Transcript
Speaker: Hi, Catherine. Hi, Meredith. I'm really excited to have you on. For folks who don't know you, could you say who you are and what you do? I'm Catherine Bricken, and I founded Delicious in 2017. to the UK in and eight and just started...
Speaker: as a hobby doing cakes and cookies. And then in 2014, people came to me and like, can you just make me a really good American style cookie dough? And so I started doing that again a slight hobby, but scaling it up.
Speaker: And then 2017, was like, okay, go big or go home, put it in a food show. And whole Foods came to me, all these other supermarkets in the UK came to me and they're like, we love it. How do we get it And I think it was like the first American style cookie dough in the UK, because I truly believe like the UK is always two years behind the US. But in this case, cookie dough just wasn't a thing. Like biscuit dough was there, all these biscotti dough, but never an American style cookie dough.
Speaker: That's interesting. What a white space to find. Are you a baker at heart from the time you were young or was it just you were missing cookies when you came to the UK? Both. I was a baker at heart. My mom was an amazing baker. At Christmas time, the kitchen was filled with cakes, cookies. People would come to our house just to eat her food. And I actually worked at Publix growing up because i just loved to see all the products that would go through the register.
Speaker: And then to go and stock the shelves was so exciting for me because I would see what was new. i'm like this strange foodie, you know that type of person that wakes up and thinks, okay, if I eat this, then I'm going to this. I plan my food day by what will excite me. You and I were chatting just before we got started and we have a lot of clients in the CPG space.
Speaker: I've never talked to someone who said from the time they were a teenager, they were interested in the products on the shelves. What drew you to it? I'm going age myself, but do you remember how they used to do Sunday coupon books in the Sunday paper? So with the Sunday paper would come out to grab the coupon booklet so I could see what was new, flavor, reiterations, always an interest in food.
Speaker: That's so interesting. From getting interest from friends to creating you and launching and finding distribution for a product is no small feat. It's such an accomplishment. What was that process like for you?
Speaker: It's definitely hard. It's harder than I ever thought. So when somebody says to me, oh, I'm going to launch a product, I'm like, are you sure you want to do this? And I probably did it the hard way because Couldn't find a co-man that could make the cookie dough pucks the way I wanted them to look and to bake for the customer.
Speaker: So I decided i was going to do it all by myself. I tried a co-man to be fair for four months and they just couldn't get the dough right. So I went to Germany, bought a machine, in rented a room in a large factory and i' was like, okay, I'm going to do this myself. And at that time also decided to be a hundred percent gluten-free because I loved oats and oats have always been an important part of my diet.
Speaker: It may be like more of a mental thing where I think if I'm eating something with oats, my body is so much happier and regular from the fiber. And if I eat a regular cookie, I just don't feel as good.
Speaker: So it had nothing to do with a celiac or being gluten free at the time. But then I found this great farm outside of London that had gluten free oats. So I'm like, okay, I'm just going do this. I love them. I love their principle and I want to be inclusive. So that's how it became all gluten free.
Speaker: So I had this own little factory that was producing minimal amounts. And as the business started to grow, i went and moved to another factory. And then the one in Renau, have about 22,000 square feet in London that produces over 5 million cookie dough pucks or gelato bites a day.
Speaker: Oh my God. And now we're just starting a command in the U S in Ohio. So it's a really exciting time for us. Congratulations. I mentioned this before I started recording, but I'm gluten free. So I appreciate inclusive products like yours very much. I was going to ask, like, is there a celiac story behind it? That's very interesting that you're just like, no, it made me feel better. I wanted to be inclusive and that's the direction I wanted to go.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think we don't talk enough about the power of the oats and all our oats are with beta glucan, they're glyphosate three. So touching on these things, like it's not just an oat, it's a better for you oat. And then all the ingredients that we put in our dough, whether it's the gelato bites or the cookies,
Speaker: Those two, like we don't use any white sugars in our factory. If I can put coconut sugar or maple syrup in there, I will. Sometimes it's not the right thing for the dough, but also looking at how we can use less sugars. And we are less sugars than any other brand that does the same thing in the U.S. per gram, but always trying to focus on that better for you.
Speaker: Nostalgic cookie that everybody loves. Before Medberry, when I was at an agency, I was the COO and it was a global agency and it was people. We weren't creating a CPG product, but there was a production element to the work in that there were quotas, there were processes. Things had to be started, completed and shipped across a day. And that type of operational work I found very fun and interesting. And it was also, i don't think for the faint of heart and not for everyone, you don't know what you're going come into in the morning. What's going to happen?
Speaker: But from an operational perspective, do you enjoy that work? What is your day to day like? Yeah. I love it. It's not for everybody by any means. And every day is different. The factory starts at 5 AM. So really early checking in getting the lines going. And right now we'll run three days at a single shift and then two days at a double shift. So it is stressful. Like it's really a lot. So I'll come in right now. I'll focus on the factory in the morning. And then I focus on sales and marketing in the afternoon.
Speaker: And it's almost like I'm running two brands. So in the morning, we'll focus on what's going on with logistics, production, what they're running. I have a board in my little office room here. We have two different facilities. So what's running in each facility?
Speaker: Then look at the OEE, which is like the daily P&L from the day before. Did we meet our targets? Did we not meet our targets? And then it's product development also in EPD, which is existing product development. So is there a product that we can make easier for production? Is there an ingredient that we can change out? Is there a cost savings? So those are like my mornings. And then afternoon, it's like switcheroonie to marketing, PR, sales.
Speaker: And we do have a small team, but we're super small and scrappy for being a global brand. I think we learned the hard way. We hired too many people in the beginning, but too many people means a lot of management. And I think like that is the one thing I hate about being a CEO is having to manage people.
Speaker: I think a lot of people feel that way. I'm grateful for the MedBerry team and I do enjoy management, but it's tough. It's a significant amount of emotional labor, strategic thinking, and sometimes it can feel like a distraction from what you're working on.
Speaker: I feel that culture and roles are really a hard balance because so many people are like, if it's not good culture, they're not happy. so making sure there's really good culture, but then also making sure that everybody adheres to roles and s SOPs. And our main goal is to make this epic product that's safe for customers and then get it out there to the world, which it sounds really easy, but it's really hard.
Speaker: I want to go back a little bit to learn more about your professional background before launching this brand. What was your professional journey from college onward?
Speaker: So went to University of Tennessee because I had gone to an all-girl Catholic high school in Miami, Florida. And I was like, I'm going somewhere big. somewhere that has sororities where I can have more fun than I did at my all girls Catholic high school. So only applied to university of Tennessee and got in. And then I actually was a French minor and a journalism major and studied abroad for a year. always thought I'd go back up to France just because I loved the culture, the language, but didn't get the job right away that I wanted. So I took a job on Capitol Hill. I was asked to come and be a legislative correspondent. I was like,
Speaker: Okay, sure, I can write. i can do this. So I worked for a congressman from Florida and then a senator from Florida and then ended up working with a senator from Minnesota doing health care policy and transportation issues.
Speaker: Like nothing to do with my French background or my foodie French background. And then met my husband, got married right away, and he took a job in Canada.
Speaker: with Bain & Company. So this was the perfect time for me to recreate myself because I knew i was not going to lobby healthcare care transportation issues or work in government in Canada. So i was like, okay, I'm going figure out what I love.
Speaker: go back to, okay, food is what I loved and what made me happy. So that's when I was able to get a job with Borden Foods that had a plant in Montreal so i could use my French and i could work on a pasta brand.
Speaker: And i was a brand manager for the pasta brand called Lancia and did that for a couple of years and absolutely loved it. And then you're gonna learn in one of my series in my Instagram, then got pregnant with twins. So that kind of changed everything.
Speaker: Congratulations. How old are they? So the twins are 28. And then I had another one that's 26. Oh my gosh. Congratulations. So a lot's happened since then.
Speaker: So like you focused on your family for a bit. And then as they got older and this thing happened for you in the UK. Yeah. One of the Instagram posts I'm talking about, it's like how working for Bored Foods, getting pregnant with twins basically created Delicious. Because once I had the twins, I was like, I've got to move back to the U.S., I can't be in Canada too far from family. So we moved back to the US, actually to Charlotte, North Carolina. And that was when i knew I had to keep working. I'm never the type of person to just watch TV and go to the gym. I have too much energy. So I started baking these really decorative cookies and cakes. And that's the beginning of the sweet treat, delicious format.
Speaker: It does sound like the work you're doing now from your interest in what was on the shelves as a teenager and feels a little bit faded. Does it feel that way to you where you're like, yes, it does feel like I was meant to do this project at some point in my life. I love it. It's definitely hard, but I love it.
Speaker: Can we talk about brand a little bit? I think your brand is very cool. I didn't know you had the background with the pasta branding. What is the world branding? CPG food branding like? And what are you thinking about when you're working on the brand?
Speaker: What is everybody going to like? What are you going to like? Who's going to buy this? And I'm an innovator and I love food so much that I'm always thinking of how I can differentiate ourselves.
Speaker: But I think that sometimes it's staring at you in the face because No matter like what you think of differentiation, it might cause a Instagram post to go viral or a TikTok or somebody that interests. But what is going to drive the sales is the mainstream, nostalgic, what customers love. So the chocolate chip.
Speaker: And as normal as chocolate chip is, I think ours is different by what we do. Like with our cookie dough, we brown the butter. So it's got this different bournois taste to it. But sticking to...
Speaker: The brand values of nostalgia, better for you and taste. I think the point you're making about how what is going to maybe go viral on social is different from what's going to appeal to your ideal customer in the store and figuring out how to make both work.
Speaker: I did think I spent a little bit of time on the Instagram and I was loving one where it's a woman's mouth. She's biting into a rainbow sprinkle one. The birthday cake is actually going viral right now in the U.S. And that is a SKU that we just launched in Whole Foods U.S. Some of our products are with Whole Foods globally, which is pretty cool.
Speaker: but We've found that the images where there's a mouth involved and no eyes blow up. permanent yeah I'm curious, a global brand is complex in that you're speaking to consumers in the UK, in the US, elsewhere.
Speaker: How do you navigate that? And do you feel like the people in the UK maybe have a different aesthetic or respond to anything different than right now the same demo in the U.S. does or not really? Does it feel pretty similar to you?
Speaker: ah Slightly similar, but very different. So I think the funniest thing is we have to remember when we say flavor in the U.K., which I automatically right now is F-L-A-V-O-U-R, but in the U.S., F-L-A-V-O-R. So I'm always like, oh, my God, somebody's going to think I like just don't know how to spell in the U.S. And i think in the U.K., again, cookie dough is a new thing.
Speaker: Like Brits don't eat raw cookie dough. Americans love raw cookie dough. So I had to teach everybody. i had to tell them like why they should be eating a soft American cookie as opposed to this hard biscuit that you only dip in tea. Like there's so many people that have launched cookie dough in the UK and even in France. Like at first when I presented to a large chain of friends, they were like cookie dough.
Speaker: guess dough And I'm like, yes American style. cooky dough But it's really been hard, but also very rewarding because I think I broke down those barriers and not only for me, but for a lot of brands.
Speaker: So they've now entered the. cookie dough. You create like a new category in the UK. I have to really create the category. It's crazy. And then we created the category with our cookie dough gelato bites because I didn't make a traditional ice cream sandwich. I'm like, no, that's too normal. I'm going wrap cookie dough around gelato because All these people want to go to Italy and the gelato is so much better with, we use 8% fat. There's ice cream brands that have 18% fat.
Speaker: Just thinking about all that fat coats my mouth and makes me feel kind of. It's like drinking half and half or something like that. Yeah. I have this thing that I always say to people when they try delicious. I'm like, do you feel anything in your mouth after? Because I think when there's too much sugar or too much fat, it's definitely on the palate and then nothing goes out until I try it. That's my taste test.
Speaker: I don't want to feel like it's going to stay with me the whole day. It's funny. i don't think I've ever thought about that necessarily in so far as snacks, but I think I'm like intuitively avoiding the ones where I'm like, is going to give me like a weird thing. Cause I think in the U S cookie dough to me, it's very fun. It's nostalgic.
Speaker: Yeah. It makes me think of eating cookie dough as a kid while yeah making cookies or my mom made cookies. Yeah. And do you feel like that nostalgia is an element from a brand perspective that resonates more in the U.S. than the U.K. then because there's just less familiarity with it?
Speaker: Absolutely in the U.S. But what I do, like one of my stories to anybody in the U.K. is it doesn't matter whether your mom was making a biscuit, somebody in Italy was making biscotti. Like it's all the same. It was the dough that you looked from the bowl. Like it's.
Speaker: Anybody that can say they never lit the bowl, they are completely lying. Like who didn't lit the bowl? Who didn't like the beaters? Like we would fight for the beaters. Yeah. What is your product of process like? At what pace are you ideating on new products, testing new products? And do you have goals where you're like, we want to get five new ones out this year or two or 20? What's the scale and volume of that work? We are always ideating. We have a library that has some crazy dough products that when the time is right, they will come off the library and go into retail. Because I always think as a founder, I always want to stay above the curve and
Speaker: be proactive, not reactive to trends. So when I started Delicious in 2017, but basically 2014 as a hobby, my top flavors were chocolate chip, mainstream, everybody loves chocolate chip cookie, but matcha white chocolate was one of my first ones.
Speaker: And at the time, nobody even knew what matcha was. Like I was out at a dinner with some friends and a very like worldly woman was at our table.
Speaker: And my friend next to me is like, oh my gosh, don't you think you should do something different? Cause everybody knows what matcha is. I'm like, no, everybody doesn't know what matcha is. I said, ask this woman across the table. And she asked her and she's like, oh, isn't that how you say hello in Japanese? I was like, see, I'm telling you. In 2017, people were not familiar with matcha. And now look at matcha. It's everywhere.
Speaker: And we were like one of the first ones to do it. So again, staying... On top of the trends, we've never done a Dubai cookie because we don't want to be followers again. We just launched in the UK our first cookie dough with benefits, and it's a banana chocolate skillet with plant-based collagen. And it's also high in fiber, low sugar, and plant-based collagen. Like, why wouldn't I eat a cookie for breakfast when I can have my collagen?
Speaker: I know. Is that coming to the U.S. soon? We launched two of our spirits at Whole Foods and the banana was supposed to launch. And sadly, we made a mistake on the label. And Whole Foods has really strict requirements. So there was one ingredient in the plant-based collagen. It actually was a mineral that depending on the way the minerals used, it can be food or not food, acceptable for some standards. So we pulled it out, but it wasn't pulled off the label. And we submitted it through their backend, the IQ, and it got kicked back. And the launch time was so close that they just said, okay, let's just wait. So hopefully it'll be in soon, but it was sad and disappointing that we made a mistake, that it was a nationwide launch that we screwed up.
Speaker: I remember once we were putting together a survey for a big team and we were getting some consulting on what the survey question should be, et cetera. And I did one of the questions that they introed, which was the idea where they were like, do you feel like leadership understands that mistakes are part of any working process. And I liked it because I felt like I could actually integrate that into myself more to be like, of course, I'm going to make a mistake every now and then. That's just part of doing anything. Do you feel like if something like that happens, do you really beat yourself up about it? Or are you like, it just happens. We need to accept it. Every single brand deals with stuff like this. What's that like for you? Do a terrible day after?
Speaker: because think of my P&L. That was not a pretty P&L mess up. Yeah, brutal. What am I gonna do? Fire everybody? No. Hopefully people learn from their lessons so it won't happen again.
Speaker: But yeah, it was a pretty bad day. Rough. a One skew nationwide, Whole Foods. Because of one ingredient, Meredith. And it's brutal that it wasn't even the ingredient, it was the package. Yeah. but The fact of the matter is we were just moving too fast.
Speaker: Packaging compliance is so important. So we go round and round, making sure that everything is right. And even when you do that, you can miss something. I'm sorry that happened. I know. So you'll just have to wait for the collagen. I will. To your point, the collagen puts it over the edge for me where I'm like, this is now a healthy wellness moment in my day as opposed to a cookie snack.
Speaker: And we always want to be like that better for you. So that is the lane that we swim in because I'm not going to compete with a protein bar. because that's not our goal.
Speaker: Our goal is to bring joy to the customers. And to tell you the truth, don't eat protein bars, but when I do try them, do I feel joy? Absolutely not. I have not found a joyful protein bar. When I eat our product, which I eat every day, i find joy. and that's what we wanna bring to all the customers out there, some type of joy, which actually gotta show you this.
Speaker: I just got this in the mail yesterday. Somebody hand drew this Oh, wow. wrote us a letter, how much they love delicious. And on the envelope, they drew gelato bites.
Speaker: Oh, so cool. It's things like that that bring the joy. You want to do some rapid fire? Absolutely. Okay. Number one, coffee or tea?
Speaker: Coffee. Favorite type of cookie? Chocolate chip.
Speaker: Best way to spend an evening? Oh, that's a hard one. Dancing. Oh. Best way to spend a Sunday morning? Oh, walking the doggies. Oh, what kind of dogs do you have?
Speaker: A Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and a Puerto Rican Rescue. Right here. Right there. What's your favorite savory snack? Pizza.
Speaker: And what's one piece of advice you'd give to yourself 10 years ago? Be quick to let somebody go if they're not right for the business. Catherine, I'm so interested in the work you're doing. I really appreciate you taking this time. i want to throw things in the show notes so people listening can follow along and check out your products.
Speaker: We'll put your Instagram in there. We'll put your website there. Is there anywhere else that you'd like us to send people if they're curious? Yeah, I think that right now it's a really important time for us that we just continue to grow the brand. So brand awareness and velocities in store. Target is really hard, guys. It's a hard retailer to be in and hopefully stay in. So if anybody's listening and they want to try and delicious, go to Target.
Speaker: Just because it's... a crowded space, so hard to stand out unless you're a Mars or a Unilever and you have the constant spend for end caps.
Speaker: We've heard that. We've worked with a few folks who've had products in Target, and I didn't know until learning more that because you have to sell a certain amount. Is it every day or every week? There's a quota, and if you don't hit it, they're like ruthless. It's like you're out, and the end caps are expensive.
Speaker: but that's where people gravitate towards. So it's like almost like a bit of a pay to play in some ways. Yeah. And we'll go into some stores and we're just not merchandised, right? So we'll be down in the lower left corner with one tag, not two. It's really hard. Yeah.
Speaker: So everybody go to Target. Yeah. This weekend, I'm going to go to Target. I'm to buy one of your products from a Target and I'm going really look forward to it. Catherine, thank you so much. You are so lovely to talk to. Appreciate you doing this.
Speaker: Thank you for having me.
