How to Develop a Brand Strategy with Lesser Evil

If you allow yourself to get too stagnant, then it's really easy to get stuck, and there's just nothing that's going to be like appealing for a consumer to kind of be with a brand that feels like it hasn't changed in 5 years, 10 years.

In this podcast, we share how we grew a 7-figure food business out of our 2-bedroom apartment in Chicago, all during the height of a global pandemic, and bring in expert entrepreneurs to share their stories and wealth of knowledge in business strategy and innovation.

I'm Annie Slobotsky, and I'm Morgan Lerner. In today's episode, Brand Strategy with Lesser Evil Snacks, we are bringing in Caitlin Mack, their senior brand manager. And Lesser Evil is the iconic health snack company that was revamped back in 2004 with now CEO Charles when he took over and catapulted the brand into a leader in the health snack category. And as such a notable brand in the health food and snack space, we what better guests to have than the brand we eat on the daily. So clearly their branding has worked wonders on us. And so in this episode, we'll be talking about some of our favorite topics: brand evolution and strategy, packaging, marketing different SKUs, something we and Lesser Evil know a lot about, and so much more. So without further ado, let's bite into business, shall we? So I gave a little bit of an introduction about Lesser Evil, but they had a very interesting path and have been around in the space for a little bit now. Now CEO Charles revamped the brand, essentially taking them to a place of health and better-for-you products after his experience with mindfulness at a retreat. And this inspired the brand's characters of gurus and Buddhas on the packaging, which I'm sure Caitlin will tell us all about. So we're excited to dive get into that. But first of all, thank you for, for joining us. We're very excited to have you, and we'd love to hear how you got started with Lesser Evil.

Yeah, for sure. So my background was actually in PR. I started there doing PR for Procter Gamble Beauty, so a very different kind of, um, way of marketing things. From there, I transferred over to a company called VaynerMedia, which was an ad agency that was really at the forefront of the social media world. So it was when you were just starting to be able to post pictures on Facebook. We were starting and getting in there for brands and do all that stuff for them. So I learned a ton during my time there. I traveled between New York and San Francisco and then eventually landed back on the East Coast. And I was actually up at a yoga retreat, Wanderlust, in Stratton, Vermont. Yep. So I was at that retreat. One of my best friends is a yoga teacher, so she kind of brought me along with her. And one of the vendors that was there kind of passing out snacks all weekend was Lesser Evil. And I've always been a popcorn fan. It's kind of like a joke that it's my absolute favorite food. So I was eating the snacks all weekend. And then I got to talking with them and found out that they were actually based about 20 minutes from where I grew up. So it felt very serendipitous. They were really looking to kind of start their marketing department in a bigger way. And so I decided to kind of make the jump over at the end of 2017. So I've been with them for about 4 years now and we've grown a lot. We've done a lot. So it's, it's been a really fun journey to be on so far.

Well, that is awesome. So I know Lesser Evil has gone through probably a lot of changes since you started. Because we've actually been consumers for many years now, and we've also seen on your website you've transitioned branding quite a few times since 2004, which I could imagine that just happens naturally.

Yeah.

We see you kept some elements from 2014 to 2018, but then a lot of things changed. So why did you make those changes, and was that strategic to make little tweaks every few years, or was it more of a natural evolution?

So, I mean, I think the biggest thing with us as a brand is that we never like to be kind of at the finish line, we always think of ourselves as a work in progress. So we're constantly tweaking the packaging. You'll notice little tweaks just to like our taglines or just the manifesto on the back. We're always growing and changing as a brand. And so we want to make sure that that's reflected in what we're putting out to the world as well. But I think the really large transition that we did at the beginning of 2019 was in reaction to a couple of things. The first was that we launched Paleo Puffs at the end of 2018. And what we are finding, if you've kind of seen the original packaging, it's very bold colors. There was a bear as our kind of hero there, um, and the brand name really looks to be Paleo Puffs. And so I was going out in the field doing these large-scale events, and I was passing out popcorn and Paleo Puffs at the event, and people had no idea that we were the same brand. They loved both products separately but just had no concept that we were connected. So we decided to partner with Retail Voodoo, which is actually a branding agency out in Seattle. We did an extensive branding workshop with them. It was a really interesting process where they talked to a lot of our key stakeholders, so some of our buyers, they talked to our UniFi reps, just people who are really familiar with the brand and kind of care about the brand's future and the future growth. And they started to identify kind of key things that seemed like they were really like core to our brand identity, which was really reflective of a lot of the things that we were seeing as well. So our big thing was the gurus, is that, that kind of pink, in-your-face, bright character was what people recognized and knew and loved about us. Store. Um, the second thing is that people didn't know that our name was Lesser Evil. So people just thought our name was Paleopuffs or bootable popcorn. There was no real tie connecting everything. So we decided to make a really conscious effort to make Lesser Evil. It's a great brand name. Um, it has a lot of opportunity to expand outside of just popcorn, which we've obviously done in those past, you know, 4 years since we did this, uh, big rebrand. And so that was kind of the impetus for it. So we really did the logo as the hero and then thinking about the gurus as they're each individual characters. With some sort of tie back to either the benefits of the product, the ingredients of the product, and just making sure that there was kind of a core tie there. And we've expanded. When we first launched, we did— everything looked like the popcorn bags. And we realized that this worked for popcorn because popcorn's a kernel and everyone knows what popcorn is, but no one really knows what a paleo puff is. And so we realized that you actually need to make the product imagery itself a little bit more prevalent. So we ended up transitioning within 6 to 9 months, our packaging on all of our extruded snack lines where we now have the product kind of cascading down the side. So it's more clear that this is what a paleo puff is, this is what a power curl is. And it was a kind of really quick switch, but it paid off hugely for us.

It's so interesting how much packaging can give off, for sure, because as you said, those things as a consumer, I thought the same thing. Yeah, I remember trying both products and being like, oh, these are both lesser evil, or are they lesser evil, or are they You know, bootable. Yeah, I remember thinking of you guys as bootable.

Exactly.

So interesting. And now you see that consistency.

Yeah.

And with all your different products, because I have to say, I think I've tried most of them, if not all.

Awesome.

The pictures on the packaging do educate that. Yeah, I know what I'm getting. Even though they are all different snacks, I do understand the difference. So kudos. Yeah, you do a really good job of educating.

It's been a labor of love.

I know you said that, you know, you try and tie these characters to the ingredients that are in them. Would you mind talking a little bit about that process? Like, how do these characters come to be? How do you think of them? What's that whole process like?

And maybe giving our listeners who don't know about the characters or the gurus, um, some context.

For sure. Yeah. So it really started with our kind of main hero, which is our big pink guru whose name is Homer. And so that was really inspired by like Homer from The Odyssey. And I think speaks back to just us as a brand of this kind of journey through life and always kind of changing and growing and always kind of seeking for that next thing. And so that's really, I think, core to just the brand identity. From there, we've tried to kind of tie it into the different product benefits. So we wanted to make sure when we launched our paleo puffs that we were giving a nod to the original packaging. And I think that bears are just very core to kind of the paleo CrossFitter type lifestyle, this like idea of getting back to nature. We ended up launching our paleo puffs with the pomeranian in kind of a bear costume, and his name is now Henry, which was inspired by like Henry Thoreau and again, kind of getting into like the nature side of things. And then Power Curls, that was kind of our next one we did. He is Homer, but he's wearing a sweatband and he has muscles because there's a protein component to it. And he was based on Atlas, like the idea of, you know, kind of carrying the world and that strength that comes with some of like the protein components. So it definitely kind of is inspired a lot of ways through that. We do all of our packaging in-house. So everything's done as kind of a big brainstorm. I'll literally kind of send out like a huge inspo doc to the sales team, our ops team, our marketing team, and we're all kind of just putting some like thought starters in. A lot of how we get to these characters is we kind of create these things called like dating profiles, which gives like, this is their favorite song and this is what their like lesser evil is, so kind of their like vice. And we're able to then kind of like create this character a little bit more in our minds and then ultimately translate that onto the packaging.

Where was the inspiration that each of your different categories of products would have characters of their own?

So I think that we knew that the popcorn bag was working like there was something really cool about that packaging and it was different than what was out there in the space and people recognized it. So it was like a super recognizable, obviously like the color pink. And that's kind of the reason why all of our gurus is pink is super kudos as a nod to the Himalayan pink salt that we use in all of our products. So we knew that we wanted to continue to do that pink and have that pop and everything across the board. And I think it does create just a lot of consistency. So obviously our logo is on everything, but then when you see that kind of character, you know it's a Lesser Evil product, even though their look may be slightly changed. And we've since— we have female gurus now, we have a baby guru now. So we've kind of expanded it in a lot of different directions, which has been really fun.

I can imagine it helps in a lot of ways. It's so unique. So it, like you said, it can pop on the shelf and no pun intended, there's a lot of popcorns and snacks these days. So having having such a unique, poppy, recognizable character can just help stand out on the shelves on its own. And then I can imagine it also helps from a branding perspective. Let's say you're talking about marketing and what you should call out for a product, it's essentially that persona. You're kind of speaking to that persona.

Exactly.

So I'm sure it helped in that way too.

It definitely has. And I think it helps us to like really think about each of our products and how they're different, and we're able to kind of visually show that through each of these gurus, which has been really fun.

I I guess on that note, kind of taking a step back, yeah, how do you describe Lesser Evil as a brand overall, encompassing all the gurus? And also, how did you figure all those things out? So we as a newer-ish company, we've been around in our new model for about a year now, and we definitely have a brand, but we're also diving deeper into who we really are and doing some exercises. So we're also curious on the back end what that looked like to get there and really figure out, or maybe on an ongoing basis too, how do you nail in and figure out who you are as you evolve.

Yeah, and I think that's something that we're always working on. So one, like, large transition that we had after we did this rebrand is when we first launched the rebrand, we launched with a tagline of sinful taste, clean snacks. We were kind of sitting with it for about 6 months, and we realized, like, you know, that doesn't really speak to who we are. And so we'll just have kind of internal brainstorm sessions thinking about, like, okay, what are our core values? What do we really care about? And what we ended up landing on is this idea of simple acts, clean snacks. And it's, I I think for us it's all about those little things. So it's better sourcing. I didn't mention this earlier, but we own our own manufacturing facilities, we own our own warehousing, so we have a lot of control over the entire process. And that's something that like we take very seriously. So as we're kind of again thinking about those little things, it's we're sourcing the highest quality of ingredients, we're getting those healthier oils in the products for you, we care about sustainable packaging. But then also on just like the company's front, we care about employees and we about the happiness and the well-being of what we're doing. We have a gym in the office, we do meditation classes. So there's like a lot of stuff that we try and like practice what we preach. And we think that kind of the sum of all those little things is really what makes the world so great. And so we want to just kind of contribute just those tiny little simple acts that can ultimately end up to a better food future and then ultimately kind of a better future for everyone.

Yeah, that's such a beautiful thing that I think probably so many people want to do. I know we're taking baby steps. Sometimes it's hard financially to do all of those things, but it's a beautiful part of your mission, and it's evident. You guys educate on social about your ingredients and the environment and what you do, and you have biodegradable packaging. And it also ties back to the founding story, or the, the CEO. I know he was big on mindfulness, so that's apparent in your culture as well as your packaging, your products, all that stuff. So it's pretty awesome to be able to achieve that across all of those levels.

It definitely stems from like our CEO, so he very much lives the lifestyle of Lesser Evil, and he's very, very involved in a lot of like the branding and our marketing conversations because something that's like so core to him as well, which is awesome.

So back to kind of that piece, what did you guys do or what do you do on an ongoing basis to get clear about your brand messaging and voice? Because especially with all those different things that you guys do, how do you get a clear message across? Because I know you could message all of them.

For sure.

For sure.

Yeah. So I think like as we're launching new products, we definitely always think about the guardrails and is it going to make sense for the Lesser Evil consumer? Like just because we can make candy under the brand name Lesser Evil, should we be making candy? So there's definitely kind of like that guardrail process that we go through. What's going to make sense for our brand as it exists? And like, where does our brand then have the room to continue to expand and grow? So it's a lot of really just kind of like internal gut checks. We have a product development team in-house. That we're managing the ever-constant workflows of all the new products that we're launching. So there's that piece for sure. And then I think it's just us. We do really regular monthly, quarterly kind of like lookbacks at all of the work that we've produced from both packaging and what's on our social, what's on our website. And we really just sit down, everyone kind of inputs their favorite things, what didn't work so well. And so we're always like just relooking at our work and constantly evaluating and wanting to get better is obviously the ultimate end goal.

Absolutely. I think the reviewing part and analyzing is key to improving and growing. I know you guys are pretty big at this point, but it's all relative. You can say you're small, and so you, you're always, you're growing faster than your average company. So you always have to be analyzing, improving, and that's kind of the fun part too, as a professional too, because you're challenging yourself and, and you're learning. Yeah. Let's say you're sending me a brand guide.

Yeah.

I am making something for Lesser Evil. What do you say are those key things that you want to get across? Let's say it's a paleo puff that I'm marketing, you know, what would you say are the key elements to get across?

Our oil story is really important for us. When we think about other snack brands in the space, um, it's a lot of safflower or sunflower or whatever, and we like to make sure that we're always using kind of the cleanest, healthiest oils. And that's really what we kind of built the brand on. So we only use coconut, avocado, ghee and olive oil. I think like a big thing with that is that we air pop the popcorn and with our extruded snacks, they're actually baked. So nothing we do is fried. So that means the oil is really only getting heated to that melting point, which then allows it to kind of transition all of those really good nutrition factors, factors that the oils have. Interesting. Then go in the products. So that's like a big piece. I think just like that's— I think as we think about ourselves in the future of the brand, it's like healthy oils are really what we're kind of betting big on. And then I think I think like a huge thing for us is we don't want to take ourselves too seriously. So I think that's evident in obviously like the characters and the brand colors. Yeah, we always say like, well, we look at life as a journey, we'll bring the snacks. And so we want to make sure that things always feel fun, um, and lighthearted. And we want to obviously share the, you know, all these like great positive things and healthy benefits. But at the end of the day, we're a snack food company and people are having snacks with friends, they're sharing snacks with friends, and we want to make sure that we're reflecting that in the brand that we're putting out as well.

Yeah, that's beautiful. So I would know to emphasize the oils and maybe the ingredients, how it's made, probably the unique benefit, like tying back to the guru. Is it that protein? Is it that whatever? And then add some fun into it. I mean, that's, that is what I get across from you guys anyways, let alone just the amazing product. But there is that brand behind it. And as a consumer, it gives me kind of some purpose too when I'm meeting you guys. Love it. So I love that because I mentioned, you know, we're going through some exercises like this, what advice do you have for companies who are trying to get clear about their brand?

I think like, don't be afraid to fail and pivot. So we've rolled out some stuff that didn't work. I think like a perfect example is this tagline. And instead of kind of letting it live for another year and a half, we decided, okay, our next round of packaging, let's change the tagline, let's make tiny adjustments. And our packaging is always adjusting. We're always making little tweaks to things just because we want to make sure we're always getting it right. And so we never want to be too stagnant and allow yourself the change. It's okay if there's slightly different versions that are existing out there, because at the end of the day, you're really just on this journey to kind of be the best brand that you can be.

I totally agree. I think you have to, like we were mentioning, evolve over time. And that's part of also just growing a company in general. There's that trial and error involved. And oftentimes the changes are not as visible to the consumer as you think. You know, I just see you guys as Lesser Evil who's evolved over time. And now that we talk about these intricacies, I'm like, oh yeah, that did happen. Um, but it's part of just learning. And we say that, um, even for someone starting a company, it's like, just start it. It doesn't have to be perfect because you're always going to be making small changes over time. And that's kind of the fun part. Um, perfection is, is not a thing at all, but kind of conversely too, what pitfalls do you think companies fall into where they become just a product, not a brand?

I think really listening to consumers is huge. And if like you're not doing that, that's when things I think are just going to kind of go awry and making sure that you're kind of like reflecting what consumers are doing and their actions and how things are like kind of changing. I think if you allow yourself, it kind of goes back to kind of the first point, but if you allow yourself to get too stagnant, then it's really easy to get stuck and there there's just nothing that's going to be like appealing for a consumer to kind of be with a brand that feels like it hasn't changed in 5 years, 10 years. Like, the world that we're living in is moving so fast with social is changing every, every 5 seconds. So I think just making sure that like you're trying to keep up with that as much as you can, it's going to be like hugely, hugely important.

I think Instagram probably changes its algorithms like all the time, every week. I don't even know anymore. I can't keep up.

Yeah, that's a full-time job. Oh yeah. So Definitely is.

But that's so true. I think these days especially, consumers want more than a product. They just want to have a purpose. They want to know the story. They want to know the behind the scenes. I know you guys do this. We do this as well, showing the behind the scenes to kind of let the consumers in. And one of your brand pillars is transparency. Same. It's all kind of about letting them in. And I think that helps differentiate you as a brand. You know, there are other banana bread companies out there, and obviously we differentiate differentiate by things on paper, like being nut-free, and we have innovative flavors similar to you guys in your ingredients and flavors. But taking that, that story and having pillars and a mission just make you even more differentiated. So I think having a brand beyond just your products is super key for that reason, um, and kind of building longevity too.

Consumers just like expect it now. It's just like an expectation, and it makes our jobs more fun. Yeah, for sure. I love the creative side of it. Yeah, no, for sure.

This is a fun question that we asked ourselves when we were doing some brand exercises, and this might be easier for you because you do a lot of personas, but if Lesser Evil was a celebrity, who would they be? And I can share ours if you need some time.

Yes, share yours. Let me think about it.

Okay, so we thought about this a little bit, but we landed on Anne Hathaway.

Okay.

She has this kind of elegant female presence. That's kind and soft, but also kind of girl boss. And that's kind of our story. Annie and I met in college and we are best friends. We're very bubbly.

Yeah.

But we're also businesswomen who are very driven and have high aspirations to grow the company. So we kind of identify with that, you know, kind girl boss.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah. That's awesome.

With a little bit of sass and fun. So that's how we landed on her.

I love that. I mean, ours, I think it's like not super celeb, but it's, I think just Homer's kind of goes back to like who we are just as a brand is this like idea idea of like, you know, always on the journey through life and expanding. And I think where our— like, he's really the core of who we are. And then we can kind of look at each other character has their own celebrity type person associated with them. But that's really like who the brand is as a whole and like what everything is really based off of. We say he's kind of like our Mr. Potato Head that we're able to just put all these other attributes on, and then that's how we build out the rest of our product line. But everything really stems back him.

It's helpful too to envision that because it gives you some direction and it's like an easy thing to reference when you're like, what should we say? What's our tone? What's our— so that was a really, really helpful exercise for us. But I also am curious, and, um, I just kind of thought of this, how do you get the customer feedback on a regular basis? Yeah, to be able to evolve your branding and analyze, because you always— you said that listening to your consumers is super important, which we agree on, but there are so many ways to hear from them and get that data. So how do you do that?

So we've done like a couple of things, I think, particularly this past year that have been helpful. Like the first is obviously just social media, just making sure that you're like very reactive there, always kind of keeping track of feedback that we're getting when we launch new products, um, if there's certain things that are popping more than others. And we have kind of weekly check-ins on that just to see like what the reaction is. We also have like a really robust customer service process where where all of our kind of like complaints about products are logged. We have monthly quality assurance meetings with our factory where we actually go through each of those kind of complaints and make sure that we're addressing it and figuring out what happened and how could we avoid that happening in the future. So those are like two really big things. And then I think just more of like the qualitative stuff is we launched a reviews program on our website this past year, which has been hugely helpful. So getting feedback on which flavors are popping more than others. And we've also done couple of other kind of, you know, smaller scale programs, but sending out product samples to then kind of get that feedback back in as well, which has been really helpful. So I think kind of like the summation of all of those, it's not necessarily like one tactic, but kind of looking at all of these different venues and places and then compiling all of that together. And that's where we're really able to kind of summarize and see if there are things that are bubbling to the top that we need to be addressing sooner rather than later.

No, absolutely. We do a variety too. I think you need multiple sources, especially if you're dealing with smaller subsets. And we do a lot of that. We track our, our customer service complaints too, and all the different buckets. Um, social media is a great tool. We'll literally put up a poll saying, yeah, flavor name would you like more, you know, Birthday Cake or Fun Factory?

I know, it's like an awesome, like, focus group. Yeah, very quickly you can get stuff back.

Yeah, from a decent amount of people. And people love being a part of it. So we're often just like, let's throw up a, throw up a poll.

Yeah.

And sales obviously are just an easy one and reliable. So we've learned a lot from Yep. So it's always interesting to hear how other people do it because it's so important. And especially in a COVID world, we and a smaller team, we don't have a lot of in-field things, so we're relying on a lot of the digital.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Sometimes we'll just hop on customer calls.

Yeah.

To get that kind of like one-on-one kind of feedback. And maybe eventually we'll do some, some more in-person.

Yeah, we'll see about that. Hopefully soon.

One thing we were to ask too. So you guys come out with some pretty wild flavors, um, some of which I actually haven't tried, like your lemonade popcorn for the summer and your watermelon. I've had a white chocolate matcha, um, some really wild flavors. How do you manage the brand side of these and educating and making the customer want something that's so unfamiliar? I've never ever had or heard of lemonade popcorn. How do you go about educating?

Yeah, so the seasonal program is actually super interesting because it was actually born in 2020, which was obviously a crazy year. What we were kind of finding is that we were— since we do own our own manufacturing facilities, we didn't necessarily experience a lot of like supply chain or production issues that others in the space were. So we kind of took that as an opportunity to have some fun. And retailers were definitely looking for some support filling shelf space. So it was a really kind of— it worked in both of our flavors. We really take a lot of inspo for our summer products. We look to our, like, friends in the beverage space because obviously popcorn and beverages go very well together, no matter the beverage. So in the case of our summer flavors, that was actually inspired by— we were seeing Spike Seltzers were, like, blowing up. And so we kind of looked at those a little bit and saw which flavors were, you know, kind of expanding and doing really well. And fruit popcorn, as you said, no one has really done it. And so that was really what inspired that. And they're really fun, they're really low sugar, but it's like a very like light, fresh summer product, which we're super proud of. And that is about to enter year 3. So that did super, super well. And then I think similarly, as we look to kind of the other seasonal, pumpkin spice is kind of a no-brainer. Everyone loves pumpkin spice everything. And so we do that in the fall. And in the winter, we have a dark chocolate pink salt and then a white chocolate matcha. So again, kind of looking at the hot cocoa, matcha, kind of warm, wintry flavors and translating those to popcorn. And I think seasonal has been really fun for us because it's new and it's always changing and evolving. And so there's certain times of year when we were seeing dips in popcorn sales because, you know, towards the holidays, all that off-shelf space is getting given to the brands that have seasonal deals or like the stuffing brands because Thanksgiving is there. And so we've found a lot of success with the seasonal programs because there are off-shelf opportunities available and we're seeing more of that consistency of people wanting to kind of purchase some of these special items to share with their family and friends over the holidays, which has been really fun.

That's such a good point about shelf space. Yes, we do a lot of seasonal products, and it's actually been a challenge just being new. Yeah, to figure out how to time that in grocery because you have to work so—

Yes, it's a very big learning curve during seasonal.

Yeah, people start planning Christmas in July. Yes. And people think about Valentine's Day a while ago. So yeah, it's always planning ahead, which I— which is very impressive to do with and all. Yeah, I would also imagine you have to really message the flavor. Yeah, say it's the lemonade popcorn, you know, this tastes like— yep, whatever. Yeah, you know, whatever it is, so people can visualize it since it is so new.

Like, a lot of the fun with like the summer stuff is that like it is so unexpected. So I think people— what we were seeing is people are just buying it being like, I had no idea what this is gonna be like, but it's so unexpected. And then people love it. It's been a really cool one because we've had— we We actually get requests for— we only really run summer from May to July, August, whenever it sells out. But we get requests all year for the summer flavors now because people have just become so diehard fans of them, which is really fun. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's such an accomplishment as a brand too, to say we put something random out there and people love it and want to try it because they know it's us and it's good. That's why I would try it. Exactly.

Yeah.

Anything they make is good. So I'm sure it's going to be delicious. Delicious. So that's, that's a fun thing to be able to do too, and it makes you guys stay relevant.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Well, I love that. Um, I love to end with a few fun questions. Let's do it if you're down.

Yeah.

So what are your favorite flavors and/or products of Lesser Evil?

Yeah, so lots to choose from. No, I know. My all-time favorite popcorn is the Himalayan Gold, which is our vegan butter Flavor. It's so good. Oh, it's my favorite. I just ate a bag before this, but the Sun Poppers are actually sneaking up there. They're really, really good.

We have the same taste.

Yes, I love that. My favorite. And then I would say the one I'm probably bringing home the most— I have a 2-year-old, so our Little Puffs, we go through about 6 bags of those a week. She calls them Mommy Puff. We're going through those a lot, so those I think have to be one of my favorites just because she loves them so much, which is really fun.

I'm sure that's so fun. Yeah.

And those were fun because we actually kind of created those like right after I came back from maternity leave. So it was almost like inspired by her in a lot of ways, which was really fun. So she's like, feels very core. The little guru actually kind of looks like her when she was a baby. So it feels very like core to like her, which is like, makes it like a soft spot for those products for sure.

Wow. You were like the target consumer speaking straight from the source.

Oh yeah. It makes it a little easier. Sometimes we have to take ourselves out of it.

Oh, because we're very different from our consumer in some ways. So it's better if you are.

I know, it's been nice to kind of align with like where they're going.

So absolutely. And then another fun one. What's your favorite part about working for Lesser Evil?

I think just the change. Like we grow all the time. We're always evolving. So it's never boring. And I love being kind of at the ground, at the HQ. I love being able to go over to the factory and see what they're producing that day. It's a company that you're able to feel just really connected to because you kind of see every step of the process. It's just like, I think the people that we attract and people that we bring in are all just like, have that kind of same mentality. So it just makes coming to work fun every day, which is cool.

Absolutely. That's probably also a result of the brand you helped build.

Yeah.

And speaking of the future and growth, any exciting things that you can share with our listeners who, if they don't know about Lesser Evil, are now going to be huge fans of?

So I think our big kind of focus over the next year or so is really going to be in the plant-based protein stuff. So Sun Poppers was kind of the first foray into that. We also kind of subtly launched a product which is going to be coming up in a bigger way next year called Peanuts, which is meant to be a little bit of a competitor to the peanut nut space, which has 9 to 10 grams of protein per serving. It's a pea protein blend, which is really, really fun. So those are awesome. So those are going to be— you'll see a lot more from them in the next year or so. They're at Thrive Market exclusively right now, but wow, that's going to be a really fun one. So I think that we just think there's a lot of opportunity in plant protein. I think just people are, as you guys know, people are wanting to make that shift towards more of that plant-based diet, and we want to have the products and the tools to help them kind of snack their way there.

Is that a snacking product, a nut butter, or a protein?

It's a snacking product. So if you kind of think about like a, like a corn nut is what peanuts kind of look like.

Oh, but it's like made with pea protein.

Yeah, it's made with pea protein. We say it's a knot, not a nut. Oh, okay.

I love this. Another one that I'll have to try. I'm gonna go on Thrive Market after this.

They're awesome.

Oh, well, I love that. I am so glad you got to join us today. This was so informational, and as a brand we know and love so well, it's so to hear the story and the evolution.

Yes, thank you for having me.

Thank you guys for listening to our episode with Senior Brand Manager Caitlin Mack from Lesser Evil, where we discussed everything from building a brand to maintaining it and how to avoid branding pitfalls. She gave great advice as to how the multimillion-dollar snack brand gained notoriety and stuck out on the shelves of the ever saturated snack food aisle with a little help from their lemonade and watermelon flavored popcorn. So thank you, Caitlin, for joining us. And that is all for the episode of Bite into Business. Hope you all have a wonderful rest of your week, and we will catch you guys in 2 weeks to talk about high impact marketing with Kopi from the Shark Tank. So it's a really juicy episode and can't wait to see you guys there. Thank you guys for tuning in. And for our sweet tooth friends out there, if you're like, what is this banana bread? I need to try it. I'm so glad I discovered this podcast. You can find us on the gram at @go_nanas. You'll get all the fun updates, behind the scenes, new flavor updates, all that jazz. And you can also find us online at eatgonanas.com. That's eatgonanas.com. And if you want to try our banana bread for free, we're just starting out, and so we are building our reviews. You can help us grow. It means so much. So if you're on Apple Podcasts, rate and review. Or for Spotify or something that doesn't use reviews, share your favorite part of the podcast on Facebook and Instagram and tag us. We will see you. We will enter you into this, and we will be picking winners to give away free banana bread every month. So you'll be contacted, we'll be on the lookout, and they just make our day, if anything else. And the link to subscribe to our emails on the podcast itself so you never miss a bite of business will be in our show notes as well. So check those out, there's a lot of good links there. And see you guys next time. Bye!