In this episode Kristi Knowles, CEO of Mother Raw, shares how her 25-plus years in food/CPG led to spearheading a successful rebrand and expansion of founder Michelle Kopman’s beloved RawFoodz. Taking the genesis of Kopman’s mission, Knowles strategically evolved RawFoodz to Mother Raw, resulting in a rebrand that resonated with a wider range of consumers and opened up a wealth of expansion opportunities in their category.
In this episode Kristi Knowles, CEO of Mother Raw, shares how her 25-plus years in food/CPG led to spearheading a successful rebrand and expansion of founder Michelle Kopman’s beloved RawFoodz. Taking the genesis of Kopman’s mission, Knowles strategically evolved RawFoodz to Mother Raw, resulting in a rebrand that resonated with a wider range of consumers and opened up a wealth of expansion opportunities in their category.
DTC growth show. All right, welcome back to the DTC growth show, where each episode we interview founders and marketers from the most exciting brands in the world. Today on the podcast the Christina's leading with equal parts, grit and grace. Christy is deeply committed to Mother rock nation to encourage more people to eat more plants, rooted in over 25 years of experience with big companies. She's steering mother raw into over 5000 stores across North America, while learning what it's like to be small and scrappy. We're so excited to have you, Christie. So to start us off, I was wondering if you could just introduce yourself a little bit to our audience. And what's the mission that you're building with mother Ra? Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, thank you for having me, I loved the opportunity to talk about the brand and what we do. So this is great. This is right up my alley. In terms of myself, I have about 30 years on my goodness of sort of classical CPG, consumer packaged goods, marketing and sales and strategy experience. And, and as well, alcohol beverage. So my last role was in alcohol beverage, and I was responsible for innovation, amongst other things. And in 218, I made a really big switch in my career. And I started with a very small but scrappy company that is called reunion foods. But the brand that we have under reunion foods is mother raw. So I can't wait to get into the story about how we birth, let's say, a mother bra.
Awesome. And like, what? Why make that switch? I guess from like big CPG because they're so different. Why make that switch? I guess from working in like the CPG world to like more of a scrappier brand, like was it just kind of a change in scenery was it just you just needed a different challenge? Like what was I guess, like the inspiration behind that change? Yeah, sure, it was a sort of a confluence of a lot of different factors. But at the end of the day, I really wanted to have an opportunity, you know, to have a direct and immediate impact on the business. And when I say that, I mean, in the context of a large company, it's just by nature of the organizations, there's a lot of complexity, there's a lot of people who need to weigh in on decisions, and things just take slower and longer. And I'm the person who has, you know, lacks a little bit of patience, and, and really wanted to be in a kind of in a place where I could, you know, help an organization move faster, take smart risks at a more rapid rate.
Listen, there's awesome things about both bigger organizations and smaller organizations. What I love about the bigger organization is you have more people to spar with, to talk through ideas, to, you know, generate new thoughts. And so I do miss that aspect of it, as well as the resources. You know, listen, they, you know, there's bigger budgets and sort of more opportunity to maybe do some bigger things. But what I love about this smaller organization that I'm in now, is that we can be scrappy, that there's no sort of levels of decision making, that everyone in the business sees their direct impact on the business. And no job is too small for anybody to do. So. I've, you know, I've learned so much about about all areas of the business that I just wouldn't have had an opportunity to do so in a bigger company. Yeah. And then what were some of those, I guess, like key skill, because you mentioned you worked in innovation. So there's a lot of creativity behind that, especially when working for a bigger brand. But like what were some of those key skills that you had working in like the CPG space that you're able to bring over to work on scrappier brands. So, you know, a lot like I have, I'm fortunate that I have a big treasure chest of experiences from my, my, my CPG years. So you mentioned innovation. Well, innovation has many stages from the front end concept, creation, ideation, all the fun part. And then it also has all of the complexity of the commercialization phases. And so I'm very familiar with front to back and the skills necessary to get from that idea through to execution and I appreciate what it takes. So I don't set you know, false expectations. Oh, we can do this in a month. Well, I know that there's regulatory involved and I know that you know, there's new ingredients that need
To be ordered, so,
you know, innovation is one place where I've definitely been able to kind of leverage that experience. Also, you know, brand building, just at its very core. When I started with, with this company, there was a different brands. And, and it was a big chore a big, you know, the effort needed to take place around
rebirthing that brand for showtimes, let's say. And so I was able, and I will can talk more about that. But I was able to bring my just, you know, my basic understanding of the why the what the how the brand mission, all those kinds of things in order to eventually have launched another raw. Yeah. Okay. So on the topic of like rebranding, what was the inspiration behind the rebrand from other raw and like, why why a rebrand in the first place?
So, just by way of background, if maybe this will help. Yeah. So originally, the born the, sorry, the brand was created as raw foods, that was the name of the brand. And it was created by the original founder, Michelle Kaufmann. Her inspiration was Why can't my salad dressing be as healthy as my salad? You know, basically, she, she came from a holistic nutrition background. And so she created these, you know, a bunch of salad dressings from her from her kitchen, originally sold in Medcraft, at farmer's markets, and branded them raw foods. And it was at that point that I came in to help with how do we make this brand accessible to more people, she realized herself that, that, you know, she wasn't a branding expert, per se. And so I came in to give some advisement, and, and discuss the opportunity to take what was a brand description, raw foods, and not particularly an advertising proposition.
And not something that is something that was very, if it wasn't, if you wanted to do a beverage you couldn't write because it was raw foods. And we just discussed the this idea of of how do we take the genesis of her brand, which was all about clean ingredients, and deliciousness and package it into a brand that had a greater purpose. And it resonated with more people basically. And that's yeah, that was sort of that's where this idea of let's let's, let's re almost repackage the proposition. Oh, yeah. And it's, I find, it's, it's such an must be a must have been such an interesting process for you, especially as Michelle started off in these kinds of like, very homegrown community oriented kind of farmers market and stuff. Like, I feel like that almost creates more barriers to a rebrand because the people who know you so well know you kind of more deeply and intimately they say, then had you originally launched in the grocery store? So for a scrappy brand like that, like, what does that process look like? And what's a challenge that you've, that you may have not been anticipating that you saw in that process? Yeah, very, very true, about how do you sort of maneuver right from one to the other, in an elegant way that that is true to the brand and, and, again, by way of background, a few months into me providing some consultation to Michelle, as she passed away.
And that was, you know, obviously devastating to to everyone, including her family, and her her fans, she was a real trailblazer in this area of organic, natural, clean ingredients. And so that was a moment in time where
I decided, I was asked to by the Venture Capital Group, who was already part of raw foods to jump in and, and lead from the front. And so I did that. And
that made it more tricky, obviously, because there was just so much emotion wrapped up in, in the evolution of the brand, but the way that we did it was
by being very inclusive. So we included her daughter, who was very close to her, and was in the kitchen doing product development with her, you know, so we, we did things like that that felt appropriate, but beyond appropriate, you know, it just allowed me to do it in a way that felt really I felt like it was validated all the way along that it was respectful of the original proposition.
We did
With an agency who had very much value, you know, with, with our precious little baby, right. And so it was an agency that I was very comfortable with leading the charge. And I brought the management team and the board, everybody along for the journey at the appropriate points in time. So there was no, no surprises, it was really clear. And, and really listened to people's input. And we started I remember our first meeting with the agency was in a, you know, in a board room, just really discussing like, what, what is this proposition? What is really behind this, this brand? And we started with articulating the brand's mission and promise and beliefs. And we went from there. No, that's incredible. And it's we've been having a lot of really wonderful conversations with other founders about future proofing products, and how hard that is just an in and of itself. But thinking of the additional layers that will you went through as well of like, how do you future proof like this brand to speak to as many people and be as inclusive as possible, as well as, you know, tackling the challenge of like, how do you preserve Michelle's legacy? Like, I feel like you could write a book on that?
Yeah, I think it was just all done, you know, very transparently. And at the same time, you know, we have a business to run. And so it was, okay, how do we make this proposition at like to future proof it? How do we make this proposition as large and inclusive as possible without sacrificing you know, our parameters and the fact that our beliefs, and that's why we started with, we didn't start with the brand name rather raw, we didn't start with the products, we started, again, with the mission and the values and the beliefs. And out of that came a really, you know, what one of the values of our brand is keeping it real.
And that links to raw, at least links to the product proposition of minimally processed, but it also links to how we approach our communication. So as opposed to saying, we are a vegan brand only for vegans, or, you know, we're an allergen friendly brand, only for allergen friendly people.
We said, we're not going to, we're not going to put ourselves in a box or, or, more importantly, our consumers in a box, and tell them what they should do. And, you know, we're going to say, hey, we're going to keep it real, we're plant based, we're organic, we're all these good things. So you don't have to worry about it, anybody can enjoy us, we would love if you if you you know, if you considered a plant based diet. And if you don't, this is still a really great option.
And so that was part of the future proofing was moving away from hard hitting language around using vegan as the example to plant base like that was an initial shift we've made very early on.
Because more people can wrap their arms around the idea of eating more plants, fewer people can wrap their arms around veganism. And I'd rather people take small steps than no steps at all.
So
you know, but that value of keeping it real, and the value around independence is another value of ours where we don't want to follow fads and trends. So we're not going to say, a couple of our products, for example, include some coconut sugar, you know, very small amounts.
But if we took that coconut sugar out, we could say we're keto to ever be on it. But it's, it's not what we're chasing. We're not you know, we didn't say our value is keto, you know, our and so we, we we've chosen at this point not to sort of jump into that. We have offerings that are keto, but we're not going to sacrifice our independent thought around tastes prevails. And that's why we have a little bit of sugar and a little bit of you know, of our varieties. Because we want to,
we want to stay true to what's important to us. And that's, it's gotta taste great. And we want to encourage you, our products encourage you to eat more plants. That's it. Yeah, I really, I was gonna say, I'm gonna jump in, I really enjoy, just like how you explained like the concept of rebranding, especially when you're rebranding? I feel like you have to be very careful in that process. And I'm very curious, like, how did you ensure? I don't know you kind of talked about it a bit, but how did you ensure like a successful rebrand especially when people have known it as something else? Like how do you I guess, during that process, you know, change consumers minds, like if they're used to saying or thinking of it as a certain name or a certain value proposition like how do you ensure that that's successful? And now they know it as mother raw. Yeah.
So we manage that transition very actively, you know, to didn't, we just didn't turn off one and turn on the other, for example, what we sort of did on Instagram, because that's the only option we have. But, but first of all, the community of very vocal loyal fans, we,
it was very Toronto based. And and, and so we leveraged Michelle's community that we knew, and that her daughter knew and, and had open conversations with sort of the most vocal highest influencing group amongst them to say, hey, we know you worked with Michelle on this, or we know that you, you know, you love Michelle, and what she was doing, this is what's happening. And we were, we had stakeholder lists of people who we wanted to reach out to and not surprised.
The other way that we did it was we told Michelle's story, right, we, you know, obviously respecting her family, but this was Michelle's. This was Michelle's vision, you know, what her her
what she wanted most was to have her her products and this proposition more widely available. And this is why we're doing this and most, we didn't get one negative comment. Most, you know, any feedback that we heard about the rebrand itself was super positive we made. The other thing that we did was we adjusted the recipe. So I brought in a professional product developer, who was able to work with these super clean, fussy ingredients, like it's a lot easier to cover up things with highly processed ingredients. So I brought somebody in who,
who could could take the product, and make it again, just more yummy for more people, basically.
And I was worried about that, too. You know, you're used to the Japanese dressing, the way it was, again, though, we were so like, we were very confident that it was a step improvement. And we did friends and family panels that involve fans of hers. And, you know, so again, very kind of inclusive, and because it wasn't,
it was clearly an evolution of the proposition. It wasn't, it was not, there was nothing shocking about it in terms of Wait a minute, now everything doesn't contain extra virgin olive oil contains oil, or soybean oil, or oh my gosh, like these don't use the unfiltered apple cider vinegar, they just use distilled vinegar. There wasn't any of that. So I think I think it was just staying true as true to the proposition and recognizing the stakeholder like stakeholder engagement was, and that's, that's something I learned a lot about in big companies was, you know, you actually have a stakeholder engagement strategy for, you know, various initiatives, because there's so many stakeholders. Well, in this case, it didn't wasn't overwhelming, because there wasn't, it was, it just wasn't that overwhelming, because I sort of knew how to maneuver through that to some, you know, to some degree, and
it worked in this case,
I love your, your company values of like keeping your reel and not sacrificing the quality in in your mission of your brand, for trends and stuff that just might make you slightly higher on the shelf for a season or two because it makes me think back to the conversation we had with another guest Sam Levenson, where her one of her core missions is up with her brand, Dom was like kind of reinventing people's our relationships with routine. And what I love about Mother rah is that when you are so inclusive in the way that you rebrand, and that you look back at your product development and launch other other products and stuff, like it's that inclusivity helps consumers like myself, adopt you into my routine, because I think one of the homeless heartbreaking experiences for a consumer that's finally you know, stepping out of like the very, very ingrained kind of like food systems that we were brought up with is that you finally find this product and stuff that allows you to be empowered into a healthier community and a better routine. And because the the corners that were cut and like the when when companies and you know, chase those trends, and it's not sustainable, and can quickly fall out of my own lap and stuff, not going back to the grocery store and not being able to find them and being really lost than in my routine. You know, like that's, I'm, you know, it's a worst case, worst case scenario, especially as we're trying to break out of, you know, maybe like unhealthy kind of like food relationships, trying to find products like yours and I love
that you said that because one of the things another value of the brand is there's there's four of them. Of course, I'm gapping right now on the fourth, like the actual word, but the third is playful. And what we say is, we take our product very seriously, right? Like it's organic, certified organic is non GMO, GMO, non GMO certified, it's kosher certified is right. So everything is done really seriously. But the way we present ourselves, like we do all that, so you can be playful with it. So we can give you recipes and tips. And you can enjoy it without worrying because there's so much of this. Sure, it's organic, kind of, you know, converse Oh, sure it's clean. Ours. You know, listen, if you can't pronounce or you've never seen the ingredient before, or it wouldn't be it doesn't have a place in your kitchen cabinet. It would never be in our product ever. And so
it's the reason that we can kind of have that playful vibe as a brand, is because we we take the product so seriously, so you don't have to.
Yeah, and so it's kind of speaking of play, I think that works perfectly into our little pivot here.
You and I finally got to meet at what is realistically kind of called in this entry as like, the Super Bowl of like natural foods, conferences at Expo West. And I was reading back at I was reading a Forbes article about this, like after the show, because I feel like it took me a while to really kind of understand it like what did I just experience, right? They said, you know, in the 40 years of the show, this is one of the largest ones 60,000 people flying in, you know, over 3000 brands, brands coming in spending anywhere from 15 to $90,000, like USD to just bring their brand to the show. It was like, it was like enter every every arena was like walking into a carnival. I'm curious is that like, has it as you know, like as a business service stuff, like I have one perspective, but it's like a business owner like yourself with a brand. Like, what was that experience like for you? And like, what is the goal for a team like yours when you go to a show like that? So you're right, Expo last is one of a kind. And it is like
food porn like Oh, my goodness, right? It's and it's not just food, it's beauty. It's everything.
So it's a great question. And this is very going to be an answer that's very specific to my business.
So the goal for Expo was the reason that we were there was from a media influencer
perspective, more so than anything else. So you have media coverage there, you know, you have influencers who are walking the floor.
It's also to shake hands with the senior folks from the retailers. You know, it gives you that sense of largeness.
The
ROI on it for our business is, is not there. Let's call it for showing up every year. And the reason I say that is a lot of brands are there because their buyers might be there. Their grocery, like the retail buyers who buy their category.
Also, you know, the bigger like big smaller brands I should say would be there for investors.
Alright, so to meet with investors to woo sortition investors, great place to do that. We weren't we we aren't in that phase right now. So that wasn't our objective. But I have no other friends and colleagues as CEOs and food founders who went for the investors. Some of the big organizations go in order to get they have retailer meetings there. So they're able to meet with like a whole buying group with their whole sales team and sit down, you rent out these conference rooms upstairs, you know, four floors out, and they have these meetings. And so it really you know, each company is there with a different objective. For us. It was really about launching our dips, and having all of our range of dips there and sharing those with media and influencers where we actually get our buyers
at the table so to speak at a at a show is produce shows because mother raw is a refrigerated product. And worse our buyer is the produce buyer.
This is this has been a really big learning for us because produce buyers like they I was at a big show in Montreal for produce. So you talk about the big booths. Well dole was there.
With a big boost and DeMonte was there we don't kind of think of of that like, Oh, yes, of course that would, you know, their buyers would be produced but produce his brand is. And so that's where we have the most robust opportunity to meet directly with our buyers. And that's where we focus. Our trade show and event dollars most mostly, is incredible. I wonder if maybe the the budding design students are getting it all wrong, because like, you're so right, it's like these, there's so much action, there's so many learnings that happen at these shows, and I feel like a lot. A lot of people don't see food in the way that we see food like it is such a complex system, it is such a tough business, you know, to like to grow in, you know, like I, I am on Instagram, and I'm seeing so many incredible like design students are emerging. And they're talking about like, their dream, their dream show to go to is like, be in Paris or Milan for Fashion Week and stuff. See the displays see the level of organizations and I almost want to tell them like,
look at food. Look at
Yeah, truly is, having worked at Molson Coors, and when they, when alcohol companies put on shows for their distributor, so in the US all alcohol goes through distributors. It's, it's are the shows,
like the new Yeah, the new innovations, it is insane. And there's, there's a lot so many aspects to it, that there's a lot of ways to get in and make money if you know, as as an as an end learn.
Yeah, and I'm curious to it to get your perspective on this, because I feel like with you with 30 years, you know, like in this industry, it feels like it sounds like you went from having all this rich experience as a Goliath. And transitioning when you went over to Mother raga becoming the David, were there any trade offs of tools that you wish you still had from being kind of in that beverage industry? Or were there any surprises that you found that did become like your secret weapon and stuff when you did emerge as like a David?
Yeah, well, that's it. Every ask almost has a double edged sword. So
what So the thing that I'm missing the most is data and insights.
It costs a lot of money to get gain gather,
data on store sell through consumer data,
consumer insight and all laddering up to insights, right? actionable insights, it's like, Okay, it's good to know, I'm growing at plus three, like plus 35. That's, that's nice to know, Mister produce person or, you know, produce person. But what's a category growing up? And was that the last four weeks like you don't get I don't, I can't buy ongoing sufficient data from the various sources that used to just be part of what we had in our arsenal, or to do the kinds of one off consumer research,
you know, that I'm used to being able to do
that said, there is a gift to that, to some degree, because a there's not the expectation that you're going to have all that rich data, and therefore teams to mine it all. And when you're smaller, right, like the there's, the buyers tend to be a little bit more forgiving. If you have access to all the data and you're not providing value to them and helping them manage their categories. And their or providing loosely good facts based selling decks, you know, why you should? So there's a bit of a, you know, it's not sometimes it's not so bad not to
have everything, because the expectation then is that you have everything and that can be hard to because there's once you get it, there's a ton of time sucked into really, you know, getting your teeth into it. So that's the one thing though, like, how are you doing in the last three months? Well, I know how I'm doing it X Y, Zed, but I don't know how my categories doing.
I don't know how I'm doing it the other accounts because we're only looking at shipment data, which is very bouncy and noisy. So it's not a very satisfactory response. Right. Like, how are you doing? Well, I think we're doing okay, because, you know, we find our way to figure it out, but data is the big one. And then the other one I already mentioned is, is is not money, well, everything sort of comes down to money driven, but it's not the dollars per se. It's just the access to more minds. You know, I
Miss, like, I, in my last role, I had an innovation team. I had a strategy team, I had an insights team, I had the marketing team, you know, and it was just always someplace that you could go and spar, and hear hear other people's, you know, get other people's point of view. But I find that I spend, you know, some time alone to go, Okay, what should I do if I'm talking to myself, especially during COVID.
And so I've had to find other ways to access that type of, you know, that type of network. Yeah, in terms just branching off from that.
We're talking about like data, and I guess just like success in terms of like sales from products is there like a certain channel, whether it's like retail or E commerce that is more of like, a focus for the brand, or that drives more success. Because every brand is definitely we talked to some founders are so super focused on retail, and other founders more focused on the E commerce space. So curious how that I guess breakdown works for your brand. So by nature of our brand being refrigerated, and in 100%, recyclable glass packaging,
ecommerce is very tricky.
So we do have our own Shopify sites, we are connected to other online shopping forums. But um, the reality is, you know, 95% of our business remains in retail. And, and that's where our focus is.
Okay, is there like, a world where you'll try to focus more on like the E commerce space, or just kind of primarily building out the retail environment,
I would love to have more opportunity to be online, until the economics work both for us and the consumer, it's pretty tricky. And an obvious solution would be well, you know, take your dressings and dips to shelf stable in a plastic container. But like we talked about earlier, you know, our mission is is is is linked to being the best least process quality, you know, in that in a category. And for us right now, that's refrigerated and plastic, unless we can find a really, truly recyclable plastic that is also affordable. Glass is where we're gonna stay. So
it would take us going into new categories, which is something that, you know, we built this brand to be stretchy, to be able to go into different categories, Mother raw is a belief, it's a mission, it's not a product. So that would be our most likely avenue into EECOM would be if we enter into a category that's conducive to it. Okay, and is there because that's actually a question I want to ask after in terms of expansion, like, is there? I guess thoughts? Maybe if you're trying to touch more into the E commerce space to like, branch off into different categories? Is that something I was thinking about? Or like, have ideas, not sure kind of what you can share, but just if you can kind of give us like a little snippet of that, like, whenever you can share.
So we definitely have an innovation pipeline and ambition. I think it's, we've just launched our depths. And it's actually dips, cases, and alts. So the first sort of ALD
what first that we've seen aoli is that it's at depths, and so very new, right? And the thing is, is we get very excited about oh, we just launched this and what's next, but the reality is it takes time to get on shelf. So it's although that although we've launched them and they're on shelf in some places,
I think we've got 2000 stores now but we have as a brand 5000 stores have dressings, so a long way to go. So just just the caution on as founders, we much must pace ourselves.
Because innovation is expensive, and a lot of it fails. Alright, it just does.
But in terms of innovation, you know, our our trademarked tagline, let's call it motto is put good on good.
So we put real food I eat like a lot of dressings aren't really food, like there, there's something else there's some concoction that you would never make in your kitchen kitchen. Right? Yeah. And same with depth. Like a lot of the, you know, onion dips out there, let's say are, you know, like look at the ingredients. So our motto is good on good. And so that can take us to a lot of places as a brand, you know, condiments across the board, right as an example because usually you're putting condiments on your food. It could be
You know, sauces,
it could be all kinds of all kinds of things. So
we're absolutely, we're very fortunate that we self manufacture. So we have our own facility, our own awesome production team, who
we've maintained 100% service levels through COVID, on time and in full because of this team. And so they are working with us every day on not just producing what we have, but for helping us in the Test Kitchen and test piloting new stuff that we're creating. So we're excited about it. But we're also going to pace ourselves because each innovation takes money and time, and we become impatient with repeating our messages as but as marketers, we know, we might hear something 100 times, consumers are not hearing it 100 times, right, and you just have to be persistent. So, but it's great, you have that background, though, in innovation, I feel like that's just such a huge asset to the team, just that you came from that background, even if it is for like larger CPG companies, but to be able to apply that to Mother I feel is like a game changer, just such a huge asset to the company. Because it is super difficult because even in fearing a bigger brand, you're dealing with like, newer product. So they're kind of like you have to be sort of scrappier in that in that product. And that launch too. So it's great that you have all of this knowledge to apply to like this space as well. We, during COVID
is when we developed all these new dips, I think there's eight or nine of them.
And we went really fast, like really fast. But every single one of them we put through sensory testing, like control, location testing, it's called and, and basically, it's people who don't know what your brand is. And they're tasting your product as a French onion dip or as a Spanish dip. But they don't know anything about the brand. Because we're like, that's the highest bar, right? Instead of saying this is an organic plant based product. It's like, No, this is an onion dip, what do you think, and then you compare it to all the other depths that have ever been tested. So we just and I think it's the background that I have. And then our product developer also has a lot of history in product development from years in the cereal business, doing product development, but you know, we're able to just turn things and no, I know that the highest bar is going to be that control location test. So let's spend our money there and get there as fast as possible with things that we think are good, right, but who knows? Who knows? Might not be good at all.
Because, you know, we're obviously a little subjective, I guess.
Yeah, and I think it really does speak though, to the, the strength and, and, and the wealth of knowledge of your team, because I know you as you were sharing, like you do kind of crave and stuff like being back in those arenas where you get to kind of meld incredible minds together. But clearly, like at this pace that you guys are going out and stuff to to bring forth innovation, even when is expensive. During COVID I think it really does speak to like the quality and the sophistication and stuff like How do you tackle like, the very challenging piece that is like educating your customers on the products and, and the benefits of like non GMO organic and plant based because like there is so much misinformation out there. And it is incredibly hard to steer through like the storm that is the internet like the internet, kind of cyber dietitian. So like as the captain of this type of ship? How do you steer your customers through through those kind of rough waters? So yeah, I would say. So first of all, it's so important to realize that taste is still the people need to know it's going to taste great, it's going to be craveable. So that still has to be our number one message. Otherwise, we lose everybody. So we really do try to focus on like ads craveable and organic and clean and and we take a position of we're not authorities, like we're not the authority on
front like dietitians can be an authority on on on how to best get your nutrients, organic, there's so much awesome literature out there by you know, just the organic
associations, for example that were part of. So we pull we pull our educational components from, from science from those bodies that we trust, but we also don't, again, like pretend that we're like the authority because we can't be the authority and everything. So
Our focus with consumers is really be focused on, it's delicious. And it's made with ingredients you can pronounce. It's, it's like, why do you need titanium dioxide dioxide? Like, do you need it in your kitchen? No, not every week, that type of language. So it's it's a not tackling every component because we just can't, we're just trying to, you know, so again, like keeping it real, we taste really good. We do it with really clean and natural ingredients. And we don't believe in cutting corners.
And that's what we, you know, we try to express and I think we do a good job. And I think we're always trying to improve the type of you know, the our communication to be clear in that in that way.
But that's like our focus is on it doesn't have to be this way, it can be our way.
Your way, as consumers, you don't make you don't make food with those ingredients. No, that's awesome. And so where can we follow you on your journey with mother raw and what you will be innovating next? Sure, well, on our website, for sure. www dot mother raw.com or.ca. Depending where you are, we have both both websites, because both have Shopify sites, we ship, the place where you can see our full lineup is on our website, and we ship anywhere in North America, that arrives cold to you. So that's our promise. And then at Mother Ra is, is our Instagram handle. So we're active there, you're going to start to see more content from me personally, I've been
you know, it's not my it's not necessarily my comfort zone to be to be posting on behalf of the brand. But we've decided that let's let's give it a try and see if
if people are interested in what I have to say.
So
that's going to be something that I'm going to be personally experimenting with that is very much outside of my comfort zone. But as a founder, I'm often outside my comfort zone. So that's okay.
That's incredible. And we're so excited to follow more about the best least process quality ingredients in the in the category. So thank you again, so much, Christy, for for joining us and sharing all of your wisdom with us today. Thank you so much. It was a lot of fun. Thank you, Christy and Mother Ross story is it's so interesting. What did you think so?
Yeah, I think this is a really, really important episode of something extremely different than we've done in the past with other founders. I think highlighting the importance of rebranding and what that looks like. Something like a rebrand, you have to be super careful on because I think Chris, you did a great job of explaining this. And obviously mother Raj did a great job at really exemplifying this in their own rebrand, but making sure that when you're rebranding, you know, not disrespecting your core audience who helped build that previous brand before. So making sure that, you know, Christy mentioned that she involves a lot of her, I guess, original community and growing community in that process of being able to rebranded and getting their thoughts and like, you know, really listening to their opinions and being super careful with every step along the way. And then also being able to attract new communities as well, new audiences by being super inclusive. And, and rather than having, you know, she was saying more of like a limiting name, expanding it so that it can also attract different communities as well. So I think they did a really great job at like bridging, I guess those synergies of making sure your community original community is happy and excited and eager about a rebrand by also being able to you know, keep the brand super inclusive and putting it on a really, I guess, like successful path so that they can attract like a growing community and different kinds of people. So that's something that to me really stuck out that I did really appreciate that she mentioned. How about you? Yeah, like on that note, it's I really haven't heard of a lot of other stories that have like Christine mother Ross, where the team and the community suffered such a deep loss and then there was the decisions of like, well where do we go from here? Because I think like you're totally right and said like it is incredibly delicate situation they did do it really really well because I think the the other risk factors that when we think of the rebrand, isn't it, it's not just the loss of the communities, like how much more pain could actually happen in those growing pains, like over the years say that they were building stronger and they were continuously like, innovating, but you know, it's
when you're innovating away from that core mission and stuff like that also opens you up to that opportunity of your your community
Your team kind of re experiencing the loss and those growing pains like all over again, like it's in the game of innovation and stuff and empowering communities and stuff like that it's not a game really, you really want to play, especially when you have a playful brand like this and stuff that does want to simplify people's lives, not make it harder. So I think the other thing that would like really stuck out to me from our conversation with Christie was really that that transition, and enough of her kind of reverse David and Goliath story and stuff of, you know, really missing, like those really big tools and insights stuff, because I think time and time again, as we speak to other founders, it's
the beauty of innovating in like, in E commerce and stuff or creating brands from scratch in this day and age, because you have so much data in insights, but being a scrappy brand, and like rebranding, and you're letting go of a lot of like the old previous kind of support that you had, you know, like you do lose out on those things. That being said, I really loved her point about it being a gift, in many ways, because innovation is so expensive. And when buyers are more forgiving in there is more leeway to, to innovate. You know, like it's, as an entrepreneur, it's incredibly encouraging to know that you have a little bit more of length on your lead before, say a big VC and suffer or your other stakeholders, but like really win back when you're, when you're essentially strapped to it to the cage of what data is. Right. So like, I'm excited to see how far they can push that, and how far they can push the category in innovating before say one of these big consumer brands like come in and stuff and try to replicate what they're doing. But it does kind of make me question a bit more when I see a lot of the bigger brands when they innovate, knowing how how dependent they are on data makes me wonder look, well, that how many corners were cut, or how many decisions were made in order to get to that new product? Because they are they are held to very different standard.
Yeah, no, that's a good point. And
yeah, I mean, that's a wrap for this episode. Thank you guys so much for listening and staying tuned and supporting us every other week when we drop episode. So you know, stay tuned for next time you know where to find us. It's at hashtag paid on Instagram, on Twitter. You know, reach out to us, message us if you have ideas on who you want to bring on or if you just have feedback or if you just want to say hi, so yeah, thank you guys so much. We appreciate all the support. And we can't wait to see you guys next time when we interview someone else. So stay tuned. Bye guys.