Ops Hook Ups & Design Fuck Ups
So I had this Nutcase idea. I created a product, tested it, and the response was nuts. I need to scale this. But how? It all started with a simple Sunday brunch in Vegas. I told our buddies about Nutcase and they offered to introduce me to the founder of Mezcla, making me promise in return that if this works and we raise funding, they get first dibs. Deal.
From our very first call, it’s clear Griffin is a rockstar. We chat about Mezcla and I tell him all about Nutcase. Griff is happy to help and tells me about David. He says he’s the guy to talk to and that makes an intro.
David and his partner Josh help CPG brands with operations. From product formulation, to co-packer matching, supplier sourcing, etc... they do it all. I told them about Nutcase. They loved it and we’re down to work with us. Sick! Now what?
First things first: formulation. We need a formula that can scale. The recipe I’d come up with in my kitchen was not exactly designed for high volume in heavy machinery (ie. thousands of litres per production run vs our little 1.5L Vitamix batches).
I wanted only real premium ingredients and no bs (no refined sugar, artificial sweeteners, oils, carrageenan, etc). It had be delicious AF with a magnificent mouthfeel — simultaneously satisfying and refreshing (so you feel awesome after drinking it vs bloated and weighed down). Finally, it should be shelf stable to extend expiry dates and not require refrigeration — truly enabling scale.
I admit it was ambitious. I couldn’t find any milks that met those specs, and those that came closest — not so tasty. Sure, we were asking a lot and maybe it was a little crazy. Admittedly, I had no clue if it was even possible. What if it didn’t work…? Fuck it. Let’s just try and see what happens.
Just as we started looking into formulation, a guy David has wanted to team up with forever told him he can take on a new client. It just so happens he’s a genius formulator with a lot of nut milk experience. Lucky timing.
From the very first call with Ryan it was clear this guy knows his shit. He kinda reminded me of James McAvoy in Split, which is totally irrelevant, but just sayin’. Anyway, I shared my vision for the best milk ever and he was totally up for the challenge. Perfect fit.
Ryan got to work on chocolate, vanilla and coffee flavours and soon had samples for us. Just one problem: I was in Canada and you can’t exactly ship strange liquids across the border. Fortunately, I was headed to Arizona, so he shipped them there.
When I got the samples in Scottsdale, I roped my husband into helping me taste test. With high hopes, I tried vanilla first — and practically spit it out! I felt like I’d just taken a straight shot of vanilla extract. Too strong. Next up, chocolate. Too bitter. Finally, coffee. Too acidic.
Round 1 was a fail. It was a bit disheartening and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little concerned. But it’s a process and I had to keep faith as Ryan got to work on Round 2. I was in Vegas by that time and though it was an improvement, it still wasn’t quite there. Progress, not yet perfection.
On to Round 3. By this time I was back in Canada, so we had to get creative. We live just over an hour from the border, so we came up with a plan to have the samples shipped to UPS in a tiny US town called Ogdensburg. I wasn’t able to go that day, so I asked our guy Justin if he could get it for us. He was totally down for a little road trip and we thought nothing of it… until I got a call from him: “They are threatening to take my car.” What!?
The border guard accused him of smuggling commercial goods across the border. Justin explained these were just samples and not for resale. Officer Roy was not having it. He dove into a story about how if we bought a pencil in the US, brought it back to Canada, and used that pencil in our business —its considered a commercial good. Absurd. Who uses pencils anymore?
I got on the phone with Officer Roy to try and clear things up. I explained these weren’t even for a Canadian business (Nutcase is a US Corp), I just happen to be Canadian. Again, he was not having it. He shared his pencil story with me also and asked for our import license. I explained I didn’t have one since this product wasn’t for the Canadian market. He asked for it again. I apologized saying I had no idea. He just kept repeating I needed a license. I asked what else I could possibly do.
After a long silence, he finally gave in: “You can tell your buddy here to drive back across the bridge and dump these in the US.” Ok, so we lose the samples, but Justin keeps his car. Fine. I found it was strange they didn’t just confiscate them, but at that point I didn’t care — I just felt bad for putting Justin through this ordeal. Ultimately, we made the most of it: Officer Roy is now our favourite inside joke.
I immediately call up Ryan to tell him what had happened. Luckily he had backups and sent another batch the next day. This time, having learnt our lesson, Brooke and I drove to Ogdensburg ourselves to taste the samples there.
So here we were, in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere, taste testing jar after jar of samples. It was awkward, but we did our best and ended up with chocolate and vanilla versions we were happy with. The coffee flavour still needed work, so we decided to shelve it for now.
We’ve got milk! Now what do we put it in? Plastic bottles and tetra-packs are common for milk, but I had another idea: slim cans. I’d never drank milk out of a can, so naturally, it intrigued me. I also felt a can would look sick, stand out, and suit our premium brand. Plus, aluminum being the only infinitely recyclable packaging material was a key factor. Canned milk: best thing since sliced bread?
I had also noticed with 16oz bottles that many people only drank half at a time (myself included). This inspired us to go with 8oz slim cans (OG RedBull style). After all, Nutcase is meant to be a little indulgence and this offered built-in portion control for the perfect guilt-free sweet fix.
Next up, David told me about retort processing — which is pretty badass. Our cans are placed inside a retort chamber and subjected to intense 250F heat, under high pressure, for several minutes. This destroys any bacteria or microorganisms, and since the cans are already sealed, they can’t be contaminated. This gives us about 12 months of unrefrigerated shelf life — science baby!
So now we needed to find a co-packer that does nut milk, retort processing, and smaller MOQs (minimum order quantity) to get us started. It just so happens Ryan is part-owner of a co-packer in Minnesota called Black Eye that checked all those boxes. Perfect.
Now it was time to design our cans. Most nut milk brands lean into eco, vegan, hipster vibes. But that’s just not me. I wanted dark and edgy. Black and yellow with a sleek logo.
I was so fired up about the idea of a sexy black slim can I jumped on Keynote to play around. I’m no designer and don’t have the fancy software, but I love to mock shit up. I find most packaging too busy and prefer minimalist design. I came up with something I thought looked pretty sick. I’m biased though. I needed a second opinion.
I knew exactly who to ask: my husband — and toughest critic. Daniel was Co-founder and Chief Design Officer at Shopify. Unlike me, he actually knows what he’s talking about. I was excited, but also nervous to share with him. He has literally torn apart every single thing I’ve ever shown him. Nicely. But still. He’s German.
I finally sucked it up and showed him my screen.“Who made these?” he asked. Wait. What? You don’t understand — him not thinking this was my work is a huge compliment. I answer “me…” He’s shocked. “These look so cool!”
I’m in disbelief. And I know he means it since he’s always brutally honest and Germans don’t sugarcoat. “Do I have a piece of this yet?” Holy shit! He likes it so much he wants to invest? I promise I’ll let him in the first round.
So I had my mockups, but I needed help to refine them, make sure they were FDA compliant, and create design files for the sleeve printer. Fun fact: until you reach about 250k cans, you print sleeves for the cans vs printing on them directly. Anyway, I needed an actual designer.
I got intros to a couple of the top CPG design agencies. As they broke down their process, I realized they are used to working with founders who have no clue about branding and design — whereas I love this shit and already had a vision for the brand. It felt like overkill, but I heard them out. But when they sent proposals for $100k… I’m good thanks.
So I connected with more affordable designers. I finally picked one and, though I was initially skeptical, our kick off call went so well I actually felt optimistic. They seemed to really get it. We shared our mockups and asked them to take them to next level. They promised to work on a concept in-line with our designs and asked if they could also create a concept of their own.
Although I was pretty set, I figured I should try to keep an open mind and agreed to give them a shot. I simply asked that they stick to our dark and edgy vibe, making it very clear we did not want their usual bubbly hipster aesthetic. They assured us that they were excited to do something different.
When they finally shared their concepts, we were shocked. They did exactly what we told them not to. We say black, sleek and sexy and you give us vintage old school? I tried hard to stay calm, but like… wtf!? They acknowledged they fucked up, apologized, and promised to re-do it.
The next iteration was in-line, but rather than refine, they wrecked it. Everything was a little off. I’m no designer, but I could tell it didn’t look right. When I showed my husband, he immediately pointed out the, spacing, sizing, and kerning were all off. Yikes.
It was painful. And as I would find out months later, not fully compliant. When we finally sent the design files to BelMark to print (shout out to our rep David O) and they pointed out that some lines were too thin and fonts too small to print, and that our white on black barcode would not scan. Am I crazy for thinking supposed CPG designers should know this shit?
Now the best part. We print the sleeves for our first trial run. We get our first cans and I give some to our investors. The next day I get a text asking why there isn’t any cacao in our chocolate milk. I’m super confused — of course there’s cacao. That’s when I notice they copy pasted the vanilla ingredients onto both labels. Seriously?
We found a new designer for the next trial run — and next fuck up. This time: barcodes. As I’m inputting our UPCs online, I grab a vanilla can and type it in, then I do chocolate… wait a minute—why are these numbers the same? Fml. Thank God these cans were mostly for sampling (ie. would not be scanned).
At the end of the day, it’s on me. I should have known better than to trust designers. But hey, we finally had a product! That said, we still had so much to figure out: legal, banking, accounting, insurance, warehouse… all that boring, but super important shit — leading up to our first ever production run — which I tell you all about in my next post.
