Simple Nutrition Insights
Welcome to Simple Nutrition Insights, your practical guide to understanding nutrition in less than 30 minutes. Join us as we break down the science of healthy eating into digestible insights and actionable tips. Whether you're a busy parent or just short on time, our goal is to provide you with straightforward advice to enhance your well-being. Tune in for expert interviews, evidence-based advice, and quick, easy-to-implement strategies for nourishing your body and living your best life.
Simple Nutrition Insights
Mighty Beyond Gluten: A Celiac Journey to Cookie Perfection
Carolyn K. Haeler shares her journey from a life-changing celiac diagnosis to creating Mightylicious, a brand revolutionizing gluten-free baked goods with products so delicious even people without dietary restrictions choose them.
• Diagnosed with celiac disease at 31 after months of deteriorating health
• Discovered that gluten is not just in obvious foods but used as preservative, filler, and coloring in countless products
• Created Mightylicious after a disappointing experience with a store-bought gluten-free cookie
• Spent three months developing recipes, baking thousands of test cookies
• Walked into Whole Foods for feedback, walked out with an opportunity to sell her cookies
• Uses rice flour milled to exact specifications to eliminate the grittiness common in gluten-free products
• Named the brand Mightylicious to create a fun, positive image instead of clinical packaging common in gluten-free products
• Created Charlie the non-binary unicorn as a mascot that appeals to diverse audiences
• Financed her business through credit cards, small business loans, and eventually raised $5 million through crowdfunding
• Recently expanded product line to include specialized flour blends and brownies
• Products available in Kroger, Walmart, and natural food stores across the country
Visit mightylicious.com to order products shipped to all 50 states (free shipping on orders of 3+ bags) or find them on Amazon and in retailers nationwide. Use promo code MIGHTYHOLIDAY for 20% off on Amazon.
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Hey, hey, everyone. Welcome back to Simple Nutrition Insights. I'm your host, Leonila Campos, registered dietitian, wellness advocate and your partner in making nutrition simple and sustainable. Today, I have a truly inspiring guest joining me, Carolyn K Haler, the creative force behind my Gluten-Free, a brand known for its uncompromisingly delicious gluten-free baked goods. Carolyn's story is not only rooted in entrepreneurship and innovation, but also in personal passion and purpose. Whether you're gluten-free by choice or necessity, or just love a great cookie, this episode is for you, Carolyn. Welcome to the show. Let's start with the heart of your journey. What inspired you to create Mightylicious?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I started Mightylicious in 2017. That was actually after five years of living with a celiac disease diagnosis. I was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2012, when I was 31 years old, so prior to that, I had lived a gluten-full life. I didn't have any dietary restrictions. I didn't have any allergies or anything. I've always been a very healthy person. I really love fish, I really love salad and fruit those are like my three but I also eat lots of other things like cake and pasta and pizza and all of those things bagels. I'm a New Yorker.
Speaker 2:Around in 2012, I guess it started in 2011,. I just started getting some indigestion, which wasn't a big deal, but it was annoying enough that I was talking to my GP about it because it was something that I'd never had before and over the course of the following nine months, my immune system started to fail. By the time I was diagnosed, my hair was falling out, my skin had turned gray, my stomach was distended it wasn't just bloated, it was like physically distended and I was in a tremendous amount of physical pain. I'd also just moved to Manhattan, New York, and I had just started in a brand new job down on Wall Street and I mean physically on Wall Street, not just in finance. I was actually taking a train every day downtown to the financial district and worked on Wall Street and all of that is overwhelming by itself. And I was going through all of this pain and I got to the point where my doctors you know I was working with specialists we'd done blood tests, we'd done elimination diets, we'd done all sorts of different things and everything came back negative. But I was so unhealthy and so ill that my doctor looked at me and was like maybe you have HIV? And I was like, wow, maybe we should have tested for that nine months ago. So it was a very serious thing, because I think that a lot of times gluten sensitivity and celiac disease sort of get lumped together and they are not the same thing, and having a sensitivity to anything is frustrating, annoying and painful. But I have an autoimmune disease where when I eat gluten which is in a lot of things I create antibodies that attack my own body. It specifically attacks my colon and it prevents my colon from absorbing nutrition, which is why my whole immune system was failing. Even though I was consuming food, I wasn't actually able to absorb that nutrition. So my hair is falling out, my skin was turning gray. Fortunately, a week after him saying that to me, I had a colonoscopy and endoscopy and they actually found the antibodies, I was like, congratulations, you have celiac disease. I was like at that time I was very relieved. I was like that felt like something I had a little more control over than sort of an HIV diagnosis, and they handed me a sheet telling me, basically educating me on celiac disease, and I was like enjoy your life. Obviously it's a little more complicated than that. One of the things I learned quickly.
Speaker 2:The reason why we didn't find it through the elimination diets was because gluten's in everything, whether even if they don't have gluten in them, right, if it's not. Like, when you think about gluten, you think about bread and pasta and cakes and anything made with wheat, which usually is a baked good. Gluten is used as a preservative, a filler and a color, so it can be in vanilla and apple cider vinegar. It's in soy sauce. It's in caramel color, which is in Pepsi-Cola, coca-cola, even ginger ale, anything. Any liquid that isn't white, isn't clear, likely has caramel color in it. It can be used as a filler, so it's in spices, and it's used as a preservative, so it's in things like imitation crab. It can be in cold cuts in the refrigerated aisle. So almost anything you eat has gluten in it and even if it doesn't have gluten in it, it could have cross-contamination because it's manufactured on a line that has a gluten, a product that has gluten in it. So really, unless the product has a seal that says certified gluten-free, I can't be sure that I can eat it, unless it's like a whole, a whole fruit.
Speaker 2:So I got this diagnosis. It was a couple of days before Thanksgiving. So I went home and I was like you know what? I am not eating anything unless it was picked off a tree or if it's meat. It's something. I can see the cut marks in it. Right, I could see how it was cut from the animal and within 24, 48 hours my skin turned pink again. It was that immediate. Obviously it took a long time for my body to heal itself because I'd been doing so much damage to my intestine and my gut, but I did. You know I'm perfectly healthy now as long as I don't eat gluten.
Speaker 2:So I was diagnosed with that and it was dramatic having to live without basically the entire grocery store. It's a huge change, life change to go through. You no longer can take food for granted. You lose a lot of convenience in your life, and I was getting up at 5 am to be at work by 7.30 and not getting home until after the sun had set. So convenience is very important in your life when you're working those kinds of hours. So you lose a lot of the convenience in your life. Even today, I have to think about every single meal because you can't just be like, oh, I'll just grab a muffin on my way to work. No, that's something you have to think about.
Speaker 2:When I travel, I like to stay Airbnb's because I don't want to go to a hotel where I don't know what kind of food they serve. Usually you're pretty isolated. The hotel you have to eat what's on their menu, and that I like to have an Airbnb with a kitchen so that I have more control over how I'm able to nourish myself and feed myself. So all of these things that used to not ever be a concern are things that I think about constantly. So that changed my life dramatically and I was living this lifestyle for five years and it finally got to the point where, like you know, I'm working in finance, I'm very tired, I don't get enough sleep. I get yelled at all day, so if you make a mistake it's the end of the world. There are things that I loved about it, but it's a very intense and emotionally draining career. And I just had a bad day and I was tired and I was standing in line and I was waiting to check out and I'd been shopping all day and hadn't eaten and there's this package of gluten-free cookies in front of me, like at the checkout line, so I grabbed them and I took a bite and it was so bad I literally was like I didn't even like continue chewing it, I just was like spitting it out, which is at the time and still pretty good.
Speaker 2:Gluten-free products are not satiating, to say the least, and even times not even edible. You're like that is not something. I want to participate again when you think about a cookie. A cookie should be a little personal nugget of happiness. There's no other purpose for a cookie. You're not getting any nutrition from a cookie. You're not getting. You know it's not a cake or a celebration, it's your own personal little nugget of happiness. In that moment it's like a little treat and it should be the very least. It should make you smile. It should make you just have your day a little bit better. And a lot of times gluten free products are definitely not that. And this one wasn't.
Speaker 2:And I just had gone to business school and I was like you know what? I'm going to make a gluten free cookie. I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to do it, I'm going to make this. There's got to be a better way.
Speaker 2:So I left my job and I spent three months baking every day, like I was used to getting up at five 30. And so I was like, very, I felt very like indulgent. I would get up at six 30 and bake until I literally would drop at the end, like I would bake, sometimes to midnight, like I would just bake and bake, and bake. And I baked million, thousands not millions, but thousands of horrible cookies until I figured out baking and understood the process and developed some chemistry and some sophistication and developed some recipes. And so I walked into a Whole Foods and I was just like you know, you learn in business school to develop a prototype and they get feedback on that prototype and then refine the prototype. So I was like I have this prototype. It's a recipe, it's delicious, I can make it over and over and over again. It comes out the same every time. I'm going to go to the Whole Foods up the block, up the street and I'm going to get some feedback.
Speaker 2:So I walk into this Whole Foods and I'm just looking for feedback and the woman at the information booth goes, oh talk, to Chris at the bakery counter and I was like, okay. So I go over to the bakery and there's a guy standing behind the cakes and I was like Chris and he was like, yeah, I was like I make gluten-free cookies. He came over and he takes a bite and he's like that's the best gluten-free cookie I've ever tasted. I want you to go down to Union Square and to Brooklyn, to those locations of Whole Foods and we sell more gluten-free cookies than anyone else in Manhattan and if we all like your cookie, we can email our regional team, the regional office, and they might onboard you to like our forager program, which is a local, a program for, like local companies that are small. This is on a Thursday and I was being onboarded by Monday.
Speaker 1:Amazing Wow.
Speaker 2:So like and I had, like I had. I was like that was just looking for feedback on my prototype. I had no licenses. I had no insurance. I was making cookies on my 24-inch stove in my studio apartment in New York. I had no manufacturing Like you have to have. There's a lot of regulations to go into food manufacturing but fortunately I had. It took about six months to onboard with Whole Foods. It usually takes, on average, three months. Six months is long, but I didn't know what I was doing, so it took me six months to onboard with them. By then I'd gotten all my ducks in a row and I launched my cookies and that was my whole go-to-market strategy and I've been making, creating cookies ever since and now we're developing some new products.
Speaker 1:That's so amazing just to hear your journey, right, and it started from just wanting to eat something that tasted good, yeah. And then you were able to eat, knowing that it's absolutely 100% gluten free, yeah. And then you use you know, your skills from business school to like go and pitch to this huge company, right, and like just them loving it. That is so inspiring. So, yeah, amazing that you have been able to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would say like I like that you point that out I have been able to do. Yeah, and I would say I like that you point that out. I would say that the process to start a business sounds really intimidating and usually you think of business and you think of these big headquarter buildings and there are these huge symbols of power. But you can have an idea and start a business just at the ground floor. Right, you can just walk into a company, into a retailer, and be like I make cookies, looking for feedback, and that could be all you need to establish a customer and then start generating revenue. No one in those big corporate offices are going to tell you that.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly.
Speaker 2:They're going to tell you that you need private equity funding and you need $10 million, and you need sponsors and you need all this. All you need is a good product and a good idea, and then someone to believe in you.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, absolutely, and, as you mentioned, by just going in there and asking for feedback, yeah, and you are absolutely correct. You need someone to tell you yeah, this is amazing, or maybe not there yet, but okay, let me fix it up and I'll come back and share it again.
Speaker 2:I was expecting the prototype process to take many iterations.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I wasn't expecting that to be like we'll take it. I was expecting them to give me actual feedback on how to refine the recipe and I didn't get that, which is great. It was great for me, but certainly getting feedback and fixing your prototype feedback is really important and that's what you're looking for in the beginning. You're not trying to sell anyone anything. You have a concept, you've identified a need, you have a concept, you've created a prototype and now you're looking for feedback.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, I love that you have given us, you know as business owners, kind of like the roadmap. Right, okay, this is what you do and like some of the steps in the simplest way, which is amazing, awesome. Um, let me see what I know you have in a deep personal connection with, and I think that also really matters. Right, like you, you spend so many hours trying to perfect a recipe. There was a purpose, right it's not something that you were like, and I have to go and do that.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I was obsessed, yeah Right.
Speaker 1:You wanted to make it happen. Yeah yeah, nice.
Speaker 2:Go ahead, sorry.
Speaker 1:No, I was going to ask you because I know you mentioned the taste, right, and so essentially that's one of the gaps, right, that you see in the gluten-free market. When you're trying to taste something Like, it tastes like cardboard, I know, and you know you want to be able to cater to the customers that have gluten-free or that have celiac disease or sensitivities that they can still feel included, right, but not feel like, oh man, I don't want to eat that, right, like you feel happy to eat those products, and I think that's essentially one of the things that you really worked on, by being able to give that to the customers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was my biggest complaint. I mean, food is more than just. Obviously, I need to nourish my body and heal my body. So I wanted to create a product that would accomplish that, and that's something I don't at all take for granted. But food is so much more than just nourishment. It's very emotional and psychological. It's what connects us to people, connects us to our memories, it connects us to our communities and our environments, and so when you're constantly being asked to a celebration but you can't have a slice of cake, that starts to feel emotionally heavy and difficult.
Speaker 2:And I found, like, when I first got diagnosed, I thought that I was going to miss pizza and pasta and like those things that we associate comfort with, and I certainly do miss those things. But the things that had more of a impact on me were things that are associated with memories, which is how we sort of relive our past. So like, even though I don't go to baseball games that often, I miss going to a baseball game and having a cold beer. I miss having a cold Diet Coke at the beach, because I have so many positive memories of drinking Diet Coke at the beach in the summertime. I miss having birthday cake. I don't even like birthday cake, but I miss having birthday cake because it's such an important part of the birthday celebration. And so I started to realize that there's like all these punctuations around food that are such an important part of our identity and our memories and who we are, and that is really what you miss when you have such a severe food, not allergy, when you have something taken away from you and it's related to food. And so I think that's why I felt so impacted by a cookie, because I don't eat a lot of cookies. I don't have that much of a sweet tooth. You notice that all my cookies are pretty savory and salty and sweet. They're not like overly sweet. They're also, you know, complex. That's because I don't have a big sweet tooth. I like pie, I like something really savory and buttery with some fruit. That's like my ideal dessert.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to create something that was balanced and like I was like most gluten-free cookies are overly sweet and sophisticated, like they're just bland or they just taste like cardboard, and then they're also gritty and grainy. The whole experience is so upsetting that you don't even want to like. We're like obsess over sugar and butter, right, and a cookie is just sugar, butter and flour and a little bit of vanilla, like we are engineered to want a cookie and so when you're spitting it out, you're like this is not. I mean, it doesn't take a lot to get me to eat something. It's a farming cookie. I'll probably eat it. It could be celery, it could be a cookie, it could be anything. But to get me to spit something out is like it's a challenge, and that's how inedible some of these products were.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I really am a very detailed person, I'm a very focused person, and I was like this isn't just going to be a good cookie, this isn't just going to be a good gluten-free cookie, this is going to be the best cookie I've ever tasted. And so I put that amount of like, energy and focus and passion into all of my products. I am extremely focused on quality and like. Even though I've I mean, I created my gluten-free cookies.
Speaker 2:My first cookie that I ever created was the brown butter chocolate chip, and even though I created that now it was 2017, seven years ago, eight years ago I am still perfecting it. I'm still looking for ways to make my cookies better. Now it's a little bit different from just a recipe. Now I'm always looking for ways to naturally improve the shelf life, because when you make, it's one thing to make a cookie and then eat it that same day or the next day. It's quite a different level of science and chemistry when you're trying to make a shelf-stable product that is going to be baked today but maybe not consumed for nine months. So now I'm constantly looking at new ways to create a delicious shelf-stable, all-natural, preservative-free cookie.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and that alone right, it can be a challenge. And so, with that said right, have you worked with like food scientists, or do you have a team that has helped you or that is helping you with that?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. Well, I was lucky early on when Whole Foods really supported me in the beginning and I was looking for like I was making everything for the first year by hand and then quickly I went from three stores to 10 stores, to an entire region and there's no way I could package myself. I had like two people in my kitchen. I would rent kitchen space out in Queens you can rent like commercial kitchens out there by the hour so I'd rented for the whole day and I had like two assistants who would come in and we'd mix dough and we'd bake dough and we packaged cookies and I did this for a full year. And then I got so big that there was no way. Like, actually the baking is pretty fast. You can make thousands of cookies in like a half hour if you have the right equipment. But packaging the cookies takes forever and I think a lot of people think that that part is automated. It's not.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:If you have, like, an Oreo, and every single Oreo is exactly the same size and you are Nabisco, then yes, you have a machine, but the majority of us do not have machines that can handle odd shaped cookies, so we would do that by hand and I outgrew it. So I went to I needed a co-packer. I needed someone who could do this for me but still maintain the hand-baked quality of my cookies, and Whole Foods helped me find one, and they are still doing my co-packing. They're excellent at it.
Speaker 1:If you have like food scientists or chefs there.
Speaker 2:My co-packer, the CEO, is a food scientist. I will say and I've spoken to people there's like I'm in New York and there's Rutgers University who has a whole food science and research laboratory. My having done this now for eight years I would say that the science doesn't exist for gluten-free and that's why the products are so bad. It's because wheat is a technology and you have to think of it not as an ingredient but as a technology. And there's a reason why most cultures are either rice-based cultures or wheat-based cultures or both. It's because rice and wheat are technologies but they're very different from each other. And when we use rice flour in our cookies and most gluten-free flour mixes are going to have rice in them the problem with rice the good thing about rice is very neutral flavored, so it tastes good when you combine it with butter and sugar. The problem is it has one 400th the amount of protein that wheat flour has. What makes wheat flour so genius and such an incredible technology is that it's neutral flavored, so it's very palatable and it doesn't compete with like if you add sugar to it. Doesn't compete with you add cinnamon to it. Doesn't compete with it, doesn't compete with any of the ingredients that sort of enhances them. It also it browns really beautifully, which enhances it, caramelizes and browns, so you get a beautiful color to it. You also get an enhanced sort of caramel flavor to whatever you're making, whether it's bread or a cookie or pizza dough. That caramelization can be both savory and sweet and it's delicious. So you get the caramelization. You also have protein, and protein can be the right amount of protein, the exact right amount of protein in a wheat flour so that you can mix it very gently and fold in egg whites and make a sponge cake and it's very delicate and fluffy and light. Or you can eat the hell out of it, make sourdough bread, and it's going to be tough and chewy but also delicious. And you have one ingredient. One ingredient does all of those things and that is an incredible technology.
Speaker 2:Once you remove the wheat, you lose all of that. You lose the color, you lose the texture, you lose the protein, which is the structure. You lose it all and there is no other grain that replaces it. You can add sorghum flour, which a lot of companies do. They add sorghum flour to their rice blan. Sorghum flour has almost the same amount of protein as wheat flour.
Speaker 2:Sorghum flour is a wonderful ancient grain, but it doesn't taste good. It tastes like you could have sorghum with chicken piccata, right? So you have salt, you have olives, you have all this flavor to compete with the sorghum and then it tastes fine. You cannot add vanilla, which is basically a perfume, right? Vanilla comes from an orchid, it's an incredibly sophisticated but delicate flavor, and you have butter, which is also a really delicate flavor and, competing with sorghum, all you taste is the sorghum. So there's no other high-protein grain out there that exists that is going to give you the same qualities and technology as wheat with the same neutral palette.
Speaker 2:The only grain that's really, in my opinion, comparable is rice, but rice has no protein, which makes gluten-free baking nearly impossible. It's extremely challenging. So what happens? When manufacturers you've said they taste like cardboard or taste gritty and it doesn't taste good, that's because the rice doesn't have enough protein to support the baked good, so you have to add more flour and then it becomes dry and gritty and like cardboard, and so your ratio changes. You also can't get like what the protein allows, like when you put butter and fluid and liquid into the batter and then that evaporates and the protein in the flour allows it to expand and create bubbles and then you get body so you can get something that's very cakey and has those little bubbles like you get in bread. Rice flour won't do that. It doesn't flex, it's very brittle. So you can't get rice flour to do that. So you can't get your product, your baked goods, to rise Very, very challenging.
Speaker 2:So the technology doesn't exist, despite the fact that my co-packer is a certified food scientist and a Columbia MBA, very educated person. He doesn't even like to bake gluten-free when I'm not there. It's so hard and he makes millions of like six million cookies and he makes really specialty cookies, like hand decorated cookies, really challenging, not like not a Chips Ahoy, things that have filling in them, things that are covered in caramel and chocolate, things that are hand decorated, everything from double brownies, everything. He does all the specialty things that look like bakery products and he doesn't like to bake gluten-free. That's how hard it is. So, despite, like, I have spoken to records, I've spoken to food scientists and I've never really pursued them because, to answer your question, this chemistry does not exist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds really difficult and you know you haven't been able to just create this amazing product. I think that it's amazing and, as you mentioned, you continue to perfect things and try different things, which I'm sure is not an easy thing to do.
Speaker 2:No, and it's all been trial and error. I've learned a lot. I can talk about the chemistry a little bit better now. I'm certainly not a food scientist or any kind of scientist, but it was a lot of trial and error and I can make a lot of recipes now. But it was literally starting from scratch. It was just a lot of failure until I started to succeed. But it was many, many days and many thousands of cookies of failure before I started to figure it out.
Speaker 1:Right yeah, I mean that journey right yeah. By the way, how do you come up with the name Like what?
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that question, yeah, so when you look at a lot of gluten-free products, so I did not only wanted my products to taste good, but I wanted it to be fun, because a cookie should make you smile, right, and cookie packaging and cookie branding should also make you smile. It should be fun, it should be flirty and it should be enjoyable. And if you look a lot of the gluten-free products, they've been around a while and they're maybe from the seventies or eighties and, frankly, their packaging is uninspiring. It's a little bit trite. It's like white with some blue letters or an old man's face on the package and you're like I don't know if they had me in mind when they made this and I wanted it to be colorful and fun. I wanted the branding. I didn't want it to be Carolyn's Gluten-Free, because there's already Bob's, there's already Lucy's, there's already Abe's, there's already everyone's, everyone's gluten-free. And I was like it's not going to be Carolyn's gluten-free, it has to be something that's fun.
Speaker 2:And so I honed it on Mighty, because Mighty is sort of like Mighty Mouse that's where I got it from Whereas, like this children's cartoon, like everyone sort of identifies with Mighty Mouse because he's a superhero. So, like, even grown men are like Mighty Mouse, right, because like superhero, and I found that that word really resonated with people, that, like it reminded them of their childhood, but they also identified with it as adults. And so then I had to come up with Mighty what? And that was hard and I had like dozens of names and all of them weren't very good. And then I was like, what about Mighty Delicious? And I looked up Mightylicious and it was.
Speaker 2:So it's not just your name, but you have to be able to trademark it, so it has to be not been taken. And even though there might not be a brand out there, the trademark had been taken, like in 1976, by someone. It's just not in use. So I found Mightylicious was not taken and I was like I love it, it's fun, it's funny and it sort of sounds. It's not necessarily sounds like a superhero, but it makes you like smile when you say it. And then we also have a mascot. We have Charlie, who is our non-binary unicorn. I love that, and unicorns trend in every decade and Charlie is non-binary and he's holding the peace sign, he's got sunglasses on and makes him cool and grown men love him and little girls love him and everything in between loves him. Them yeah, yeah, and so it was really important to me that I had a mascot and a fun name and branding that was happy and cheerful and makes you think this cookie is going to make me smile.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, I love the packaging for sure, and you know that you have a mascot because you do as you're creating a brand, right? You need people to remember it and say I want to eat this cookie or I want to eat this product, as you mentioned it brings a smile right, as opposed to like oh man, that's a sad packaging. Yeah, you don't want to eat it.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and I was like when I think about fun as a child, I think about like Cocoa Puffs and Fruity Pebbles and we were not very often allowed to eat that in my house, but when we did it was a big deal and all the cereal boxes have mascots.
Speaker 1:And I was like, yeah, we're gonna have a mascot, right. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing, love it. What are the misconceptions that you've heard right or that you've experienced with that? That's about gluten free eating right or gluten free, and we kind of talked a little bit about that right, just not the flavor not been there. But what are some of the common misconceptions that you've heard?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean our biggest hurdle is, like I say that misconception about celiac disease is that it's not a real thing, like that's a big hurdle.
Speaker 2:Like there's skeptics about like oh, just just eat this, like it will make me sick immediately, like trace amounts of gluten will make me very sick within 180 seconds. So that's a misconception I think that people have about their allergy and also the disease that a lot of people discredit and don't take it very seriously when it is very serious. I would say that my biggest hurdle is getting to the consumer, because the consumer is so jaded by all the sort of cardboard gritty products they've had and so just getting someone to try my product is the biggest hurdle. Once they've tried it they believe. But just getting them to take that risk because they do genuinely like gluten-free products can be so disappointing that it's generally people view it as a risk to put a gluten-free thing in their mouth. Right, that's how bad the reputation is out there. So that is the biggest hurdle. I don't think that's a misconception, I think that's fair, I think it's a survival response.
Speaker 2:People are traumatized, which is why I've learned, I've developed a way to talk about my products that really makes sense intellectually, so that people feel a little bit more at ease. Be like, okay, someone understands the chemistry, she's really thought about this, she's spent a lot of time developing it. I know how to tell that story so that the people will literally open their mouth and take a bite. I have to negotiate, basically to get people to try it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and you build a powerful brand in such a competitive space. I think this is such an important question in terms of just being a woman owning a business, being an entrepreneur in the food industry. How has that been for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hard. There are other women in this category and so there are a lot of women in food. When I go to these trade shows, there's many female entrepreneurs. A little bit as a millennial, I feel like we're still battling conceptions or misconceptions from the 1950s and 60s. People still think that women are starting businesses, and that's just not true. 50% of CFOs in America are women and 30% of CEOs in America are women, and the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in America are women, and the largest, the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in America are women, and 60% of all college graduates in America are women. 30% of all of individuals who have a million dollars net worth or more are women, and so women were here and we are a force to be reckoned with.
Speaker 2:But I would say that, like in STEM and private equity, finding funding is still a challenge. You still have sort of that good old boys club and the ideal entrepreneur is a 24 to 28 year old white male, and I knew that, and so I didn't try to raise money from any private equity people. I was like I'm going to do it myself, I don't need you and I'm just going to figure it out on my own, and that might make it more challenging, but it also might open up opportunities. I didn't know was there. So when I started my company I had no intention of raising capital, at least initially. So in the beginning I opened up some credit cards just using my personal credit and that gave me about $150,000. And I only ordered enough ingredients, like I would get a purchase order from Whole Foods. I would only order enough ingredients and packaging to fulfill that order and I made sure that I was creating my packaging. It helps that I have an art degree as well, so I was able to like buy a printer, like just a printer from Staples. I can print stickers and I designed my own packaging and just put it on tintype coffee bags, and they loved that packaging. It was a great way to start. So I only had to buy enough ingredients and packaging for the order and that way I just had $10,000 worth of revolving debt that I would just put on the credit card and then, once I got paid, I paid it down and I never accumulated any debt.
Speaker 2:I managed the finances that way until I grew to be two regions and then I couldn't handle that anymore and I took all the success I'd had and all this organic success because I had no marketing dollars. I was literally just word of mouth with how my product was expanding and I went to a crowdfunding website and they love my product and I raised $5 million. It took about a year to do that. It wasn't a fast process, let me tell you. It's good and fast. It was not, and I raised $5 million. So I still don't have any strategic investors.
Speaker 2:Of course, I am to the point where I am open to those now, but prior to raising the capital, I actually had enough purchase orders to get a loan from TD Bank, a small business loan. So I was able to get two small business loans from TD Bank at a very reasonable interest rate. That was like a fraction it was like a quarter of the interest rate of what I was paying on my credit cards to help manage the interim. And then I raised $5 million in capital. So there are resources out there that don't require you to do anything but submit an application. There are small business loans you do have to build up. You have to show I have purchase orders, I'm generating revenue, but you don't have to go to a private equity firm and convince them. You're the next Elon Musk? That's not necessary. There are resources out there. I also have a government SBA loan that I got because it was around COVID when all this was happening. It was actually 2020. So I got that loan and all of this. I got all those loans the private TD loan and then the SBA loan and then about a year later I raised $5 million in capital. So there are definitely resources out there.
Speaker 2:The fact that I worked in finance and wealth management helped. I had a lot more exposure than the typical entrepreneur into different types of debt vehicles and different types of financing, and I'm even learning about them. I just had a company cold call me and say we offer revolving lines of credit and let's see how much you qualify for. And I sent them some information and they're like here's a hundred. And I was like great, yeah, I'll buy some ingredients.
Speaker 2:So in this world, like compared to when I started to where we are, there are so many more lenders out there that are legitimate, safe lenders that are far more competitive than the banks because they can take on they don't have to be as strict with their risk assessment as the banks, like a bank is going to charge you the most and they're going to be the difficult not difficult, but they're going to have the highest requirements to qualify for debt because they have all these investors. Jp Morgan has all these investors. They have a fortress balance sheet. They can't fail. They're more stingy with who they give their debt to. But there's more digital companies that are smaller, that are legitimate lenders. They're newer companies and they can lend against things like oh, you have a purchase order, how much is that purchase order for? It's a purchase order for Whole Foods for $150,000. Well, we can give you 15 grand and that's fantastic at a reasonable rate. And those are the types of opportunities that are available now.
Speaker 2:They're open to everyone. You can be male or female, they do not care, and you can sort of bankroll your company that way until you're ready to raise capital. And then, once you have established a brand and you have multiple regions, then people will be interested in you. They don't care if you're male or female, You've shown it, you have the revenue and you have the brand equity and all those things. Then it doesn't really matter. It is still a little bit hard, but I never like. I never think about it that way. I just think about it as like okay, so I have to find different routes. And you know what, maybe those routes are better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love the way that you see it right and more of a positive way versus like a holding you back kind of way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think that I was realistic about there are certain stereotypes around what the investor should look like. It's not like, oh, we don't want to invest in women. It's just like they would rather invest in a 28-year-old white male. That's just what they think success looks like, and I knew that and I just accepted that and was like I'm going to find my way around this. And then once I think that to be a successful entrepreneur or any run a small business, you have to be a creative person creative in so many different aspects of the industry and so you have to be willing to do a little bit more work.
Speaker 2:And I'm grateful for all of the financing options I found, because I was like I didn't know that you could get a loan for this amount at this interest rate with so much risk. That's wonderful, because I've always worked at big banks, yeah, so yeah, I think that the doors are opening for women. I think that also, companies are realizing that women are good investments because women make good risks. They take women, on average, take good risks, meaning that if you had women in charge of the stock market, we wouldn't have all these crashes. Because women take good risks, meaning that if you had women in charge of the stock market, we wouldn't have all these crashes, because women take good risks and that's something that is pretty well known, even at the corporate banks. Where you get into more of the testosterone-driven industry, it can be a little bit more intimidating, but I worked as a stockbroker like I can handle anyone.
Speaker 1:I love that. It's amazing. Bring it on yeah.
Speaker 2:It doesn't make it easy. I mean 99% of entrepreneurs fail. It doesn't matter what gender you are. It's hard to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it truly is what has been your proudest moment so far.
Speaker 2:Oh, what a good question. I don't know what my proudest moment is. No-transcript. Even get my kids.
Speaker 2:My kid has XYZ allergies and he won't eat anything and he loves your cookies and I can always get them know that I can have those and it's something that he needs. So if I have a toddler now and it's like you're not feeding your toddler broccoli, you're just like please eat the gummy bears, please eat something, because you're so hungry and irrational. Whatever you want, just eat it. That's where I am. My kids are pretty good eaters. They're not as picky and they don't have any allergies.
Speaker 2:I can't imagine what parents are going through with their kids who have food allergies and when you just want your kid to eat because they're having their sugar is too low and they're like having a meltdown, which happens with little people. So that obviously is very important to me. But I say I'm the proudest is when, like some dude comes up to me and he's like my girlfriend's gluten free and she buys your cookies and your peanut butter cookie is my favorite cookie and he's like I have no allergies and I'm not vegan. Right, like that is. I'm like that's, that was the point. Like I make a cookie for everyone. You just have to like cookies. You don't have to be gluten-free, you don't have to be vegan, you don't have to even care about being better for you, you just have to like cookies. So my cookie is a great product.
Speaker 1:You just have to like cookies to enjoy them, and they just so happen to be allergen friendly and better for you, right? Yeah, that's amazing that someone that would probably not just see the packaging and be like, oh, but I'm not vegan or gluten free, you know, I don't have any sensitivities but still being able to be like, wow, this is a great cookie, right.
Speaker 2:I like that I eat these voluntarily.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly that's awesome. So what's next for Mighty Delicious? Are there any new products, new flavors coming soon?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you tried my cookies, right?
Speaker 1:I have yes.
Speaker 2:Did we send you any of our flour blends? I?
Speaker 1:actually made some. My youngest loves chicken nuggets, right. So I'm like, okay, I need to make my own. And I used the all-purpose flour and they came out really good. I mean, he ate them and I was like, huh nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so rice flour actually makes better gluten-free nuggets than wheat flour because it's crispier yeah, they were pretty crispy. There are some things, like a cracker or something that's fried, where rice flour is actually going to perform better than gluten because it doesn't have the elasticity. So, yes, so you can definitely use our flour to make chicken nuggets. It's going to go crispy and delicious. Yeah, so we just launched this year in March, march, april, I think hit the shelves this April. We have three flour blends. We have an all-purpose flour blend, which is the one you tried. That flour blend is gluten-free. It has whole milk powder in it, so it's not dairy-free. We have a vegan flour blend, which is gluten-free and dairy-free. It has coconut milk powder in it. One of the ways that we replace the protein in our flour blend is with milk, either a whole milk or coconut milk. And that brings me back to what I was talking about earlier, about not wanting to use sorghum flour.
Speaker 2:And I have nothing against ancient grains. I love quinoa, I love garbanzo beans, I love lots of ancient grains. I just don't want them in my cookie. I don't want in my cake or my cookie or things that are meant to smell and taste like vanilla, so we only use rice flour. What makes my cookie so different is that we're, I think, the only company that only uses rice flour as our base. Everyone else uses an ancient grain which has that acrid aftertaste. We specifically mill our rice flour to a speck. I work with the rice growers and the mills to mill it so that it's fine enough, so it's not gritty. That allows us to eliminate the integrated grain, and the way we replace the protein is with whole milk flour, coconut milk flour. So you get a cookie that is completely neutral on your palate but has the structure that you need and the softness, the fluffiness that you need to bake with it.
Speaker 2:Most people don't know this, but rice flour in the US is not milled for baking. It's milled for cooking. It's not milled fine enough to bake with, which is why you get that grittiness in your baking. So I was telling this. I was at a food show, which I do four times a year to a buyer and he goes. I was explaining why my cookies taste so good and he goes. I love them. I'm the flower buyer at Kroger, which is in the US, the largest natural grocery store in the US. It's bigger than anyone else Can I buy?
Speaker 2:your flower and I was like, yes, we make it, we make it by the ton, but we just don't package it. So I created some packaging, sent him some samples. He took two of the three I sent him, and so I have now two flower blends that are available for retail. They're going to be available in Wake Fern in October as well, here on the East Coast, and we have a brownie, a vegan, gluten-free brownie, and it is my best-selling stew. It's absolutely divine. So that's what's new for us is our three flower blends. They just hit the market this April and we're growing in distribution. We're already in Kroger. We will be in Wake Fernern, which is um on the east coast. This is my little person, right, who loves mommy's cookies, right? So, yes, yes, amazing, those are the best taste testers they are.
Speaker 2:She's the best sister. She also helps me make recipes right they will give you an honest response.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, awesome, yeah, so many amazing products. I can definitely wait to try the vegan brownie one. Um, so I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:We didn't send you that. We should always send that because it's like people just freak out over it. I just created, like I obviously always want to make a, a excellent product, but I was like I need a third skew. I have two flower skews, but I need three because that's always better, and so I created this brownie really quickly and people the response to it has just been overwhelming.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah, just all the products and, I'm sure, the many more things right that you'll continue to create. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's just the beginning. I want to be like a better for you brand, Like I want to be in multiple aisles of the grocery store, but I also I'm not trying to saturate the market too quickly. I want to, like develop a product really establish it Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Awesome. Where can they find? Where can the listeners find your?
Speaker 2:products. How can they get ahold of them? You can get my products at mightyliciouscom on our website. We ship to all 50 States. If you buy three bags or more, shipping is free. It's just mightyliciouscom. You can find us on amazoncom. We have a storefront there. You can buy all of our products there. You can find us in many retailers across the US. We're in HEB in Texas. We're in Mayhold Giant here in New Jersey. We're in HEB, we're in Giant, we're in Walmart all throughout the East Coast. We're in tons of natural specialty stores in the US, from Chicago to San Francisco to Texas. Texas is one of our biggest markets. If you don't find us at your local grocery store, always ask Any product that you don't see at your grocery store that you buy on Amazon, ask about it, because if enough people ask the local grocery stores, that eventually filters up to the whoever is the person who is in charge of buying. They don't want to guess what you need. They want you to tell them. So, of course, ask for it.
Speaker 1:And if you can't, ask if you can't find it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:I'll make sure to add all that information, specifically the website um and the tips that you are providing we also have and I forget it, but vicky has it we have a code, a promo code specifically for your listeners, so they can get 20% off on Amazon.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thank you. I will make sure to get that code and add it in the show notes. Caroline, I know you're a busy person. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for coming to the show and sending you lots of good vibes and amazing success. Thank you so much. You're welcome, take.