Advice Line with Ben Goodwin of Olipop

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Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist, or get started building for free today at Framer.com slash built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's Framer.com slash built for 30% off. Framer.com slash built. Rules and restrictions may apply. Hello and welcome to the Inventory Podcast. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show, who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is Ben. Ben Goodwin, co-founder of the prebiotic soda brand, Olipop. Ben, it's great to have you back on the show. Guy, absolutely a thrill to be back with you again. So, Ben, you were first on the show not that long ago, 2024, when you told the story of Olipop, of course. And you spent years developing a completely different soda brand that you then had to walk away from with very little in return. But you eventually, after much struggle, rebounded from that experience and created Olipop. A brand that is so amazing. It's now valued at over $2 billion, maybe more. That was the last I saw, which was last year. It is such a great story. And as always, for those of you who have not heard that episode, we will put a link to it in the show notes. So, please do listen to Ben's episode if you haven't heard it, the story of Olipop. It is so good. Ben, before we get to today's callers, just a couple questions for you. You guys just launched a kind of a rebrand, right? Like a refreshed packaging and an national ad campaign. Tell me about the thinking behind that. Yeah, no. Uh, thanks for noticing, Guy. Look, I think that, you know, if I reflect on where Olipop's been stronger and weaker since its inception, I think we've always been a really great pole brand. And a lot of that is, you know, the kind of original packaging and brand ethos. And then there's a great tasting product that once you tried it, it kind of was a delight how good it actually tasted. And that kept people coming back. And that made people want to give it to their kids. And so, that's been amazing. For us, because it's created a really, really strong foundation. That being said, it's always been a, like, a really significant goal of mine to take the layers of our brand mission and to kind of competently translate them to the consumer. Which I had never really felt satisfied with the level at which we'd done that prior. And so, we have a new refresh to the visual identity, which speaks to all the layers of benefits you get out of Olipop. A new Sonic identity, which I'm really, really proud of. And a new fiber education campaign. And I, you know, I'm really happy with how the early traction is going. We're reaching men at a higher rate. We're reaching older demos at a higher rate. It's the most effective advertising we've put out to date. And correct me if I'm wrong, I think you guys are an entirely remote distributed organization, right? Yep, that's right. You don't even have a central office. No, we don't. I mean, you know, David and I, we first started the company. We kind of were a little loathe to commute or to force people to commute. And then, you know, you get this logical push from your investors. Hey, you could really use an office. And then COVID hit. And, you know, we spent about a year and a half or two years or whatever it was learning how to create a remote culture that could really thrive. And then once we had that rolling, there never really seemed to be a good reason to revert. It's really remarkable. I mean, given your sort of evaluation of the company and, you know, your sales figures. I suspect, I think you run a pretty lean team, right? I mean, how many overall employees do you have? So, yeah, we're sitting at about 280 right now. And, you know, we might have closer to 300 end of this year, Q1 of next year. So, Ben, as you know, of course, last year, PepsiCo acquired one of your biggest competitors, Poppy. We also told that story on the show. And I suspect that was a very good day in many ways for Olipop because, I mean, when all of a sudden, with tax credits and so on, it was almost a $2 billion acquisition. And, again, I suspect that there were a lot of smiles around Olipop because of what it could mean for you in the future. I mean, tell me about the vision for the future of the company. I mean, you know, I think most minds are like, oh, well, then Coca-Cola may or another, you know, Keurig or some other big brand is going to want to acquire you for even more down the road. Yeah, look, let's find out. And, you know, look, I say this and it's not coming from a place of coyness. Look, I think one of the things that's made Olipop have the level of success it has is the way that we really hold the impact of the mission as the North Star of the business. And so no matter what checks or opportunities show up, I don't want to live in a world where five, ten years from now, I'm staring at a product that's been delisted or it's been cratered out to the point where it's no longer providing value. For me, it's like dead serious. Dead serious that we're providing real value to all those people who need the health benefit. I mean, we just published our first piece of human research on blood sugar stability. And we found that, you know, in that research, Olipop didn't spike people's blood sugar, kept their blood sugar stable. We were studying the vitreous colon in that one. Yeah, you're using stevia and like. Small amounts of real fruit juice. So it's less than, it's five grams or less sugar per can. So anyway, those things are always going to be really, really important to me. Now, I mean, my target right now in my head is, okay, I need to get to a billion dollars. Gross revenue. We're well over a half billion and we're chugging towards that line. And as long as we perform well and run a great business, we'll have, there's the public path. There's the acquisition path. And then there's all sorts of weird paths in between. Sometimes you get a distribution deal and you still go public anyway and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Ben, I'm curious. And you may not have an answer to this right away, but what's like a widely accepted piece of business advice? That you, that you've gotten over the years that, that actually is completely wrong or, or maybe in your case is rose wrong. You know, I think that oftentimes, and this is like, I think that people who are hardwired to be entrepreneurs will buck this kind of anyway. But I think, you know, anytime I hear the quote, something's market, you know, it's like a, and everyone kind of goes, oh, this is kind of what you need to learn how to accept. And I'm kind of like that. The second you take. tell me that something is market is the second I know that we have to do better than that. So whether it's like terms that you're looking at, or, you know, either with investors or with, I don't know, some distribution partners or just anything where you're, you're, you're compromising your standards, you compromise your integrity, or you're compromising quality. And somehow that's considered a part of the Faustian bargain that you just need to wrap your head around. You know, I always thoroughly reject that. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right, Ben, ready to take our first call? I'm stoked. All right, let's bring in our first caller. Welcome to The Advice Line. You're on with Ben Goodwin, co-founder of Olipop. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a brief line about your business. Yeah, thanks for having me, Ben and Guy. Great to meet you both. I'm Darren Alpert. I'm based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I'm the founder and CEO of Gielish. We're a snack brand that's made with organic ghee and got into about 4,000 stores in two years. Wow. So welcome to the show, Darren. So Gielish snack brands made from ghee, the clarified butter, of course, right? Correct. So what kind of- What kind of snack foods are you making? Yeah, so we started with three skews of organic popcorn, and then we launched our version of a pop chip slash pop corner. And then we've got a sweet snack that's going to come out in the fall. Amazing. So tell me a little bit about the business. Where did you start it? Yeah, so I had the concept about three years ago. My wife and I made samples in our kitchen. I cold emailed Sprouts. I got a meeting with their innovation team, brought them samples that my wife and I made, and then six months later, we got on shelves. So we went straight from my kitchen to Sprouts nationwide. Wow. And so ghee, I can understand because it's delicious and buttery. I mean, tell me why you wanted to build a brand around ghee. Yeah, yeah, great question. First of all, no one else had. Right, there's avocado oils and things like that, but yes. Lesser Evil, I think, has one ghee skew, but nobody who's ground up ghee. Right. So that logic is exactly why I did what I did. Right. Right. Right. So I thought that was a platform that we could make similar to like Caulipower or Bonza or Hippies or Truff. Take an ingredient and make a platform out of it. Nice. And how did you raise money to launch the brand? Initially, no. I mean, I literally launched the whole thing with 250,000 credit card points and $50 in ingredients from the store. It's kind of like Ben's SodaStream deal. It's classic. Yeah, I got the green light from Sprouts, and then I went out and raised money. So I cold emailed Gary Vaynerchuk. He's one of our lead investors. Wow. Yeah, it was incredible. And then I went out and raised money from friends and family as well, too. And tell us briefly, how is the business doing? Where do you expect to net out this year in terms of gross sales? Yeah. So last year was our first full year, which is 2025. We did about 1.8 million last year. Wow. All wholesale, no DTC, no Amazon. We still don't do those. This year, we'll finish about 3.5 million. Incredible. Okay, before we dive in further, what is your question for me and Ben? Yeah, so just like you led off, Guy, you had to clarify, no joke, no pun intended, what clarified butter is. Ben, I've got so much respect for what you've built. You have talked about the Trojan horse strategy with soda to bypass kind of the education hurdle of prebiotics. We're doing the same thing with chips and popcorn as a form factor, but people aren't that familiar with ghee/clarified butter. I would love to hear any tactical advice to help us educate people on ghee, since they've typically only seen it in a jar, and it looks kind of weird in the jar. Yeah. All right, Ben Goodwin, before you can answer the question, or you can ask more questions for Darren either way, but take it away. Yeah, no, awesome. Well, first of all, Darren, congrats on the growth, right? The hardcore bootstrapping, getting Sprouts locked, and then raising capital after you had that, you had your kind of product together, I'm sure, did at least minor wonders for your valuation going in. So that's a really good, really intelligent strategy. Yeah, I mean, also, for what it's worth— I mean, 90% of my cooking at home, I use ghee, I'm a huge fan of ghee. And yeah, this isn't necessarily the track you want to go down, but I am really fascinated by kind of its Ayurvedic history, not for balancing, but also its utilization as like a high-absorption carrier, it almost acts as like a liposomal agent for nutrients. My brother and nerd of ingredients, I love it, man. Yes, right. Yeah, so I mean, I guess I'm just curious. Obviously, you've got some really great traction. Sounds like it's mostly in the natural channel, yeah? Yes and no. So we've got pretty close to a green light with one of the big club stores as a regional test. But yeah, you're right, though. The majority of it is all through natural, for the most part. Current sales. Currently, yeah. Yeah. Are you getting any other feedback other than we just don't have enough awareness of the value of this particular ingredient? Well, it's kind of just in my own head. It's like— You look at Skinny Pop and you look at Smartfood and obviously, Lesser Evil, but Skinny Pop and Smartfood do about a billion dollars combined just in those brands, and we're 30% less calorie, 60% less fat than Skinny Pop, and we're organic. So there's a lot of reasons to switch. Is that front and center on—not versus Skinny Pop, but is— Yeah, yeah. The reason why I ask is because you have to think about the order of operations of consumer motivation. So you'll typically get kind of price at the top-ish, but that's always like a value-to-dollar ratio, and so that kind of goes to the side. It's about the argument that sits underneath price. So then number one is always taste, right? So if you, quote, blind taste test against all your major competition, especially in your price point, are you coming out on top? If you basically aren't getting a yes, then the structural argument— If the structure behind the product is going to be borderline irrelevant, then, you know, especially at the mainstream level, specific ingredient nuances can be a little challenging to communicate because attention spans are so short. So the structure of less fat, less calories, but tastes better then, and then, you know, simple, like, broad strokes, like all real ingredients and yada, yada, yada, that would—it might—I would say, like, it's a little generic, but— If your packaging looks good enough, that would be my starting place, especially when you're looking to go outside of natural. Yeah. Ben, I have a question for you. I mean, I think that there are plenty of people who will buy Olipop because they like the prebiotic side of it, but I think—and I think you're implying this—most people buy it just because it's a good-tasting soda, but it doesn't have, you know, 35 grams of sugar like a can of Coke, right? And so the ghee side is great, but I wonder whether it even matters that you emphasize that. In other words— In other words, if it tastes great and it has, you know, far fewer calories and far, far lower fat content than the leading brands, like, that's really interesting. I don't see that on your packaging. I see fiber, which is great. Yeah. But if it just tastes great and it's a great alternative, you're not thinking, oh, man, I wish I had Skinny Pop. You're thinking, this is amazing, and it's even—you know, that, to me, is where you have the opportunity and not necessarily in educating people about ghee, right? Does that—Ben, would you agree with that? I mean, so I think at a broad— At a broad strokes level, that's right. I still would ensure that you find a great avenue to tell the deeper, richer story. So it's—that's the, you know, people do like a good bootstrap entrepreneur story. I do think there's interesting dynamics in terms of ghee's historical relevance to, you know, a culture and a medical discipline. And I also think that, look, fat is a major transporter of flavor, right? I mean, you've also got the culinary— The culinary arguments. I think for your broad—for your broad consumer base, I think it's really—it's—I think what Guy just articulated is bang on. It's, you know, does this taste really fantastic, especially at a premium price point? Then it's bullet points right on the front of the pack around comparative nutrient compositions and how your product is superior. And then figure out the other avenues for the stories that are—that's deeper, but that's for your evangelist. Consumer who—they're an important part of your community, but it can go a little deeper in so that it's less front and center and you get faster absorption rate from your emergent consumers. And maybe it's something you put on the back of the bag, right, for people who—or you've got QR codes or you use social media to create videos. What is ghee? Why do people use ghee? What are the benefits of ghee? You know, why does popcorn or snacks taste better made with ghee? You know, that's really where you— You can start to tell the story, but you've got a great product. You're doing—I mean, your velocity is terrific, so— Yeah, you're off to an amazing start. Yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you. And it's a tough, tough space, snack foods. It's a really tough space, so that's exciting. Darren, thank you so much for calling in. The brand is called Gheelish, G-H-E-E-L-I-S-H. Good luck. Best of luck, man. Thank you both. Yeah, of course. Thank you. It's a tough category, and we know that because we've, you know, we've done a lot of snack brands on the show. Yeah. Switching behaviors. Yeah, behavior and snacks is tough. But if you can get it right, and if you can get the product, you know, make a delicious product that is, you know— I hesitate to use the term better for you because everyone uses it, but if it is or can be perceived to be better for you, that's, you know, that's gold. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz. Stick around. You're listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. Starting a small business is the fun part. Running one, that's where— it gets complicated, because all of a sudden you're hiring people, and you've got to pay them on time and figure out benefits, and nobody handed you a manual for any of it. It's a lot to carry, especially when you're already doing five other jobs. That's what JustWorks is for. 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As flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Main to select domestic destinations. Book 21 plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person in taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply. Welcome back to the Advice Line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Ben Goodwin, co-founder of Olipop. And Ben, are you ready for our next call? I very much am. All right, let's bring in our next caller. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business. Hi, Guy. I'm Ben. Thank you so much for having me on today. My name is Sarah Godfrey, and I'm the owner of Sarah's Gluten-Free Goods. I specialize in gluten-free desserts that actually taste good and also cater to other food allergies, such as dairy, nut, corn, and oat allergies. Awesome. And where are you located? I'm right in Westfield, Massachusetts, close to Springfield. Okay, got it. Well, welcome to the show. Thanks for calling in. Okay, so you're making a line of gluten-free baked goods. Do you have a bakery? Is that where you're selling them? So I actually have a cottage food permit, so I'm allowed to cook out of my home, which is a really unique opportunity because I don't have to have all that money up front to have a commercial kitchen and all that kind of stuff. So where are you selling your baked goods? So right now, I do three local farmer's markets, and I also have my stuff in two or three local small grocery stores as well. Got it. Okay. And so gluten-free, a lot of gluten-free products out there, but what is. Tell me about why you went into this, why yours are different. I'm assuming you are yourself gluten-free. I am indeed, which is funny to me when I'm at farmer's markets and people are like, you're gluten-free too? And I'm like, yes, I am. There are many of us. I know that somebody the other day said that there's a minuscule amount of people that have gluten and dairy allergies in the world. And I was like, well, nothing has made me more angry and want to do more good with my company than somebody saying there's a minuscule amount of people that have gluten and dairy allergies in the world. And I was like, well, nothing has made me more angry and want to do more good with my company than somebody saying there's a minuscule amount of people out there. Oh my God. By the way, I could talk. We won't do it. I promise. But I could talk about why the rate of gluten and general food allergies have gone up precipitously since the 70s. Spoiler, it has a lot to do with the microbiome. Of course. Yeah, yeah. That's for another day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think the difference for my company is that it's not frozen, first of all. Everything is fresh. So when I go to a farmer's market, people ask me, did you bake? Did you bake all of this yourself? I say, absolutely. I baked it all yesterday in a local facility that is completely safe for multiple allergies, such as nut, dairy, and gluten. Got it. Okay. Before we dive in further into, oh, yes, briefly, tell me how, you know, roughly, what do you do in sales a year? I mean, or, you know, what do you expect to do? So I've only been open for about a year. Last year, my net profit was negative $2,000. All right. Good start. I, the fact that, you know, net versus gross, you're actually, I learned it from this show. So thank you so much. I know so much. Good. Oh, wow. Look at you, good. So this year, I'm expecting to do about $20,000 in net profit. Oh, fantastic. Okay. That's great. All right. Before we dive in further, what's your question for us? So my question is that I'm really sort of harping on the fact that I want my goods to be fresh, never frozen, and available for people in my local area, if not more. And I find, as a consumer of gluten free goods, everything I buy is mostly in the freezer section. And if I want something fresh in the grocery store, it's made by the grocery store bakers. And there's a caveat on the label that says may contain wheat, nuts, stuff like that. So I personally could never eat that because it's not safe for me. So I'm wondering how can I provide that for my community when there is that issue of perishability and how long it'll last on the shelf? All right. So how do you, how do you start to sell fresh stuff that's not shelf stable? And not necessarily frozen? Okay. Ben, good. I want to bring you in. You've already said hello to Sarah, but say hello again. Hey, Sarah. Great to meet you. Yeah. Hi. How many, is this a one woman show? It sure is. My wonderful husband is doing a farmer's market for me right now, though. So he is amazing. Okay. So what the one, the 1.5, got it. Yeah. I guess the main question I kind of have is every pathway from here, unless you get really, really lucky with a network that you're connected into is probably going to require some additional money. So have you thought about that? And then do you have a sense of your kind of risk tolerance for raising either raising capital and, you know, the challenge obviously would take you money is you need to then show some sort of scale and you'd show the ability to return. The alternative to equity is to raise debt. But then the debt's going to be secured against your assets, which might not be super exciting. So have you thought about if you need a capital scale, how you'd approach it? So I definitely have thought about it. And I would say that just in a personal, I am debt averse because I'm have been debt free. I did a personal debt free program. So my brain is already a little bit averse to it. And just hearing me to me too. I hate debt free, like refuse. So and one of the amazing opportunities I had, which is sort of like, stuck in my head is I had the opportunity to do a local grant program. for small businesses in my town. And I ended up getting a $3,500 stipend for my business. And that allowed me to have somebody help me with my website. So I'm wondering, a lot of people have talked to me about the ability to maybe get grants to start my own allergen commercial kitchen. And I'm wondering if there's a way for me to go that path instead of having investors in debt. I want to jump in for a sec. And I'm going to take a counter argument here, which is, I think you're really far away from raising money. You're too small. You've got to show traction and velocity. And that's not to criticize you at all. It's actually to sort of put a reality check on this and say, you have a lot of work and opportunities before you even go down that path. Now, it's not to say you don't have to, but I'm thinking of like, we did Bobo's, the Bobo's O'Pars on the show several months ago. And she started by making O'Pars and selling them. to a coffee shop in Boulder, and then two, and then five. And I wonder, even before you move into a commercial kitchen, can you start to kind of become the bakery behind other businesses like Bobo's did? Like, could you go to coffee shops that you like or small co-op stores, independent cafes and say, hey, can I drop off gluten-free blondies or cinnamon bread or you know, not? 20 different things like chocolate muffins, like your best sellers. Can I drop these off? You know, and maybe we can start a relationship that way. Yeah. So what I have right now is I have three local shops where I drop off a small batch of things every Tuesday, and they take a 10% commission, but I get to decide what I bring. So there's not a lot of leftover product, and I can sort of figure that out. I have tried a couple coffee shops, and what I'm finding, there's friction in that because they don't want the liability that if somebody has a nut allergy that they might go after their business versus my business. And I'm not really sure how to get over that hurdle because I know it's okay, but it seems like the business owners don't want to take that risk of somebody saying it did have gluten in it or something like that. Sarah, what does your kind of excess capacity look like? You know, how much available additional time or energy do you have with your currency? Because I think Guy's point is super correct. In the event that you can continue to generate more output with existing human and, you know, time resources. Yeah. So something that's definitely something I've been thinking about because this year has, it's been incredible, the growth that I've had this year and the people, because I've been on local TV, local radio, in the newspaper, in a gluten-free magazine, and people are like coming and coming and coming. And I'm like, yes, I can do that. Yes, I can do this. And I'm, you know, up in bed late at night, like, oh my gosh, I'm one person. Like, how can I do this? And so I'm wondering when I take that next step to be able to have help, to be able to get it in more places. And I'm not sure if my role is in the kitchen as the baker, or if it's as the marketing person, because right now I'm all of it. Yeah. But you have, I assume you've got standardized recipes at this point for a base selection of products. Yes, absolutely. Yep. Okay. So you might be the one on the lead of creating any new products, but you can, in theory, hand your existing formulas off to staff. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, so, okay. So sounds like you've picked up a bunch of work, but it's already the place where at least it's causing you emotional stress. It sure is. Okay. So yeah, you're, look, obviously, you know, this, the next logical step is what is, is something that was also part of Guy's feedback, which is the commercial kitchen. Right. But, and, and all we did that at Olipop. I mean, I was formulating in my kitchen and we had a local commercial kitchen and we just grew more and more and more space. I have some very fond memories of that, but, you know, in this case, that cross-contamination issue would be a challenge, you know, so. Well, and I've reached out to a couple of places and nobody is willing, and not, maybe I just haven't found the right person, but nobody wants to take that risk or have a specific space. So maybe about five people have said, why don't you be the one to start the commercial kitchen for people with allergies? And I'm like- That's totally, yeah. Which would have been my- I love world domination, but like, how the heck do I start my own commercial kitchen? Money. Yeah. But I think Sarah, right now, and you're selling in farmers markets and it mainly is you, right? You are, the story is we can trust this to be totally allergen-free because she is totally allergen-free. I mean, she has to eat that way. And so it's the trust factor that you bring into it. One other thing I want to bring up, which is you are, you said you're reluctant to freeze products. And I wonder whether, and again, you'll, you know, you'll need to figure out how to do this with a small amount of money, ideally a little bit more money. I mean, surely you can freeze things like muffins. Or, you know, or, or blondies or, or, you know, things that could actually defrost pretty well. Right. I mean, I mean, isn't that possible? Yes. So I find that the blondies and the muffins do well, the breads, not so much because of the moisture content in them. And I find that myself and the people I sell to, their eyes kind of light up a little bit when they realize that they can have something for breakfast. And I find that that they don't have to get out of the freezer section. Like I've heard feedback from people that they like that idea. So I'm so stuck on it and I wish I wasn't so stuck on it, but it's just, it's something that nags me all the time that like, I want to be different. I want to be different, but I wonder if that will be my downfall of, I want to be different sort of thing. Yeah, for sure. I mean, again, if I think about your story, um, I would, for, if I would really, cause I've been at this inflection point a handful of times with things that started from zero. Right. And, and, I think you can get a little more squeeze out of the situation by, all right, are there some people in me at the farmer's market or are there some friends that can be a combination of product and cash or some way to kind of stay within my means to just eke a bit more out. I would really try to have an honest conversation with yourself between you and your husband around, all right, how much more can I squeeze out of this super, you know, super bootstrapped. Right. And at what point, do I need a bit more cash in order to, you know, because, uh, for example, thinking of my, my friends over original sunshine, they did just build their own facility. Uh, and that was allowed them the quality control that kept it free from allergens. They happen to be lucky enough to have connectivity to somebody who had some space. So that was useful, but I think you're probably, you probably are going to have to cross that hurdle. Grants do a grant all day, but 3,500, you need tens of thousands, right? Like you need like, a hundred thousand dollars, not like, you know, $3,500. So, so I, I agree with guy that, you know, raising, first of all, raising equity is really complicated and it's easy to get screwed and you have to generate some sort of return, but I would start to go look at small business loans, maybe run by like a local, uh, credit union or something. And, and then just, you, you know, you're going to, you're going to reach a threshold point where it's like, okay, am I super committed to this? Cause you're going to trade the stress of being overworked, which you're still going to be, by the way, you can just trade the stress of that for the stress on the financial side. So you're just going to have to evaluate, all right, what's my real commitment level? What's my real risk tolerance here? How much do I believe in this and, and do all the modeling you can. But, um, if you've got a great customer base and you're already experiencing a lot of traction, then you've got a lot of positive signals from the community that there's a demand. Yeah, absolutely. And so I wish you massive amounts of luck. Thank you so much guys. Appreciate it. Sarah Godfrey, the brand. It's called Sarah's Gluten-Free Foods. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. It's, um, it's like such a labor of love because baking is a lot, it's a lot of work. It's like early mornings. It's a lot of work, but, um, there's, I mean, this is different. There's a mission here. It's like making gluten-free foods delicious, which is slightly harder. And I, this is where, you know, this is why when I'm in a lot of the kind of interviews and stuff that I do, I talk a little bit more about the interpersonal side of entrepreneurship, because this is, this, this, this is like stress management and holding a vision together. And, you know, these intangibles like courage and stuff like that are going to come in to a lot of strain, but look, small businesses start from nothing or kind of the backbone of this country. So I support them. No question about it. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller and another round of advice. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab. to take a few of those necessary tasks off your plate so you can get back to the bigger picture. Gusto is online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use, so you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. Save time with built-in automated tools like offer letters, onboarding docs, direct deposit, and more. Plus, get direct access to certified HR experts to help support you through any tough HR situation. 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Plus, Function members can also get brain-related add-on tests like an Alzheimer's detection test, which measures blood markers that can flag Alzheimer's risk years before symptoms. Check your brain and health the way I do. Function provides 160-plus lab tests for $1 a day and member pricing on advanced imaging. Join at functionhealth.com slash built and use code built25 for a $25 credit. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking your calls with Ben Goodwin, co-founder of Olipop. Ben, ready for our next call? Let's do it. You're on with Ben Goodwin of Olipop. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business, please. John Groner. I'm calling about the Bexley Natural Market, Central Ohio's only cooperative grocery store. It's been around for 50 years. In 2024, it had some financial trouble. It's been I happened to retire as a pediatric trauma surgeon in 2024. So the Bexley Natural Market seemed like it needed some resuscitation. So I joined the board with no food experience. Okay. Thanks so much for calling in, John. So if I got the story right, you are running a food co-op in Ohio. And where in Ohio is it again? It's a suburb of Columbus. Okay. So it's called Bexley. Okay. And tell me about the co-op. I mean, I'm imagining like bulk bins of natural food. Natural products and organic foods. I mean, what do you guys sell there? So, well, of course, I have to say first, the Olipop is right next to the cash register. Ah, good man. Great. Okay. Good. Natural, organic. Yeah. Well, I mean, farmers bring stuff right to our store. I mean, one time a customer said to me, is the farmer nice to his chickens? I was stocking eggs. Right. I said, well, you can ask him. He's standing right here. So she had a conversation with a farmer and she brought three dozen eggs, you know? So. So we spend hundreds of thousand dollars to local vendors and farmers every year. Yeah. Nice. And John, tell me a little bit about how the business does. I mean, what are, it's a co-op and are you, are you profitable? Are you, yeah, I mean, how are you guys doing overall? So if you go back to pre-pandemic, maybe 1.2 to 1.4 million in sales per year. The problem wasn't so much the pandemic, but afterwards there was definitely some miscarriage. There was some mismanagement, too much on salaries, some bad choices, and this is before I got involved. So it was really going downhill. And when I joined the, there was a public meeting, should we close the store? Should we not close the store? A couple of us said, you know, I just really love the store. I mean, my kids sort of grew up there, you know? Yeah. And how's the business doing now compared to the pandemic? We're about halfway back. I mean, we are definitely in the profitability way, but not to So your sales are half, are half of what they were at their peak. Wow. So, so that's, that's significant. Okay. So I visited co-ops and a lot of other cities as research and they all have websites. So I thought, well, I will develop a website for the co-op and that will help our sales. So I spent hours and hours and hours, you know, photographing thousands of products, putting on the website and there's like no traction. So how can I get traction on the website? How can I just, we need about 20% more sales to kind of push us over the top. So I thought, well, I'm going to develop a website to really be not in danger of closing. Okay. A lot to ponder here. Ben Goodwin, I would love to hear your thoughts for John. Bexie Natural Market, their sales are half of what they were during COVID. And obviously, you know, they're trying to figure out how to turn this thing around. Yeah. A hundred percent. Well, first it just says the starting place, John, I think it's really admirable what you're doing. Being a pediatric trauma surgeon is absolutely incredible. And I'm sure you've, you've really helped a lot of people. And it also shows what kind of person you are that you jumped into this, which was struggling. And, you know, cooperatives are really, really important to the community. First of all, actually, for what it's worth, I owned a small co-op out of a house in my mid twenties back in Santa Cruz. And then we had a sister co-op in Berkeley and in Santa Monica. So I actually, you know, I, but they were small, they weren't actual storefronts. They were in inside homes. So anyway, I'm just like a, they're again, really important part of the community. And I think, you know, you deserve a lot of respect for what you're doing because it's not easy work, but it's so crucial. I'm curious, what is the intended goal of the website? You said other co-ops that set up websites, you know, how are you attempting to use the website as a revenue source? And is there anything falling off? So the way the website is set up, it's a grace card. I'm not sure you're familiar with that, but it's so when new products come to the store and they're inventoried, it automatically shows up on the website. So you can order from the website. And then you can order from the website. And then you can pay. We don't have delivery right now, but the idea is to compete with the Kroger truck that's going by the store every day, taking groceries to families that, you know, that in my non-scientific survey, you know, people say, well, I'd love to shop at the co-op, but I just don't have time to go around. And I know if there was a way I could just order things and just pick it up, that would be great. So that was the thought behind it. We need to get Sarah out there. Yeah. Yeah. You said for sure. John, I don't know how much, if you should put a whole lot of energy into marketing or promoting e-commerce for now, it's a, it's a very, very hard, it's an expensive game, right? And it, and, and customer acquisition costs are very, very high and, and maybe down the road. But I think for now, what you have is what Kroger and the big, you know, chain stores don't have, which is, you know, exclusive products, handpicked, curated items in the stores, real stories. You mentioned that people come and ask about the eggs and are, are the chickens treated well? You know, they want to know about the meat and how it's you know, where's the fruit coming from? I mean, all of those are stories that the, the big grocery stores just don't have, and they can't tell. So a couple of things come to mind. First of all, could you try things like, you know, like bringing the farmers in on, you know, have a, like a, a, a meet the farmer Saturday or something, you know, where you, you've got somebody there talking about the meat or talking about the peaches you got right now, or, you know, there's great milk in Ohio has got, produce a lot of milk. I know this because Jenny's ice cream uses milk from Ohio. I think there are some creative things you can do to get not just your existing customers in, but to build more word of mouth, like, oh, we're going to Bexley's natural foods to, you know, to try out like every Sunday, they have samples of new products. They're considering stocking and we want to go try them. Yeah. We do have a table at the local farmer's market, which is actually going on right now. Not every week, but some weeks, and we do have some products there. I mean, do you think that's a useful way of spreading the word? Got to do it in the store. Yeah. You know, I think there's three levers that are kind of a part of the co-op experience. So one, you know, has already been called out, which is uniqueness of ingredients and quality of ingredients, right? I've got friends who live in a small town in Pennsylvania who go to a co-op, just like yours, right? And it's all this dairy from, uh, these amazing Amish farmer and really high meat quality. And they know that they're going to be able to go get things that are so much healthier, but also just taste so much better. And it's worth the special trip to go stock up. So amplification around uniqueness of ingredients, but just an unmatched quality to, I really think about cooperatives from the standpoint of they are anchors and hub for community. You guys have like a parking lot to the co-op? That's got some space that you control that's outside? We do. Yeah. So, you know, I would start to really think about how do we really leverage that space? You could almost take Guy's suggestion of like meet the farmer and you could think about, okay, how do I, how do I accelerate that? So how do I bring once a month or whatever the right cadence is, how do I create a special community moment or how do we deploy out into the community in ways that are supportive? Because I think that not only does it help to get the word of mouth out, but then by by people interacting with the co-op or interacting your events uh they can start to actually feel more integrated into the community it actually becomes like almost like a like a social conduit for them which is a big deal and we need it more than ever and i think the third thing is kind of like shopping experience what are you doing to the inside of the store to make sure that it feels really good when you come in you know are the scents in the right places are they greeted by bright colors or fresh produce right when they walk in like how what how is it arranged so that it's an intrinsically pleasurable experience and i think unless you are delivering you have an instacart model most people this and i could be wrong but i would think that most people are going to be using the digital opportunity for the convenience so they want to deliver to the house so they're shopping people might tell you oh it'd be convenient for me to look at your website but nobody it's like i don't know it's a lot more interesting and you get more exposure to more things when you go in and actually shop the stores i would look at those those three levers yeah yeah but how do you balance um i mean i think there are definitely things that could be done to improve the store how do you balance the national brands like you meant olipop and you mentioned bobos you know how do you balance the local brands versus the national brands in a in a cooperative store i think the key is is curation it's finding it's finding products that you guys really like i mean this is what makes trader joe's so successful you know they don't they don't have thousands of skews they have very few uh products on on the shelves but people know that it's been through you know trader joe's people have tested it and and if they don't like like something after a while it goes away but you know that what you're going to get there is probably good i think you want to take advantage of your of the curation of the of the folks who run the co-op uh and and that's what people trust they want to go in and say oh i've never seen this beef turkey it might be a national brand that they still haven't seen or it might be a national brand that they have seen like olipop it's you're going to have some of that too but um i i think the key is is that you're the products that you've got in the store are practical they're things people want to use and want to cook with and also eat obviously but they are also products that they know you guys have tested out that you guys like and and i think that's what's going to make the difference that's really helpful john groener the uh the co-op is called the bexley natural market and bexley ohio thanks for calling in good luck thanks gentlemen you've been very helpful thank you so much thanks good luck john appreciate it yeah rooting for you yeah i love going into uh small grocery stores and co-ops i mean it's i i just the aisles you know sometimes looking for ideas for the show but also just to see what's out there what people are are making and there's a lot of really interesting tiny tiny brands you know um and a lot of it's delicious totally i mean i remember this tiny little co-op i used to go shop in santa cruz and they definitely had they had these olives that were just ridiculous i couldn't get anywhere else they had these macadamia nuts that were like i couldn't get anywhere else and um it was just this you know again it felt like a cool place to go shop there was just something about it and i think that they really need to make sure they build up that emotional experience yeah ben um thank you so much for coming on the show and helping me out i have a before i let you go i have one question for you which i'm asking all our guests which is if you could go back to when you were you know starting out i mean when you started ollie pop you already came with quite a bit of experience from the previous situation right but if you could go back to your your you self then and give you advice about what to do or not to do knowing what you're doing and what you're doing and what you're doing and what you're doing now what would have been helpful yeah i uh i i think that look i i mean i think that people who are entrepreneurially minded you know and actually not to plug myself here but i ink gave me a monthly written column and i just put my first article out on that and i in it i was really talking about the kind of psychology of a lot of founders and then you know being a craftsman or having a how that's a a buffering agent and a grounding agent but i you know a lot of us have instincts and we have to learn how to listen to them correctly and work with them correctly and calibrate them correctly and i think it's being aware that for those of us really cut for the you will always have something a little special that the rest of the world may not be able to recognize and recognize and recognize and recognize and recognize and recognize and recognize and recognize clearly yeah um but that's part of what makes you great entrepreneurs learning how to to have faith in that part of yourself learn how to work with it and learn when to really trust your entrepreneur instincts is a really great use of time that's ben goodwin co-founder of ollie pop ben thank you so much for coming back on the show guy a real pleasure and an honor thanks for having me on and by the way if you haven't heard ben's original episode on how i built this you've got to go back and check it out we'll put a link to it in the show notes and here is a clip from that episode one of my favorite moments from it in fact the first two years i was focused on cracking the code around the fermentation so we want to try these three chemicals and we want to try this food source and we want to try these microorganisms so let's put that in a bag let's do 10 different versions of it and let's literally staple them to the wall of the shed it looked like a scene out of you know the hive in aliens a little little oh well yeah until you see like 400 bioreactor bags filled with god knows what hanging from the walls i mean it was absolute madness hey thanks so much for listening to the show this week and by the way please make sure to check out my newsletter you can sign up for it for free at guyraz.com or on substack and of course if you are working on a business and you'd like to be on this show send us a one-minute message that tells us a little bit about your business and the questions or issues that you're currently facing because we would love to try and help you solve them you can send us a voice memo at hibt at id.wondery.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298 leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach you and we'll put all of this information in the podcast description as well this episode was produced by carrie thompson with music composed by ramtina rablui it was edited by john isabella and our audio engineer was cena lefredo our production staff also includes casey herman carla estevez jc howard sam paulson katherine cypher chris massini alex chung neva grant and elaine coats i'm guy raz and you've been listening to the advice line right here on how i built this lab if you're running a small business and payroll benefits and hiring feel like a lot you're not alone and just works is ready to help because you don't have to worry when it just works we get support from engine a lot of founders start with a product or an idea but at some point the business becomes something else think about brian scudamore he started 1-800-GOD-JUNK with one truck and a vision to make junk removal a real brand that worked and then it became hundreds of crews across multiple cities trucks on the road every day routes changing by the hour and a team that had to be in the right place before the customer even called or beryl stafford who started 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