? Would our parents eat it? Would our grandparents eat it? And if we put it in front of them, did they feel like this was a true soup dumpling? And that's kind of how we tested it.

07:21
Jen Liao
But for the formula and recipe itself, it just took lots of iterations, which we're still doing, actually, to this day, because dough is just so sensitive, where if you have different temperatures, different humidity, different flour, humidity in the flour that you receive, it all needs to be adjusted, especially for something that can be as delicate as a soup dumpling skin. So we're just kind of continuously working on it.

07:48
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, I think that is something that's true, too, for a lot of brands, where people think that the first iteration that comes to market has to be the final iteration. And the truth is, almost every brand is continuing to iterate. And I will say none of my soup dumplings split or had anything happen. So my temperatures were all good. And another thing I loved about your soup dumplings, which is maybe really specific, but I feel like I've had soup dumplings before, even in restaurants where there's almost too much soup in it, and it, like, explodes a little bit in my mouth and then also, like, everywhere else. And I really appreciated the size and ratio of filling to dough. So just gotta shout that out. That that was done perfectly.

08:36
Grace Kennedy
But going back a little bit to some of the origin of Mila, which obviously you guys worked with a chef. So it sounds like neither of you or your co founder, who is your husband, correct? Yep. So neither of you guys necessarily have a professional food background. So what inspired you guys? You said, we wanted to eat the food we like to eat here in America. What sort of inspired you and also emboldened you to take this leap into not only the culinary world, but also the CPG world.

09:10
Jen Liao
Yeah. So at the time that we started to think about the restaurant, I think Caleb, my now husband boyfriend at the time, we had been dating maybe a year. So that's also pretty risky for a couple to, like, make an investment together, start a business together, definitely. And I came from a health tech background, and he was in finance at the time. So I think for both of us, it was just a really amazing creative outlet and just a way for us to understand ourselves as well. Like, what are we good at? What do we truly enjoy? What can we accomplish? And that felt like such a little oasis outside of our kind of corporate jobs where you've already selected a career path and you've been at it for a really long time and haven't really deviated.

09:57
Jen Liao
So I think there was some personal appeal in starting a business in that way together. And then I actually always thought that I would be in healthcare this whole time. And when we started to work on this during COVID I think there were so many operational problems that we had to solve for and so many things that we uncovered about the food space and specifically about chinese food, frozen chinese food, that it just felt like there were so many interesting problems to solve and so many intellectual problems to work on together that it was like, okay, maybe healthcare isn't the one thing that I could be interested in. It's agnostic to that. It's more about how do you apply problem solving? How do you work through some of these problems and think through from a first principle standpoint?

10:47
Jen Liao
So I think for both of us, that was very important and probably where we made some mistakes that have turned out well for us. And because we haven't come from the CPG background or food world, we did things that other people maybe wouldn't have done to begin with, like manufacturing your own food or shipping frozen food at all is just not really a thing that normally happens. But for us, we're like, yeah, I don't know. Why not? Okay, we've encountered a roadblock. How do we uncover this? How do we unblock it? And instead of looking around and saying, okay, there's a reason why, none of these companies exist. Why is that the case? Should we abandon this choice? And I think we just went kind of step by step to. To. To figure it out.

11:37
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, my God. I hear every CPG founder who's in frozen always just saying, like, why did I decide to do frozen? Because I think it definitely has some of the biggest hurdles and navigating cold chain logistics. And do you have any advice for any other frozen brands who are maybe earlier on in their journey than you are about how to navigate some of those hurdles in the frozen space?

12:05
Jen Liao
Yeah, I mean, I think there are some things that were just purely lucky on, and I think that's hard to replicate. And then there are some things that I think we did it in a very stepwise approach that other people can adopt. Like, we're very lucky in hitting product market fit right away. We're very lucky in that at the time that we started, I think paid ads were very cheap, and so it was super easy to test out different things. And so we could afford a lot more in terms of supplementing or covering and subsidizing the shipping cost of four frozen. I think most consumers don't realize that frozen actually costs a lot for DC to ship. Everyone is used to free Amazon shipping, two day shipping now.

12:53
Jen Liao
And, you know, like, the average box before we had gotten started was like, $70 to do frozen shipping. Because you have the styrofoam, you have the box, you have the dry ice, you have the air shipping, like, it just gets incredibly expensive. And I think if you go on, you know, there's, like, gold belly as a platform. Most of them have a $70 added frozen shipping cost. And if you do, like, fresh frozen seafood or butcher meat, then, like, those also have very high costs as well. But the whole model is around, you have subscription, and so it gets baked into a lot of that. But for us, because we started in a time period where ad spend was quite cheap, then we could afford to, I think, subsidize a lot of those.

13:38
Jen Liao
And we just, like, worked very rigorously to bring down those costs quite a bit as fast as we could. And it did mean working with, like, independent warehouses to build out all of their sops. So they also, were not really prepared to do frozen in such a sensitive way. I think other foods are a little bit easier in that you can do ice packs, and even if it melts a little bit, it's okay. From a food safety perspective, for us, it's more sensitive than ice cream, so it cannot melt at all during any single leg of the transit. And so for us, we had to build, like, all of the spreadsheets, all of the tracking, and, like, we trained the warehouse teams in order to do that.

14:22
Jen Liao
So it's a lot of, I think, upfront legwork, but it was worth it for us in how we did it. But for us, we had basically mapped out six different warehouses across the US. So that way we had full two day ground coverage because air shipping is a lot faster. But if it gets stuck, that adds one to two days, and then for sure it would be melted by that point. So I think that was kind of how we tackled it. But also, I think you can go stepwise. As I mentioned, where we started local, it was like ten mile radius around where were making them. And we hired taskrabbits and just inside Google Maps, dropped it off on people's porches.

15:05
Jen Liao
And then as you expanded a little bit more, there are a lot of last mile logistic providers that you can work with where there's one day shipping, and that's much cheaper than if you're trying to do nationwide. And I think those give you a lot of good data points of product market fit. Right. So, like, if it continues to have demand and people are telling their friends and people are coming to you, asking if you can expand further out, that's a pretty good indication that you've hit on something that people want. And so you don't have to be like, oh, I'm launching this whole huge thing that is nationwide. It's perfect packaging, perfect logistics. Everything is already totally built out to using get it out there. We started with ziploc bags and brown paper bags, and it was janky, but it was.

15:54
Grace Kennedy
Yeah. And what made you feel like you were ready to take that leap to nationwide, given that you started in a more local radius?

16:03
Jen Liao
It was because when we did turn on ad spend, were not hitting the ceiling at all. Like, no matter how much we had scaled at that rate, weren't hitting anywhere where it looked like it was starting to plateau or diminished. So in terms of the supply and demand side, that was already covered. And then on the logistics side, that's just like brute force. We have had situations where in I think it was the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021, where there was a truck that had our shipment of soup dumplings going to a warehouse. It broke down, and it was, like, going to be a holiday period.

16:45
Jen Liao
And if we didn't go to pick up the soup dumplings, then the entire truck would have melted, which would have been a disaster for us, obviously, as kind of like a bootstrap company at that time. And so we just, like, had someone on our team literally go there and make six different trips in order to bring all of the soup dumplings back to a warehouse and then refreeze it and then send it out later.

17:13
Grace Kennedy
Oh, my God. Yeah.

17:15
Jen Liao
Yeah. So it's just a lot of labor of love at that point. And then as you go, I think it's just anticipating, what do you need to do to build for scale ahead of time? And I think it always happens faster than you think it will. So it's good to be proactive, but, like, you can't fully plan it, and then all of a sudden it's happening to you, and all you can do is say, I'm so thankful that I have this team member or started this system, or we switched to this provider literally one day to two days before we needed it, and got lucky on that.

17:53
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, totally. So much of it is luck, and so much of it is planning, and it's just kind of a combination of the two things. And I think it's important to remember both aspects. You can't control everything, and you can control as much as you can. Oh, there's so much I want to ask you guys about, Mila, just as you've grown so rapidly over these last few years. But one thing I guess we'll touch on before we go any further is the fact that Simu Lee is on your team. I was looking at that said, that's so cool. For those who don't know, Simu Lee, famous actor, he's in the Marvel movies. He was in Barbie. All in all, cool person.

18:37
Grace Kennedy
But I feel that for many small brands, getting a celebrity endorsement like that is huge and can do a lot just in even spreading word of mouth. So what was, a, the story of how he got involved and then B, how has it been working with a celebrity involvement in that way?

18:56
Jen Liao
Yeah. So we actually, for our first investment round, our investors were able to find someone who knew his managers, so were able to get it shipped to him that way. So there was no direct contact in the very beginning. But then we heard that he liked the product, and he was going to put in a small check. We later found out that his parents actually had eaten all of the soup dumplings. He didn't taste it, but because his parents had said, this is fantastic, he was like, that passes the threshold for me. That's a good endorsement, and I think I can take a little bit of a risk on that. After that, it took about a year where I was kind of following up with his team to see if there was an opportunity to meet or to sit down together.

19:45
Jen Liao
And finally, one whole year later, were in the same place at the same time, where he had a window. We got to lunch, and I think neither side really knew exactly what to expect, but it just started to click really well in terms of what were looking at from a value perspective, mission, what we wanted to accomplish on a cultural perspective, product perspective. And he asked a lot of questions about the business and whatnot. So it wasn't as surface level, I guess, as like, oh, let's just do a brand ambassadorship, or let's do a commercial together, which would have been happy with that as well, but it just kind of naturally led there very quickly on what we could do in a deeper way. And so hearing that, I think it felt like a really good fit for us.

20:33
Jen Liao
And then it was about crafting the partnership to really reflect the spirit of what we talked about, where it's not about just posting or, like, mentioning it or appearing in spots, for example, we did want him to feel like he was integrated into the business, and so that's how we structure the partnership was like monthly meetings, attending board meetings, or like, board meeting reviews and business updates. And then I creative strategy sessions. And on top of that, kind of some of the things you would expect from a brand ambassador, to just have a pretty frequent cadence of engagement and moving things along. So that's kind of how we structured it, which I think was really important, because if you think about it, each person can only prioritize so many things in their life and in their day.

21:25
Jen Liao
And the more meaningful it is to them, the more like that just naturally takes mind share. And so I think for us, we wanted whatever were offering to feel equitable and equate to him being able to put in that effort. And then also what he was getting from us and understanding, he could translate into how he thought about it or integrated us into opportunities. So that's kind of how we leveraged it, which is, I think, a little bit more unusual for this type of partnership, where it's either you own a large chunk and you bought a large chunk or invested a large chunk and it's your company as a celebrity, or it's like just the commercial piece, and somehow were able to figure out this slice in between.

22:11
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, definitely. It's so awesome and definitely speaks to, a the quality of the products you guys have, but also b, the mission and what you guys are trying to do around bringing this chinese food to all of our kitchens, which, you know, I personally am very grateful for. You mentioned to some other investors, and something I've been hearing from a lot of CPG founders is just the struggle with funding in general. And I know you guys were bootstrapped at first and then did some fundraising, so I'd love to hear a little bit about how you approached fundraising, especially now as resources in the funding world have shrunk. Ive heard that anecdotally from other founders and have seen it myself. But how did you guys approach fundraising?

22:58
Grace Kennedy
And then any advice to brands who might be where you were a few years ago or two years ago, maybe?

23:04
Jen Liao
Yeah. So I think for our first round, this again was a little bit of a combination of luck plus planning where werent exactly ready to go out for fundraising and. But we felt there was momentum. So it was like, okay, we're approaching a time period where we could explore something like that. So we had put together, like, internal materials. We had just pretended like, let's say we have an investor, we have quarterly meetings. How would we present that data and be rigorous about it? And so actually, when imaginary was our first investor, they had reached out and they found us because a friend had sent them the product. They ate it. They're like, oh, this is so good. And we seemed like we didn't know what were doing at the time.

23:54
Jen Liao
I think they were pleasantly surprised by how much infrastructure we had built out. It was more just like marketing and branding that was pretty weak at that time. And so I think it felt like they had discovered it and there was really something there. There was momentum, and because we had these materials that were already using internally, it became a much easier process to move fast. So then were able to take advantage of that momentum and translate it to kind of a term sheet and round. And that did happen before. I think the fundraising environment had gotten a lot more difficult.

24:30
Jen Liao
So for our second round, I think this is probably more typical where we had started to get in touch with investors from the first round and just kept in touch with them every so often, like quarterly check ins or they would reach out to see how things are going. And for us, the most important piece was forecasting correctly. So it's like, hey, here's what we plan to do. Here's how we're going to do it and the timeline we're going to do it on and showing at every single juncture that we hit all of those plans. I think that builds 100% confidence. Like, let's say it's nothing as crazy growth numbers as some other companies, but if you're consistently hitting it, then it feels like you operationally know what you're doing and you fully understand it and you have a team that can be trusted.

25:21
Jen Liao
I think that goes a really long way. So we just kept people apprised along that journey and showed that were able to hit it. And so then by the time were ready for that second round, I think several investors were primed and they were looking at it. It was very interesting. So we did it. We started the conversation November 2022. It was about three weeks after we gave birth to our kid, so it was pretty tight timing, but we knew that the whole fundraising environment was turning down, and there was momentum from us in being able to take our product launch and translate that to projections and how we thought things would go. So went out there and did it then and again.

26:16
Jen Liao
It's just like the prep beforehand and showing that you have the data points and hitting those creates just a lot of confidence. But we did see that it was either you were already clued in and ready to go, or it took a really long time to activate another investor. So if we reached out to someone we hadn't really been on that journey with, it took them, like a week or two to even respond to us about a meeting, which was, I think, crazy. That would not have happened before. This fundraising environment had weakened a little bit. Like, people would be all over it. There's a lot more discipline, there's competition for deals, and now it's just like, oh, I have time. I can be leisurely. And so you have to create that urgency a little bit.

27:02
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, totally. That's really interesting. And an aspect I hadn't thought about, that they have less money, but so many people coming to them for the money, so they're kind of like, oh, get to it when I get to it. But I'm glad it worked out for you guys in the end. And I've seen just, you know, looking into you guys before this interview that you've been able to leverage some of that to continue. Mila's growth. You guys seem to have been growing into a lot of different retail locations after. Seems like at first, primarily DTC. I know a month or recently you launched nationwide into Whole Foods, which again, for many CPG founders, I think is kind of a dream retailer of sorts.

27:46
Grace Kennedy
So could you speak a little bit to the process of how those conversations went with let's use Whole Foods maybe as an example? How did those retail conversations go? And what was the process like of actually going from conversation to being stocked nationwide?

28:05
Jen Liao
Yes. So kind of like you said, were at d two c all the way up until last year, and for our first retail tests, we had tested a few locally. So they were people like specialty grocers, town and country met market. QFC were the three that we started with. And because they were local and it was a little bit more contained, they were just really great partners with us in terms of allowing us to run different tests. So we did different products, different price points. We changed price points from month to month. We did an A b test of, like, sauce packet, no sauce packet, and they gave us all of the data.

28:47
Jen Liao
So they were just fantastic partners for us to work with, which I think is helpful to, like, show this data to other retailers as you pursue bigger retailers, but also for us to inform things because we wanted to understand the risk of bringing frozen soup dumplings, which needed to be steamed into a retail environment. So that's how we started. And those conversations were a little bit easier to navigate because they were local. We actually had also had Wegmans reach out in 2021. So they waited two years for us to go come into retail, and they kind of kept in touch basically every quarter, asking if were about ready and when they could stalk us. And that was a, you know, really positive for us, but also a balancing act where it's like, okay, are you the first retailer?

29:39
Jen Liao
How fast do we commit to it? They also tend to like to do private label. So how does that happen in conjunction with our branded piece? So Wegmans is obviously really great because it's a leading indicator for how they'll do, you know, you can do in specialty and natural. So that's great. And they share a lot of data as well. So that's kind of our first set that we had tested with, and then we started to expand outside of it. Costco actually was our first major retailer, which is very unusual for a CBD brand, but it made sense for us because we had started with family packs online, and so there's huge family packs at a certain price point. And for Costco is really appealing to go into family pack size right away with better pricing.

30:27
Jen Liao
And so were able to test Costco pretty quickly as well. So last year was kind of the year of testing, and I think there are people who are more disciplined than us where they'll say, okay, specialty first, natural next, and then you have conventional, and then you go into other ones, and then by that, you have a force ranked order of stores, and you fully saturate a store first before you move on to another one. We didn't purge it that way. We basically did many different regions, many different retailers, subset of that, which was weird from, like, an online marketing strategy perspective, because then you can't really market a specific retailer because if you're only in 20% of their stores, how do you get people to go to the 20% that you're in? So it's kind of just a weird place to be in.

31:18
Jen Liao
So we did do some creative marketing where, for Target, for example, we had a red envelope campaign. So there was a red envelope with actual cash taped to the back of our bags. So there was one bag per store that we ran in Target, and they somehow approved us to do this campaign. And then we ran ads based on this Easter egg hunt to find the red envelope. So then we can make it a little bit more of an interesting campaign to, like, find the store locator versus just a straight go to Target. And there's a 20% chance that you'll maybe find us there.

31:55
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that's so much fun. And I love that. And there is another brand, I think, bim bamboo. It wasn't the exact same thing, but they gave out. They had. You could go and get a free bim bamboo, if you like, found where they were located near you. And I did go and I got. Because I like their products. So, you know, it's maybe an upfront cost on your end to do that marketing campaign, but it sounds like it was successful for you guys.

32:26
Jen Liao
Yes, our team. Yeah, our team hates it when I'm like, guys, I have an idea. It's like, it sounds so simple to just have this envelope on the back of a bag, but then you have to figure out waterproofing because it's in our freezer door, tape that actually sticks to the back of bags already in the freezer itself and doesn't come out, and then sealing it properly because it is in a food freezer as well, and then having specific people go into the stores to put it on the back of those, because you can only have one per store. So, yeah, it was a heavy lift. Hopefully it was worth it.

33:09
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, right. Jury's still out. So did you then you were started to expand into these other retailers, into Costco, and to target these things. Did you then take that data and bring it to whole foods, or did whole Foods approach you? And how did those conversations go?

33:24
Jen Liao
Yeah, so for Whole Foods specifically, I think a lot of these conversations are one year lead time. And so for Whole Foods, similar kind of thing where they were actually interested, but they had already started to bring in other people into that exact same set as us right before. And so when they had the conversation with us, I think they had just done their reset, and the other product was in there for one month, and so we had to wait another eleven months for them to bring us in again, even though they were interested. So were able to show them the data, and then it was about selecting how many. What does the shelf presence look like? Which skus are you putting in there? What is the pricing? And so I think that was a really, just a very long wait.

34:13
Jen Liao
But, yes, I think for all of these retailers, it's just really good when you have data to bring to them of, here's the velocity per Sku, and here's the dollars per Sku, and then also here's the average across your entire set, and then here's how you can keep growing that portfolio. And that's the most compelling message, I think, for us. On top of that, were able to take our DTC numbers and show them to, hey, here are the number of impressions that we generate for our ads, and here's how you're driving brand awareness that you're tapping into right from the get go.

34:51
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, being able to show both things and sort of having already established yourself in the DTC world to say, hey, there are consumers who are out there ordering this and want this, and why don't you make it easier for them to just go to the store instead of ordering it online? So, thinking more broadly about the future of Mila, I know you guys have other products besides the soup dumplings, and I'd love to hear about those other products, but also what's coming down the pipeline for Mila. Are there any other developments, any other expansions that you're allowed to share yet? But, yeah, what's coming up for Mila?

35:30
Jen Liao
Yeah. So we had soup dumplings to start with, and then we have a noodle line. So we're still looking at that noodle line. And extending it a little bit later this year. In a couple of months, we will have dumplings as well. So non soup dumpling, just like pasta curd dumplings. And we have a couple of twists on flavors, so I think that'll be really fun for our launches. And then in retailers, we have a couple of big launches coming up in September. So September is a big month for us.

36:06
Grace Kennedy
Oh, my God. Well, perfect, because I think this podcast will probably come out in early September or the end of August, so everybody can hopefully find out very soon or if they haven't already, all of the launches that are coming from you guys. But my final question, and I always ask this of pretty much every founder, because I think it helps to hear that everybody struggles in one way or another, and no brand has had some, you know, everything's gone perfectly every single time. So what has been one of the biggest challenges since founding Mila? And this could be on a personal level as a founder, or it could be on a business level, an operation side. But what's one of the biggest challenges, and how did you overcome it? Or how are you still trying to overcome it today?

36:54
Jen Liao
Yeah, I think from a business perspective, it's less about one single challenge, and it's more that it's continuous challenges that you're navigating kind of nonstop. So you get through a hurdle, and then the next month there's another hurdle. And I think that is the fun in it, but it's also challenging. But probably the biggest amplitude challenge recently is that we moved into our second facility, and it's eight x bigger than our last facility. So it was a pretty big change. And I think for us, we mentally have thought of it as, oh, we're just, like, going to move this operation over there, and then we'll gradually expand. And that's not really what happened.

37:40
Jen Liao
And like, all of the infrastructure, sops, processes, scaling, team like, everything was just different, kind of even one month in, and we hadn't really anticipated that necessarily because we thought it would be just a simple kind of move over. And so I think that's been challenging in the sense of we didn't anticipate it, but energizing and all hands on board, we're working together to kind of figure that out. On a personal level, I think, especially because my cofriend and I are married and we have a kid together, and the boundaries are really hard where work just bleeds into every aspect of life 100% of the time, and knowing when to have time for ourselves or when to have time for just family and prioritizing that. I think those have been the most difficult things as we navigate it.

38:35
Jen Liao
And we do have to, like, constantly have active conversations about how we do that. So I think it has helped because we have a lot of communication now around what we want from each other and from our lives. But also hard, because before the conversations, you just feel that there's something that's changed. And it's not exactly how it was, but you have to figure it out.

39:00
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, totally. And things change so quickly, too, in the business of running your own company. They can change in a minute or in a second, and it happens every day. Has your child, are they old enough yet to try soup dumplings?

39:18
Jen Liao
Yeah. Yeah. He's almost two, and he does like soup dumplings.

39:22
Grace Kennedy
I love it. That's so cute. I'm sure a small two year old eating soup dumplings is incredibly adorable. But last question. I know I said the last question was the last question, but this is a quick one, which is just where can people learn more about Mila? And follow along to hear about all your exciting launches coming up this fall?

39:42
Jen Liao
Yeah, so eatmeala.com is our website, and then eat nila on Instagram is our main kind of social media platform and where we do all our announcements.

39:54
Grace Kennedy
Amazing. Well, I can't wait to see what you guys do next and where Mila goes next. And I think I am quite literally gonna have Mila soup dumplings for dinner tonight. So, you know, it's working out perfectly for me. But it was so fun to chat with you, Jen, and thanks so much for coming on the show.

40:11
Jen Liao
Thank you so much.

40:14
Grace Kennedy
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 Slack. I'm 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 dot. 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 dot.