How I Built This with Guy Raz - Advice Line with Jeni Britton of Jeni_s Splendid Ice Creams _2025_

0:00Before we get into the episode, thanks to our presenting sponsor, Anthropic, they make Claude an AI built for the problems that take real thinking, research, strategy, planning, and making sense of a lot of moving pieces. Give it a try for the next thing you can't quite stop turning over in your head. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai-slash-h-i-b-t.

0:30Hey everyone, so this week we're revisiting one of our favorite episodes from The Advice Line. It's the episode with Jenny Britton, the founder of Jenny's Splendid Ice Creams. And stick around to the very end of the episode because we checked back in with our callers and they have some really awesome updates. This episode first ran in March of 2025 and I hope you enjoy it. Hello and welcome to The Advice Line on how I built this lab.

0:58I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will help me try to help you.

1:10And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Send us a one minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. You can also send us a voice memo at hibt.id.wondery.com and make sure to tell us how to reach you.

1:36And also, don't forget to sign up for my newsletter. It's full of insights and ideas from the world's greatest entrepreneurs. You can sign up for free at GuyRaz.com. And we'll put all this info in the podcast description. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is Jenny Britton. She's the founder of Jenny's Splendid Ice Creams. Jenny, it's great to have you back on the show. Hey, Guy. It's so, so great to be back.

2:00You were a guest on the show back in 2018. We did a live show in Columbus, Ohio. It was so fun. And by the way, guys, if you haven't heard that original episode, we will put a link in the episode description. You, of course, started Jenny's. Your first location was in a food hall. And then you opened your first scoop shop a few years later. And I think most people know your ice cream. I mean, creamy, amazing, well, weirdly wonderful flavors like...

2:27Powder jelly donut and Bramble Berry Crisp and Texas sheet cake and my current favorite I have to say a brown butter brittle. That's my favorite. Yeah, we have a pint and a half. My son eats a pint of your ice cream like almost daily. It's very it's just really amazing when they're growing how much ice cream they eat.

2:47Yeah, well, I know that very well, too. My kids eat a lot of ice cream as well. We are an ice cream family, of course. But yes, that one's my favorite, too, and the one that I always, always, always have in my freezer. It's so good. Today, your ice creams are sold, I think, in about 80, at least 80, scoop shops across the country. That's right. 12,000 retail locations. You built an incredible business. Jenny, before we get to today's callers, I want to ask you a couple questions about your story. I mean, when you Warren College, right, you had this moment when you knew you wanted to make ice cream, right, basically for the rest of your life. And you dropped out of the Ohio State University to start what would become J.D.'s first called Scream Ice Cream. Yeah. In 1996, I walked out of art class, literally. I mean, yeah, you walked out. And so a lot of, you know, a lot of callers have asked this in the past, which is when, like, how do you know that it was the right thing to do at that time? Well, first of all, I didn't question it.

3:45It wasn't something that I sat and thought, is this really right? Is it not right? I just knew that I couldn't do art anymore. And I had spent my entire life in art. My grandmother's an art teacher, my mother's an artist, and it just wasn't for me anymore. I just wanted to be making ice cream, and I wanted to be serving ice cream, and I wanted to light people up in that way, and I didn't know at all what I was doing, and I just thought it was just gonna be, you make ice cream, you serve it, people love it, and then you become Ben and Jerry's overnight. And obviously that's not true. That was just the beginning.

4:15I think a lot of people assume that brands start in coastal cities, LA, New York, San Francisco, but you started this in Columbus and built a national brand really on the sheer force of the quality of the product and the branding and the look of it. Tell me, why do you think Columbus turned out to be the perfect place for you to launch the business? Columbus is a perfect place.

4:42And these smaller markets are really perfect for a lot of reasons, actually. I mean, I was in Columbus and one of the reasons that I wanted to be an ice cream maker is because I drove by farms every day. You go 20 minutes outside of downtown and you're driving by dairy farms. So I knew that we were a dairy state because I saw it in front of me. So I thought, okay, great, it's awesome for ice cream. And we forget that a lot of innovation can come from the middle of the country, whether it's in food, especially in food, where we have ag states.

5:08But also when you're in a smaller, small to mid-sized city, the city gets behind it in a different way. You know, you can really try things and also fail a lot and people still stick with you. And I have noticed that in big cities, everybody's trying new things. Everybody's got something going on and it's really hard to stand out. And of course the cost of doing business is lower. Just the startup costs are lower in a place like Columbus versus Brooklyn, New York. It would be impossible to do what we do at Jenny's. All of our money would have been in you know, rent and paying people and all the things that you have to do in Brooklyn that would be different from Columbus. And here we can put it all in the ice cream. And that's just a huge difference. Yeah. Jenny, before we get to our callers, you have a new product that you've launched. I think it's a completely separate company called Flora. And these are energy bars or bars, but they're like high in fiber, like 14 grams of fiber.

6:05Purbar, tell me about this new business that you've launched. Yeah, Flora is a fiber company. We actually make fiber or pull fiber from produce trimmings. So we are located actually inside of a 600,000 square foot produce processing company that makes cut produce for all your favorite grocers. Like baby carrots or stuff like that. Mott's apples, for instance. And so we can take the apple cores and then make them into a paste, which becomes the base of our bars.

6:35And so we also work with watermelon rinds. We actually ferment the watermelon rinds a little bit, which opens up cellulose and pectin and prebiotic fiber there. We work with honeydew, cantaloupe, rinds, mango skins. These are really high in fiber. And then 95% of Americans are deficient in fiber. And it's the cause of many chronic illnesses across America. So I don't know. You know, people are like, how do you go from ice cream to fiber?

6:56And to me, it's just the same thing. It's about making people feel better. I learned after I was able to kind of step back a little bit from Jenny's over the last five years, how important fiber is and how absent it is from our food system. And we really need this to have a healthy microbiome. So yeah, so Flora exists to get people fiber every day. That's so cool. Congrats on that. It's really true. I mean, I I eat so many vegetables, and I still add psyllium husk to my morning smoothie. I eat chia seed pudding every day. We don't eat enough fiber. And you have to work to do it. You have to actually try. It's really hard. And also, you know, of course, there's this sustainability aspect, because all of these ingredients were going into the landfill, but they are really good for you. You should be eating them. Yeah, for sure. Well, all right, congrats on that. I can't wait to try them. Thank you. Back at the beginning. Back at the beginning. I love it.

7:47Let's bring in our first caller. Hello. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with me and Jenny Britton. Welcome. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business. Hey, guy. Hey, Jenny. My name is Jesse Koenig. I'm calling in from Washington, DC. I'm one of the co-founders of Jesse and Benz. And what makes our fries special is that we don't use seed oils or any weird ingredients. It's just non-gmo potatoes, healthy fats, like grass-fed beef tallow or avocado oil and salts and seasonings. That's it. Just real ingredients you can pronounce and none of the bad stuff. Incredible. I love it. Welcome to the show, Jesse. Thanks for calling in. So these are sold frozen in a bag that you would get at the grocery store in the freezer aisle? Exactly. Yep. They are frozen french fries you'd find right in the freezer aisle next to some of the big red bags you probably recognize from a long time they've been there. And then you take them home and you just put them on a baking sheet and you bake them?

8:42Yeah, exactly. Right in the air fryer. Air fryer is great. People love their air fryers. I like to make them in the oven too. They're great in the oven as well. It's kind of like a twice fried Belgian style fry. You get at a restaurant and we do the first fry and you're basically doing that finished cooking at home either in the air fryer or in the oven. I got it. Cool. Well, tell me a little bit about how you started the business.

9:02Our background is actually in restaurants and you say are you've got a you've got a partner that's that would be Ben that would be Ben exactly I guess the Ben and Jesse and Ben's yes with the guys behind the fries I'm one half of the equation being Jesse all right, but now we met in college We were friends. We decided this brilliant idea that we're gonna get into the food industry with no experience jumped right into it in DC in 2014 with food trucks and farmers markets and kind of running around the city What were you selling? What kind of food?

9:29It actually started out with gourmet grass-fed beef spiral cut hot dogs of all things. It was a very niche, funky thing. Hand cut fries were a huge part of the menu from day one and we- Eventually pivoted the concept a little bit more into the burger space and building a better fast food concept. We've had our best year ever in 2019. We signed our first lease getting ready to open up in 2020. And it was not the best time as you might imagine to be opening your first restaurant. Yes. So we were building our restaurant in March getting ready to open in May. And that actually led us to this kind of idea for french fries because we were trying to solve a problem at our restaurant. We were hand cutting fries for our food trucks and farmers markets and now this new restaurant. And we thought,

10:10We need to survive. We don't know what we're gonna do. What if we could use a frozen french fry? But since it always been... you know, a core part of our business from the earliest days, we couldn't sacrifice the quality of our fries. Yeah. And we decided to make our own frozen french fries because the only one we could find that we really worked. And then we had these frozen fries and we walked the grocery store aisles and we just saw that sea of sameness we'd learned about from being a long time listeners of how I built this. Awesome. I love it. And realized a huge opportunity to just do something better and realized there was a real problem that needed solving. Amazing. All right. Just to clarify though, these are sold

10:45in stores, not direct to consumer. It's kind of hard, I'm assuming, to ship these, right? Yeah, we've had people all over the country trying to get us to ship French fries, which we've decided not to do for the time being. Dry ice, it's hard. So where are they sold? How many grocery stores are you in right now? So we just launched into retail in June of last year, so June 2024. And by kind of end of the year, early 2025, we're in about 400 grocery stores. And we're actually launching nationally with Sprouts Farmers Market soon. So We've got a lot going on this year and we're just trying to figure out one step at a time of what to do next. All right. What's your question for us today? Yes. My question's related to just how we should focus our marketing efforts. I know we're a small business. We don't have the budgets of the big guys and we're getting ready for this nationwide launch and sprouts and we're trying to think about as we get into these new places, how should we be

11:36allocating our resources and our time and our budget. On one hand, it seems like there's a good case to be made to go and find the people that are already removing ultra processed foods and seed oils from their diet because they kind of get it. They can be those early brand evangelists. On the other hand, It kind of seems like it could make sense to go find people who are buying lots of fries and don't even know about this problem. And if we can educate them and get them to know, hey, these fries not only taste better, but they might be better for you and your family too. So we're just trying to figure out how we should really focus our effort when it comes to marketing as we're rolling into new places. All right, we'll get to your question in a moment. I want to bring Jenny in. Jenny, you may have some answers to this question, but you may have questions of your own before we get to it.

12:17Hi, Jesse. Hello. Congratulations on your business. Thank you. I mean, how cool. It's amazing. I feel like there's like a problem with French fries right now. You guys identified it inside your company where it's like you can't actually buy decent French fries, but making them is actually really hard too. And if you're feeling it, I think the consumer is feeling it as well. I would love to know, where are you manufacturing? How are you manufacturing these?

12:41So we make all of our own franchise ourselves. We actually just opened a brand new 6,000 square foot facility in Rockville, Maryland because we are doing grass-fed beef tallow and avocado oil and we think we have a very true to form process for these hand cut, you know, Belgian style fries. We don't really think there is an option elsewhere to do co-manufacturing. We kind of like controlling that part of the process. So we do it all. That's actually kind of what Ben's specialty is.

13:08And what are your, I mean, your established businesses, are people just sort of super excited about the fries? You know, I mean, is that something that, I mean, it sounds like it. But in addition to your burgers and the dogs and everything. Yeah, at the restaurant level, I think for us, we were able to execute on making a fry that tastes as good as any French fry you ever had. But.

13:28the sort of magic behind the scenes for us as operators is that we just open up a bag of our Jesse and Ben's fries, drop them into the fryer, and we've got a great french fry right there. And we actually do sell fries to other restaurants. It's kind of a sneaky wholesale business that we have that helps us grow our business and run our manufacturing plant profitably. Hopefully that's the idea at least. Easier said than done. Totally. It's really interesting. Jesse, can you give me a sense of what your sales are right now with the fries? Are you guys, have you broken through $200,000 in sales?

13:58Yeah. So in our first 12 months in business, we've done into seven figures in sales. Great. So it's been growing pretty quick. Incredible. Well, let me let me try to take a crack at your question because I think there's a parallel with what Jenny's done. And you mentioned this is an idea of like a higher quality version of something that you were used to, right? There's a lot of awareness on social media about about seed oils and people are getting sort of weirded out about using them. And there's still some disputes about whether that's accurate or not. But I think that most of the people that you want to appeal to aren't really going to care about that as much yet. I still think it's new. I think most of the people are just going to like your product because it's delicious. It's a higher quality product and you can taste it. Do you think there's something to that, Jenny, or do you disagree?

14:47I really do. If you go super deep on the seed oil thing, that science has not reached consensus yet. So it can be fad-like right now. And so you don't want to just be known for that. People who follow that will find you. They'll see tallow, they'll see avocado oil, and they'll find you. But I will say there is another component or an element to think about, which is you're not just moving people from one fry company to another. And Jenny's it was the same way because your customer when you're in grocery is not their customers, it's the buyer. And what the buyer wants to see is, yeah, sure, you can split some votes, that's okay. Are you bringing new people to the category? And so the new people that you're bringing, sure, it's some of the seed oil people, it's some of the health conscious people. It's also just people who love fries who just don't think you can get good fries in the grocery store and you can't make them at home. And you have a story that can back that up and that's gonna bring new people in the category. And I think the buyers are gonna really wanna have you on the shelf.

15:44How what are you guys doing for sampling? I mean, I do have air fryer set up in some of these grocery stores and just handing out a hot french fry While you're shopping for groceries. I mean my god We've done it a couple of times. We actually just were jokingly serious But joking about this idea like what if we just got a giant food truck and drove it down the east coast and had a french fry tour bus and just did cool activations but I think tasting definitely is believing. We've had a lot of success just finding these really influential people online and on social media, seeding out the product, having them give honest reviews and giving their experience. And that's been really effective. But I think you're right. When you put an air fryer out and you give somebody a couple of French fries in the grocery store, it's very hard to keep them on the shelf. We're selling out stores that way, definitely.

16:29Yeah, and you go right to your customer in the grocery store. I mean, it's a really great way. Sir Kensington's actually did a really cool thing. You should partner with them. They sent a truck out and they did French fries, but it was to sell their condiments. And they had this cute leg container and I happened to catch it at my whole foods and they had their mayo and their ketchup. And so you would go up and you would get that. And it's like, I've been a huge fan of Sir Kensington since.

16:51I mean, you're like, as Jenny said, like when people would ask her to describe the flavor, she would say, we packed more as much chocolate into this pineapple we could possibly get. When you have people trained people who are sampling Jesse and Ben's at Sprouts or wherever it is, then they can say, and it's made with avocado oil or beef tallow. And you know, whatever the pitch is, I mean, here you go. It's going to change your mind about oven fries and it's available in the freezer section just around the corner.

17:17i love that's a pretty good pitch to guy we have to hire you to do some samples i love selling other people's products for them i think it's like it's so great in fact it's a good thing to do to be to listen to how other people talk about your products because you'll talk about it one way. But listen to what other people are saying and also when you're thinking about your pitch. Think to your customers think about what do i want them to say to other people.

17:38and talk to them the exact way, because what you say, they often sort of say in your words to somebody else. And that word of mouth is going to be everything. I think that's great advice. I really appreciate the help. Jesse Koenig, the brand is called Jesse and Benz. Thanks for calling in. Good luck, man. Good luck. Thanks so much. We really appreciate you guys. Great having you. Yeah, I love French fries. And Jenny, you know, French fries and a great steak for me is like one of the greatest moments.

18:09ever. Oh, same. I'm really excited about this, this tallow and sea salt, though. And I agree. Like, I know a lot of people are talking about tallow, but, you know, like, we're just going back to, like, some first principles of, like, how do you make great French fries? I know I'm in the Midwest, so I'm hoping that my stores carry them. Okay. Next up after the break, another caller with another business challenge. I'm Guy Ross, and we're answering your questions right here on the advice line on how I built this lab.

18:45Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. I've been using Claude when I'm prepping for interviews, and it's become one of those tools that helps me get out of the messy middle faster. I can be looking at a founder's timeline, trying to understand what happened when, which early decisions mattered, what the real turning points were, and where the story actually starts. And instead of just giving me a quick summary. Claude helps me work through the material and find the thread, the thing that connects where someone started to where they ended up. And that's what I love about it.

19:18If Claude doesn't just give me answers, it helps me think through the problem and organize what I already know and get to better questions. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter.

19:45And now with co-work, you can use Claude to help with the operational work that piles up too. Point it at a folder on your computer, or connect tools like Google Drive, Gmail, and Slack. Describe what you need and it can help organize files, build spreadsheets, draft reports from scattered notes, and queue up tasks so you can come back to finished work. So whether you're in deep research, prepping for a conversation, thinking through strategy, or just trying to hand off the busy work that slows everything down, Claude helps you keep moving. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai slash h-i-b-t. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Ross, and my guest today is Jenny's Splendid Ice Creams founder Jenny Britton. Jenny, why don't we let's take her another call. Okay.

20:48Welcome to the Advice Line. You're on with Jenny Britton. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business. Hello. Nice to meet you both. My name's Casey White, and I'm calling from Boston, Massachusetts, and I'm the co-founder of Jajju Parogi. And we specialize in high-quality Polish dumplings. We're producing high-quality Polish dumplings at scale using our grandfather's recipes to grocery stores throughout the country.

21:13Amazing. Well, thanks for calling in, Casey. And so pierogi's dumplings, these are, I think most people know what they are stuffed with potatoes and cheese and I think you can get it with meat. You can put anything you want inside pasta dough, right? So we make a bunch of different flavors from potato and cheese, kelbasa, which is a pork sausage and red bell pepper, a sweet potato, caramelized onion, jalapeno cheddar.

21:41We name it. We can put it inside. So this sold frozen in bags in the grocery store and you just heat it up in the oven? Yeah. So we boil them and freeze them so you can air fry them. You can bake them. My favorite is sauteing them with some butter or oil for about eight to 10 minutes on the stove. You could even microwave them if you wanted to. So just reheating them. And tell me how you started the business. Tell me the story behind it.

22:06Yeah, so my sister and I grew up on our grandfather's pierogi. So Jaju is our brand name and that's the phonetic spelling of grandfather in Polish. So we grew up on his pierogi and always had them like in the freezer like our Kraft mac and cheese. Like that was our snack or go-to thing. All of our friends would ask, hey, where'd you get those? Like I can't find handmade dumplings anywhere. And we were like, really? Because we always had them. So we just assume that everybody had. Yeah. Yeah. So we actually drove back to our grandfather's store and found his handwritten recipes in the back of the store and just started tinkering on our kitchen table and kind of like that small business story, right? Started going to popups, farmers markets. We started doing this around the time and breweries were like really hot and new. So pierogi and beer is like the perfect combination. So we would hop around and do that. And

23:03quickly realized that, yeah, people could not find pierogi anywhere. People were like driving from neighboring states to come to our events. It was crazy, but it was awesome. So we kept going with it once we saw that demand. Wow. That's super cool. All right. So you're not sold direct to consumer or you are?

23:22We do sell direct-to-consumer on our website. We don't do, it's not a large part of our business because as you said before, frozen is pretty expensive. It's challenging, yeah. Yeah, not easy to do, but we do offer it. But most of our business is to grocery. So now we're in about 2,700 stores throughout the country. Whole Foods, Sprouts, a lot of stores in the natural channel. And then we still do We do have a big event part of our business that we still operate mostly in the summer months like music festivals and stuff like that. Right. And give us a sense of your sales right now. So last year we finished at 2.5 million. That's great. This year we should do almost four because we're actually getting into Costco, which is exciting. Oh, wow. All right. So before we dive in with more questions, what's your question for us?

24:13So my question is, how does a company sustainably grow in the CPG industry without raising a ton of capital or is raising a ton of capital just part of the equation? All right. Big question. And Jenny, I know you've got a lot of thoughts on that. Jenny, questions for Casey. Hey, Casey. First of all, congratulations. What an accomplishment, I mean, to have 2700 plus stores is I mean I know from my experience at Jenny's this is a slog that is not easy to do and I just applaud you I just I guess when I think of bringing capital I think the first thing I think of is that entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs for a reason and that's because we like to do things our way and differently and we like to explore and discover and all of that and when you bring in outside capital you lose all of that and so you know are who's on your team who how many people do you have are you ready to sort of

25:06like let go of that kind of control. Yeah, that's the hard part, right? Because it's like, we're a very small lean team. So we've been very methodical and our growth like we've been around for Nine years and so a lot of people write they say oh like nine years like maybe you should be in 10,000 stores or whatever and we say like well we've just methodically grown because we didn't want to take you know outside investment and stuff like that and so it's kind of just like that point like okay if we want to get into the club stores the big you know the bigger guys like. We need some upfront money to do packaging like just all of the logistics and all of that.

25:43piece of it. And so that's what I struggle with because it's like, right, I don't want to give away control. I want to be able to still make the big decisions, but also like, where do I get the money from to do so? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's, um, that's always that sort of catch 22 or whatever, you know, where you're trying to, uh, to grow and, and you need the money to grow. Have you looked into like SBA and like, um, the sort of SBA in bank loans? Because I think, you know, the thing is we don't really ever talk about that. And it can be such an incredible resource, especially, you know, the first answer is you're doing it. This is how you do it. This is actually how you raise a company in the best way because you have control and you're growing and you're doing it. And that's another question too for you. It's like, what would you do with the money? I mean, if it's just packaging and getting into a store, you might be able to get a loan for that. Have you looked into bank loans and is that something that you would consider versus bringing in a partner?

26:40Yeah, open to all options. We have taken some bank loans, the SBA COVID was a great time to get federal money. So that really helped us. So there's definitely that avenue. It's just funny, like being in the industry, the CPG industry, I don't know if it's because you're just surrounded by people, right? Who are always like, I raised X and I raised this and this round series, ABCDE, like it's like, is this what I'm supposed to be doing? Right? But I agree with you. It's like, Fine you can get creative with how you need to front load anything right if it's just packaging like in this case most of it is right it's just accomplishing execution of a new store. Then why give you know 25% of your business away to someone who does never gonna care as much as I do. Yeah and they're gonna have a lot of opinions on how you do things.

27:31And to be frank, we've talked about this on the advice line before. It happens to be a more challenging environment to raise money, especially in food and CPG businesses now. What I'm hearing from investors right now in the food space is they're really looking for brands to hit.

27:5350, really $100 million in sales. A couple of years ago, it was 20. If a brand hit $20 million in sales, it was a target for acquisition. That being said, I mean, you have some friends and family who have invested in the business, right? Right. Yep. Yeah. And so, I mean, is there talk or thought about maybe going back to them? And if that's something that you need, is that an option? Yeah, that's part of my plan of attack, right?

28:23When we did that round, I learned a lot about myself and my connections. People want to help you, whether they're giving you money or not, they want to help you and they give you the advice that kind of leads you to the next person that might write that check who believes in your company, has been seeing us grow it for years. So that's kind of my first plan of attack. It's like, okay, look at my network, the people that I trust and have believed in this product tap them first because I was pleasantly surprised the first time. So I probably will be pleasantly surprised the second time I do this. Well, just to get to this other, this other point that you're making, which is like, it does feel like, and I felt like this at Jenny's too, it does feel like even now, like, like.

29:11Your success as an entrepreneur is not whether you're actually selling or creating value for your customers. It's about whether you've gotten what round of funding you're in and I'm so fundamentally against that. I mean, I think that it has to be as entrepreneurs. It has to be about our customers really creating value for people and and.

29:26Honestly, I think the best way to do it is this. I'm talking about this Jennie's all the time, but I start small and build, just keep building. Jennie's took on partners in 2015, but that was when we started in 2002. 2002, yeah. Business from 1996. You know, I was learning that whole time. I built my brand so that when we brought in a private equity firm who we're still with and we love and we're very lucky on that front. But when we brought them in, the brand was established enough that I still had power, you know, you know, to put it frankly.

29:56Do you have a board of advisors or a board of some people that you lean on? We do. We have a few. We haven't fully built out a board, which I think we need to do. I have found that very helpful. I thought that was helpful at Jenny's. When we brought in the private equity firm in 2016, actually, we organized a board and that just made us kind of prepare for, you know, we had to sort of tell everybody what we were doing every month. We had to get prepared for that meeting and we had to, you know, but it also helped us just organize together as a team.

30:26They were so helpful to us. So I have a new company now, Flora, and we've already formed a board. And we went out and found people who are real experts there. And I think there are a lot of people who would want to help you because you're already out proving it. And then also, when you get to that point, if you do a little later want to go for funding, you've already got your board established. So that gives you a little extra leverage. I think that's great advice. Casey White, the brand is called Jajju Parogi. Good luck. Good luck. Thank you so much.

30:55Yeah, I mean Jenny do you know obviously it's a different time environment to raise outside capital and food right in the food business But it was important right. I mean it really helped you kind of super scale your business Yeah, and it we looked for partners and I'm doing this at Florida too We look for partners who could be to add more value to the company who could really help us I mean we were just a scrappy team and When they when they came in we sort of formed an executive team of professionals who understood how to do it. And that was a game changer because there are methods that we just, you just have to know you have to learn. Yeah. What are you hearing? I mean, if anything about fundraising for a special food brands right now. Well, it's funny you should ask because I'm literally in the middle of it. I've been doing this for the last, you know, I've been building this company for two years really scrappy and we've gotten some angel investors for early stage.

31:46Just to get us to kind of figure out what we're doing and now we're kind of going after the bigger funding But we are finding yes, of course. It's very tight very very tight and I think you have to have a massive opportunity We're I'm hearing people say that you know, they're looking for companies who could become a billion dollar company. Yeah, if you think about food That's massive. You know, I mean, that's just that's just global scale almost They're throwing around that B word a lot. Yeah Stay with us because after the break we'll talk to another founder working to take their business to the next level I'm guy Roz and you're listening to the advice line right here on how I built this lab Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm guy Roz and today I'm taking your calls with Jenny Britton founder of Jenny's splendid ice creams So Jenny let's get back into it and take another call. Okay. Sure. Let's go Hello, welcome to the advice line you were on with Jenny Britton

32:59Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business. Hi, guy. Hi, Jenny. My name is Callie Zahir. I'm calling in from Los Angeles, California. I'm the founder of uve.co. And we make organic purple sweet potato pet treats tailored to sensitive stomach and skin pets. So purple sweet potato, tell me the connection between purple sweet potatoes and like dog treats for sensitive stomachs.

33:25Yeah, for sure. They're made of organic purple sweet potatoes as our main ingredient. The term for it is ube. Yeah, a lot of Filipino community loves that as a really high fiber ingredient in a lot of food and desserts. So I was looking at just in general in the market, there's not a lot of treats that's tailored to sensitive stomach pets.

33:54I have a dog that has a very sensitive stomach. He is a cavapoo and he's just from when he was young it was really hard to find high fiber treats for him. So I was cooking a lot of sweet potatoes, a lot of pumpkin, things like that for him and then I found purple sweet potatoes.

34:16And then I was doing a lot of research because my background is in science and I found that there's a lot of antioxidants and vitamins and minerals that are really good for their health in purple sweet potatoes. So that's how it started. Wow. And tell me where you're selling them. Are they is a direct to consumer through through website right now? Yeah, mainly direct to consumers. We have we're in 10 local stores around LA and two in Hawaii. Yeah.

34:45Cool. I mean, give me a sense a little bit about your sales. Have you guys broken $25,000, $50,000 in sales yet? We've broken $50,000 in sales, but not to $100,000 yet. Right. Okay, cool. And what's your question for us today? So my question is, right now, currently we have only relied on organic growth, achieving about like 30% return returning customer rate online.

35:10But we're facing a really big challenge in reaching new customers. And I think to scale the business effectively, I think it's time to partner with a PR firm for marketing to allow me to focus on product development. So how can I find a reputable PR firm to help promote ube.co and expand our reach? All right, Jenny, I want to bring you in. Dog treats sense to stomachs makes a lot of sense.

35:37sweet potatoes. Let's go. Let's figure this out. Amazing. Callie, congrats on your business. It's so cool. I mean, I'm always floored. I have two animals. And I adore them. And I always just like, I'm really tuned into this idea that people spend so much money on their pets. And we need to like care for our pets. We do. We care for them like they're our children. We do. I love your background in science. And I think this can really carry you. And I'm just curious, as a scientist, what was your How does that specifically help you wade through the research? Because when you get a PR firm, I think what we're going to do is figure out what your message is. And so figuring out like, OK, let's say you're a scientist, you looked through all the research, you created this idea based on what you know, and now you're sharing it with other people. And so have you thought about how to use your experience in a way to communicate that with others? And I think that would be like, a PR firm might help you, too.

36:33Yeah, I've thought a lot about this actually I was planning to do like a fun ingredient list for each product that I launch With the scientific terms of the ingredients in it But also there's like a little bit of hesitant in the sense that oh would people think that it's like more like medicinal or like, you know Is it chemical? You know the words kind of sound like scary, so I try to use just us like simpler terms, antioxidants, high in vitamins and fiber, things like that. But like my message right now is not coming out as clear as I want it to be. Yeah, that's so much a part of our what we tackle as entrepreneurs, especially in the beginning when it's just us doing everything, getting your communications, what you're saying, right? And because you're right, even though it matters that the science is accurate and that it's there, what are you actually communicating to the customer that activates your customer?

37:30And you learn that by selling, by selling to people and listening to feedback with your audience. What's resonating? What are people really, I mean, yes, the product works, we hope, yes, it works, but why? And what is the thing that you can then use? Cause then that becomes your communication strategy, which then leads into like when you go and try to get on the today show. Yeah, I think, from last year, we did a lot of farmers market and like sell directly to customers. And if we found that, One of the things they're most like interested about is just the ube itself We have a slogan called ube for my bae and everyone is like, oh, I love ube So my dogs must love ube too and it turns out they do like so I think that's a good way to attract people But I think what kept the people coming back is the health benefits the fiber the vitamin the Antioxidants like you can see you can see the improvement in their gut health by feeding them the treats

38:27I mean, I know you're small and you're probably scrappy, but have you tried playing around with social media ads? Yes, I've done it. Just me and my husband learning from YouTube and everything and just launched the ads and it didn't turn out so well. Pretty much we broke even on what we spent. Right, customer acquisition is getting harder and harder on social media, but I will just say this.

38:56We have an episode of the show on misfits market, which sells like food that would otherwise get thrown away, you know, an apple with a blemish or something. And what they did, and again, this is in 2018, so it was a little slightly different environment, but still effective today, I think. Instead of focusing on, hey, you know, this is still edible, or we sell food for, you know, these 30% less, they would literally have like a weird freakish looking carrot, right, a photo of it. And it would just say, This carrot needs a home. That was the ad. And people would click on it because it was so weird. You have a product that's unusual. You're using purple sweet potatoes. I know them, right? But if you go to, you can get them in Trader Joe's, but a lot of people would be like a purple sweet potato. What is that? Right? And so because you've got this sort of literally like a, what Seth Godin would call a purple cow product, right? It's so, it's unusual. It stands out. I feel like that could be really just an interesting thing to try.

39:55Right right I think I think we just need a lot of guidance in in marketing and PR right now because I've tried a few things and I'm I Honestly am not good at social media and I have hired a part-time person to help me with tiktok and it's Not working as well as I wanted to because obviously people don't care as much as I do so And I've been reached out by so many PR firms in Los Angeles, obviously, that they could help. They could help pitch. They could help get us into stores. They could help. They promised so many. It's not like a promise, but they're trying to sell their PR firms, obviously. But it's just hard to find who I can trust. I find that PR firms can be really awesome.

40:42But you have to have somebody, you have to have somebody at that firm who is your champion, who adores you, who believes in you, who wants to push it forward. Otherwise, it falls flat and you just, you kind of go nowhere and it's very expensive. You might be better suited to spend that money on somebody who can work for you and multiple.

41:02um, places who could have some contacts, um, with media or know how to speak to them, might be able to also help you with social media or even do that. Um, but who can really organize this communication, just somebody who's like saying, this is our message out there and where are we going to put it? Who are we going to tell this to? Um, who can just kind of come in and help organize all that. And then that is their only job. And it wouldn't even, it doesn't even have to be full time yet. You know?

41:30Yeah, I think that's really good advice. PR firms are tricky, right? I mean, if you find it's that perfect fit and Jenny's right, I mean, they have to love the product. And if you can find somebody, I mean, look, if you find a firm that has made a pitch and you say to them, look, my budget is $10,000 or $5,000, like this is what we can pay. So show us what you can do with that. I mean, there's an argument to be made that you could, if you're willing to take that kind of risk with that amount of money, it might be worth the risk. You say, you know, I don't know social media well, and I think most people feel that way. Like, I don't know how to do it, but the reality is most people who do know how to do it, they just figured it out by doing it. I love the idea of really going into social media. I know that it's all very scary, but guys, right, you learn by doing it. And also just remember that people like authenticity, and especially now, when it doesn't seem like anything is authentic, and you're such an authentic

42:28Person I can tell you know I mean obviously and people like that realness and just saying just going on saying try to keep it under 30 seconds or even under 15 just try to say like This is why I did this. This is why it's good for your for your puppy Just show the behind the scenes and just start doing it and then part of social media too a big part of it It's just talking to everybody else so going on every other everybody who's talking about dogs or pets being on their feed talking to them right I was doing that a lot last year. That's why I started hiring another person to help me with the comments, the likes, the messaging, all that because it was taking a lot of my time. I'm still a full-time scientist at UCLA. And so this is like a part-time passion business side thing that I hope that it will turn into a full-time one day. But we depend a lot on brand ambassadors. We use an app that

43:23like, you know, search for brand ambassadors and they get like a percentage of the sales. So that has been really helpful. They make really good contents. But I do think the messaging needs to be a little more clear. I just want to say, like, when you said I'm a full-time scientist at UCLA, like, I want to hear that. I'm a full-time scientist at UCLA. I started a dog food company because I needed something to feed my dog. Totally. You know, and I decided to use Ube because it's purple, you need color, you need vibrancy, you need fiber or dogs, you know, we all do.

43:53I love that so much, just that message over and over and over and over again. People invest in you, even consumers and customers. They want to know that, oh, this came from somebody who really cares and really knows what they're doing. Yeah. Totally. Yeah, 100% agree. The brand is called ube.co. Callie, thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much for calling in, and good luck. Jenny, I've already asked you about luck or skill on the show many years ago, but I have a different question for you, which is, If you were able to go back, not just at the beginning, but like 2005, 2010, when you were still really scrappy business, you weren't this national brand yet, what advice now that you know what you know here at this point in your life and career, do you think might have been helpful for you to have known then? This is what I say when people say, what would you have done differently?

44:49And there are a lot of things I would have done differently, but it's all about who. In 2005, 2006, what I needed on my team were I needed a coach. I needed to understand how founders carry power in companies as we were beginning to grow. There are leadership things that you can learn pretty quickly, especially if you have somebody on your side who can help you. A business advisor.

45:11That was so important to me especially as we started to grow and to like bring on people from the outside and I needed to learn how to speak that language. I need somebody on my side outside of the company.

45:22And then I would just say a great attorney. As a founder, you know, you have your company attorney or whatever, but you do need to have kind of your own really great attorney just to have somebody to ask questions. There's so much. And if you're a leader in your company, you really need to have an understanding of law. So those people I would have had definitely on my side. Now, going back a little earlier than that, I think we get to like where Cali is and I would have, I would also say communications. That was something that I spent a lot of time trying to figure out.

45:51And it would have been really cool to have somebody who could just come and say, here's what you're doing really well. This is what people are resonating with. Because whatever you think is probably not the same as what's going on over the counter. So having that communications person just to help me know what I should be saying every single day. Yeah, that's great advice. That's Jenny Britton, founder of Jenny's Splendid Ice Creams. Jenny, thanks so much for coming back on the show. Oh my gosh, this has been so much fun. Thank you for inviting me, guy and your team. You're the best. You're the best.

46:20It's great having you. And by the way, if you haven't heard Jenny's original How I Built This episode, you've got to go back and check it out. We'll put a link in the podcast description. And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview. It was the call that none of us could have imagined ever wanted to get. A pint of ice cream in Lincoln, Nebraska tested positive for Listeria. So we decided that we were going to recall everything, which meant that 265 tons of ice cream that had been out in the world.

46:48came back to us and there we were. Did you think there was a possibility that you would shut down, that your business could basically end? I think at that point we realized that that was it. And it was weird because I kept a journal all the time and I was like, I don't even have any ideas. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. And by the way, we checked in with our callers and we are glad to say that their businesses are all doing pretty well since we first spoke to them, and they're following some of our advice. Callie says Ube has seen stable growth and have had tons of folks reach out about her products. Casey says she took our advice to apply for SBA loans and grants, and those new funds have helped launch Jaju Perogies in giant and target stores throughout Midwest, and they've grown their food service by 40%.

47:40And Jesse says that Jesse and Ben's has grown from being in 400 stores, to now being in more than 5,000 stores across chains like Whole Foods, Sprouts, Target, and Costco. They also recently raised $10 million to help support all of this growth. And that round of investors included some legendary founders and friends of the show, including Andrew Abraham of Orgaine, Allison and Stephen Ellsworth of Poppy, and Nick Jamey of Sweetgreen.

48:07So congratulations again to Jesse, Casey, and Callie. This episode was produced by Catherine Seifer with music composed by Remtine Arablewe. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Neil Rausch. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Kerry Thompson, Jaycee Howard, Alex Chung, Chris Messini, Carla Estevez, Sam Paulson, Elaine Coates, and Neva Grant. I'm Guy Ross, and you've been listening to How I Built This. One more mention for our presenting sponsor, Anthropic.

48:38That clod is built for people who like to keep pulling on the thread, the research, the planning, the questions, the follow-through, until the work starts to make sense. So try clod for the next problem worth solving.