Masienda's Storytelling Model Brought Fame, And Eight Figure Sales

0:00Is Millie Bobby Brown entering the coffee category one of the stranger things to happen this year? What's the resolution in legal battles between Miyoko Shinner and her former vegan cheese company? Who's taking the reins at Ben & Jerry's? And how long-form content has helped one brand get into Whole Foods markets?

0:28Hi, everyone. I'm your host, Carol Ortenberg. On the Nosh Podcast, we go inside the business of natural, organic, sustainable, and healthy food. Today, the team discusses a new entrant to the celebrity coffee space, the resolution between Miyoko Shinner and her vegan cheese company, and leadership changes for Ben & Jerry's. Then we hear from Masienda founder and CEO Jorge Gaviria and creative film and video director Daniel Klein about why the company has found success turning its attention to long-form content. Joining us today are reporters Lucas Southerd. Hi. Hello, and Adrienne DeLuca. Hi there, Carol.

1:11Hi. And of course, Editor-in-Chief Jeff Kleinman. Thrilled to be here. Guys, I have to admit I'm kind of low on the caffeine today, but it sounds like I'll have a new blend to try out. Stranger Things and Enola Holmes star Millie Bobby Brown Last week launched her new coffee line under her Florence by Mills brand. There's a pretty robust array of products, including ground and whole bean coffee, flavored syrups, coffee concentrates, and cold brew coffee bags, all of which are launching in the U.S. and Europe. Jeff, you interviewed Emma Chamberlain, founder of Chamberlain Coffee at Nosh Live. What do you think about this launch?

1:50Well, I think it's interesting. They don't really operate on the same platform. right? So Millie Bobby Brown is known for her work on television and streaming cable, whereas Emma Chamberlain is much more of a social media influencer. That said, I'm not sure that there's ever been a situation where Millie Bobby Brown's coffee consumption has been part of any of her character arcs. Although I haven't seen Enola Holmes, it's apparently pretty good, but that would seem to fit more with the tea brand, right? So are you saying, Jeff, that there's not enough like stranger things tie-ins or that she just doesn't have enough like coffee drinking credentials to really make this feel original?

2:45The thing about Emma Chamberlain is she's famous for the things she consumes in one sense, right? And that's a big part of her character. Now, Millie Bobby Brown's characters are famous for their consumption of things like Eggo waffles, which her character, Eleven, in Stranger Things is lured around by. So you think she missed it? She should have been doing frozen waffles instead of coffee? Maybe like a Belgian boys collab or something instead. Ooh, now we're talking. I think there's room for something there. And again, I am not a Millie Bobby Brown stan, and I'm not super knowledgeable about what her fan base is like.

3:46But I think it's hard at times to make these things work without something to close the loop. She may very well have that. And I'm not taking the position that she doesn't. I'm just saying that if you're going to go for it, there should be a reason. And I think the consumer appreciates that. Florence by Mills also is the name of her cosmetics brand. And certainly that to me is a little bit more of a fit as she grew up as an actor. There's been a lot of discussion around her clothing, her makeup, and how she's really become kind of a style icon for our younger generation. But you're right. I haven't seen as much about coffee.

4:34We'll see how this develops. I know the Florence by Mills brand is also going to be used for her new pet care line. Does she have pets? I think so. I think she has a dog. I hope so. The picture had her with a dog in the announcement. That's good to hear. It's good to hear. I mean, look, Donald Trump famously hates dogs. I wouldn't, you know, be surprised if there was a Trump pet food out there. It wouldn't resonate, just like Trump vodka did not resonate. How did Trump steaks do? Probably better than Trump vodka. As long as you like your steaks, like, well done, then I think they probably did pretty well.

5:19that would be the way to bring that back, is these steaks are specifically designed to be overcooked. Yeah. I have a quick update. I did a search. There is a lot of dog content on her Instagram. It appears she helps get dogs adopted. I have not quite seen her own dog, but I'm guessing she probably adopted a dog and is now working with whatever agency that is. Well, Quick Search says that she has a three-legged dog named Whiskey and that her family has six dogs in total. So, OK, we've cleared her. She's a pet enthusiast. We're there. I'd like to point out that in the one thing that I looked up when it came to this was that she's engaged to Jon Bon Jovi's son, which is fine.

6:10Great. You know, I'm sure they're going to be a happy couple. So she's going to be Millie Bobby Bon Jovi. Millie Bobby Banchovy. She could start a Florence by Mills anchovy brand. Anchovy by Bon Jovi. Maybe she gets a pet seal. And so it's both the pet care line and the seafood line. We're done. Adrienne, talking about platforming this, when I showed you the product line images, you had some strong feelings about this. Yeah. You know, I get what we're all saying. You know, she's making this kind of like her, her lifestyle brand thing she's apparently interested in. But I took an issue with just like the packaging and the color and like not changing that up between these different brands.

6:57You know, the coffee lives on its own separate website. It's yes, it's the same brand name as her beauty line, but it looks like it is a beauty line. You know, to Jeff's earlier point, it kind of looks like it maybe could pass as a tea or something, but coffee, I was not really getting that at all. And I shared with you all earlier that may have shown a picture of the coffee to a family member this weekend who just asked, is that a box of tampons? So I don't know, maybe something to consider, Millie. We found another platform for her to go into, Adrienne. That works well. See, that would be a great line extension for the personal care line.

7:37coffee i'm not seeing it speaking like in a totally non-sarcastic way i absolutely agree she has shared the journey into young adulthood on a variety of media with a variety of consumers And I think that there is something there that resonates, right? Millie Bobby Brown tampons, you know, is, again, something that makes some level of teen vogue-oriented sense. We'll have to keep an eye out on that, see how Millie Bobby Brown evolves her coffee connoisseur persona. In the meantime, Freddie also saw the resolution of the long simmering back and forth between founder Miyoko Shinner and Miyoko's, the vegan creamery she founded.

8:43It's a very quick refresher that started back in February when Miyoko sent out a press release that Miyoko was no longer CEO, a transition that was actually months old. And then that was followed by lawsuits by both parties with allegations including the theft of trade secrets and claims of gender discrimination. Now, I don't want to relitigate those claims, but last week, the two parties posted rather generic statements to each of their social media channels, stating that both complaints had been settled and essentially complementing each other's hard work. There's a lot of hard work to be done there in explaining how Miyoko's, the brand, no longer employs Miyoko, the CEO, it's going to be a pretty big step change, I think, for that business.

9:32One of the things in Miyoko's complaint was that Miyoko's was still using her name in imagery. And with this settled, I noticed that the about page talks about Miyoko and how she founded the company and how she expanded the company before switching to more of a broader narrative, let's say, talking about all the team members and the company that was built. But they are kind of going back to referencing her in that storytelling. It's hard to get around the cult of personality that can build up around a founder. And, you know, it's good IP to name the brand after yourself. You just hope there's a cleaner breakup when you break up with yourself.

10:15Well, I think the industry is happy to see this settled and interested to see what both parties do next. Adrian, you pointed out that Miyoko is leading vegan tours of Italy, and I know she's heavily involved with her nonprofit as well. And then on the Creamery side, you know, they've talked a lot about how they want to broaden the platform and reach new consumers. So we'll have to see how they do that in the upcoming year. But speaking of company leadership changes, last week, Ben and Jerry's also announced some news. Lucas, you covered this. What happened? So Ben & Jerry's announced that they were promoting their longtime CMO, Dave Stever, who has been with the company for 34 years.

11:00He started as a tour guide, running tours for the legacy ice cream brand. And now he's the new CEO. he's taken over from Matthew McCarthy who ran Unilever's foods uh North American foods division for about six years and then took over Ben Jerry's has been um the CEO for the last five years um so it's it's a kind of a fun story great that they're hiring or they're promoting from within and And obviously, Stever has a lot of institutional knowledge about the company. So we'll kind of see what comes of it. Now, Carol, you always thought that Matt had pretty much drunk the psychedelic Kool-Aid over at Ben & Jerry's anyway, right?

11:49I mean, he came in as a Unilever exec. And oftentimes when you see that happen, let's just say some of that creative spirit sometimes disappears. It becomes a little more corporate. And I actually think under his leadership, the company became even more outspoken about societal and political issues. Yeah, it's an interesting change, too, because, look, Ben & Jerry's and, you know, the new CEO sort of goes back to those days. Originally, yeah, it was a it was sort of a capitalist product with purpose. It also, you know, was really well known for the way it wanted to treat its employees and its sort of new wave of pop culture references.

12:39Seeing it get explicitly political over the past few years is something that's, you know, actually, as we see now, proven to be kind of risky for some companies. So he definitely kept those purpose irons in the fire. It's funny, right out of college, I actually did consumer research and one of my clients was Ben and Jerry's. And I'll tell you, we tested a lot of new products, smoothies. I think there were novelties, some other ones that never made it to market. Not once did we test, you know, mission or consumer sentiment or brand personality. It was all very product focused. Yeah. I mean, I wonder if at the time you're doing it, it was just assumed to be really baked in to the brand.

13:32Half baked, maybe. Oh, it's a good one. I got a Jeff pun in. No, you didn't. I'm doing my best. You know, it's hard. You got big shoes to fill. They're small shoes that have tiny feet. Honestly, it felt like mostly they were trying to figure out new categories to go into because it seemed like they felt the pint market was saturated. And so they needed to expand into other parts of the freezer case. And that was the main vibe I got. But I was just a peon straight out of college trying to get people to try the latest Ben and Jerry's flavor on Newberry Street or run focus groups, which required one required a wall of microwaves and we blew out all the power to the center several times.

14:25Needless to say, that product never made it to market. I think I need more explanation on a wall of microwaves. Yeah. Yeah, was this the hot ice cream? Yeah, we're talking about an ice cream brand here. Ice cream soup. It was a play on a hot fudge sundae that they were trying to create. Okay. Okay. I'd still be interested. Maybe they should go back to that one. It sounds like unethical to put a sundae in a microwave to me. One of the ways Ben and Jerry's is typically consumed is people microwave the whole pint and then eat a slightly melted pint of ice cream. What? No. No. Google it. I don't know.

15:09To loosen it up within the pint. Like a solid seven seconds in the microwave. That's all you're allowed. I've heard you eat it out of the pint and people actually like it to be a little melty, but I'll have to do a little research on this. Ice cream. That implies cold. I'm officially disappointed in humans for this one. To be fair, a lot of plant-based ice creams will advise you to microwave them. So maybe that's where you're picking up on this because a lot of the base ingredients freeze at a lot lower temperatures. So in a normal freezer, it stays like rock hard. I thought it was just to kill the plants.

15:46That too. You want to hear them scream before you eat them? I like it when they're dead. I don't know about you guys, but in the pint market, there is apparently, I say apparently because as we discussed, I don't have a sweet tooth. I'm not really the core ice cream consumer. There's a lot of like rotation between brands and wanting to explore new novelty flavors. And I think part of Ben and Jerry's marketing tactics really kept it front of mind where you were purchasing more than just a flavor, though certainly they have done a lot of collabs recently. Last year, they also launched a few new flavors with Tony's Chocolonely.

16:29In addition to launching some co-branded chocolate bars with them, that whole move was done to support Tony's mission, which has now been adopted by Ben and Jerry's as well, which is to eradicate modern slavery within the cocoa supply chain. So looking to pay farmers, living wages, reduce deforestation, child labor, all of those problems that have continued to plague the cocoa supply chain. Lots of storytelling going on there, which ties in great to our featured interview with Jorge Gaviria, the CEO and founder of Heritage Mexican ingredient line Macienda. Jorge and I sat down with Daniel Klein, Macienda's creative director of film and video.

17:15Now, you may know Jorge from a recent Capital One advertisement, but beyond that, video has played a really important role in the company's development. The three of us discussed how Macienda has pulled away a bit from influencer marketing, or at least paid influencer marketing, instead choosing to focus on long-form content. It's a strategy that's paying off the two said, both financially and creatively. Not only is the brand headed into Whole Foods nationwide later this year, a jump they believe occurred because they had such a passionate audience following, but also two of Macienda's videos, as well as Jorge's cookbook, are finalists for the James Beard Awards this year.

17:57So let's learn more about this marketing strategy. Hi, Jorge. Daniel, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks for having us, Carol. Very good to be here. Thank you. So Masienda's strategy and product has really evolved over time. How did the company start and what do you guys make now? Masienda is the Better Masa company. Masa is the building block for tortillas, tamales, arepas, pupusas. It's really the connective tissue of Latin America. And we make a dehydrated version of that to just add water and then you basically have that dough to shape all of those products. And what has the distribution or path to market, I won't say retail, look like from Hacienda?

18:45It took us almost nine years to build the supply chain just to get to where we are today. And to build it organically, we work with food service. So that has really been kind of the channel that we specialized in before anything. It's typically an afterthought for direct-to-consumer or grocery retail brands. And we kind of started with the hardest part first, I think, and are now working our way toward kind of that fun kind of mass distribution component with retail grocery. And, you know, the supply chain is based on corn. And in the U.S., there's not much to really speak of in terms of really high quality corn.

19:16So it's taken us a number of years to build a supply chain to kind of really meet consumers where they're at in terms of values, regenerative farming, sustainable practices that taste really great. And so to do that, we sort of sold that raw ingredient for a long time to chefs in the food service industry as we were kind of building up sufficient scale on the supply chain side. You know, a very big part of what we want to do is encourage folks to be real active consumers as opposed to passive. So really kind of take the time to connect with that food at a deeper level. And it's also just an amazing category.

19:46It's about a$48 billion category globally, 12 billion in the U.S. on the rise and just a really sleepy space where there hasn't been any innovation. And so this is a long-winded wave thing. We are the better Masa the company. And it's taken us about nine years to get here. And I think you, you know, really ramped up the food service side of things right as COVID hit as well. Yeah, the pandemic happened right after we bought over a million pounds of corn for food service specifically, and all restaurants shut down. And so very quickly, you know, we scrambled, we actually thought it was sort of a pre-mortem, we thought we were going to go out of business and kind of a graceful kind of moment of like pause and silence.

20:26And then D2C just became an incredibly sort of prolific part of our business and is now, you know, what, 65 % of the business that we have today as a eight-figure company. And as we pivoted in direct-to-consumer during the pandemic and that those numbers really held, you know, we decided if we're going to be playing at all in the direct-to - consumer space, we need to really have a robust storytelling strategy for social and also paid social. And, you know, I had kind of, I had explored paid advertising beforehand, just, I mean, like as a, as a, not even an armchair expert, like just like really very, I very remotely dabbled with paid social beforehand.

21:05And I knew that it's basically, it's a content game. You know, you have to, to be successful, you have to constantly innovate with what you're working, tested as much material as possible, different audiences. And you really need a strong video team, especially as the algorithm is prioritizing video. So I knew that as we were getting the direct direct consumer and we raised a little bit of money to double down on that channel, video was mission critical to what we were going to do. And it also just so happened that it's a passion that I've had for a long time and a great excuse to work with my buddy, Daniel.

21:35It's great that you bring up, you know, the size of the market, the size of the company to set the stage for what we're going to talk about today. How big is Masienda? end up? Yeah, it's a great question. So we started really incorporating video strategy at about, I think we were kind of about the$4 million or$5 million run rate. And since then, we've jumped up. So I mean, really, we track that, attribute that change directly to kind of our strategy with regards to video and audience acquisition. Jorge, let's get to what everyone wants to know specifically. How has this financially benefited the company?

22:14I think in terms of content strategy, when Daniel came on board, Bon Appetit was imploding. Murr had just imploded. And that Test Kitchen model that had really launched an entire YouTube channel was seemingly up for grabs. And we were really, really chomping at the bit to get after that category of content. And we realized really quickly, one, it's super hard to do that on YouTube. Maybe the moment that window wasn't there. And two, the type of content that we wanted to create didn't lend itself as apparently to that channel as it did Instagram. So we were doing these long-form docs or short-form docs, but longer-form content as far as social goes on YouTube and not seeing those results.

22:59We weren't seeing as drastic of an audience growth trajectory that we had hoped. And then we started kind of basically thinking about how that would look on social Instagram first and kind of working backward from that point. It was sort of in that transition that kind of that storytelling model was sort of applied for short format. And we started to see kind of a breakaway hit in terms of audience acquisition and what that translated to for for sales across the site. I mean, we had long heard that performance marketing and social strategy were critical to growing a D2C brand, but couldn't quite relate to it because we hadn't gone through those motions.

23:38And in just the last year, direct-to-consumers become 65 % of the business, and then food service and increasingly now retail grocery. We've been able to triple year-over-year our direct-to-consumer channel. So that, I mean, those metrics are kind of directly correlating that we're seeing with our growth in followers on Instagram, for example. So I mentioned 10 % growth month over month. That's tracking to about triple year over year. We're seeing the same kind of results on the ad side. You know, our return on ad spend, which is kind of the metric everybody thinks about with performance marketing, is consistently around 400 % to 500%, which is unusual for a consumable brand.

24:20And I think we're lucky. Our customer acquisition costs are pretty low. They're between$20 and$30, depending on the season, which is great. And our AOV is like between$120 and$140, which is, again, very unusual for a food company. But the reason we're able to do that is because we're offering complementary tools and experiences that really enrich that masa experience that we want people to have. So a tortilla press, right? If that's added to your basket and two bags of masa, you're walking away spending$110 and you're really kind of building an experience that's going to emotionally connect you with the product we want you to keep consuming after that, which is our masa.

24:57So Daniel, we've come to the point where you enter the picture. What on earth did Jorge say to get you to join Masienda? And what was really appealing about this proposition to you? Well, I met Jorge like eight years ago, and he actually reached out to me, kind of cold called me to make their original Macienda documentary. After doing research on Macienda and seeing how our values aligned, I offered Jorge on our first film project to be paid in equity instead of, you know, in cash or however I would usually be paid. Sadly, he turned me down, but our relationship continued and we have, you know, worked on projects over the years.

25:38And so when Jorge came to me a little over a year ago with the idea of working full time, it was really appealing to me, first off, because I value the company and the work that they do. So much of what I've put focus on over the years has been companies that are able to make sustainability scalable, that really work with farmers, that improve lives and also improve the food that we eat. And I think Masienda does that through and through. And then also over the years, I've done a combination of documentary and then working in like PBS and advertising. And this was an opportunity to really combine those things together.

26:18Having made documentaries for many years, I think it can be a very frustrating process for a lot of filmmakers is that, you know, they're not getting their film scene in front of people. Maybe they reach a tiny film festival audience or something like that. But like they have these dreams of impacting, but like what is the impact, you know, whereas working with a company like Masienda that works with, you know, over 2000 farmers who are actually like being impacted by the sales that we do here in the US by the advertisements, etc. By telling their stories and enticing the, you know, the imagination of our consumer like that to me feels like real impact.

27:03Daniel, what's your role at the company and how do you kind of fit into the team and the structure at Masienda? I'm the creative director of film and video, but I really work with a team, a core team, which includes Jorge, my colleague, Hallie and Allegra. And we sort of come up with a strategy, a monthly, bi-monthly strategy to release a wide variety of enriching video content, which includes recipes, documentary stories, fun ride along restaurant review type films. Um, so I'm part of that team that sort of ideates and then executes the, you know, those stories. Um, and I just happen to be the one who's like more focused on video and ends up, you know, filming and going on doing all the fun stuff, like traveling to, you know, restaurants and farmers in Oaxaca and doing all these wonderful things.

27:58But we're, we're a team that sort of like collectively creates this strategy for, for our films and photos and videos. While everyone else toils away in an office somewhere. I do feel bad about it, actually. That would be me. Yeah. Or I used to come with me on the trips. It's too busy now. What kind of content are you guys producing? We've sort of learned the players now. Let's talk about the actual content that's coming out of your work, Daniel. We've learned that social comes first. So we are making sure that Instagram is sort of a priority in the content that you create. But we do that from like a much larger, bigger storytelling picture.

28:43So we're creating regular YouTube films, really. They're short films, like between three and nine minutes long, that tell the stories of chefs, farmers, foragers, all of these different players that connect with Masienda in some way. I was just in Oaxaca filming the like crawfish, crawfish harvest that our farmers there do. So it's not really directly related to like buying masa in Whole Foods in the United States or off of our website, but it is like connected to our brand and who we are. So then we take these stories, these films that we make, and we adapt them across many of our platforms. We make a long form YouTube version, you know, six minutes long that people are interested in film or who are really connected to us as a company will watch completely.