 This is Start up a Storefront Business is like basketball. It's all about the pivot and Alice in Cain the founder of Haven's kitchen is no stranger to the game Haven's kitchen was founded on the mission of empowering home cooks The first iteration began with cooking courses, then it grew into a cafe and events held in their New York City kitchen Over and over she kept getting the same feedback Everyone loved the sauces, but no one had the time to make them and from there The ready-made sauces were born in this episode We spoke with Alice in Cain the founder of Haven's kitchen about her experience going through the Chobani incubator program The problems with how I built this podcast and why she wants to be the fairy godmother of CBG We hope you're ready. This podcast episode is filled with some crazy flavor and spice All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Allison from Haven's kitchen. Thanks for joining Thank you so much for having me for people who don't know what is Haven's kitchen Haven's kitchen is what we call a creative cooking company Helping home cooks feel like champions in their I love that and we use creative cooking company because we do have a line of Sources like fresh sauces and pouches, but we're not condiments company Okay, we feel like you know our roots are in a cooking school And we've been teaching people to cook not just follow recipes for you know over a decade So all of the content that we're making to support home cooks and future product lines are part of What Haven's kitchen is so we used sort of a vague? Yeah kind of word What made you want to start the company? What was the thing that gave you the idea of like maybe making this you know Real CPG getting it everywhere. Yeah, I mean the company basically started as a cooking school in New York I had five kids before I was 33 and You know my youngest was in nursery school I decided to go back to get a master's degree what I thought was going to be public policy It was in food systems and food studies, which is you know very much about personal habits, you know Politics religion ethnicity gender through the eyes of cooking but also very much about farm labor practices and the environment and Cooking is this one sort of act that people don't think of is a political act But at the end of the day the more you cook from home the better your you know meals are the more you're doing for the environment There's a lot of connectivity to the larger food system So I opened a cooking school in 2012 because there just weren't that many people that knew How to roast a chicken or how to pick a sweet potato at the farmers market and what to do with it After several years of running the school and teaching cooking our students started saying I Totally love that you've taught me how to make chimichurri and I'm probably not gonna make it on the regular like I don't mince Oregano that well. Yeah, I don't really want to do like the shopping a lot of work in the cleaning The sauces are the thing that makes the meal. How come these sauces that we're learning in class don't exist in the grocery store? All of those things happening So I tried to figure out a way to make a better sauce for home cooks to feel really good about what they're making at home They don't need a meal kit So we launched the sauces in 2018 and 14 New York City Whole Foods closed the school in 2020 And that's obviously the year that the sauce is kind of exploded sure in the CPG world Did you go for funding right away or how did you what was the initial concept? The initial concept was you know a I don't know if you notice this, but I am on the older side the founder world and I have a very sort of brick-and-mortar mentality and What I mean by that is like we didn't buy a hand dryer until we had the month closed You know priors until we knew we had the cash So there was no like scale and growth and exit like there those words didn't mean anything to us We were all about margin and all about profitability Which turned out to serve me absolutely relatively well Yeah, I think but it was a little bit of a salmon upstream Swimming sure I don't know what the expression is, but you know what I mean So to answer your question I used profits from the cooking school to fund the initial 18 months or so and how many how many flavors that you first come Out with that's always like the hard part of startup It's always like you have to have especially in your world or like beer or something like that or you have to have Like six we started with or okay promptly got rid of one over the farm There was a peanut lemongrass, which has reincarnated herself as the coconut cashew nice delicious Jimmy Cherry was at the beginning Yeah, Ramesco was at the beginning and then we had a kale walnut pesto that we couldn't figure out how to get the Basil from not graying like at the top and it drove me crazy So I basically discontinued it like just out of ego How long what time period are we talking about for the graying to occur? So at that time we were making them in an incubator kitchen and then we moved to a small co-packer We still hadn't really sort of professionalized the process or industrialized the process By the time it got on the grocery store shelf There was like that little tip, you know tip in the shirt Just enough to turn off the consumer just enough to make me terrified that the consumer would be turned off and I was just like the world does the world need another pesto Especially one we're like we're asking them to like just squeeze the little top out You know that so it went away pretty quickly and then back to the funding once I realized that there was a there there our velocities were like Immediately immediately kind of amazing and that was good and also terrifying. Why do you think that was you know? I think it's because we had such a beautiful community already established from What six years like pent up people understood it there were people who just they recognized our name and our logo And they were just picking up whatever we were putting down. So I think we underestimated that I don't I don't think I even knew what I had When I look back and that's why it was so scary when we went national in 2020 the first week of COVID because I was like people and you know Sacramento don't know what Haven's kitchen is or who we are They're not invested in us But in New York they were and so you know, we would go we would you know go on fresh direct and We would do a swipe up to buy and they would sell out and they had never seen a condiment do that kind of velocity. So Once I knew there was a there there That's when I made a deal with the co-packer who invested in the company I needed to have a valuation because they wanted Whatever you're putting in let's multiply that by whatever and that's when I did my first sort of you know Funding baby round. Yeah, you went to the Chabani accelerator program. Yeah, what was that like? It was amazing Yeah, I think I was the Chabani founders involved in that or Hamdi Hamdi This was his personal sort of mission. Okay, okay He's just a magnanimous man. Yeah at the end of the day and he doesn't get enough credit in today's society Today's world like he I don't think people know that that's an employee owned company And he's made everyone at that company a millionaire and it's a story that gets a lot I don't know. It's it's kind of a bummer when I think about the press where I think like he's really figured out a people-centric Way of approaching capitalism. Yeah, which I think is difficult Yeah, because of ego mostly and also greed but He was institutional investors that he ended up buying out. Yeah, I think at some point along the journey to yeah Yeah, I mean that that program I was probably a bit too early to really juice the lemon as much as I could have they were talking about price sloping and I was like Well, we we have what does that mean? What does that mean? I? I think it means Having a very clear, you know price pack Architecture so, you know knowing ahead of time what your Costco pricing is going to be okay what your Walmart pricing might eventually be Knowing sort of like which retailers are going to need which margins and right interesting planning your you know that You know five ounce pouch for example and fresh should probably not be a product in certain Retailers because of the margins because of the margin. Yeah, this is the one thing that I think entrepreneurs miss at the beginning It's always like they they always price themselves too low And they don't factor in that they should be making money and then the problem is if they have a good product they have to now raise their price and Most entrepreneurs deal with this like imposter syndrome moment where they don't think people will pay the price that they need in order for them To stay in business and the advice I always give them is like Unfortunately if people want your product They're gonna have to pay the price they want that's the only way you're gonna be sustainable But a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with kind of knowing their worth I think I think that and then when you take sort of the zeitgeist of Forget about profitability just grow because if you build it we'll figure it out or you know Hey, we'll keep supporting you Through you know a 10% gross margin and and and we'll we'll get you there and somehow volume will solve that That's a misconception or your first product might be a 10% gross margin But we'll build the brand so beautifully that you'll be able to then swing it up to you know 50 and Yeah, I mean I think you know we internally have this discussion a lot. I've always You know, it's not rocket science, but again coming from a brick-and-mortar cooking school You know, I know you got to figure out margin on any product whether it's a service or a packaged good before you can offer it Widely and then the next piece I think is that you know, you don't see LinkedIn posts Like we have an eight units per skew per store per week velocity. Whoo. You see we have 10,000 doors Whoo, right, right exactly when the velocity is really the thing that matters a hundred percent only thing and it takes a minute to figure out where your fish are and How to get that velocity to where you want it? So for me, it's like figure out margins figure out velocity and then Put the fuel on the fire and figure out distribution because that's I mean not the easy part But it's very hard to undo if you don't figure out the first two That's what Paul's doing. That's that's what I love when he came on the podcast He was sharing how his first few deals were like basically no money that they were making as a company and As he grew he had to unwind some of those deals and make them a little more profitable and luckily because of the velocities Yeah, the retailers were happy to comply, but it took you know, we're talking probably three four years later Yeah, 100% and that's that's that's the velocity is the you know I mean, I'm not a mathematician, but you know, it costs a lot of money to open a door Yeah, right. It costs less money to kick the door a little wider open It's just less sure energetic. Yeah already got the relationships. That's well, but yeah Not to go completely left here, but you have a podcast also I do and so why what made you want to start your podcast? There's a story that I read about a guy in like Northern England who fancied himself like a DJ and He was like for his 80th birthday, basically his wife built him a studio in like their barn and Told him that it was he had an hour Long show on the local radio station every Saturday night, which was not true It was a lie, but he went into that studio and he was like just living his best life for one hour Yeah, just and then the radio station of course found out and then gave him a show whatever I'm a little similar in the sense that I just needed help. I just needed to have conversations with people therapy Therapy and also like what is a margin and what are operations free advice? Yeah, I needed free advice I'm not comfortable asking for free advice. So I figured I could do two things. I could offer them a Spotlight whether or not anyone was listening on the other side didn't matter didn't really matter People respond really well to being asked to be on a podcast if you haven't noticed. I did Yeah, even when they're a half an hour late And the other thing is I also know that I'm really privileged to have access to a lot of people that other founders don't and so I was Having these conversations with you know, these people from Chobani or people who had their launch events at Havens Kitchen And I got to talk to them I knew the you know head of operations of Bonsa at the time all of those things and I every time I was having one of those free Advice conversations. I felt kind of guilty that I wasn't sharing like people need to know this stuff Where where do people go and this was again in 2018? There just weren't all of these startup podcasts. They're just there was how I built this which basically makes you feel like garbage, right? And why do you say that? That's an interesting take on it. I mean Maybe speak freely Strong opinions to you. Oh, okay in agreement with you. Okay. Well to me again the analogy is Are you teaching like for my cookbook? It was like brass tacks Don't worry Here's how you actually like preheat an oven as Opposed to one of those beautiful coffee table cookbooks where there's this amazing Elaborate gorgeous dish that no home cook is ever gonna be able to make without wanting to shoot themselves To me how I built this is like, oh, yeah I remember in the past distant like when I was on the couch and I used every credit card I had and but now I'm a gazillion error and trust yourself Like thank you. That's not that I need to know like no when you say make a sales deck That's 10 pages like what is every single page? Yeah need to say. Yeah, just tell me That's literally why we started this so how I built this if you unpack it is also like there's an orchestra behind it And so it's like watching a movie. There's actually never just two people listening and talking Not like Joe Rogan, which is literally just people talking. There's no music. There's no Here's the drama scene. Yeah, and also I Don't know but he's a reporter and so ultimately he doesn't understand The realities of starting a company and when you don't understand that you can't go deep You can't tell people what's in the sales deck, right? You can't it's all just oh, yeah And then it was great again, and then it was hard and then it was great again And it's like let's go on this beautiful song and dance and that was it. I was like I hate this. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, I don't know how I built I call mine like how the bleep am I gonna build this? Yeah, like I like that Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. What we found from our podcast is it also presents opportunities to collaborate in interesting ways and I'm sure that yours has Provided the same resources for you But I'm curious like what specific examples that you've found of those collaborations. Have you been able to arrange? I mean, that's a really good question I mean for sure there have been brand partnerships that have come out of it a hundred percent, you know I mean at this point I started in May of 2018 I'm on like my 180 something episode so I think you might be 180 actually you right now in this seat 180 yeah, I'm pretty great winner winner number. Yeah That's awesome. There should be some music or orchestra behind you, right? It got hard and then it got easy You know I um so brand partnerships for sure investors for sure And even just it's a lonely job and and having connectivity to other founders Although I will say I I get a lot of incoming from founders. I really like to interview service providers and You know agencies and people who aren't telling their own story, but helping really helping. Yeah, actually So I hope I can be actually helpful. Yeah, just talk about myself But yeah, I mean I think you know those connections relationships introductions And that community building I think is is really important and I think also it's helped me help other people a lot which is again, I'm Someone was like you're like the fairy godmother of cpg and I was like that's over. I love that I would love to be a fairy godmother if I can put that on your business card I know exactly, you know because I do I really I really like connecting people and I really like saving people time and money and energy Yeah, you know What are the like three or four things that you can point to on your podcast that you've like that you remember Daily or things that you have taken into your business that you almost see repeated with all the other cpg companies That you can just spew. Yeah. I mean I think you know, let's start with ops, right? So I think that margin question Is is really fundamental and I think there is a misunderstanding that volume Will solve it and it doesn't and I don't know where that came from So this economies of scale idea like that happens when you're yeah, yeah Way beyond where we're gonna be as founders, right? Ideally we're out long before we start seeing that type of there may be a little in packaging But like my oregano isn't gonna Go down tremendously when I start doing Costco, right? So I think that's a misconception. I think there's questions around You know, everyone uses sort of the platitude of like build a relationship with your co-packer. Like what exactly does that mean? How are you supposed to build a relationship with a co-packer? Invited to your kid's birthday parties. I mean like you know, and what where like where does that start to be really inauthentic You know, and what does it mean to manage a co-packer? What does it mean to manage a team? What is it? You know, those are things that are Fundamental, I think learnings that you really need to have and now there's this sort of swing back to self production That has its own list of challenges, especially in today's labor market, right? Like there's a lot of stuff I think on the op side that isn't necessarily fun and sexy to talk about but is really critical for emerging brands And then obviously there's the sales piece which is don't go wide You know core than more everyone says the same thing and yet you still see people like posting their door counts and As if it's a good thing to be in 15,000 stores after three years It's very likely not and then there's marketing of course and there's a lot of tools You know people think brand building is marketing That is part of it, but there's also very there's like a real in-store point of sale Grabbing that shopper who's walking by thing that I think people have missed in the last couple years because we've been so dominated By digitally native companies that you know, we've forgotten wholesale Now it's back in spades But it's almost like everyone's kind of caught like wait what you know, what do you got shelf ready packaging? Like what does that mean like what needs to go on the front of pack, right? Well speaking of that, I know it was that I know that you have leaned heavily into QR codes on the front of your packaging And I read that, you know, you've seen a lot of interesting developments in terms of When people scan them like how people are scanning them and you know Can you talk us through the decision behind that and how your company has changed since the implementation of those QR codes? Yeah, I mean going back to the Chobani incubator One of the things that you do with the Chobani incubators you have like a one-on-one with their head of this their head of that their head, you know they and The head of innovation sits down with me and he's like So you need to stop innovating and I was like what and he's like you have flavors that nobody knows what they are like Like what percentage of americans know what chimichurri is and I'm like I'm 80 and he's like 40 and I was like, okay, and he's like and and romesco sauce like 10 That's actually really good advice. It was great advice. That's really good. So yeah, so I was like, okay Thank you. And then he was like on top of that I mean he said it in the nicest possible way and I am getting to the QR codes On top of that you are putting sauce in a pouch Have you ever seen that in the united states and I was like, well, there's this one canadian cup. He's like, yeah, no That's not a thing And he was like and then the third thing is that you're in the refrigerator Do consumers go to the refrigerator to look for sauce? Do they even know what fresh sauce means or what cold pressed or hpp or any of that stuff is i'm like No, so he said so basically you have like a lot of consumer education to do and You need to just stop on the like Exciting stuff just get down to brass tacks. So that was at the beginning of 20 in september of 2018 at that point I was like We just need to show people how to use these things and the way to show people how to use these things is like showing them recipes and how How do we make it easy like maybe we put a qr code on it? And then very promptly everyone's like no one uses qr codes. They're not a thing They take up a lot of room. You have like two square inches on your pouch to actually say Anything so don't do that So we didn't do that covet happens. I'm like People use qr codes now like can we can we do the qr code thing? Which meant that obviously we needed to make the content but to answer the question like we have a lot of educating to do We need to show people how this is going to make their lives better And how to use it on a daily weekly right basis And the best way to do that is to show them not tell them. So the qr code is there To just be a very easy. I can make this The sort of secondary benefit is from a sales perspective We are not only showing recipes, but we have textable shopping lists I think we're the only people that are doing that So you click into a recipe like a gingery miso roasted salmon. You're like, um, that looks good You can click text me the shopping list and while you're in store Wow, you get the shopping list, which if you are the buyer In right at the store, you're like, oh basket building very convenient mentality keeps them in the store You know those scallions are a little bit of a ring, right? So again, like I said at the very beginning We don't use content to sell our product the content is part of the product because By necessity we need to be Educating consumers and we need to be a resource for them, right shopping lists prep lists cleanup tips How to store my herbs so they don't you know dry out and wither the day I get them home All of that is part of what we see ourselves as and the qr codes Help a lot They also I think, you know, we now know people scan them in store And people scan them at six o'clock on sunday night So now we know, okay six o'clock on sunday night There's like a disproportionate number of people that are scanning That means that they're thinking about what they're going to make for the week That means maybe they're putting their insta card order in Like what does that mean exactly? And how do we now Make the content that serves them at six o'clock on sunday night What what do we need to dig into here, you know, which sauces get the most scans That's like the social media platforms moving to video made it easier to some way for you because now it's like Oh, who doesn't like food we know food statistically does really well. Yeah On tiktok and instagram actually it's and it's endless content. Yeah endless, right? And it's really fun to offer content that you don't have to pay for Right. So in what capacity does that mean people are are making it and sending it in or no in the in the sense that you know There's a paywall for new york times recipes. There's a you know a spawn con For you know bonap, right all of the traditional like places where you would go for food content Have been a little sullied from my perspective and so they have to figure out a way to monetize that That's true. Ours is just you're giving it to free. We're giving it free We're also like by the way You know, if you look at our at our Pinterest there We're never like buy sauce, you know, even our tiktok like we have 50 000 tiktok followers I don't think we've had one product forward now The product's got to be in there to some extent, right? But like I guess what i'm saying is that it's not that hard to make content when you are You're just trying to show people how to make dinner right and Then you can kind of slice it a certain way for the pin trust audience You can slice it a different way for the seven second tiktok And then, you know, there's youtube long form. There's youtube shorts We have 12 minute videos. We have, you know, 30 Whatever second shorts or whatever it is and and it's all sort of the same Pie we're just slicing it up differently and some people like the crust and we know on tiktok I think like 50 of the users will eventually make a purchase, which is actually way higher than instagram Yeah, have you seen that like have you seen a translation of literal customers? engagement all of a sudden in the in the purchase Can you track that or is it is it we really don't Send people to buy from us directly. So that Trackability is as you know a little bit convoluted, right if we're We have seen our velocities Increase like 30 percent year over year at a time where people are cooking a little less than they were a year ago and through a price raise so Our hunch is that there is some awareness connectivity to purchasing But we can't say for sure. Yeah, so also tiktok is very gen z And so is that is that your customer also also? Wow, okay It's interesting because you know, I remember very early on in some marketing class Like you can't say everyone, you know, sure. Yeah, everyone will love this But I don't think that ours is as Like Demographics based as it is psychographics based, right? I think you can be 19 and living in An apartment with three friends and love sauce to make something good and just like sauce And it's worth it to you Or you can be, you know in your fifties and you're feeding a big group of people and you want to put chimichurri on your steak Yeah They have a lot more in common like the venn diagram Is not generational. Yeah, I think it's who's hungry essentially or who Who cares about, you know Flavor who cares about ingredient panel and who doesn't have time to cook which is a lot of people Yeah, as you think about like expansion, is it is it sticking to the sauces or is it what else? So that's the fun thing, right about being a cooking company We have sort of permission to go into any category that makes the home cook Feel like a rock star. How do you do it? I'll come on next year and talk about our 2024 launch But we do have a new product line in the works Coming out Like q1 of 24 Well, you've already had so many iterations from from your foundation as a you know, a cooking class And then you launch into this event space and cafes and then you do the sauces And it's like when I look back at at how far you've come in in haven's kitchen It's it seems like pivots that were Just following signals that you were getting from the market and just constantly being aware of them And and reacting to them. I mean, is this is this new product launch a continuation of that 100% Yeah, so first of all, I really appreciate that you notice that because it's something that I take pride in In the sense that I think a lot of founders are like now I want to make a candle You know, and then it's just like I you know, I what why and like no one's going to be like Hey, that's probably not a good idea because you know, you're the founder, right? So, you know, I feel like all along the way Chimichurri flavor candle No, we were like you and a fi classified our like edamame green goddess as haircare Which we thought was really funny for a while until we realized it actually wasn't funny But like we like should we make a shampoo? Yeah, so obviously we're not doing that But I mean, yeah, I think when people talk about how humble they are It's usually a red flag, but I don't mean like oh, I'm so humble I mean like there's a humility to this business that was forced into me being a brick and mortar cooking school in new york city for all those years And you know, you learn to when people are like you should really make blah blah, right? You learn to be like that sounds like a good idea. Let's just see How if that's a real thing, you know, we didn't have lunch at the cooking school for the first three years We had enough people coming in for coffee in the morning Saying if you just make lunch, we'll eat lunch. So we made lunch. There's this I always talk about like a sailboat, right like You want to hold on to that sail or jib or whatever it is pretty tight so that you don't Luffed around but you also need to know when to let it out when the wind's blowing so that you can like move forward and you're constantly listening Having conviction listening Is this a real thing? Are there enough people? Sometimes people are really upset like we discontinued our harissa We got a lot of upset people, right? But the reality was is that it wasn't just didn't get the distribution that it needed And it was you know a time where we really needed to sort of that's a great analogy. Yeah The boat really get the boat. I wish I was I should probably actually look up What those things are you had it right? So laughing is when you let it out. Yeah, you don't want to love Left laughing laughing called laughing. Does it have a t at the end or is it? No, no, no, that's even better Just it's just it's just what's the name haven. What is that? It comes from again like I want people to feel really good You know, whether it's a physical space a video that they're watching or they're in their own kitchen alone with our sauce I want them to feel You know, my ultimate mission is More home cooks means Better for the environment better farm labor practices, right? There's this whole discussion like There's a lot of vegans that don't seem to care about like labor practices in the food system That can't be everything has to be like the whole system has to be addressed And personal health right family community You're not going to cook if you don't feel good about it You're not going to enjoy it. You're going to do it as a chore That's not going to be motivating my entire like life's mission and the company's mission Is like this is fun. Like they're like finger paints Like look at this beautiful yellow thing that I just get to like squiggle on top of my fish Like that should be a great empowering feeling And so should the content right that goes back to how I built this It shouldn't make you feel like I'm not going to achieve that thing because that is not motivating right what is motivating is like Okay, I see how I can apply this right now to my life and how this is going to like make things a little smoother for me I'm going to do that. Well, if you do do stay at home meal prep. I would love to be part of your test audience here in Los Angeles, I mean Because I think what's happening in that space is interesting like all these companies are it's a race to the bottom And so they're they're doing really dumb things like um, they're assuming the customer won't pay X and that's probably because they have feedback and maybe some data to suggest that But the problem is and you'll notice a company starts at chickens a certain quality Then it just starts going down now It's like now it's like microwave foods and then it's just bad and then they go out of business and it happens There's so many examples of this I wrote a opinion piece for the new york post on the trouble with meal kits I think in 2018 I didn't expect to get Like calls. I mean, I really didn't know who was going to even read it and why and anyone cared, but you know I think the fundamental problem is Again, if you're positioning yourself is like i'm going to help you feel confident in the kitchen You have to scratch that itch Meal kits never did that They never gave people that sense of like joy and satisfaction and agency Because again going back to the other podcasts that shall remain nameless They they have this picture on the box of what you can make but your thing It doesn't look anything like that, right? And so it's actually Demotivating right and stressful and then you have all this packaging and you're like you feel bad like so much packaging Yeah, people feel bad, right? You know, I have five kids Like I said the the way to get them to do something more Is not to make them feel bad The way to get them to do something more is literally the way to get any human being to do something more Is like this gives me flow. This makes me feel good. I feel really competent I'm not dreading the cleanup You know all of that stuff. It's all part of it sure and it should be a haven. Yeah, I love it Well, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, super fun. You're making such an amazing product If you made it this far, I bet you loved the episode So you should join our youtube channel membership for only two ninety and a month This gets you access to one the whole on a bridge conversation Two you get the episodes on monday one day earlier three you get two additional entries to our giveaways Check out our instagram to see what we've given away and four you get access to seasons one through three That's over a hundred episodes of wisdom and life changing advice. What are you waiting for join?