323. Functional Foods and AI: Why This Is The Next Big Retail Trend With Suzie Yorke, The Little Cacao Co.

0:00Suzie Yorke:AI is not only for large companies and for rockets and for interplanetary life. The rate at which AI is multiplying and it allows us to get more and more efficient is tremendous. But our time is so precious when you're literally touching 30 different things at the same time. And, you know, my emails are scraped. I wake up, my emails are scraped. My urgent priorities are highlighted in front of me right now. Are you ready to hear more? Welcome to the Bulletproof Your CPG Brand Podcast, the podcast for entrepreneur founders to protect runway, improve execution, compete smarter with the resources they already have.

0:44I'm your host, Dan Loman. Most brands don't have a spend problem. They have a visibility problem. Their data tells them what happened, but it does not always show why it happened, what influenced it, or what to do next. That's where brands leak profit, margin, execution, cash, and runway. Each episode gives you practical strategies to help your brand find hidden profit leaks, earn stronger retailer trust, and create the unfair competitive advantage your brand deserves. Be sure to follow, subscribe, and share this episode with another founder who needs it. And don't forget, there's a free downloadable guide for you at the end of every episode to help you go deeper.

1:21Now, let's roll up our sleeves and get started. Susie, thank you for coming on again today. And again, when I say again, I mean you're here in episode 139, and that was a master class in brand positioning. So thanks again for coming back. And let's start by talking a little bit about yourself and who are you and how did you get to where you're at?

1:42Suzie Yorke:Okay, great. Well, I'm thrilled to be on a second time. It's quite a privilege. I'm an engineer turned marketer. 35 years ago, I graduated McGill and my first job was a bit wild. I took a marketing job at Procter & Gamble. So that was the first time a non-business grad had been hired. I stayed at P &G a pretty long time. I followed my boss to Frito-Lay and then I got a big promotion, big job at Heinz. So I climbed the ladder in CPG. I was a very young director and then I got pregnant with my first daughter. And then I got a big job at Weight Watchers as a VP of marketing. So I had five multinationals.

2:25Suzie Yorke:I did Conagra in the middle. And I became known as a turnaround agent. I was, you know, initially at P &G, I was put on my last assignment was a really tough assignment. The brand had been declining for five years. And there's not a lot of brands at P &G that declined for that long. So I kind of turned that around. Doritos, they hired a new marketing manager because the brand had been declining for three years. Then I launched Hostitos into Canada and then both Ketchup and Weight Watchers were declining brands. So I was starting to kind of find my niche of like, I'm kind of the go in there, fix it, blow things up.

3:05Suzie Yorke:Usually it's people positioning and processes were kind of the three themes. You didn't turn around big ships, with just like, you know, a little promotion or a little bit of fluff. These were hard, hard brands to turn around. And especially Ketchup and Weight Watchers had been really, really battered for 10 years and had some smart VPs before me. And then, you know, I moved to fractional at the end of my last, I did two hyper growth companies as CMO, VP of marketing CMO. And And I really got a feel for like the addiction of taking a brand from 10 million to 100 million. I was really fortunate as a Canadian VP of marketing to do that twice in the late 2000.

3:51Suzie Yorke:And then I was just doing fractional stuff because I was like, well, wait a minute. You know, I do this strategic plan, the sales plan, the innovation, all the consumer research was is was is still my niche. and um i just got an idea to launch good fats because i saw like i read the book from nina teicholtz and i'm like wow there's something happening here i don't there's going to be a lot of doctors writing books i think there was three already in the works and i'm like i'm a brand builder so why don't i just launch a brand knowing like you know chobani had kind of got on to like really kind of exploded to a billion dollars with protein they got known as like the protein yogurt and then gluten-free had taken off.

4:35Suzie Yorke:And then I was just like, well, somebody, Atkins 20 years before had kind of conveyed low carb. It was a bit too complicated for me, but like somebody is going to just tap into this trend of good fats. And indeed, you know, I was right at the right time with the right brand. I was adamant that the brand needed to be called good fats. I did four rounds of research. Consumers were like, oh, I don't know if I want to buy a brand called Good Fats, but those were early adopters. As soon as the keto kind of backwinds, like it took the brand from 8 million year one, the first 12 months were 8 million, 8.2, 47 million year two, 30 million year three, despite COVID.

5:21Suzie Yorke:Year three was smack in the middle of the first year of COVID. So it was really an exercise of everything I had learned before, like how to turn around or launch, you know, Tostitos, we are 50 million year one when I launched it for PepsiCo. Like, how do you kind of take all of that? The difference is it's your own money. It's your own time. It's your own job. You're the founder. You're the one raising funding and kind of saying like, you know, I believe I have something. And it just worked really well. In the end, Love Good Fats wind up being sold to the second largest investor. And I didn't have common shares.

6:00Suzie Yorke:We didn't have millions and millions of dollars of exit as we on paper had prior to COVID. But it was a really good experience in at age 50 learning, you know, you can scale a brand. And I now have like nine years of board governance experience and raising funds. The whole VC world has changed. Like everything post-COVID like has changed dramatically, kind of twice, like during COVID and the immediate two years after. And then the last two years, it's Wild West and packaged goods again. So you you definitely see cycles and GLP-1 and protein and fiber is nuts again. So, you know, like over the 35 years, I've seen a lot of cycles, but these are big cycles that are hitting us.

6:50Suzie Yorke:Like the same as AI is massive, right? We haven't had this amount of massive, massive trend shifting or habit and share changing trends that really reshape entire categories. So it's certainly a fun time to be where we are, to be part of it. It is interesting. Thank you for sharing all that. And that's a lot more than you shared last time. So thank you for all the depth. And I, so I, first of all, I love the fats, the idea behind it. A lot of people don't understand that's important avocado that's good fats etc but getting back to where you're at you're right this is a very different time and brands are struggling to make margin and control it and stuff like that so thank you for positioning that because this is a very difficult time certainly in this country i don't know what it's like in canada but i imagine you're probably at a lot of the similar stresses so yep why did you start little cacao what was the problem you're trying to solve there Yep.

7:58Suzie Yorke:Well, the little cacao company, I think, you know, you get as a as a late blooming entrepreneur, I started at age 50. You get a bug the same as it's hard to just do one Ironman or one marathon, you get a bug, especially with Ironman. And then it's like, you know, I had my bug in my 20s, I took a nine year break, and then I just had to come back in my 40s. And I did seven more. I had the advantage of having like big CPG, a really strong CMO, fractional CMO business, and then a founder CEO. So I had really, I could pick any of the three. I could have also just done to brand building because this was four, nearly five years ago that I stepped out.

8:44Suzie Yorke:And, you know, I had a partial brand built up. And now, you know, we never knew how big TikTok could be and personal brand building could become back then. But I kind of already had an inkling like I could just, you know, if I focus for 12 months on building my brand with the different buckets that I have and expertise, that could have been my full time. at that point, I didn't necessarily want to jump in. Now I look at the thousands of content creators, like I have six years as the marketing person on whatever, and let me give you all this advice. So I kind of knew there is three potential paths that I could be pursuing.

9:29Suzie Yorke:I had a big CMO job of a US company that I'd worked for before and scaled from 10 to 100 million. So I was kind of comfortable in that pushy CMO chair, but I just got drawn, you know, I got drawn back to the entrepreneurship. I was an expert in functional bars. So energy bars, protein bars, fat bars, and that whole world. And I became quite an expert in bars and bars is a really tough category. But then while I was in my CMO job, I had some, like a broker in South America that was looking for a marketer because there was a factory in Ecuador that was looking for, like they were doing some private label and they're finally kind of piercing through a little bit in the US, but they needed a brand builder because they didn't want to stay and just do private label.

10:19Suzie Yorke:It's a tough business. You get squeezed by the big boys down there. So lo and behold, now I know so much about chocolate, but they had a good little chocolate line and had learned and developed how to mix vitamins into the chocolate. And also when I, you know, start when they met me and we started spending some time together, I just said, I want you to put protein in similar to Quest was putting protein in their cups, but, but a whole bunch of really bad, like bad artificial sweeteners and stuff, which is like, I would never, I would never do that. So, so I started working both plays, a functional chocolate, wood adaptogens, ashwagandha, energy, like claims, like benefit claims, and vitamins.

11:13Suzie Yorke:So basically, a chocolate family. And, and it was pretty novel, like I was the brand builder. And these guys had never really done that, we wind up doing a joint venture. And it's hard enough to have partners in either Canada or the US where you speak the same language, you have the same kind of respect of areas of expertise. But their plant was like, it wasn't a fit at all. The plant wasn't, you know, I was bringing 30 years of brand building and they were bringing five years of, you know, a couple of factory runs in the plant. And then, you know, as soon as I raised money that it just went sideways, you know, um then there's money in the bank account and then it's like no you know so so that though got me two years immersed in um learning about chocolate so I really started spending like I quit my full-time job and I really started spending time saying like I know there's something there and sometimes you know it's not always the first partner or the first idea their second idea but I I was like, wow, like I discovered the cacao beans and the beauty of Ecuador and Peru are the two main South American area areas that are quite unique.

12:28Suzie Yorke:Ecuador because of the volcano soil and then Peru because it's the best micro climate, best soil in the world. And I discovered that cacao beans are full of flavanols. And it's like, wait a minute, flavanols are the antioxidant that for 40 years, I have to take my antioxidants to kill those free radicals that are causing my muscles to ache with my killer workouts, right? It's like you need antioxidants to offset the bad free radicals. All athletes knew that. And now I'm touching, holding, and making a product in a factory that's the highest flavanols in the world in terms of percentage and weight and the second highest in antioxidants.

13:17Suzie Yorke:It's 95 ORAC value versus 100 for acai berries. So I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I can't believe this. How come we don't know? like it's kind of like how come we don't know this it's like imagine 30 years ago before a cagli berries uh and i don't know i pronounce it in the french way but i was like whoa so there's something here so bean to bar don't process with alkali have a craft bean to bar factory get the beans from the right soil then they have to ferment in the wood boxes then you have 10 days which daily you rotate the the basin so that you have the right amount of sun for 10 days in a row so it's a 15-day process all the stuff that the culture cell culture cacao beans now are getting called out for because they just put it in a petri dish and then they're like oh we have more flavanols than this like first of all you have to grow in the soil for eight months and you have to If you have flowers and fruits around the little backyard gardens, they don't have fields in South America.

14:23Suzie Yorke:It's little homes with backyard gardens where the family works. The bean develops, develops, develops, flavor, flavor, flavor, flavor. Then you do the proper steps after. Then you bring it in the plant and you do the roasting, not at a crazy temperature. and then you don't soak them in alkali, which is the fast way that, you know, Africa and all of Europe does. Oh, we do the Dutch method and it's look, it's dark and it tastes, it tastes, doesn't taste bitter. Yeah. But it's nothing like it, like it's, I don't even know what's the nutritional value of cacao beans when you strip out all the flavanols.

15:01Suzie Yorke:So I kind of knew there was something. So then I was kind of like, look, you know, I, two years, three years, four years of experience, 10 trips to South America, two factories, one joint venture. And then I started looking at factories in Canada. And lo and behold, there's a factory in Vancouver that the founder, he's had for 10 years, no alkali. He has the license to make vitamins, but he didn't have the actual NPNs. It was like, I can't believe my luck. So I just kind of had to, one foot in front of the other. I had to pivot here, I had to pivot there. Like every time, there's always a chance to just quit, hang up and, you know, like retire, go do podcast.

15:43Suzie Yorke:Like, you know, I could have done like, okay, I'm going to just, you know, spend time with my doggies. But nobody, like, I think there's something huge with a healthier chocolate that comes from the land. Of course, you know, I launched by the time I signed the joint venture, cacao beans was 229 per kg, and then it moved to 10 and$12. So hundreds and hundreds of companies went out of businesses, brands went out of businesses, distributors went out of business. Farmers in South America rejoice because, you know, it's commodity pricing. So they finally were getting paid fairly but africa has been decimated for three or four years and uh but now timing like again i don't know if it's too much of good luck but now the market got contracted big chocolate cpg replaced cacao with other oils and garbage stuff so now there's a surplus of cacao beans and they're going to invade the world starting later this year with the cell-grown cacao, I guess being, I don't know what it's called, powder, mass, whatever it's called.

16:59Suzie Yorke:So, you know, I'm just trying to do my part. And at the same time, Trump says, you know, picks a big battle with Canada. And in Canada, we have to do everything we have to do to kind of foster investing in entrepreneurship here. So I bought a factory, so I don't have any grants or anything yet, but Carney's promising that, you know, if you have people like us who kind of put everything on the line to become an entrepreneur and build Canadian ecosystem, that there's something in it for us. So now I'm, I just got to finish this acquisition. I hired two senior leaders, one in ops and one in finance.

17:44Suzie Yorke:So I can get that off my plate because I don't mind doing it, but it takes me away from my superpower. So my ops guy started today. So it's a pretty happy day. And I'm looking forward to just going back to, you know, my superpower of like building a brand. So I think I got the three Ps, right? Like I pick a good name, products, fabulous and we're going to make sure we you know retain our our uniqueness and the price is right it it's like it's a premium product but not like some you know you look at whole foods some of the chocolates there we're not priced at that price and and i put some with like they all have prebiotic fibers 12 to 16 grams all of them um and some of them have protein i'm launching some without protein now.

18:31Suzie Yorke:I have vitamins on the shelves at Walmart. I'm doing proof of concept in Canada, so I can kind of come down once we get scale and then roll that out into the big leagues in the US. I'm excited that you said that. I love your passion, first of all. I mean, your passion is amazing. Let me back up a little bit. I had the privilege of working closely with a big supplement company, whole food supplement company. Yeah. And they work, well, mega food and not to sing their praises, but this was a long time ago. And the cool thing was I had an opportunity to listen to people like Trina Lodog and Dr. Weil.

19:10So I understand exactly what you're saying. And being a former athlete, I get it. So thank you for sharing all that because this stuff matters that's what makes natural naturals we're solving problems but not just solving the surface level stuff we're digging deeper and mission-based etc so thank you for sharing that so now that you're up and running the problem you're trying to solve is bringing chocolate to to the our world is it also trying to bring everything that you just mentioned the flavanols and everything's by

19:41Suzie Yorke:the way they call them acai berries here but um it's not a process it's a process just kidding yeah but no i love that i think it's process but anyhow so um with that said how is that going in terms of you making that difference for you making helping people understand the why yeah well we're just starting off so you know we i i have a line of vitamins which you just taste the vitamins and then uh consumers are in disbelief retailers are in disbelief is this like this is pure chocolate it. And you don't even need to get into the story of flavanols. It's like, wow, it tastes amazing. And it replaces gummy bears or pills.

20:24Suzie Yorke:So that's been really easy. It's the first, the only in North America. I think there's a little chocolate mushroom in the US, but there's not really just a line of chocolate vitamins. And then the, so it's in proof of concept here. And then we're at, We're on Amazon and we have our website and we're in about 500, 600 stores in Canada. So we're kind of proving our way. It's a bigger hurdle because once a mom gets the kids multivitamin, it's sold itself because first it's a delicious, low sugar, healthy chocolate with cocoa butter. so the absorption of the fat soluble nutrients is 100 versus most of all gummies and all pills you need to take with fat so your mom used to say take your vitamin with food so we have an automatic absorption claim and we have a delicious new way to take vitamins and our sleep is a super super formula we put 5-htp and gaba in addition to the clinical dose of melatonin two adaptogens Like it's like an incredible formula.

21:35Suzie Yorke:So you feel it working right away. So we'll have that in proof of concept. Vitamins is a big category and it's expensive to break through. We have a good little 15 second ad that's airing. But in the meantime, you know, when I was in my first joint venture, I really just wanted to have like a functional chocolate with protein in it and, and kind of, you know, at least have a healthy version of Quest mini cups, like pure chocolate. So I have a little 13 gram chocolate mini cup. I put nibs on it because nibs are all the longevity gurus. You know, you make sure that the nibs are not processed with alkali.

22:14Suzie Yorke:And then you can literally just have mega doses of antioxidants, flavanols, which is sprinkling nibs on your Greek yogurt. So I put the nibs on the chocolate. That's a bigger thing in South America. It hasn't hit here yet. So it's like, okay, come on, come on, I'll bring that. That's my little doggy from my rescue from Greece. And then I just said like, okay, well, there's protein in the little mini cups and let's just do bars. So in Canada, there's two brands that have dabbled into like a pure chocolate bar with protein. Then protein exploded. So I have, you know, chocolate with protein already.

22:56Suzie Yorke:um i'll just i'll just give you a sample this is just an old mock-up but it kind of looks like it's a chocolate bar with protein and there's nibs on the top um so there's two brands that have a little bit of protein lots of prebiotic fiber 12 to 16 grams but it tastes like delicious pure chocolate because my the factory that i just bought so in january i wind up buying the the a little factory that can make my chocolates. And we conch in the factory. So we don't just, 90 % of the chocolate, they just buy the pieces and they just melt them and then temper them and mold them. And that's it, you know, and cool them and that's it.

23:41Suzie Yorke:But the magic, especially if you want to get either, you know, like adaptogens, or if you want to get protein and extra fiber, you put it in the conch. so that's where it can get smooth it takes 24 hours not 20 minutes so it's you know it's just about bean to bar because I don't roll I don't want to roast uh I don't want to be bringing in unroasted beans into Canada I get my container straight from Peru so it like for many many reasons like if they're roasted by the time they hit the container we're not going to have any contamination. So I can't say bean to bar, but like most consumers don't know what that is anyway.

24:22Suzie Yorke:So it's like roasted nibs and the cacaus. And then I melt and conch everything at the factory. So the chocolate is much, much better. And the brand that I bought with the factory has it all has a couple million dollars off business. It's a 30 year old brand. The brand's called Ross. It's a diabetic gentleman that started selling diabetic chocolate 30 years ago. So I kind of, for many reasons, you know, I have my new brand. I have a factory that I can buy with shares because I don't, you know, I didn't buy the factory with cash. I'm still cash strapped. And I inherit a brand that has a little bit of volume and, you know, EDI is connected at Loblaws and Sobe.

25:12Suzie Yorke:So it's, you know, I instantly grew by a couple million dollars too. So I'll take that. But the idea is to build a mega brand, you know, healthy chocolate, the best cacao process, very, very light processing, retain all the flavanols and the antioxidants because there's no alkali, high fiber, high protein, rich, authentic cacao flavor, 100 % single source from Peru. that's like it hasn't i think you know i think it resonates but i have a brand to build with with that in mind that's very exciting i would never put hershey in the same bucket with you no yeah no because yeah i wouldn't so i apologize for that but what i'm getting at is the consumer that is looking at what's happening with uh the reese's peanut butter cups and stuff like that how they're getting in trouble and getting exposed the cool thing is that negative awareness for them I think opens more for you, which is really exciting.

26:15Suzie Yorke:Yeah. The high-level trends are really in my favor because the price has come all the way back down to$3. Now there's a surplus. So number one, it's because Africa's crops got resolved. But then so many people exited, like so much kilotons exited. Now there's sell cacao. Now, all big, large chocolate companies have contracts with lab grown, cell grown. So the capacity is going to become even more available. So the poor farmers are getting a pretty bad deal in that whole thing. And I have an established brand that's hopefully claiming the high ground with a real cacao bean. It's not the little cell cacao beans.

27:06Suzie Yorke:It's like the real stuff. And there's so much bad press with big chocolate. You know, for 10 or 20 years, it was child labor. And now it's like everything. It's they all remove chocolate, like Hershey's removed cacao entirely from their products. Then the grand, the grandchild like complain and then, okay, they're going to put 2 % back in and like they're getting rightfully so, you know, the candy bars. when you kind of see not only do they really destroy the cacao bean, but then, you know, you have the bad oils and you have all of the additives. Like it's by the time you get the candy bar in your hand and your mouth, like it's really not a good product.

27:56Suzie Yorke:So with what we know now, you know, and we're all trying to, The FDA is focused on processing and obviously dyes. So I hope that, you know, I have a product that for those who want like a higher quality chocolate, who can afford it because chocolate is, you know, like a treat. So we're all very Canada and the US, you know, there's a lot of people that don't have enough money to make ends meet for the groceries at the end of the week. So I think, you know, building a brand in such an economic challenging times is not easy, but hopefully there's, you know, enough of the right trends that can allow us to get off the ground and going because that's what kills the ability, even from big CPD when they launch brands, you know, you have to have a lot do things go right uh and then spend a lot of money for things to to work in your favor thank you for sharing i what i do in my my day job so to speak is i help brands navigate that what you're talking about and i will tell you i'm going to send you something that i did a long time ago and and the point being is that mission-based those products that that speak to that consumer that's where the opportunity is yeah and that's where you're skating to where the puck is going before the play starts.

29:23That's why I made that reference. But the point being is that I think you're well positioned. So I'm really excited about what you're doing. And the cool thing is, because I know I'm watching the clock, because I know we're kind of limited on our time and I want to respect it. So the cool thing is now that you've got that, you're classically trained in big CPG, same as I was, which by the way, the reason I'm saying that is because the training is unbelievable. I wish small brands had that. So they have us hopefully to help them get that education, one. And then two, you've got all that fractional training.

29:57So thank you for sharing that and putting that together. So one of the things that I'm really impressed with you about as an individual is how you mentor other brands, how you take a leadership role. So I'm going to merge two of the topics that I mentioned to you. So you've got LinkedIn and you've got the small brands. The way that you encourage and help and support those brands, hats off to you. That is so cool. Can you talk a little bit about your passion around helping those brands? What do you see there? What are you trying to accomplish? For me, my mission is to help brands like yours get more runaway available resources so that you can do more good on our behalf.

30:38Okay, that's kind of me. What is it that you do? Because I'm sure that you have something very similar.

30:44Suzie Yorke:Yeah, it just started off, you know, as soon as I stepped away from Good Fats and then I took the CMO job, I had one founder, another founder, another founder. Hey, can I get 15 minutes? Can I get this? Can I get that? So like I would pick up the phone, I had a full-time job and it was always the same thing. So it was always like, my brand's not growing. I'm not sure why I don't know what to do. And then they would show me the packaging. Then I would ask what's the positioning. And I was like, Oh dear. So, you know, what I was trained and I've done for 30 years, which is the, I call, I kind of call it the four P's to keep it really simple.