Sweet Loren’s continues to grow
I have said it so many times, food businesses are so hard. They are the hardest businesses to grow because of the capital constraints. Raising money from family and friends is a good start but then how about the next round? CircleUp is one place to raise cash but you do have to be doing a certain amount of gross revenue to be on the platform. The key is really building up a business to do about $8M or more annually because that is when the private equity people come in. That is essentially the financial trajectory of a food business. Hard to get there.
I met Loren Brill a few years back and was blown away by her drive and tenacity. I wasn’t going to do any more food but I couldn’t get her out of my head. That is usually a very good sign. At 22 years old she graduated from USC (University of Southern California) only to find she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It changed everything. She started to look at food differently. To satisfy her sweet tooth she began making cookies. Thankfully fully recovered and healthy what came out of it was Sweet Loren‘s. A non-dairy, 100% whole grain, with no high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils or artificial flavors, and are OUD Kosher cookie in three flavors; Chocolate Chunk, Oatmeal Cranberry, and Peanut Butter Chocolate — with a delicious Gluten Free Chocolate Chip launching this year.
Sweet Loren’s started out in the freezer section but have now moved into the refrigerated section with brand new packaging. Now you can bake 1 or all 12 cookies at a time – even in a toaster oven. Nothing like a warm cookie to make someone happy. It is a perfect treat for the next generation of parents who want their kids (and themselves) to be consuming healthy products not consumed with products you can’t pronounce. Great even for the college dorm fridge.
Where do you find Sweet Lorens? Whole Foods (Northeast and Southern Pacific); Fairway; Westside Market; The Fresh Market; Gelson’s … launching early 2016 in ShopRite; Wegman’s; and many more supermarkets soon. If your local store doesn’t carry us yet, request them!
They also offer food service. 16 Handles frozen yogurt carries Sweet Loren’s cookies cut up on their topping bar now. Angelika Film Center in NYC will be serving Sweet Loren’s soon so that you can enjoy movies and warm cookies at the same time! Goldman Sachs cafeteria serves them as well. If you know of any hotels, cafes, restaurant chains, cruises, catering companies, etc. that would like to create an exciting partnership with Sweet Loren’s, please have them email [email protected].
As an investor I am shamelessly promoting Sweet Loren’s. They are great to keep in the office refrigerator too when you need a treat in the early afternoon.
Comments (Archived):
Yup so hard.Building a consumer facing brand with the long tail of capital constraints is a bear.Can be done. Value of the ones that win are considerable. And damn, the importance of loving what we eat just can’t be overemphasized.
Read Tom Collicchios editorial today in the Nyx
Great piece-thanks!There isn’t an intelligent counter argument to consumer transparency. Amazing that there is even a discussion around it.
Agreed. Hopefully another unintended consequence of the AquAdvantage salmon is that everyone just stops eating salmon. Personally, that will be my decision if I am not able to identify the GMO salmon from wild caught.
The metric I have heard for a consumer product company to be bought by a large corporate consumer product company is $30M in top line revenue. If it’s beverage, there is a formula that is purely driven by case sales. Incredibly tough business.
that is to be bought not to be invested in
Aha, I misunderstood. PE as an “investor” not acquirer. Not a bad exit if you can get there. But, like you said, it’s a hard road that is mostly unpaved!
Yum. Notice palm oil as ingredient. Sustainably sourced? People care about this.
Great info, as ever. Hardware startups have a similar hurdle to jump. With retail scaling sales can be _relatively_ easy since 8X first year over year growth is baked in to the system. We’ve all seen the technology adoption curve which shows the breakout. Test well in limited locations then roll out to all the stores. The costs, though, are massive.But forget that. Peanut butter chocolate? Oatmeal cranberry??!! I’m in. Wow.
hardware is also hard but there are more people out there willing to invest in that.
Now I’ve got to try them, if you are raving this much….:)