Chrisi Hammer - The Interior Designer Scaling Cinnamon Buns Into 4500+ Doors

On this episode, we're joined by Chrisi Hammer, Co-founder and CEO of Sunshine Buns, the frozen cinnamon roll brand built upon a family recipe her mom started perfecting in the late 1970s. 

Chrisi brings an interior design background to CPG, and it shows up in everything from the packaging to the trade show booths.

We get into how Sunshine Buns went from home deliveries out of Chrisi's kitchen to thousands of doors in under two years, and why owning a commercial kitchen and storefront first gave them hundreds of hours to perfect the product. Chrisi breaks down the packaging journey, how she rebuilt the entire pack into a box that fits the frozen breakfast set while keeping the hero image consistent after being told at ExpoWest they were a breakfast product not a bread.

We dig into the retail strategy putting them on track for roughly 4,500 doors by year end  how their broker at Critical Mass Group reverse-engineered a mass-market price so the product could actually move, and hiring fractional operators from bigger brands early.

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Episode Highlights:

🌅 The family recipe born from a 1970s cinnamon roll
🚪 From 750 doors to 4,500 by year end
🏠 Home kitchen to commercial to co-packer
🧪 Why cinnamon roll dough is so finicky
🎨 Bringing an interior design eye to the brand
📦 The rebrand from bread bags to breakfast box
🛒 Owning one spot on the shelf before expanding
💰 Pricing for volume instead of chasing margin
🏬 Using the retail store as live R&D
🧊 Why frozen is hard and worth it
🎪 The Expo West booth that stopped traffic
👀 The brands reinventing the frozen aisle

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Table of Contents:

00:00 – Intro
00:59 – Origin story: Mema's recipe
03:33 – The parking lot decision to start the business
04:48 – From 750 doors to 4,500 by year end
05:45 – Home kitchen to co-packer and the science of the dough
09:39 – Building the brand with an interior design eye
11:40 – Bags to boxes: the packaging rebrand
14:20 – Keeping the pack simple: no oven, ready fast
15:51 – Advice: own one spot on the shelf first
17:51 – Pricing strategy for the frozen set
19:36 – Reverse-engineering price with their broker
21:52 – The Orem storefront as R&D
24:56 – The corporate store playbook
26:22 – Convenience as the differentiator
28:31 – Why frozen is hard and worth it
30:09 – LinkedIn, influencers, and Hummingbirds
32:57 – The Expo West booth that stopped traffic
37:19 – Building the team and fractional hires

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Links:

Sunshine Buns – https://www.sunshinebuns.com/
Follow Chrisi on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisi-hammer-b7b954326/
Sunshine Buns on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/sunshine-buns/
Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out KitPrint.

Shout out to my friends over at Glimpse, the go-to partner for automating retail-related back-office operations and unlocking margin trapped in invalid fees and manual processes.

Are you in the market for a new flexible packaging partner? Check out HD Packaging. Third-generation, family-owned and built for the needs of category leaders like Newman’s Own and A Dozen Cousins. Faster launches, lower costs, and no artwork fees. 

Transcript

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welcome to shelf help Today we're speaking with Chrissy Hammer Co Founder CEO of Sunshine Buns the cinnamon roll brand built on a 40 year old family recipe that I believe is on track to be in close to forty five hundred doors by year end Sunshine Buns was started with with Chrissy's mom baking buns I think for church fundraisers and community events in in California and then Chris and your friend eventually turned the recipe into a business think fall of 2022 with some home baking and just deliveries out of Chrissy's kitchen eventually opening up a brick and mortar location in 2024 and I think kind of the rest is history from there but we'll definitely dive into the journey a bit more here in a second so yeah super excited to dive into it Chrissy just yeah first off for listeners that aren't as familiar with the sunshine buns would love to just get quick lay of the land just in terms of kind of the origin story why behind the brand core products in the lineup and then we'll take it from there for sure well first of all I was telling for the listeners I was telling Adam before he pushed record that Shelf Help is one of my favorite podcasts ever in existence so if this is the first year hearing of it do yourself a really quick favor and download and listen to every single episode it's fantastic I was really pumped when I got the DM on LinkedIn hey you wanna be on the pod I'm like of course I do so super pumped about it so anyway you're doing a great job origin story of sunshine buns started back in 1978 so before I was born my mom she's sort of like a Martha Stewart there's like nothing that she can't do well from a homemaking standpoint she is like the picture perfect boomer homemaker she is so fantastic in the home so everything she makes in the kitchen is so fantastic so she had her first experience with the cinnamon roll actually in Salt Lake City when she was traveling with my dad back in the 1970s just a quick tidbit history of cinnamon rolls is they're not huge in the United States until about the 1970s so it was sort of like if you saw one it was sort of a rare thing and then Cinnabon exploded in the 80s but before that it was sort of like what is this so that that's an interesting tidbit so she had her first cinnamon roll she couldn't believe it she was like this is so good went home and took about five years to develop like a really really good dough she was like I'm going to master this this is gonna be the thing that I'm I do and I do well and I'm gonna own it and her and her best friend started selling them for fundraising events and local charities anytime someone needed money my mom was like I'm going to sell sunshine buns and give it back to the community so it's a really cool you know full of heart start sort of origin that I'm not full of heart this is a for profit business at this point but that was kind of the origin of it and you know they had come up with the idea of Sunshine Buns back in the 1970s and when we were deciding if we were going to keep that name or not it was like absolutely we'll keep that name it's fantastic it's got great origin and so much that you can do with the branding there so that's sort of the origin around sunshine buns and then for about 10 years I wanted to turn this into a business I had my own interior design business that I was doing at the same time so it wasn't really a good time and then one day I'm with my best friend we're on a double date and my husband and her and her husband and we were like can you believe Mima doesn't want to do a business because she's so marketable that I'm always I'm like what could I sell that my mom does and I just couldn't believe that she didn't want to turn it into a business with me because I had approached her and she's like absolutely not zero interested in creating any sort of brand or business or anything like that she's was approaching 80 and was like not interested so I was griping with my friends about it and I it was sort of like I looked at Cass and Cass looked at me and we were outside this theater before a play and and it was this cosmic moment where we were like we're gonna do this and our husbands are rolling their eyes and we're like okay let's do this now she has no idea how to bake she comes from an entirely different home than I do you know working mom not baking in the kitchen she has no idea how to bake but she's like yes I'm in let's start a cinnamon roll company and right then and there in the parking lot we bought the Godaddy site for $33 we opened up the Instagram page and we told our husbands you have six days to get the back end in order cause we're gonna start selling these from our house that's exactly what we did so it's pretty cool you know fast forward to today we're currently in about 750 doors and as you said we're gonna be in about 45 hundred doors by the end of this year which is absolutely insane some of our most recent wins are Town and Country in the Pacific Northwest Albertsons United out of Texas Lund and Byerly's in the Midwest and then some big national retailers so you'll pretty much be able to get your hands on them everywhere by the end of the year your mom like five years I'm sure it was kind of a slow methodical thing of kind of developing the dough but in terms of remining back to some of those early days of of taking the recipe from that home kitchen to more commercial scale production what were some of those kind of key variables and things you you played around with in terms of from that first version to you feel like okay this is a version that we feel like we can actually bring to commercial scale and start producing methodical as you said in making sure that this was a as simple as possible and b could freeze really well so those were two things that we were lucky enough to sort of just already be adopted into the business when we you know people spend years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in R&D and I had had four years already of my mom really perfecting this recipe and then another element is that you touched on this briefly and and I know we'll get into it more is that we opened up a brick and mortar where we live locally so we didn't go just straight from like home kitchen right to co pack we went home kitchen to commercial kitchen to co pack so it was really lucky that we were able to do small tweaks to get to commercial and then from commercial to copack again a couple small tweaks so really the majority of the tweaking that took place was from home to commercial and there was so much freedom in that because we had our own location so like hundreds of hours we were able to spend in our retail location really perfecting the commercial side before we took that to a copack of course you don't have that luxury when you're going usually when you're going to a copack you're not like hey can I work on this for three months like that's right typically not something that you're able to do so yeah I know we'll get into that a little bit more but the tweaking happened sort of incrementally as we moved through this business and my mom is still alive and very much a part of this business I'm sure she's kicking herself cause she doesn't have any equity of course we'll take care of her but my mom spends so much time in both the brick and mortar and at the co packers she is constantly there like helping quality control and having them understand like what's acceptable and what's not yeah and so that's that's really critical is to have like the actual expert working on it day in and day out yeah totally is like one of the the keys like that important texture as you've gone up from that home kitchen to commercial to co packing scale yeah bread is so interesting especially baked cinnamon rolls it's a double it's a double rise so when you make your dough it has to rise and then you roll your dough and it has to rise and then it's essentially rising again in the oven so it's almost like three rises so it's very very very finicky like it's all about chemistry and balance and fermentation and heat and and again we're so lucky that we had 40 years my mom can essentially do this in her sleep really understanding the science behind it and making sure that what she produced you know in the 90s and 2 and 80s was the same thing that we were gonna get out of the kitchen and it really was like hours after hours after hours of like making sure that it's exactly perfect and from a from like a secret standpoint I don't actually know my mom will always be like you know we'll say like oh we don't want to give the recipe away and she's like why you should tape it on the back they're not going to be able to do it because so it is so filled with like gut instinct and if you've ever made cinnamon rolls at home I'm sure unless you're like an expert nine times out of 10 it's like that wasn't what I wanted it to be we really have this like true expert in our pocket and that's kind of our secret sauce as Mima I wish everyone had a Mima in their business'cause she's so critical but what were some of the you know key variables that were top of mind for you as you were building out the brand identity positioning voice look and feel the brand I I have an interior design background and I think that has been super critical in our success for the brand although it's not like packaging design when you're designing you know a 15,000 square foot home it has to be so cohesive even down to like the door stops I'm choosing the door stops and like the window trim and all these things that are like people don't understand how complex interior design is and so I was really able to understand that design isn't just like this one element but it's really like an entire universe totally and I you know when we were originally coming up with the concept of the font and the design and everything we wanted it to feel nostalgic because that's what a cinnamon roll at its heart really is like it's Mima's recipe we want it to feel like it's coming from you know the the 1970s but we also wanted a modern twist on it so it was really about pairing modern with retro and like making sure that that was a great marriage between the two and again I have so much patience in understanding like slight tweaks and variations in that because of my design background that I was able to articulate well what was in my brain to our designers and I think that's kind of a hard part that founders you can see it in your brain but you're like how do I articulate exactly what I want this to look like and I think we're lucky that I have this background and we purposely didn't choose someone that has designed CPG packaging like I was like I don't want this to look like every other thing that's on the shelf and so I'm not going to choose someone that has designed a million packages I mean unless it was Red Heart but we didn't have so we he's pretty awesome so I was like I'm not going to do that I want this to really be very different and that's kind of been our entire brand identity from the beginning is like how can we make this feel different from like Pillsbury or Annie's yeah and then when we originally went to market it was very much like the retailers didn't know where to put us because traditionally speaking a cinnamon roll has never been fully baked before in the grocery store from you know you can get that in the deli but not not in the actual right packaged branded spot yeah and so I think that they thought that we were a bread and so we originally followed the bread brands which are in bags so we go to market in in bread bags and took you know a really long time to develop the bag and it was so stinking cute and then we went to Expo and all the big box retailers are like you're not a bread you're a breakfast and this needs to fit in the breakfast sets so hurry and go home and redo this entire packaging to represent a waffle box that will fit easier in our shelves so you know that was kind of the the reasoning behind the rebrand yeah was from go to bread to the breakfast set you know that's all and I think we've we finally are in the packaging that that we need to be in that new look in form factor with still maintaining some of that existing look so the existing fans and customers when they were walking down the aisle you know 1 could feel like it resonated with them still felt familiar and 2 could actually was was familiar enough that they could actually you know immediately be able to continue to recognize it and know what they're looking for so they don't get lost in the aisle and say where'd sunshine buns go absolutely yeah I think the imaging is super critical like if you're going through a rebrand you and it's a I mean it's a completely different like you said it's a completely different pack we went from bags to boxes and so Evan our graphic designer was like I need to keep this as cohesive as it was you know I need people to understand immediately like oh this is Sunshine Buds it's just in a different pack and I think the way that we came about was making sure that the hero image was the same from bag to box you know I know some people redo their hero image and that costs you know like Tropicana that literally tanked their entire business because they changed their hero image of course we're not like as far down the road as Tropicana so it wasn't as critical but Evan was really you know his task was really like how do I make this feel so different and fun and fresh and unique and different in the breakfast set yeah and still maintain that Sunshine Buns ethos and I think by really keeping the hero product as large and big as powerful as the bag in the box that was sort of and then everything sort of just fell into place from there and we were really um intentional in making it as simple as possible like there's not a million call outs on the bag you know we were like no oven required ready in 45 seconds and then the hero image you know like I really took into like what speaks to me as a consumer and how can I I think founders like really overcomplicated it it needs to be beautiful packaging it needs to say what it is through an image and then there needs to be very few like call outs you know especially in the freezer you've got like a split second totally to to capture that person so I mean our our buns have naturally 8 grams of protein in them and we were people have been like why didn't you put that on there and sure I don't like um it's not a better for you product and I think too many too many like CPG brands are like oh we're better for you because we have eight grams of protein you're not better for me too many people get lost in the trend of that where it's like what do you do what do you do well and call that out we yeah we do convenience well and we do product well so those are the two things it was like call out convenience and show what the product is and they'll turn it around and see like oh there's eight grams of proteins how how fun you know totally so yeah that are you know maybe a year that are listening thinking back going through this what's like one thing you might tell them to keep top of mind that that could help them I don't know do it better or avoid some of the pitfalls and things that you might have stumbled into I think really understanding like I had said previously how to keep it as simple as possible and don't go to market with living in multiple places within the grocery store go to market with one location own that location that real estate develop skills from that spot and then as you can see the velocity and sell through rate of that real estate that you own then talk about you know bringing other skis to market we were super intentional we have 12 flavors which I know we're gonna get into we only went to market with two we're just now introducing our third one of the national retailers gets a limited time offer so that's gonna be our fourth and we didn't rush immediately to 12 skews yeah and we have some that can live in dessert some that can live in breakfast some that can live in bread and we have like a bread pudding where does that go it's not in breakfast that's in dessert but we don't want we don't want to stretch ourselves too thin from a real estate perspective until people are like I know sunshine buns and that way you know a year from now when they're walking in target and they're like oh my gosh they have a bread pudding in the dessert that's gonna slap cause I know their buns slap so totally it's like keep it simple own one or two skews in your real estate print out your packaging and go and freaking tape it to an ego box if you're in the breakfast set or like a if you're in the ravioli set go tape it to Bertoli like go tape it to where you are because what you think looks good on the computer maybe doesn't actually look good in in real time that's another thing I've Learned about interior design like you have to be able to test your flooring in nine different spots of the house before you commit to a flooring and it's the same with brand packaging like yeah it's so it's so visual you have to make sure that it looks good in the right set totally when you're going to to retail what did your kind of strategy process retail price was was gonna be I think because we're in this white space that has potential to you know the break the frozen breakfast set is worth billions and billions and billions of dollars so I think you have to have like a 50,000 foot view of what your category is like if you're selling kitty cat balls that go around their collar it's probably not going to be as impactful as a company that's selling frozen cinnamon rolls right like so you you have to have that first okay like can this be potentially national and can it be potentially take a little market share out of the billions and not millions and you're like okay yes it can great now you're like if I'm going to be competing with brands like ego and Annie's and Pillsbury I need to have a market price that Susan in Kansas will pay for and Marlene in LA will pay for it you know two totally different people but can they both pay for it will they both pay for it okay so you've answered both those questions yes I need that then it's what is my gross margin well I would like it to be 30% it's not going to be 30% if I need to hit all of those things if I'm gonna take market share from ego if I want Susan and Marlene both to buy it and if I want I'm not going to be able to get my gross margin on that so I think when we first started we really had no idea and when we went to market we were like 1299 because I was like I've got to hit my margin and then once we signed our broker which will get into Critical Mass Group Dan Morad if you don't know him and if you haven't met him you should know Dan he's fantastic he's he's the founder of Critical Mass Group and he also has a fund called turpsie they've they've uh invest in in uh CPG brands but he really sat down with us and was like if you want this if you wanna take market share you have to be at the price that everyone could get you at and so he really kind of reverse engineered for us and was like you have to be in the volume game and you're not gonna get there if you're priced at 1299 so he was like trust me you're going to get volume because you are in this white space that does you know I hate the word like disruptive cause that is exactly what this is but this is such a like everyone knows what a cinnamon roll is we're just giving it we just solved a problem like getting it to them faster than they would so anyway he said you don't know how bad you're getting taken advantage of from like freight and packaging and co packs like you're just a new brand you don't understand but the volume is gonna get you in a spot of leverage where you can really like say listen this isn't a story about like can you do 50,000 buns it's like I'm going to make hundreds of millions of buns how do you fit into this you know and I think you can't get to that unless you're priced in a way where people can afford you and it will fly off the shelf so I think some people spend too much money or too much time worrying about gross margin off the bat like you're not ever going to hit your gross margin at least in frozen there's just no way you're gonna hit that gross margin I I don't know anyone that would hit that when you're talking about a strategic acquisition which is what we want to accomplish in five six seven years we're not going to be at the margin that we want at acquisition right now so how can we get of course is through like velocity and volume so I think we started high and then we had that conversation with Dan and he's like let's get this to mass price and that was really how we came to that and I don't listen to anyone else that tells me that we need to be hitting our gross margin right now cause yeah that totally makes sense side of things then you launched initially kind of you eventually open up the the physical storefront in in Aurora the brick and mortar location I think is in August 2024 what was kind of the thought process of opening until you're ready to jump to yeah when we originally started we were baking out of our house and I know I touched on this a little bit but baking cinnamon rolls in residential kitchens is really difficult commercial commercial kitchens have way more ability to to bake and bake quickly especially a cinnamon roll you know they have like proofers those are things that we don't have in our homes so you know we're spending six to eight hours a day baking 18 dozen cinnamon rolls we're at the shop that would take that takes an hour you know so being able to say like okay we can't sustain this anymore I have a business my founder my co founder had a business like we just couldn't keep up with the demand in the scale it was like we would sell out and the orders had to be in by two and you know it was just way too complicated yeah because when we originally started this business we were gonna go the franchise route and it wasn't until we open the doors that we started having people request why isn't this in the grocery store or people gas stations local gas stations saying hey I want this in wholesale and we're like oh my gosh this should be in grocery stores this would be so much easier to scale quickly if we went that route I mean easier in air quotes cause it's freaking hard nothing is easy but yeah yeah but yeah but easier than opening you know like if we're gonna be in 4,000 doors by the end of this year there's no way we would have been able to open up 4,000 locations right in less than two years so right having that unlock we'd already signed the lease we already had the kitchen and then it just became like oh my gosh this is now like our R&D we still you know we have a business like every single day people can walk in they get the fresh we do catering and you know collegiate sponsorships and we're with Real Salt Lake you know there's a lot that we do from the first store but it wasn't it so sort of all accidental you know like let's get into a commercial kitchen so that it's easier to then it is at home then we got in the commercial kitchen and it was like this is so much easier than at home and then it was crap let's go wholesale let's literally redo our entire business and then it became more of an R&D it's really great because we own this data from like real time customers that come in every day yeah and we're able to pressure test different skews you know like how well does this flavor do with these consumers so we have immediate data that we're able to take to the retailers and say listen this does the best in the store it's probably gonna do the best in retail so that was really helpful yeah was in terms of handful more of kind of these flagship ones in key locations or eventually just absolutely okay I think it's you know Cinnabon is sort of the only cinnamon roll company out there that's in mass and they're awesome what they built was great and this is no shade to Cinnabon but I think the market could use a little bit something different and so I think our philosophy going into having more corporate stores is sort of following what Cinnabon has done you know high traffic areas like airports and malls where they're sort of trapped and they smell that cinnamon roll and they're like I have to get a cinnamon roll and then we will do locations that make sense you know Manhattan Vegas places like that where it does make sense but that's way down the road once we've really captured the hearts of America and that when we we feel confident that when we open it they're gonna be like we know exactly that this is gonna do well on this market because it has you know from the retail perspective jumping forward a little bit into the retail side of things you mentioned you guys decided to just launch with the two skis versus the 12 of brick and mortar which totally makes sense it's from inventory planning perspective inventory risk perspective which is a lot less complex of some of those initial meetings of buyers and how you're kind of continuing to position the brand I think you know standing next to some of these other our biggest feature because a cinnamon roll like you can make a Pillsbury cinnamon roll and it's freaking good so it's not like they're terrible they're good I think they could be better and I think our cinnamon rolls our are better they are better than what's currently in the retail landscape um and in addition to that it is convenient we are truly the first that's fully baked that you don't have to use an oven like I you know I know Roro's and I think she was on your show yeah they're awesome and they've got this awesome product and it's so delicious but it still does require an oven and it's not single serve so we were like what Smuckers did for PB and J we wanna do for cinnamon rolls so they're individually wrapped they're in a box they can thaw on shelf you can have one at a time you can have one in under a minute like it speaks across generations and it speaks across convenience so I think that is our biggest convenience is absolutely king especially in today's day and age like so so many people are just don't know even use their oven they're like I can't I'm not using my oven like I don't I don't want to turn this on you know so and if you want a cinnamon roll it's like I either have to get in my car and drive to my local bakery which I'm sure has incredible cinnamon rolls or I have to sit here and bake this for like an hour or two hours and we were like that is a problem like if you want a cinnamon roll everyone else has made getting indulgent treats accessible why is this not accessible so that was really our bread and butter as convenience and and product it's really delicious in the process of growing and are launching a new brand into the frozen aisle within retail what's like one thing you tell them to keep top of mind just hold on it's frozen is so hard yeah but it's such an untapped you know I know you've had like some serious frozen people on here frozen is hot right now yeah like people are like wait we kind of forgot about the freezer aisle but it holds inventory it's not a big space like it's really and you are competing I think yesterday I was at Smith's and ego has four doors in the front 4 1 2 3 4 in my local Smith's I'm like that is why why is ego owning so much of the breakfast set because people are afraid to get into frozen and I think it is challenging but I always say like if you can if you can beat the challenge then the you know the point of entry is so difficult that people just don't go in the space they're like frozen so hard I'm not gonna tackle that I'm not gonna worry about logistics and freight and right you know cold chain cold chain is no problem yeah like it's so hard but if you can nail it oh my gosh it's just begging to be reinvented right now and I think you know with Rippy and smearcase and Frozen One and Fruit Riot and Evergreen and I mean there's just so many brands right now that are reimagining what frozen could be that it's like yeah it's such a fun time so if you can do it you should do it just know don't be defeated because it's very easily to get you know have a defeated mindset it's yeah a tackle one day at a time you know one step at a time yeah what's you finding having the most impact in terms of what's resonating most of people actually have an impact from driving you know incremental foot back to your yeah what do you feel like is having the biggest impact right now well I think LinkedIn is like a really slept on platform and I'm not exactly sure why not every founders on LinkedIn posting every single day I have made such great connections on LinkedIn and I am very much leaning into like I'm very open what you see is what you get and I'm just giving it all on LinkedIn like this freaking sucked this was freaking cool go freaking buy the buns and I think that has made an impact you know from buyers and retailers like they're on LinkedIn and they watch and they listen and they're observing what the brands are doing and then from like a retail consumer we're huge on Instagram we just barely started on TikTok we need to get better on that and then we've partnered with a ton of influencers and I think my co founder has half a million followers on Instagram so that we are in a good spot because she has such a great audience now that being said it's not it's a really international audience she's was in Zumba headquarters corporate for years and years and years so she has not necessarily like buying people so many people in Brazil and Europe and Asia they're not really in the US but it really we do understand because she is an influencer like how to market that and in addition to that we've partnered with hummingbirds and I don't know if you're familiar with them but they I definitely heard of them for sure they're amazing they have like a their business works on micro and macro influencers which I think you need to really understand in today's landscape is that like sometimes you can work with you know and I know this from interior design I would work with influencers that had half a million followers and I would get no customers from that because they have built this it's so big that they don't have like loyal customers where I think micro and micro influencers with 5,000 10,000 followers are their communities are so invested in them totally that they have huge return yeah and so hummingbirds works with these types of these types of influencers all across the country and so when we're opening up a new market we open up a hummingbird campaign and they go and they shoot content we own the content we repurpose the content so working in your brand right voice through Instagram and TikTok is vital but it's that it's only gonna take you so far you need people to be out there buying your product showing that they're buying your product how they use their product how they taste their product and and that can't be you have to go in with a social strategy and we're very much like all in on social on every platform totally expo what what impact did it have on you what's looking back now what do you feel like what LED you to have so much success there this year yeah I mean it really started with Fancy Fair in January we launched okay November retail November of 2025 so this is like we're new and it was our first show and back to me being an interior designer I was like I'll be damned if I show up on a floor with like a piece of plastic I just I could I was like no way so my husband and another contractor built our whole booth it weighs 30 five hundred pounds it's not like I don't know if you've seen it but it's not light and it's like it looks like a home like a like an actual storefront yeah and I was like I care about color I care about saturation I care about light fixture like those are things that I really care about just because I'm an interior designer so when I brought this booth to Fancy Fair I don't think that I understood how impactful our booth was gonna be because I just assumed like I've never been to a show before so I just thought right this is what people do they have beautiful booths you know I was on Pinterest and I'm like these aren't super great but I can do it myself so you know we yeah create this big booth and we brought it and I Adam it was so so crazy like five six seven layers deep of people like what is this you know it's like bright and pink and beautiful and orange and blue and we're a new brand but we were acting like we were a legacy brand because of how we showed up with these materials and it's not like they were incredibly expensive you know people came up to me and they're like who designed your booth I'm like I did but I encourage you to find like a local interior designer that will maybe give you something different than like a creatives briefs designer yeah totally and then even looking into you know so Expo went and we got a 20 by 10 space instead of a 10 by 10 space we brought seven other women we called ourselves the Bun Babes like I was really intentional I it's like I created a creative brief before I sent it to our graphics team like this is the story we're telling at Expo West Mima's gonna come she's gonna have her own chair there's neon signs like I spent hours weeks days months like yeah building this universe at Expo West that goes beyond just like a 10 by 20 or 10 by 10 space and I think founders should really be looking at that time as like how can I get the buyers to like think about me after they leave the show instead of just five seconds after they walk past my booth yeah and that is through a story and it has to encapsulate so much more than just the product and the founder it needs to be down to your shoes like everything has to be telling a story and I think that's sort of something we've done and done well is create stories through the show and then you know looking in and people will say well that's not realistic you can't drive like a 3,000 pound you're right so fancy fairs coming up in New York we have an entirely new concept but it it is so fun I can't wait to show it on on LinkedIn Instagram but it's not like what everybody else has but it is portable and it costs probably less than what others are spending on again the plastic click you just need to think outside the box and be really creative and I would tap into people that design space outside of just CPG you know like really utilize local contractors like hey what what what looks like MDF but is actual foam right the creative agencies that are building these booths don't necessarily like it's all IKEA type click and clack whatever so tapping into like outside resources is super vital and making sure that you are telling a freaking story when you go COO team is obviously growing you're gonna be in almost $5,000 by the end of the year totally makes sense two big hires and what are you thinking about yeah Critical Mass Group was our sales team they're national so they're incredible they're really exclusive they only have 45 brands but they sell about like two and a half billion so they're they have some really impressive brands under their banner and that means your product is gonna move and it's gonna move fast so you know we did a fundraiser in October of last year before we launched retail and we thought oh my gosh$1.6 million that's so much money and it is and it got as far but when you're talking frozen when you're talking about national we could spend $1.6 million on the target rollout alone let alone true Costco Kroger unify K he the thousands of doors across the country that we're gonna be in it's really expensive so Critical Mass came on you know January huge success after fancy Fair Expo West was wild you know national meetings everyone wants us unify KH fully on board and then it's like holy crap we need so much more money than what we thought we needed so we need to be able to tell a financial story that articulates exactly what we need and unfortunately none of us possess that and so at Expo West we were approached by a group his name is Bill he's with Everest and they have financial services and he was the CFO at General Mills and so he was like I know exactly what you guys need I'm super interested wanna come on board fractionally cause there's absolutely no way we could afford him other than that sure so he took over that element and then he was like you need an operator that understands scale so we found um Dalen he's local out of Utah he was like No. 10 at trigger and No. 30 at Skullcandy so came in and like operationally exploded both of those brands but I think what's really great and what founders should be doing when they're hiring super important people like this across sales operations and financials is that when you say I wanna sell my company to a strategic for hundreds of millions of dollars and you're a new brand and they shake their heads and say yeah that's I can see that that's a great that's a great beginning of the conversation if you're having conversations with other people with these people and they're like slow down you don't know what you're doing you know that's too big of a goal those people aren't gonna be the ones that can take you to 50 million hundred million hundred and fifty million in revenue so I think making sure that you're aligned cause we had plenty of conversations with people that are like you guys are you have no idea what you're doing this isn't going to scale to that and we're like okay those aren't the right partners for us but yeah Critical Mass Group and Bill and Dalen were all in alignment on like yeah this this has that potential how can we get the revenue and build the business around that goal in mind and I think it sort of evolved from there we were intentional in hiring people that didn't weren't just going to get us to 2 million five 10 but that could get us to 100 and I would I would encourage founders to be looking for fractional people at that stage because they're going to come from these big banners and brands that have deep understanding of how to operate at that level even early on like spend money on these guys they're gonna be more expensive than you wanna spend but so critical in getting you to that next spot totally to close it Chrissy what's what's the best place for people to fall along with with you and all all your expertise and everything you're learning on a day to day basis building this brand and then best place for people to fall along with with the brand these days as well yeah for sure follow us on TikTok cause we're trying to get back bigger perfect on there we're just tiny but are a ton ton of socials on Instagram and it's just sunshine buns on Instagram and then TikTok same sunshine buns and then as far as following me you can follow my Instagram that's Chrissy Hammer I'm not I don't post as much on there as I do on LinkedIn now LinkedIn you want the ins and outs I'm giving you the good the bad the dirty the ugly the beautiful it's all on LinkedIn I post every single day so you can find me there just Chrissy Hammer and that's us you can find us you can find our hot buns anywhere awesome love it thanks Chrissy yeah she was really you've kind of uncovered to be able to make sure that you can kind of maintain yeah of course luckily how did you balance yeah need for kind of that or so behind you that are look like for nailing down what your go to market in terms of the go to market delivery model out of your kitchen but then the the storefront versus I don't know two or three like you called out the pillsburys and what not for some other founders that are from a marketing perspective foot traffic to your retail partners like but people should look at the hummingbirds you guys recently hired a CFO the next kind of big hires and where the team needs to go from here