Glonuts

0:00Grover Light:Welcome to the Emerging Brands podcast. Sharing the stories behind brands you'll want to shop next. I'm your host, Kelly Bennett. I am a New York City-based brand strategist for CPG Food and Beverage Brands. In each episode, I'll take you behind the scenes of founders that are building better-for-you products and bringing them to market. it. Also, I talk to brand builders, retailers, industry experts, and tastemakers who help bring those cool products to your shopping cart.

0:30Kristin Charbo:You will hear stories of real-life founders,

0:34Grover Light:their launch strategies, and practical advice you could use to grow your own brand or simply discover what's next on shelf. And the best part is you could shop all the brands featured on the show. This podcast is brought to you by Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds is the go-to platform built for creator-powered retail activations. They're connecting everyday creators with CPG brands to generate shelf-level awareness, drive in-store momentum, and generate authentic content in markets that matter the most. Go to hummingbirds.com for all the details and let them know I sent you. Now, let's dive into the new episode.

1:19Grover Light:Hi, everyone. Welcome back to a new episode of Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. Today, we're going to talk about donuts, but these aren't your average donuts that you grew up on. These are super cool, super delicious. I personally just had them at the Coconut Cult activation, and I was genuinely blown away with how delicious they were. So Kristen Charbo, she is the co-founder and CEO of Glow Nuts, and I'm so happy to talk with you today.

1:54Kristin Charbo:I'm so excited to talk to you too, so thank you for having me.

1:58Grover Light:Of course. I love a Better For You product. I love a spin on nostalgia, and I feel like your product really checks those boxes. But if anyone isn't familiar yet with Glow Nuts, could you give us the really quick description of it? first before we dive in.

2:16Kristin Charbo:Yes. So glow nuts are healthy, yummy donut things. They're not exactly like donuts. They're a little different. They're made with clean ingredients that help you glow, like coconut almonds, some coconut butter, and we sweeten with a little monk fruit sweetener. So they're one gram of sugar, they're gluten-free, and they are raw vegan as well.

2:38Grover Light:That is so cool. And I was saying this before we hit record. I didn't even realize they were raw vegan, which, you know, is I was vegan for a really long time and like the raw vegan movement. And I thought that was like a cool way of showing just an elevated raw vegan product with glow nuts.

2:58Kristin Charbo:Yeah, we I mean, I would say that part was not intentional when I was creating this recipe. It just kind of it happened to be that. But I love the aspect of raw vegan because it's keeping a lot of the nutrients in the product because we're not cooking, you know, any of the nuts or seeds that are there. And so like those nutrients are staying intact. And it's also really helpful for us to keep like a nice, moist, dense consistency for the product as well, because if it was a baked good, it could dry out really quickly.

3:34Grover Light:Totally. So what did you want to do different in the industry? Because again, you are donut things. I like how you put it. It's not like a one for one, like exactly like a baked donut, but it's your interpretation of like, what would be a better for you donut? I would love to hear what you wanted to do differently in this space. Like what were you seeing as the white space or the gap of products?

4:00Kristin Charbo:So I'll be completely transparent. My husband and I, when we started this brand. We're not trying to start a donut brand at all. We were not even trying to start a CPG brand. We just wanted to own a coffee shop and we made glow nuts to go with the coffee. And we really designed them as just like a product that could solve a problem for me because I have polycystic ovarian syndrome. So I try to eat a very clean diet, low in sugar. And that was really like, I grew up eating Hostess. Like that was my favorite childhood snack. And so coffee and donuts were just a natural fit. So we made Glow Nuts to go with the coffee, started popping up our coffee cart around LA and Glow Nuts kind of went viral and took off.

4:45Kristin Charbo:And all of a sudden we were like, I think this is the thing that we should focus on. And we became founders of a donut brand without really knowing anything about CPG or manufacturing food. So we've made a lot of mistakes. And we like kind of went into this with almost no strategy. But I think to answer that question, for me, there was a major white space in like clean ingredient indulgences that were low in sugar because you could find things made with, you know, maple syrup or coconut sugar or cane sugar, but nothing was really low in sugar where it wasn't going to spike my blood sugar. And I am very conscious of blood sugar because for me with PCOS, like spiking my blood sugar up and down constantly just has a very major impact on how I feel day to day and contributes like massively to my fatigue.

5:49Kristin Charbo:So that was really important for me. And there just wasn't anything in the market at the time that solved that problem. So we just wanted it to be like a daily, like have a donut every day. Like who doesn't want to eat a donut every day, you know? Love donuts.

6:07Grover Light:No, count me in. So that's so interesting how it originally started as a coffee cart concept. Yeah. The product that you added to your coffee because donuts and coffee. But then this was the thing that really took off. What made you feel maybe confident? maybe isn't the right word, but like excited or got that gut feeling of like, oh, this is the direction we need to go into.

6:35Kristin Charbo:Yeah. So I would say two things. In our first year of business, Grover and I were working out of our one bedroom apartment, making glow nuts in our home kitchen. We were a certified home kitchen operation and he and I together handmade, packed and delivered 100 ,000 donuts, just the two of us. 100 ,000? Yes. Out of our home kitchen, we would get up in the morning, we would coat the donuts from the night before. I would go deliver them. He would clean the kitchen. We'd come back. We'd get back in the kitchen at 4 p.m. and start making the donuts for the next day. And it was like that on repeat, honestly, five or six days a week.

7:16Kristin Charbo:Um, and it was, it was that, that kind of showed us, okay, we really have product market fit. These are selling, like we were selling out of everything, you know, I mean, obviously it's small quantities, but no, but that's a lot of donuts to, to be in your kitchen. Yeah. Um, it was, it was wild. So that, that definitely showed us we had product market fit. And then there was just so much organic sharing of our product on social media. And people were, you know, DMing us saying how obsessed they were that we like they hadn't eaten a donut in years. And so we that also kept us going in a way that we were like, OK, this is a product that people really feel they need and kind of became obsessive about.

8:07Kristin Charbo:and so you know we started building a community around this product as well and so we invested our wedding budget into the brand after that first year moved into a commercial kitchen continued to make glow nuts by hand for the next like three and a half four years which was so crazy and just last year finally found a manufacturing partner that could help us scale That's incredible.

8:35Grover Light:Also, the fact that you use the wedding budget in the business. I mean, I live for stories like that. To me, that's like real life. That's genuine. When you are an entrepreneur, when you are a founder and you are going all in, it's those moments that you're like, oh, we're really doing this. Like we're going all in.

8:54Kristin Charbo:Yeah, we are fully.

8:57Grover Light:You're in. What was your career background prior to this?

9:03Kristin Charbo:I worked in hospitality and sales specifically. So I worked for different hotel groups and in travel and always in a sales role. And Grover worked in tech doing product design and product management. So I think we've both always been creative people. I never worked in food professionally, but I've always loved food and grew up with a lot of weight issues and like health conditions that have kind of pushed me to finding alternatives that can like, you know, solve my, my health problems while also satisfying my desire to eat delicious food. Right.

9:51Grover Light:And that's something too, that struck me with your story of how you were very much an athlete, but still loved a sweet treat, but then also realizing own health issues and needing to find alternatives, which again, for a brand, especially in the better for you space, I feel like the ones that are very genuine of like, this was a personal need. I feel like really resonate the most with consumers, right? Cause it's, it feels very genuine and authentic. And like you said, community building around, around.

10:22Kristin Charbo:I think we've always, um, a couple of things, like when we were designing the brand, I mean, when we first started, we were just in plastic deli containers that we bought on Amazon and we slapped a plastic label on them. When we actually started working on like, what does this brand look like? We really made a conscious effort to lead with fun over health because for me, growing up, I felt like I was constantly on a diet. I was on Weight Watchers like twice before even graduating high school. There was just always like, I always felt like I was missing something. You know, it was like I couldn't eat the things I wanted to eat, but the alternatives like they weren't that good and they weren't fun, you know.

11:06Kristin Charbo:And so when we made Glow Nuts, we really wanted the full experience to be fun. We also never wanted you to feel like any guilt. I hate the term guilt free because I don't want you to feel any guilt around food. I just want there to be an option for you that if you want to eat the healthy option today, it's here and it's still going to be a fun experience. But by all means, eat the regular donut, you know, whenever you want to and don't feel guilty about it. Just like know that you might need a nap after.

11:40Grover Light:And I think it just depends on like what mood you're in or what you have going on or, you know, it's available. but I like how you said of not having guilt around food. I think that's such a huge issue for so many, myself included. I've gone through that myself, but sometimes the better for you space gets a little like guilt-free or like you don't have to feel guilty about eating it. And that type of messaging honestly does not resonate with me because I don't want to feel guilty about anything I'm eating. So I love that you just touched upon that because that also is a differentiation of just how you all are communicating and just the funness, the bright pink on your packaging.

12:24Grover Light:I totally get the vibe. And also too, when I saw it on the, as a topping at the coconut cult activation, it also was in that company of brands that are super fun and out there and also making these like quote unquote, healthier things so much more accessible because they are very welcoming too.

12:46Kristin Charbo:Yeah. Accessible and approachability, I think is a big piece. And then also just like not taking any of it too seriously. Like we're very cheeky on, you know, our packaging too, about like, we're 98 % sure these are donuts because we know they're not exactly everyone's interpretation of a donut. And, you know, we just, we want to have fun with the product. And it's, it's just, it's just food after all.

13:18Grover Light:When you're using the term like donut things, again, speaks to the funness and the cheekiness. Do people understand what that means? Like, how is that connected when you just are going into a new market that isn't sure what this is?

13:34Kristin Charbo:I think for some people, they still take the shape very literally. You know, like I always say there's the donut police and like we're never going to satisfy the donut police. But I think for most people that just kind of approach it like this is a, you know, healthy, sweet snack. There's not a lot of pushback, but I think something I've learned specifically in food is number one, taste is very subjective. And number two is like, what was the second thing I forgot? The taste.

14:19Grover Light:Taste is subjective and I totally agree. That's why I never dunk any brands that I personally don't like because I know my palate's my palate.

14:27Kristin Charbo:Yeah. That's the thing too. I'll never say anything bad about a food product because it's true. It is so subjective. The other thing is like we say a product for everyone is a product for no one. And I think finding your niche like that community, which we have, like that's so important. It's so important that we keep solving a problem for this, like this community of people, because they're the ones that are going to continuously talk about it and just create that like flywheel effect that frankly, you can't buy, you know? Absolutely.

15:02Grover Light:What, what do you feel like is the, um, thing that people are really resonating the most with the product that is building that community? Like what are some of those things that are, you find that people are really attracted to?

15:15Kristin Charbo:Well, I would say number one is ingredients. Because I think when you look at the, you know, the, the food industry, the CPG industry, the vast majority of products are ultra processed and made with, you know, not great ingredients. And so we try to make that like our number one, you know, guiding principles, like, are we putting the best and possible ingredients in this product? And then the second thing I would say is sugar. And I think we've found that threshold for people is probably much wider than we initially thought as far as where people's thresholds lie for acceptable amounts of sugar, especially when you look at the source of the sugar.

16:02Right.

16:04Kristin Charbo:But I would say like we always want to stay as low sugar as possible because we also beyond just people that really enjoy glow nuts for the ingredient aspect. We know that there are people like diabetics that are buying our product. We know there are people with autoimmune conditions buying our product. And we know there are people with cancer and other conditions that prevent them from eating sugar. And so that's another reason we just want to keep the product so low in sugar.

16:34Grover Light:I think that's incredible that you've got it down to one gram of sugar. Just as a brand strategist for startup, pre-launch food and beverage brands, I'm in a lot of conversations usually around when someone's in formulation. And that is not easy. So I really respect that you all have gotten it down to one gram of sugar.

16:56Kristin Charbo:Um, something that is, is new for us that we actually haven't even really talked much about is, uh, we are in the process of trying to like reformulate our product to remove erythritol from the products. Um, and so to do that, we are going to have to increase the grams of sugar slightly, but we've gotten it down to two grams of sugar. So that's amazing.

17:23Grover Light:And also, I'm sure you saw the Whole Foods trend report of mindfulness. I think they called it like mindful sweets.

17:32Kristin Charbo:Yeah.

17:33Grover Light:Just seeing how people will have a little bit of sugar if they're able to, which most people say like the vast majority of consumers, but just being more mindful about it. And I think like two grams of sugar and then you remove something else. That's awesome.