The Alchemy of SkinnyDipped

0:03Welcome to the Brand Alchemist podcast, where we uncover the magic and mystery of how some of the world's most sought after and newest brands were started and continue to evolve. I'm your host, Taja Dockendorf, founder and creative director of Pulp & Wire, a CPG branding, marketing and launch agency. I'm also an investor in emerging brands and own a few of my own as well. Over the last 18 years, I have worked with, created for, and grown hundreds of companies in the CPG space, like Ryan's Snacks, Allagash Brewing, Ocean Spray, Petco, and many more. Now, here's today's episode.

0:43Welcome to the Brand Alchemist podcast. Today, we're talking with Breezy Griffith, the CEO and co-founder of Skinny Dipped, the better-for-you snacking brand she launched alongside her mom, Val, from their kitchen table. What began as a simple idea, creating snacks with no compromise on flavor or ingredients, has grown to a nationally recognized brand found in more than 30 ,000 retail locations. With an adventurous spirit and sharp business instinct, Breezy has led Skinny Dip through rapid growth, expanding into multiple product lines while staying true to the brand's core promise. big taste, less sugar, and real simple ingredients.

1:22She oversees everything from commercial strategy to sales to product innovation, marketing, and retail expansion, ensuring that the brand continues to evolve while maintaining its integrity. Under her leadership, Skinny Dip has become a standout in the modern snacking space, proving that better for you can still be craveable, fun, and widely accessible. Breezy, welcome to the Brand Alchemist podcast. I have been a huge fan of Skinny Dipped for probably since you first started, but I have really enjoyed watching your rise to fame and just being a household darling name. But I know that that doesn't happen overnight.

1:59That happens with a lot of hard work. And I'm really excited to hear your story because I know Skinny Dipped even started out of a family tragedy and what you and your mom as, you know, two partners building this brand together have accomplished is also really rare in CPG. So welcome to the podcast.

2:18Breezy Griffith:Thank you so much, Taj. I appreciate it. I'm really excited to chat with you today. And yeah, certainly it's been a journey and not an overnight success, but yeah, excited to talk with you. Perfect. Well, let's start at the beginning, where it started with you and your mom and the early beginnings of Skinny Dipped. Yeah, so our story really begins with a dear friend of ours, Josh. I grew up in Seattle and I come from a really close family. And I was doing, you know, what you do in your 20s. I was off and I was living in New York and, you know, trying to kind of find my path. And my family was still out in Seattle, including my younger sister, who I'm extremely close with.

3:06Breezy Griffith:And Josh was a really good friend of my sister's. And he was diagnosed with cancer when he was 17 and a terminal cancer. And so I made the choice to start to kind of leave New York and fly back and spend time with my family in Seattle and work to support my family while they work to support Josh and his family. And he passed away just after his 18th birthday. And quite frankly, it just it changes you. It changes the way that you, you know, the lens of which you view the world from when you wake up in the morning makes you think more deeply about where you want to spend your time and where you want to put your energy.

3:54Breezy Griffith:And my mom and I had already been chatting about, you know, we both kind of at we were at different points in our life because obviously we're different, very different ages. but we also were both at kind of a similar place which was like a bit of a crossroads and like trying to figure out what was next and wanting to do something that you know was really fulfilling and so between kind of Josh being this reminder and this kind of catalyst to push us to do something and then our conversations around wanting to do something together as mom and daughter and we are a very food centric family. So food is incredibly important to my family.

4:33Breezy Griffith:You know, we're eating breakfast and talking about lunch, eating lunch and talking about dinner. Food for us is about bringing people together. It's been a huge part of my parents' life as they've traveled all over the world. And so we knew it would be food centric. And, you know, we spent some time trying, you know, thinking about, even at one point, we were thinking about, you know, doing a cooking show together. And that didn't feel right. And so it was one day when we were taking a road trip, we actually bring my sister up to college. And I had a, you know, a, you know, quote, naughty snack with me, which was a Reese's peanut butter cup.

5:13Breezy Griffith:And my mom had, you know, she's a very health conscious eater and amazing cook. And she had a handful of roasted almonds. And, you know, we got into this conversation about like, why did snacking have to be like, either delicious and, you know, not good for you, right? Or healthy, but boring. And that was really kind of what started the conversation for us around reinventing snacking. And what did we want to eat? Like, and it didn't really go, you know, it was really about like, what did we want to pick up at three o 'clock in the afternoon or, you know, 10 a.m. when you wanted something a little satiating and a little, you know, a hit of protein, not too sweet.

5:54Breezy Griffith:And that was, that was really the beginning of us starting Skinny Dipped. And then we went into the home kitchen and that's kind of where the magic started. There was a, there was this balance between us. You know, I'd been, as I mentioned, I'd been living in New York and I understood this like kind of millennial faster paced life. You want something on the go. You have a million things going on. You want to be able to tuck it into your purse, your gym bag. And my mom had been at kind of the forefront of the farmer's markets and this trend towards, you know, whole foods and, you know, minimally processed things and seasonal.

6:32Breezy Griffith:And so that's, it was this kind of balance in the kitchen as we started to create our first product, which was our lightly dipped almond. And, you know, we created that. It took us quite a while to get it right. We tried every iteration of, you know, I didn't even know there were other varieties of almonds, every iteration of nut and chocolate and mixing chocolates to create the perfect blend. And then we had created something that we felt like was a reflection of like both of our eating habits and what we were looking for. And that's when we started passing it out to friends and family. And we realized pretty quickly that we had something that people wanted.

7:12So what were some of those early learnings? You mentioned different types of almonds, different types of chocolate formulations. Obviously, you want healthy, you want natural, you want a clean ingredient, Dax. There's so many things that go into that. But what were some of those early learnings that you both maybe held really true to and still do today?

7:30Breezy Griffith:yeah i mean oh gosh a laundry list of early learning for sure you know could be here all day but i think a lot of it was that we didn't come out of a you know we didn't have a background in you know commercial food production or cpg or anything really for us this just started with like what do we want to eat and then let's make the food like we would make to put like on the dining room table. And I say, look, we as in, I am not the chef in this. My mom has an incredible ability to just understand flavor and combine flavors and layer flavors. And that for her, she was a self-taught cook. She grew up in the era of a lot of, you know, powdered things and canned things.

8:14Breezy Griffith:And she was fortunate enough to travel the world and be exposed to a lot of different cultures. And that became, I think, a really big source of kind of inspiration for her in flavor. And that has helped to carry us actually, as we innovate and we think about food. So I think it started for us was like, let's just make the food we want to eat. And then we realized, oh, wow. Okay. As you take something from a home kitchen setting, and maybe even just the first step of scaling, which is some sort of very small commercial kitchen, there's challenges that come with that. Maybe the way that, you know, we were roasting almonds and on sheet pans and ovens like was nowhere near scalable.

8:54Breezy Griffith:So like what, okay, you know, how did you how did you have to kind of tweak what you were doing without lose the, you know, what you had created, and that became an iterative process for us. And still is to this day. But we always hold some things like, you know, for us, again, philosophy is like, if we would not put this on our table for friends and family, then it's not a skinny dipped product. aspect. And I think the other like learnings for us was just, I mean, certainly there were a lot of learnings that didn't have to do with the product. It was just like, how do you start a business? Oh, you have to form an entity, you know?

9:29Breezy Griffith:Oh, we should probably get an attorney. And I think we made some wise decisions early on, even though it was expensive, but we invested in, you know, some great legal advice. We tried our best to position ourselves. And, you know, even though it's hard to think kind of too far down the road, I think we were still thinking like that. And that that's been really helpful. But I mean, gosh, I mean, the learnings are endless, you know, I mean, how do you scale a product? Where do you even go? What is a co-packer? We have no idea, you know, how would you even make it in a commercial setting? How do you sell to stores?

10:06Breezy Griffith:I mean, we didn't, this was grassroots. This was dining room table, nuts in our backpack, selling door to door. Well, and I think what's really interesting is, I mean, you say you don't come from a CPG background, but I mean, first rule of CPG is to innovate on kind of a dated, boring category. You know, if you really want to be successful, don't do what everyone else is doing. Find something, find a category that is prime for innovation, which you really did because I mean, chocolate covered nuts or things like that, they've been around for a while, but to your point, they were never that good for you.

10:39They were really kind of fell into that candy category, less of a snacking. So you really created something beautiful by thinning out that coating and creating a much better flavor profile with a high protein nut snack that was just better for you. And I mean, as a consumer, and also someone who's watched the brand grow, it seemed like you just you hit the market with huge, you know, meat art rise, you know, you came onto the market pretty fast. But I know that that wasn't the case, because to your point, there's a lot of work that goes in behind that. I mean, you you went from knocking on doors to now 30 ,000 stores, right?

11:12That's, that's a lot. What did that? I mean, think about brands who are just starting out. What did that look like for you? And, you know, what did you learn in those early stages? Because that's so many brands are going through that still. And you just did a really good job. I mean, doing the hard work.

11:29Breezy Griffith:Well, thank you for all those nice comments. I'm, I'm, I'm glad to hear that from the outside, look again, it looked smooth and, you know, So smooth execution. I can tell you that from, you know, behind the scenes, it certainly wasn't. We've had, you know, all many ups and downs as we built the business. And just to touch on what you said about, you know, the category and, you know, identifying categories that can be dated or boring or, you know, prime for disruption. I mean, we didn't, there was no science in what we did at the early stages. Now, you know, where the brand sits today, we've evolved and we use data, but we combine that with, you know, our instincts and our intuitions as founders.

12:11Breezy Griffith:But really, in the beginning, we didn't even know category data was a thing. I mean, this was really more intuitive. It was like, what do we want to eat that doesn't exist that we want every day? And so like, I think sometimes there can be for founders now, because there's so much access to so much information, it can almost make making some of those decisions more difficult, or like where you second guess yourself. And we didn't, you know, at the time, we didn't have, you know, all this information that was telling us whether it was a good category or bad category or growing or declining, you know.

12:45Breezy Griffith:So I think we just, we kind of, we just, we just followed our instincts there. And then, I mean, in terms of scaling, it certainly was not linear by any means, but, you know, we started out, No joke. I have pictures. We started out with like, you know, samples tucked into our backpacks going door to door and, you know, selling from everything from a little corner store where we would walk in and like sell our, you know, our snacks essentially for like cash or check. And then we would offer to do like, you know, demo every day. And I think these store managers were always like, oh, wow, that's, you know, are you ever going to leave?

13:27Breezy Griffith:And then, you know, with time, we were able to be, you know, to attract some of these kind of like call them small, but really great, like midsize chains. PCC for us was local to Seattle and they were really amazing kind of cheerleader and advocate for us early on. So really, we had kind of this handful of stores where it was like, I mean, when I tell you vertical learning curve, I mean, we didn't understand, you know, we had to learn about, you know, how do you distribute your product? What sort of distributors do you work with? You know, how does it get from, you know, where making it to the shelf?

13:57Breezy Griffith:And then, you know, how do you submit your paperwork? I mean, this was all a, you know, a learning curve for us. So we kind of learned in our backyard for the first bit of time, call it, you know, close to a year. And then we had the opportunity to meet with Target and Target leaned in very early. And, you know, I'll never forget the moment that, you know, we sat and we got a call back to Target and we sat in front of this buyer. and uh you know and she said to she said you know do you have any manufacturing challenges and I was like no you know just fully dialed manufacturing meanwhile I can tell you that like I mean we had every manufacturing we didn't even have manufacturing so um but she gave us a shot and that forced us to grow up and we went okay we have an opportunity here how do we uh go from being, you know, this, you know, kind of like toddler phase to like an adult.

14:53Breezy Griffith:And we had to do that in a matter of months. And it was very challenging. And everyone told us, by the way, that we would fail in Target because we had no brand awareness and you would never want to go chain wide in a national chain. And, you know, it would never work. And we decided not to listen to that. And we thrived at Target. And that was really kind of the springboard to, you know, building our distribution. Now, it's still challenging. Like, you know, it's one it's one thing to put your product on the shelf. It's another thing to move it off the shelf. And I think in our case, one of our biggest challenges has always been that we know we kind of cast this wide net in terms of like a demographic and who loves to eat our, you know, our snacks.

15:35Breezy Griffith:So we didn't necessarily have, say, like, you know, keto consumer or vegan consumer, which can make your marketing at a very early stage when you have limited dollars challenging because you have to decide where those go. And I think you can kind of. And so that was that was a that was hard early on as we built the distribution. We had to figure out with limited dollars, what would we do to get the product to move off the shelf? But you did a really good job moving it. I mean, what were some of those key tips and tricks? I mean, were there any like certain marketing levers that you really leaned into that worked well?

16:12Because I mean, with so many brands, there's just so many things that fail and some things you're like, oh, it worked a little bit, but do we have the metrics to show it? Was there anything that you were just like, yes, that actually helped us keep everything moving in Target?

16:23Breezy Griffith:I mean, yes. I think one of the things that we always went back to, which just kind of felt like it was always successful, was like, we make food, we make delicious food, get food in people's mouths. And like, so it wasn't in that way, like overly complicated, but it was like, let's find ways to deploy as many samples as we can. And meanwhile, let's invest in this brand, this brand that we wanted, you know, we wanted to build a brand that and create an emotional connection with our consumer. We built the brand that like we wanted to be part of, you know? And so I think those two things were like very real and like, you know, authentic is such an overused word, but like it was, it was, it was no more complicated than that, you know?

17:10Breezy Griffith:And that's, that's really what we focused on for the first few years was like visibility, trial, and then lean in and build a brand that was a reflection of, you know, you know, what we wanted to, you know, kind of represent in the world. You know, we wanted to be bold. We wanted to create joy. We wanted to be inclusive. And so that just came naturally for us, you know? Well, and I think too, when you're building a brand that is, it was stemmed out of something that you honestly wanted, there's a story behind it. It's, it's something that you were craving and you felt like wasn't in the market.

17:48That's where you're going to have the most success versus say just someone being like, Oh, I'm just going to create this for the sake of creating it. But there's not that heart or that passion or that, you know, that instinct behind it. I think that definitely helps move you forward. Um, but also, I mean, this is a family owned brand. It's you and your mom, you know, early on, which is so special and so amazing for you to have that, you know, to build a brand together. But I mean, as you've grown, what are your roles look like? How are you managing that family owned side of things so that you, everyone has their lane, but you're able to collaborate and everyone can still sit around the dinner table together happily?

18:21Breezy Griffith:Yeah, well, and it's actually, it started with me and my mom, but then very quickly after that, kind of after we created the first iteration of the product, my two best friends joined. So, and, you know, they all moved into my parents' house. And so actually became, you know, me, my mom, my two best friends. And actually today, you know, my sister is, you know, an absolute marketing force. And so, and my, and her fiance is a creative director. so you know people always say like don't go into business with friends and family of which we have done you know over and over again and for us I truly believe that it's a superpower um and part of what has set us apart uh now it doesn't mean it doesn't come with its difficult moments or its hard conversations for sure and I think in particular for me and my mom we had to do quite a bit of like upfront work to figure out like, how did we, how are we business partners and also mom and daughter?

19:26Breezy Griffith:And we really kind of put in a lot of upfront work to figure out like, how do we create this, build this mutual respect that like, we each are bringing different things to the business, equally important things, but different things. And so, and over time, you know, I think our roles, like when you start as a founder, right, even if you're not a solo founder, because we weren't, you're still everybody's doing everything, right? Like, you know, like, we were all part of operations, we were all part of, you know, customer service, we were all part of everything. And as the business grows, you know, in many ways, you're actually roles start to narrow or, you know, become more focused, right?

20:11Breezy Griffith:And I think as founders, we had to figure out the four of us had to figure out what, what were our roles, and some of them were more clear than others. For example, my mom, like she runs all of our innovation. I mean, I am just a taster. So like, she is the genius behind the innovation. Now we have an amazing team that supports her, But she leads that. And as the business has grown, she we have also been able to launch a philanthropic arm of the business. And she leads that as well. Our other co-founder, Lizzie, who, you know, my I owe her big time because in those early days, Lizzie was kind of like a mediator for me and my mom as we, you know, as we figured out how to be in business together.

20:54Breezy Griffith:And Lizzie does all of our, she's like, you know, people and culture and HR extraordinaire. And then Chrissy, our other co-founder, she runs our club business and our food service business. And so all of our roles kind of continue to develop. Now, my role, my day-to-day is like, I was thinking of myself as like an octopus. I have like a tentacle in each part of the business. And I think I kind of view my job as like, I need to understand what is going on in the business as a whole. And I am a firefighter. So usually by the time something comes to me, it requires, you know, solving problems. And I actually really enjoy that.

21:40I think problem solving might be my favorite part of my job. You touched on a couple of great things, but I want to back up. Let's talk innovation. So what innovation are you looking, are you starting, you know, starting out on, evolving? When you think of the brand, I mean, starting with the dip nuts, but what does that look like for the future of the brand?

22:02Breezy Griffith:Yeah, so we started with dip nuts and we grew that from, you know, the first couple of flavors that we launched and we really grew that into like a a really beautiful kind of platform um not you know varying nut types uh you know different ways to dip them whether it was in you know yogurt chocolate and uh flavors fruit flavors uh our lemon bliss is like beloved it's you know zingy and um and then we realized that you know we really kind of created this category dipped nuts. You know, previously it had been very commoditized. You think of it being in the bulk bins and everything. And we'd really been the first to create dipped nuts as like a category.

22:43And when you do that, it can be great, but it's also, it takes time when you become a leader in

22:52Breezy Griffith:the category to continue to grow the ceiling. And we had been asked for years from our consumers about, you know, different ways in which they were hoping that we would, you know, extend and innovate. And we kind of took everything that we'd been hearing because we use them as, you know, really kind of a North star. Right. And then we combine that with, again, back to that, just like not overly complicated, like, what do we want to eat? What do we want to eat that we wish was better for you? And that is where our peanut butter cup was born. And that the peanut butter cup for us was the beginning of building out what we call a snack fiction platform, which is like taking traditional confection, but flipping it on its head, making it more snackable, have less sugar, cleaner ingredients, but not just reinventing things, putting our own twist on it.

23:40Breezy Griffith:And then, as I said, you know, pushing hard for in our peanut butter cup, you know, peanut butter is our first ingredient. It's very snackable. It's actually quite satiating. And so that was confection quickly became the largest part of our business. And now, as you know, as we're, we have a lot of innovation coming out over the next call it six to 24 months, we're looking to not only continue to extend our, you know, and build on our success in confection, but you will see us launch into new categories as well. And it's funny, because sometimes things are without, you know, without, we're not quite ready to share what those are, but funny how things are kind of full circle.

24:26Breezy Griffith:Sometimes some of these categories that our consumers have been asking us to go into over the last couple of years are things that we talked about at the very beginning. And whenever that we kind of get that full circle, you know, I always feel like, uh, you know, your radar goes off and says, yeah, I think this feels right. You know? Um, and as I said, it's a, so I would call it a lot of art and a little bit of science. Well, that's a lot of validation too. And you're like, you know, we already had that idea. Now we're here. The universe is telling us again, we should bring it back. And I had the pleasure at Expo West, you know, a couple months ago, I guess at this point, to try some of that new confection innovation, which was delicious.