 Who's on your Mount Rushmore? No one. My therapist says I live on an island alone and she's correct. Emily Schultz, founder and CEO of Pop-Up Grocer. Are you ready to answer some questions? No. Is there vodka in here? What is Pop-Up Grocer? A destination to discover new grocery items. When did you come up with this idea? Birth. I've been interested in grocery my whole life. I'm obsessed with grocery stores. The actual model and the application of it to January of 2019. What were you doing prior? I was a marketing consultant for small food companies. Pop-Up Grocer is very cool. How does the business model work? We, in a sense, advertise for the brands that we showcase in any given pop-up or activation. So we charge them what we call a showcase fee, which is essentially an advertising fee. And then in return, the brands make the large majority of the revenue on the sales of their product. Do you charge people to enter? It's free to enter and cost money to shop. Where did the idea come from? I really wanted to create the grocery store of my dreams. One that housed only the products that I was interested in. Those made the better ingredients and it didn't exist. So I had no money and I had to figure out a way to open the grocery store of my dreams without money. Hence the showcase fee and hence where we are today. How'd you come up with the name? I needed to be very direct, literal and easy to understand because the first one only existed for 10 days and nobody knew who we were. Who did the branding and what was the brief? We put together a logo when this was an experiment. And the brief was to connect sort of 1970s nostalgia, the original Piggly Wiggly, with a future of grocery. How important is good branding? Exceptionally important. Several of the brands you carry in store were interviewing on the show this season. How do you choose the brands you carry? Three criteria. One, is it interesting? Two, is it sourced responsibly? And three, does it look pretty? Have you ever told a brand, sorry no, and if so, why? Yes, unfortunately. Usually they're packaging, sometimes the product just isn't edible. Does aesthetic matter as much as the taste? Yes, perhaps more. You can't get people to taste something if it doesn't look good. Have you tasted all the brands you carry? No, but a large majority. What brands were on your mood board when you created Pop-Up Grocer? I come from Chobani background many moons ago. So perhaps they're always on my mood board. At the time I was working with a few clients like Ugly and Lava. So those were probably on my mood board. Do you have an online business? Yes, we sell curated boxes full of an assortment of the items that we sell inside our pop-ups. Who's your target audience? People who are conscious about the things that they put in and on their bodies. What's been the most surprising consumer behavior you've witnessed in store? People have no idea how to cook. Do you want to scale Pop-Up Grocer? Of course. Can you see a day when Pop-Up Grocer has a permanent location? Absolutely and it is on the horizon, potentially a fall of this year. Would that be off-brand? No, we'll actually rotate our inventory within so we'll maintain the essence of the Pop-Up within a permanent space. Retail is declining. What potential do pop-ups hold? I don't believe that retail is declining. I believe that retail is changing. So pop-ups are that change? Does the decline of retail rentals make you just want to rush into pop-ups everywhere? No, it's an extremely hard business and I would like to take a nap. But yes, there are a lot of vacancies and opportunities. Are you trying to capitalize on those? It's very advantageous to acquire commercial real estate right now, whether it's for a pop-up or whether it's for a permanent space. I think it will be even increasingly more so in the coming months. Right now I think a lot of landlords are like, hmm, I don't know, there's a vaccine, everything's going to be fine. And so we need a little bit more time for them to realize that that's not the immediate case. Has COVID helped or hurt? Helped. I think if anything, we have learned that if this is the low and we can do what we're doing to the extent to which we've been able to, then we're kind of unstoppable. All right, we're at our flow code flow card. So flow code is sponsoring this season of I'm With The Brand. They're a revolutionary new QR technology that allows you to directly connect with your customers and right there from the camera, go to your own mobile page, fully customizable. What would you love flow code to program and put on your flow page? We would probably put a lot of educational content around the brands that we feature. I would love for people to be able to be in the store and simultaneously be absorbing that information. I see a lot of like, you know, brand specific stuff, but also like ingredient dictionaries, visuals, founding stories, all the stuff that people want to know about. What's the key to your business? Our relationships with our brands, we constantly have to make sure that what we're doing is in service to them and never lose sight of that. Can a community be created with a store that comes and goes? Yes. The people who visit us just have a lot of shared values and interests. So even though we're not in a city for very long, we've managed to establish linkage among our people. What's your dream for pop-up grocer? To be an equitable, good grocer. It seems like there are more pop-up grocery concepts in the market now. How do you make sure you're the coolest? I think our sourcing always has to be exceptional. We have to have brands that you really can't find anywhere else. Who do you consider your competition? There are a lot of players in the retail as service category, so potentially, though we have a niche and thus I think we're complimentary, but arguably any grocery store? What's the coolest side effect to owning a pop-up store? Weirdly for an introvert, meeting a lot of people across the country. Who's on your Mount Rushmore? No one. My therapist says I live on an island alone and she's correct. What's been the coolest moment so far? Maybe when any celebrity comes to the pop-ups, because that just makes the teenager in me very happy. How important are influencers? Very important. I mean, with each pop-up, we have a network that we activate and who come very early on to store and help us accelerate the word of mouth. How do you make sure your brand resonates and doesn't just check boxes? Constantly be in touch with the people that it serves? What's something really popular right now that kind of annoys you? The same thing that really works for us, which is probably like Instagramming everything and being completely stuck to your phone. What's your kryptonite? Peanut butter. What's been harder than you anticipated? Being a leader. How will you know when you've made it? I don't think I will ever make it. I am a perfectionist, which is why I'm here. Emily Schild, CEO and founder of Pop-Up Grocer. Thank you so much for coming on and answering some questions. Thank you for having me. It wasn't quite as hard as I had anticipated. I'm Ian Wishingrad, and I will see you next time on I'm With the Brand.