Sorosh Tavakoli - An Exited Tech Founder’s Second Act in CPG

On this episode we’re joined by serial entrepreneur, Sorosh Tavakoli, the Founder and CEO of Stockeld Dreamery, a bold food-tech brand reinventing cheese without animals, using fermentation and legumes (this ain’t your typical plant-based cheese).

Stockeld first launched in food service with their own take on cream cheese and MELT, sliced yellow cheese that actually melts. A big retail push is now under way.

We dig into brand positioning, go-to-market strategy, raising ~$25M out the gate, the decision to prioritize quality over speed, and what it takes to build trust with both chefs and consumers in a category with an historically terrible reputation.

Episode Highlights:

🧀 Stockeld’s mission to reinvent cheese without animals
🌱 Why quality is key in the “third wave” of plant-based dairy
🍔 How they launched through iconic NYC foodservice spots
📦 Packaging and messaging in a skeptical category
🏭 Building a pilot plant and scaling fermentation tech
📊 Category stagnation and where innovation is heading
🛒 Preparing to scale the retail channel
💰 Raising ~$25M out the gate

Table of Contents:

01:05 – Intro, Sorosh’s Background, Origin Story
03:05 – Products in Market
05:50 – Building in CPG as a Former Exited Tech Entrepreneur
08:06 – Commercialization
13:50 – Why Legumes
17:00 – Launching in Food Service
27:40 – Kicking Things Off With Distributors
31:30 – Packaging Design
40:48 – Raising ~$25M Out the Gate

Links:

Stockeld Dreamery – https://www.stockeld.com
Follow Stockeld – https://www.instagram.com/stockeld_dreamery/
Follow Sorosh on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sorosh/
Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/
Check out https://www.kitprint.co for CPG production design support

Transcript

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welcome to shelf help today we're speaking with Shahruz Tavakoli who's joining us from Manhattan Shahruz is the founder and CEO of Stockholm Creamery which is focused on reinventing the foods we love without animals and a srouse decide to start with the cheese category pretty quickly raised almost 25 million to really kick things into gear which will definitely dive into the fundraising process as part of the conversation pride of stock held Shirush built and sold a video adtech platform before really going on what he called a climate impact sabbatical which I think really ultimately was LED him to to start stock held so first off just the small maybe the small group of listeners that aren't as familiar with stockhold just give us a quick lay of the land just in terms of origin story why behind the brand definitely want to hear about what how you came up with the name and then some of the core products you guys are currently offering and then maybe just call out you know a few key places people can get their hands on them these days alright hey thanks for having me Adam yeah so um so the origin story is uh I this is my second company after my studies in Sweden I started a software business we grew that to about 100 people eight offices we sold that in 2014 I then kind of entered this phase of you know what do I want to do with my life next had some time had some money and a lot of freedom and people told me you have you just lost all your rights to complain in life so I I began began that journey and eventually I decided uh that I wanted to help save the world with cheese the journey was basically I you know I pretty quickly decided I wanted to do something that was good for the world climate change pretty quickly I decided I want to do something with like a where the business model would be climate impact would be built into the business model and that's eventually took me to the world of carbon capture micro algae and then food and specifically plant based foods very inspired by oatly impossible beyond and then as part of that you know realize vegan cheese is just absolutely terrible and turns out cheese is a big problem from a climate perspective it's about 2% of global emissions that come from the kind of very inefficient use of cows as you grow all this food put it in the cow and then you get some milk out of the cow and then you make cheese with that rather than making cheese directly with the plat so that's kind of the origin story and then so we we started out I met my co founder Anya who really had a she had the food science background she done some work on fermentation and all the gooms and that became really the core focus of us feeling that we could create better products because that's all that was really and still is like the core of where I come from and and how I want to contribute is is by kind of having that obsession around the product so we spent about four years in R&D out in Sweden as you mentioned raised about 24 million and um and yeah now we have a product line which is a cream cheese line and we have a sliced cheese cheddar line so the cream cheese is available in in three flavors we've been in food service for about two years and launched in retail about two months ago the uh yeah also the cheddar is we have a cheddar now soon uh we have a smoked provolone coming out as well and yeah that one yeah we're we're that's available in the same channels and retail wise we're only in New York but yeah I'm sure we're gonna talk more about that later sure yeah I'm sure there'll be more places soon enough yes so you you met you touched on it a little bit you spent the first part of your career in tech where you obviously had had a lot of success before you pivoted in this this CPG world I'm just curious what was the so far at least what was the biggest surprise or maybe misconception you had as you started diving in it and building in CPG compared to tech I mean I so so the drive was I really wanted to work with something that you could kind of touch and feel sitting always behind a laptop and you know everything you do is kind of digital felt so I don't know not rewarding I don't know just so theoretical and abstract so that was my desire and I'm I 0 regrets very very happy to be working with food I think the biggest difference is really the margin structure and how you know you end up with so little at the end and while with software you essentially keep it all so that's very different you can it's hard to be in a negative you know margin business as it comes to software usually you usually can very quickly scale your way out of it but with food you can very easily you know end up just uh losing more and more money the more you sell so I think that that I would say that's that's been the biggest and you can't overplan it too early as well sure so yeah I think that totally resonates with me for sure what's been the the most exciting part on the other side well I think I think every single person you meet is intrigued and want to talk to you about what you do and that's really fun on so many levels I think everybody can relate to food we all eat every day we all have a point of view on whatever you know what we eat what we think is healthy what's good for the environment what we think about bagel culture or how you like your burger smashed or not or you know and it's just fun to be so deeply embedded into culture yeah totally outside of the the margin difference in margin which I think is is pretty obvious compared to tech which that's where the best margins are in the world if if a if you had another friend that had a similar background do you had some success in tech maybe they exited as well they approach you and said hey I really like what you're doing in in the CPG world seems really exciting I'm thinking about building a brand in this space too and they asked you what should they expect for just say maybe some advice or or tips or things to watch out for that could really trip them up what would be let's just say two or three things that you tell them yeah that's a it's a great question I think first of all is kind of just to be very thoughtful around the actual consumer need and be very uh cautious as it comes to trends because I think there are it's a very so there's there's a lot of trends but then you know what actually has staying power I think I would really caution them to think twice about it can't just be about a certain claim or two so I think I'd I'd be thinking really hard about what what would have staying power second I would uh and this probably reflects uh some of the mistakes we've made which is just realizing that things will take time and and and not over planning not over staffing not over spending and uh trying to be very very lean for as long as possible because there's just some natural cycles that are required to to build a business and yeah I guess I guess the third thing is kind of very related to that just it just takes time right and with that I think also comes the fact that I think you do need to have some personal passion I think it's very difficult to I would say that about any industry to come in and just try to make some money that that's just not how it works yeah wanna make money go get a job and just don't spend so much yep yeah totally I think those are all really helpful diving into the weeds a bit more wanted to talk about that the product a bit and getting to some of the form factors you've got in in market today you can correct me if I'm wrong but from what I read I think and maybe you have mentioned it also that the R&D process was a pretty long journey I think it took three or four years or so I'm curious looking back from the beginning and what key partners did you have involved and how did you go about finding those those people that really helped you get to finally the form factors that you were happy with well we we built this company in the in the golden age of food tech right so with a lot of capital we ended up building out our own internal team so we did most of the work ourselves it was certainly a very special time when it really was like a race to try to build you know there were like a lot of gains in the in the milk space you know you had the meat race was off there were kind of some winners crowned but the cheese category really struggled to grow and struggled to convince consumers and we felt it was a very clear need for superior products and for some something new to come in and and offer something better and and that way convert more consumers we had a belief early on that that these products had to be we we want to develop something that was more authentic and more authentic we felt the nutrition was also quite off and then almost every other aspect of performance whether it was taste or you know appearance or functionality meltability you know mouth feel I mean you name it and we bet pretty early on fermentation and on legumes as kind of the two 2 core parts of it so fermentation is you know a 10,000 old technology processing technology where you have basically bacteria go in and nibble on the different parts of the food and that way recreating it with lots and lots of complexity because you don't really know uh what cultures are thriving and there's different phases and you know what the byproducts will be what you do know is that it's it's essentially like a predigestion so you do end up getting a more acidic product uh the pH uh is lowered it becomes actually more food safe that way we know that it becomes more craveable it's definitely a lot of the fermented foods are the ones we crave and and once you get into it it's sometimes there's a bit of a learning curve you know you need to have it once or twice and then once you're in you're kind of hooked on it so and yeah you it just brings a lot of complexity to the flavor and to the texture as well that I think obviously very much defines cheese as we know it so that's kind of where that came from now when you ferment you also need protein because that's what the bacteria nibbles on so having protein a lot of the vegan cheeses don't have any protein while dairy cheese has is a very high protein product so it just ends up being very different from a texture perspective from a bite perspective from a functionality perspective so that was another thesis we had okay we yeah we wanna work with fermentation but we also wanna have a bit more protein in the product working with plant proteins is very challenging there can be lots of off notes off flavors there can be sandiness and many other challenges that you know you kind of avoid when not when not having them around so that was a big that was a big part of the challenge and again the fermentation was a big part of the solution to that as well where where you can get rid of a lot of those off notes and so those were the two components we were playing around with we we screened more than 500 different proteins and combination we knew we wanted probably more than one as well cause you get different characteristics and then we had you know early luck with our kind of soft cheese platform um and the soft cheese platform ended up you know in a cream cheese feta sour cream so it's kind of the same technology same kind of base and then on the melting side we were trying to we wanted to make a hard yellow cheese that was initially very much targeted towards pizza the biggest market we struggled eventually we realized we were not going to be able to hit our own ambitions and our own bar in terms of quality so uh while we realized that the product we developed were was going to be perfect for for slices so on a burger and a grilled cheese etcetera so we pivoted that quite a few years into the into the process and one of the yeah so so the different you know the different parts of it are you first have to develop some kind of a core technology you then have to find a co manufacturer who can actually manufacture and produce at scale usually your bench top product is much better and you know it's it's just very different as well compared to the equipment in the facility so that was another another big part of it and then um you know once once you have a great product coming out of a facility then you know you're ready right there's all these gates of like having a bench top product that is promising then finding someone and doing a trial with them usually you do a smaller trial that's kind of another and then at the same time you're like how much should I engage customers how much should I engage think about the brand and the packaging design and all of those things that have long lead times but also are very costly some of them can be like printing packaging and at least with the capital we had and the world view we had which was all about speed we ended up doing everything too quickly which ended up being very costly but um yeah that's a great background that that's super helpful a lot of the nut or a lot of the plant based cheeses a lot of them are are nut based or primarily nut based and correct me if I'm wrong but from what I know you guys decided to focus on legumes versus nuts I'm curious what what factors LED you to ultimately decide that that was gonna be the best route for you and what was gonna help I assume make a more differentiated product yeah well most of the vegan cheeses are not made with nuts actually they're usually like a starch and fat so the the market leaders are violife and daiya and even like even if yeah if you think of a tofutti I guess that's soy but then you have yeah you have the Mioko's the Kite Hill and a few of those kind of almond cashew based and a lot of the dessert cheeses they're all the premium nice ones are are all cashew almost exclusively so we see kind of two worlds one is the starch and fat they're they're usually like they use industrial processes it's a it's a very bland product doesn't taste anything but then they add kind of cheese flavor to it uh huh cheese aroma and that's what people usually refer to oh it's very plasticky or you know it's it's very fake it has this very weird texture and it doesn't melt etcetera on the other side you have the nut based cheeses that have two things so they can be actually taste very authentic because they're fermented they use whole food ingredients very clean label usually but then the challenges are they don't really taste so much like cheese a lot of them they can be way more tangy acidic and have kind of their own flavor which can be very nice but more as a almond paste or like a fermented cashew paste rather than a cheese you also don't get the creaminess they're way more again when I say a paste it's more like a hummus type texture where you feel the different components and then price as well I mean it's you know you can't we can't put cashews on all the pizzas on in the world you know that's just not going to work right so those are some of the and then using legumes legumes are super functional very accessible and yeah we also believe they're way less kind of sensitive to climate impact or you know volatility that way yet they bring the protein and a lot of the other things that we want bit of a side note so I wrote a small check into an early stage brand out here in the Minneapolis area where I recently moved that's they're almost entirely focusing on on school districts as their initial beachhead or or go to market strategy for a variety of reasons but I think this could end up working well for them just from the perspective that if you get kids really passionate about a product or your brand they're probably gonna start eventually going home and asking their mom to buy the products at the grocery store so they can have them at home as well and it seems like the food service channel can have a bit of a similar effect in terms of restaurant patrons if you're you know if a burger joint is using your cheese slices on their burgers eventually they're gonna start looking for that cheese at the store if it tasted really good in that restaurant I'm curious for stock held specifically what was that thought process surrounding that strategy to to focus on food service for the the first year or two it sounded like yeah so there's reality is it is like the easiest way to to do it and and kind of the fastest route because the retail packaging once you the MOQs are very high so by the you know by the time you print that and it takes a long time you cannot change your formulation and specifically like with a product like ours where we're being constantly modifying optimizing we you know it's a brand new technology so there's been things that we've modified we knew that as soon as we hit print on the packaging we can't change anything or ideally we'll wait 18 months to do it so it was pretty useful from that perspective to be able to launch a product in food service and you can easily just reprint stickers as you optimize the product initially so that was kind of one big rational for us second I think yeah we you know vegan cheese has a terrible reputation a lot of people it's it's definitely not an accepted food it's kind of on the fringe you know you have to kind of explain yourself why you eat it or you know uh it's kind of frowned upon so we felt and and this is also part of us being in New York City being in the cultural kind of epicenter of the country and maybe one of the cultural epicenters of the world we have the chance to really make this product kind of acceptable and doing that by working with some of the best in each of the categories so some of the best bagel shops like ESSA Bagel or Schelsky's or you know Old Brooklyn Bagel that we're doing something with this weekend etcetera all kind of or Apollo Bagel not to mention them right so if these people and these locations are serving this product have have decided picked it it must be if it's good enough for them it's good enough for me kind of thing so that's the we've done that on the bagel side we've done that on the burger side with you know Gotham Burger we've done that with a number of other like 5 Napkin Burgers and other great locations so it's a great way for I think to for kind of co branding and becoming legit it's also a great way to have people sample the product because it's a huge risk you know do you want to buy a tub of cream cheese for 6 $7 you've probably bought a lot of them and didn't like them and thrown them away especially in our category so we know people are quite careful yeah because they've been burned so it's a good way to have people try it as well before maybe they go to the store and pick up the product we've also used a lot of our customers as basically ad space we've done special sandwiches or just you know ask them hey can we have an a frame out to promote the new product yeah it's it's amazing at at one point we had 40 a frames across New York City and every day we got photos from our friends saying oh you guys are everywhere I saw you here I saw you there and they send us all these photos so that was a very efficient way of getting the word out there in the perfect context for us yeah I mean it sounds like there's a lot of benefits and reasons to focus on this channel you talk a lot about pros any cons that you found about the channel or challenges you yes absolutely it it you know I think the channel is very price sensitive yeah I mean at least for our kind of product it's it's kind of just an ingredient at the end of the day so I think yeah they're just very price sensitive and if you have a product that is premium with better ingredients you know a fermentation process some protein cleaner label all these things cost money and so it's just difficult to charge what you need to charge so the margin can be challenging I would say it is a barrier to get in through the door because if they have something that's kind of working already why would they change it so there's it's definitely quite a slow sales momentum as well and then the biggest barrier by far is distribution so building up getting into now two years in we work with a with almost 10 different distributors so one of the most important things for them if you go to most customers say what I care about is the quality of the product the price and can I get it and if it's not on the truck that's already coming delivering stuff to them that is just very very difficult that's actually the beauty of working with the best locations because the best locations don't they're willing to put in the extra time and effort to get the products they really want now we work you know after all this time we're working out with Cisco with US Foods with Pfizer with Baldor Ace Natural all these guys but it takes a long time and it's all the time a chicken and egg problem of like you know do you have customers who want it no and then you go to customers oh do you have it in distribution no and then you have to like self deliver a bit and like get that get both sides going in a way and then uh yeah so I would say that that makes a lot of sense you you talked about it can be a bit of a long sale cycle for brands where this channel does seem to make a lot of sense from what you found what should their strategy look like in terms of opening up and and and growing this channel like whether it's simple things or more tactical things like having a really dialed in pitch deck and go with restaurants I imagine that maybe isn't the thing that works as well with them versus retailers but yeah what's yeah what have you found works never never ever use the pitch deck so so what they I mean you know it's all about the pounding the pavement street hustle right we've done this so much my colleague Ben is is amazing at this we know we just Google Maps bagel shops and just start walking around I mean that's how we started and then for us we we we did a list of the top 10 bagel places we said who are the places that we are willing to call 10 times we're gonna keep calling emailing LinkedIn you know until we get some kind of a response from them right so we made that list and then we just tried to really focus on them and it was actually paid off really well we could tell them we made a top 10 list you're on it we would love to work with you here's the product here's the story we're willing to do marketing with you we're willing to do do all these things with you and that that worked really well so that would be one advice and then I think as you do that you can start getting a sense of is this going to be a business a real channel for us or are we going to do this for for marketing purposes and I think then if you know it's only for marketing purposes you can evaluate each customer to take on based off of that cause then you wanna make the most of that partnership right make sure that they promote you you promote them can you send some influencers there can you do different things to maximize the value of those partnerships yeah those are all really helpful shifting away from from food service you mentioned at the beginning just recently launched and expanded into into retail just a few months ago how's it been going so far yeah it's been it's been surprisingly well that's great yeah which honestly almost nothing so far has gone surprisingly well so when I say it it actually means a lot it's been there's been a lot of challenges along the way but so we decided to launch with a local distributor we launched eventually about 9 9 weeks ago I believe they sent out an email saying hey and I believe our packaging stands out in such a way that I think about 50+ stores just place an order straight away from the email which again we were not used to this in food service we had to go call them 5 times and nag and you know please but they just were like wow this looks really cool this looks sexy this pops like this is different from what else we have I'll order a case or a few cases to see how this does so that's been really helpful we have obviously not we did not expect that so we've been pounding the pavement here as well I mean benefit of being in New York is that you can get around fairly easily and it's very dense so we had a a sales blitz where the whole team came in there were 5 6 of us the commercial team and we did divide up the full city and went to each area and just walked in hey you know we've launched this new product and and we had also the list from our distributors so we already knew where they were distributing to and after that we were close to 100 stores after that first two weeks which was that was our goal for the first month then uh and then yeah we just hit 200 stores last week which is really cool that's awesome congrats your account is not really what matters uh you know we know a lot of those we're not gonna get reorders from we know it's going to come down to the 50 probably key accounts so that's really where we're focusing trying to make sure that we have a great visibility point of sales material that we build relationship with the with the buyers that we if something is not working you know maybe can do promos super important thing is demos that that is the one thing that we feel the most confident actually works we've done a lot of other things but it's it's a bit hard to know you know if uh what role they've played uh in in the success and yeah that's kind of what we're trying to obsess about we're tempted every week should we go out to Long Island should we go deeper into New Jersey we're like no no no no let's stay put let's just keep driving velocity in kind of home court yeah before we go further yeah that seems like definitely the right strategy pretty much everyone I talk to is the question I often ask is it definitely seems like some of the first time earlier stage CBG founders they want to just get into as many doors as fast as possible velocity is really the the name of the game if they're not moving on not moving quickly and you get kicked off you know kicked off the shelf it's much harder to get back in right so it seems like what you're doing is hundred percent the right strategy um on that on the similar topic so you you mentioned you you partnered with I think I think you said like 10 different distributors I think you've partnered with at least like you know a local New York distributor as an example I think for your initial retail launch sounds like it it's expanded since then no actually you know so on the food service side we have 10 okay I see got it on the retail it's only one now and and we're onboarding with UNFI this month oh nice that's kind of our yeah I was gonna ask you on on that local New York community you started with how did you decide on this specific one I imagine there's a fair amount in New York competing for yes what did they do to what were the variables that you had top of mind that help them win yeah I mean we so they came in through recommendation they used to work with a good culture the cottage cheese business and and we we know someone there that helped us a bit of of figuring out this is a you know they are Hasidic Jews super efficient you know in the contrast to going to a nice law firm where you're like now I know why they are so expensive I'm paying for all this stuff they're the exact opposite you go to their office and you're like wow now I get why they're charging a very very low fee they also have great reputation with the stores every store we went to they're like oh you work with J&J like very impressed they're very good people they know they get a good service and very good prices so that's kind of how we we decided that given that we have our own local team in New York we're going to do the sales we don't need cause some distributors would offer some sales capacity as well these guys don't so yeah we said we'll do it ourselves and we'll have a higher margin for us and a lower price for the consumer so you know it's like a double double win and yeah we've it's been working really well with them we've dedicated a lot of time and attention to it um yeah so that's how we end yeah Unify Unify will be next up that's driven by so we have next up we're launching with new seasons and market of choice in Portland uh and in Oregon so that's driving then the Unifi onboarding and we have we have a number of other launches that are quite imminent yeah that are who are with Unifi so right so yeah feeling very good about that as well but it's also clear we see some of our competitors are priced a lot higher and we we can see that that comes we also know that if we had been through Unifi in New York we would have been priced you know a dollar higher probably or 50 cents higher yeah that makes sense so yeah that we we feel good about that being able to be more competitive that's great thinking about when you I guess first when you approached that local regional distributor in New York and and now with UNFI thinking back to those what did you do to prepare the brand and for yourself to start approaching those retailers and just for some advice for CPG operators that are a little behind you as they're gonna start this process especially with the unifys of the world how can they best position themselves from a a negotiation standpoint cause I know yeah the bigger distributors they can take a pretty big hit to your margin yes on the so we we said you know in New York we're doing it ourselves but nationally we work with a broker called Cultivate CPG we've been very happy working with them we you know our expectation is was that they were they were gonna put us in front of the right people and they've been very successfully doing that and then you know it's up to us to to impress them and and you know get the deals closed but that that's ultimately all you can expect so that's kind of how we've been managing that that's been great you know getting directly to the right person the right purchaser in the time of review for them so that's been really useful um yeah and they've also helped us with with UEFA I mean the most of the negotiation happens with the retailer anyway haven't seen any hardcore negotiations happen honestly they have their margins and the goals that they need to hit and yeah very standard PC yeah I mean what what what we've been very warned about let's say is all the fees and all the hidden fees and also all of the wrong fees when you're build incorrectly your packaging really stands out on the shelf in general and it I would say it really stands out amongst this plant based category let's say especially the plant based or dairy free cheese category let's say just think it back to that original creative brief you put together whoever you worked with whether that was internally or a creative agency or some sort of freelancer what was that just thinking yeah thinking back to that creative brief what was your vision and what did you feel like were the most important points you wanted to call out on the package yeah no that was it's it's very interesting because the packaging design was done like almost four years ago for ahead of our Swedish launch and and and it even comes back to like the name of the company and we did we went pretty deep on on trying to you know capture the essence of the of the company of us as founders of you know what we wanted what we wanted to build and try to as much as possible almost like not relate too much to what else is being done and who else is is doing something right obviously we did look at the shelf and we did look at competition and we but we we wanted like so like the name for example the name came out of almost like wanting to have friction wanting to have a name that is a bit difficult not having you know an Oakley or cheese should be a bit complicated right real food has it's about heritage it's about terroir and so that was kind of the Swedish connection but with an English name as well so the dreamy is kind of the visionary part you know forward looking but stockeld is is means campfire in old Swedish so it also refers to Stockholm or you know home hometown um and it just to me first time I I saw we were brainstorming I saw the name Stockfield on the whiteboard I was like I saw this like British Cheddar black cheddar you know wax covered and it kind of communicated to me at least a lot of flavor I just I just felt like just a lot of flavor in that name so anyway that's kind of where where the name comes from and the Dreamery is obviously anything that a creamery cannon should be right that's kind of where it comes from um and it was a bit similar with the with the logo we had actually some people can't fully see that it's two E's that are you know the staircases in the logo but we kind of felt like we don't care haha you know like it it it's okay if it's a bit difficult it was something that felt very right from the get go the font was actually a brand new font from this German font developer that our designer kind of knew and we just we just loved it it was also like came out when we saw it we knew it was it was us and then the packaging was was really driven out of obviously the graphical you know identity but I don't know I've I've always been down to you know culture I I I love hip hop I love a lot of that kind of the culture of like almost you know I don't know of like rapping and and the attitude that comes with that of like wanting to do something being in a vibe being in a flow and you can see that on my T-shirt you know like here like uh do it for the culture which is referring to obviously culture cheese but obviously part of culture that's a lot of the elements that went eventually into the the packaging which which is really cool and does not communicate health does not communicate you know clean label or those things but just kind of has like a just like has the right vibe to it yeah totally we also try to keep it very simple obviously not claiming too many things there's just packaging talks about it being what do we call it creamy and tangy right those that we we wanted to call it light as well FDA you can't call it light because it it kind of implies low calories but it is more light than a dairy product so I think that's also a difference but that's also what people always say oh so creamy why so creamy and then oh I like that little Tang oh it has that like that Tang to it which is like uh comes from the fermentation so those are the things we call out we have a tiny uh founder story uh which I saw the cream cheese you can actually open up and it has like a text inside should I bring a pack does that yeah for sure bring it out yeah yeah hold up so we have the tangy and creamy is kind of the two ways we're describing the product um and then we also have the plus probiotic cultures so we're also very careful we don't want to say that it has probiotic effects or it's good for your gut those are very bold claims to make and but but we the product does have close to actually a billion the CFU um colony forming units I think it's called yeah that's what I heard that a brief that that yeah so that's a bacteria per per serving so it's pretty cool but yeah the the lid is really kind of I think where where it stands out and it just feels like I don't know like a cool um cool thing yeah anyway so that's yeah oh I would want to tell you about the so at least here's a little um Easter egg because we don't say that there's anything here but if you open up the the cream cheese you you actually get like a little extra information about the brand there's a tiny kind of founder story there's a there's a recipe from Apollo Bagels of our kind of super our favorite bagel and then talking about what culture always cultured refers to um yeah it's all it's all just really well well designed really well put together I think it's a I think it's only gonna continue to really well in retail thank you and then we have the we have this and this is also like a we've done some Optimus this is um this packaging is a lot more affordable so we have a new print on this where like the barcode went on the side classic things that that you know you get wrong yeah the slices sometimes come out in different sizes so it's been a bit challenging to get it right but this also I think really pops in the shelf I went here what we've thought about in terms of the packaging is really call out the one key benefit which is it melts yeah that's a massive consumer problem other products don't melt ours melt the best and so that's kind of what we've called out it's called melt the tea is melting it's crafted for melting it shows a melted product and in the back it's like how do you actually melt it right really smart really smart like do one thing do it well I think that's that's makes a lot of sense I mean yeah it looks really good I'm curious just for yeah first time CPG entrepreneur they're just getting ready to start kicking off this packaging design process looking back to obviously you've gotten to a place that looks really good but maybe it didn't start that way what are a few things you tell them to keep top of mind as they're about to go through this this packaging design process well I would say I I think it it's worth to do the to do some solid groundwork of understanding who you are what you stand for what you want to achieve I would really encourage people to you know we told our agency actually we said don't filter out your ideas that you always have to filter out because every time most agencies most of their customers are big and they vote in some kind of a you know quorum of like a big team and it gets watered down by every version right we said no we want something bold we want the ideas that you know you can never get through but like those are the ideas we do want so obviously that got them very excited and so so I think that's something also you have to tell the agency because otherwise they're just gonna give you the vanilla versions that they are used to and then and then comes the hard bit which is also like don't overdo it because you'll probably have to redo it anyway and that's where you're stuck I think as a as an entrepreneur because the cycles are so long the cycles are so expensive yet you know you have to go through a few cycles because you are going to change like we change our preservative from you know something that wasn't natural not allowed at Whole Foods that we changed it to a natural one we just had to do it and we had to reprint the cups so you just need to expect that some of these things are gonna happen while you don't wanna take too many shortcuts from the get go and that's why this is hard it doesn't get easy necessarily even with the best advice yeah that's all really helpful advice totally shifting gears again talking about fundraising for a second you obviously had a lot of success really early on raising 25 million early on pretty quickly especially in the CVG space is is difficult I know you mentioned you felt like you timed it really well just in terms of the food tech hype and and what not but I still think you must have done a lot of things well I'm but I'm curious for what did you find what's been what was different about fundraising for CPG versus in tech and what did you find worked well well the caveat is you know we raised money in a time of extreme hype and and boom so we all believed we are investors we all believe the world was changing very fast and it was a race against time and we had to you know the companies with the biggest guns would win almost right like that kind of mentality that is a big part of it now that doesn't mean that all the vegan cheese companies you know raised this much money cause cause most of them didn't right for me came down to I had already built a business and and returned some good money to investors I think that built a lot of confidence with them so I guess it's just unfair right like it's it's it's just like now with you know the David the bar you know like what what he's done like with with where he comes from he put in the first money like you just can't do that first time around so so I think that's one thing I think I guess what everybody's talking about right now is you have to be super lean I mean what what we did was the opposite right we were not lean we were talking about a very big game super ambitious plans talking about years years out of things that were very fuzzy now it's the exact opposite you have to know your business inside out know the numbers be very very thoughtful understand your margins you know your path to profitability all of those things are are now kind of way more important and and you have to show the grit the resilience the hustle the willingness to to be coached and adapt and and now those things matter right I think the challenge you wanna do that while having a vision right while also thinking big because you also don't wanna get too limited and then finally I think that the biggest advice though is you have to don't don't think about investors think about your business and what your business needs and it's so easy to try to please an investor deck or you know do things to raise more money but ultimately comes down to your own business and what is it that present it all also like as honest as possible talk about all the flaws all the risks but also the benefits and that then you get a balanced view equally when the investor comes in you don't have surprises and you know a sense of disappointment when the investor comes in only to learn some things you didn't share etcetera and I think it's all it's a very long term relationship yeah so those are the things that I think yeah founders get lost you know initially but to that point I've been a part of past company health startup past company we raised a lot of money and one thing that I Learned in that was that which I think a lot of first time founders miss is that fundraising is I mean one thing people always say like fundraising is a full time job which you know but they also say is like a lot of people they don't run like a really well organized and button up actual like fundraising process like what is a yeah what is a well organized fundraising process look like for you and what do you feel like maybe first time founders miss or get wrong at actually building and running a fundraising process to a certain extent yeah there's a lot to be said about that I think you need to you know put a deck in order like it's almost like first convince yourself like you know find a good good good story that you believe in yourself build out your model yeah and then I think you wanna start trying it out you know cause every time every time you pitch it just improves you know you can adapt something you're like oh that made no sense I'm gonna take that way or and then you'll get good insight as well they'll have good investors will give you some advice or or feedback and but then ultimately at some point at some point you need someone to shoot and as soon as the first person shoots you get that term sheet it's game on right and I think at least a lot of the challenges when we fundraised last time was nobody wanted to shoot and everybody wanted to just like follow like oh we'll follow we love your company but like let us know when you have a lead we invest a million on the backup you know blah blah blah blah and it's quite frustrating cause you're like it's your job to like do some work it was almost like we don't wanna do the work let someone else do the work we'll just tag along but yeah how do you create sense of urgency sometimes you have to fake it is the wrong word but like manufacture sense of urgency and structure and say well you know we're expecting term sheets by the state challenges if you that date comes and there were no term sheets how to explain that etcetera so it's always that kind of I I do think it's important to yeah and then another well run process is to just have a lot of good news that you're drip feeding on LinkedIn or or to them in meetings et cetera those things can also be be useful yeah those are helpful those are some of the things to have in mind yeah super helpful yes sir this has been awesome really appreciate the insights a lot of helpful stuff here where's the best place for people to follow along with you personally and best place to follow along with stock hell as well I think the best place uh from a consumer perspective it's uh definitely Instagram that's where we are the most active so that's uh stock keld underscore dreamery perfect it's orange just when you see the or the orange logo go there um and then for me personally it's LinkedIn and that's that's usually I don't I don't post very often but I but that's kind of one good place to follow follow me in my journey I'm all yeah not not as much on the Instagram perfect awesome it's been awesome appreciate the time it's been great thank you yeah and check out our website too stock hill.com perfect yeah we'll definitely we'll definitely link that in the notes for sure shifting gears to the sales channels for a bit um so this is the packaging right