Oh So Easy!

0:00Ava Lichauco: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. You will hear stories of real-life founders, their launch strategies, and practical advice you could use to grow your own brand or simply discover what's next on shelf.

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1:35Ava Lichauco:If you're a brand selling in retail, go to tryglimpse.com backslash trial for 30 days free and let them know I sent you. Now, let's dive into the new episode. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to a new episode of Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. Today, I have local New York City entrepreneurs, Ava and Bianca, who are the founders of Oh So Easy, a new baking mix company that is bringing something new to the space, new flavors, new vibes, new point of view. I got to taste test their products not that long ago at a local cafe called Larry's, which is one of my favorites here in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

2:24Ava Lichauco:And Ava and Bianca, I'm so happy to have you both on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having us. You're so welcome. Ava, I would love if you could start off with talking about why you wanted to start this brand and really what was the white space in the baking mix company, sorry, category that you saw for this company? Yeah.

2:50Bianca Fernandez:So I guess this goes back to my experience and my background in general. So I've been in the CPG space for the majority of my career. Before I started Oh So Easy, I worked with mostly skincare, beauty, wellness, and apparel brands. Most recently, I was the chief of staff at Experiment Beauty, help them get into Sephora. So yeah, I've been in the CPG space for quite some time. I've been paying attention to specifically the food space for a really long time and knew always, not always, but knew for a very long time that I wanted to start my own thing and start something in the food space because I've been so passionate about it.

3:31Bianca Fernandez:And baking mixes really came up because I grew up eating like Betty Crocker and Ghirardelli mixes. Like my family and I would always bake with them, customize them our own way. My mom who passed away six, seven years ago now, she really loved to bake from baking mixes. And that was just like a special thing that, you know, we shared while, you know, I was growing up throughout like, you know, just my life in general. And we always would just customize them. And so I got this idea of, you know, why aren't there more interesting baking mix flavors out there? The space has been stuck with just chocolate and vanilla and red velvet, and there really isn't much flavor innovation happening in the space.

4:18Bianca Fernandez:So that's kind of where the idea started. And then I just explored it through, you know, I explored it some more via just really deep research, talking to a lot of potential consumers. And yeah, that's kind of how we came up with Oh So Easy.

4:32Ava Lichauco:So what was the flavor profiles that you felt like were missing in the baking mix category?

4:39Bianca Fernandez:Yeah, mostly global flavors. So I'm Filipina American. I came to the U.S. from the Philippines when I was 10 years old, and I've actually lived in various different places throughout my life. So lived in the Philip grew up sorry uh born and raised in the Philippines lived in Singapore for a bit moved over to Hawaii when we moved over to the U.S. then moved over to New Jersey and the town that I lived in New Jersey was so incredibly diverse it's just like right across the river Bayo New Jersey and it's so so so diverse I was just I grew up just eating all kinds of different food and interacting with all kinds of different people and so from a very young age I had a lot of pride in being Philippine American, being an immigrant.

5:23Bianca Fernandez:And yeah, that's kind of where the inspiration came from. I wanted to bring more interesting global flavors to the baking aisle.

5:29Ava Lichauco:So cool. Okay. So your background was in CPG. I love how you have a background in skincare, especially, and getting to see the behind the scenes of bringing a brand into a huge retailer like Sephora, now becoming a food founder. Bianca, what was your background while this was all percolating?

5:55Bianca Fernandez:Yeah, so I actually went to school for biology and chemistry and was trying to go to med school, which didn't work out. And I always loved baking. So after college, I was working in research for a bit. And my boss at the time actually pushed me to start baking full time. He was like, you're young, just see what happens. You can always come back to research if you want. So I worked in a few bakeries over the course of a year. I started my food blog. In 2023, I went full time with my own food blog, Bites by Bianca. And the next year is when Ava reached out to me to kind of be one of the beta testers for the mixes that she was starting.

6:41Ava Lichauco:so congratulations on going full-time with a food blog and also taking such a leap from research lab to baking I love a good career twist and turn that's a new one I really enjoy that so how did you both connect

7:02Bianca Fernandez:yeah go ahead yeah I got an email one day from the intern at the time for Oh So Easy saying, hi, we are a pre-launch baking mix brand. We would love for you to beta test one of our mixes. It is in Ube Black Sesame Blondie Mix. And because a lot of my recipes are Filipino inspired, they thought that would be the perfect person to give feedback. And so I tried it. I gave a lot of feedback on their type form and that led to Ava reaching out to me. We talked for a few times. We met up in person and eventually Ava asked me if I would be the chef partner for the Ube Blondie mix.

7:42Ava Lichauco:So cool. Okay. So once you both met in person, you're like, okay, this is the person to help put these pieces together. What were some of those early steps that you took? Because you're super new and I love talking to founders in these really early stages because it's all super fresh of how you actually took this idea from that meeting into a brand that people can now shop. Ava, could you walk us through what were some of those steps, even using your background in CPG, but things that you also needed to learn totally new because food CPG is a whole other beast. But I would love to hear what were those really early steps to make this product a reality?

8:32Yeah.

8:33Bianca Fernandez:So what I learned working in skincare was that a lot of brand founders or even like skincare formulators don't test with their consumers. And that's actually something that we did very intentionally at Experiment. Shout out Emmy, my former boss. We had a beta test program at Experiment. So whenever a formula, we got a formula ready to, you know, just like test it out, see what people are thinking about it. We would send out various lab samples of the formula to people to just get their general feedback. And I thought that was so, I was like, duh, this has, this needs to happen. I don't like, I just, you know, me working with other brands out there, we rarely ever got feedback from actual consumers.

9:19Bianca Fernandez:We rarely ever actually talked to our consumers. And that was something that really wowed me at experiment is something that I took over here at Oh So Easy. So from the very beginning, I knew that I wanted to develop a beta test program where I just wasn't, you know, my old co-founder and I weren't just like recipe developing and kind of just like releasing it into the public. You know, we wanted to get as much data, as much feedback as possible. So we sent out over the course of two years of building the brand, we sent out hundreds and hundreds, nearly probably like 300 beta test mixes to all kinds of people.

9:56Bianca Fernandez:So people in our immediate community, people not in our immediate community. And then we started building also relationships with influencers. So as Bianca had mentioned, I reached out to her, I don't even know, 2023, 2024. But we launched literally 2025. It took us so long to develop these products because we really wanted to get as much feedback and approval as possible from our potential consumers. So that was something that we intentionally had done over the last two years.

10:23Ava Lichauco:I have a question about that because so many emerging brand founders listen to this podcast. And I know that this question comes up even with clients of mine. How did you get those early testers? Was it cold emails, following people on social? I would love to hear what was the strategy around building those community of 300 plus testers? Yeah.

10:51Bianca Fernandez:So one thing, again, that I learned in skincare that I don't think a lot of food brand founders or early stage food brand founders do is build relationships with influencers and content creators from the very beginning. so I started the company October November of 2023 hired an intern literally like the month of incorporating it was like we need to start building relationships with influencers now I want them to test our products now so that a year down the line when we launch two years down the line when we launch we have immediate brand ambassadors so it's literally like as tedious as going on socials, looking for people who fit our brand or who fit our brand vibe, creators who we love.

11:38We, you know, I'm a very like chronically online person.

11:41Bianca Fernandez:So I followed a lot of creators, a lot of food creators. So we just started putting them in a massive list. And right now we have a list of about like 1200, 1300 creators that, you know, we eventually want to work with. And so, yeah, we just built that list very much organically, no fancy platforms or anything. It's really just like combing through Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Substack. And it was just sending DMs? It's really just sending DMs, sending cold emails, obviously making sure your emails to these people, to these influencers are, you know, can grab their attention. So just like really paying attention to what they respond to, what they open, all that stuff.

12:18Bianca Fernandez:So just like really paying attention to the data.

12:21Ava Lichauco:what was something that you felt like right off the bat was grabbing people's attention about your concept was it the global flavors the founder story I would love to hear um yeah Bianca could attest because yeah because you you got one of the emails okay this is very meta yes okay Bianca what grabbed your attention yes I was one of the very first emails and I will say

12:46Bianca Fernandez:I actually ignore a lot of emails because there isn't really a backstory. There's no substance. And I just feel like it's a mass send out. But Ava and our intern's email, which is very personalized, and it gave me the feeling of FOMO because they're a pre-launch company. They're going to release this. You're going to be one of the first few people to taste test it before I came out. And I was like, well, of course I want to do this. That is so cool. I love Ube. I love the whole idea of the company. And I also even wanted my own baking mix company in my own career. So I was like, this is so cool.

13:20Bianca Fernandez:And I get to be part of this. So that is what grabbed me. The email wasn't even that long, but it was just so, so passionate. And I could tell that real people were sending me the email.

13:31Ava Lichauco:That's such a great point, because in the age of social, it could feel like you have to create a template and just use that for every outreach. but it sounds like the more personal insights that you connected the dots really helped Bianca feel seen and feel like this was a personal outreach versus just copy and paste and sending it to everyone under the sun, just waiting for someone to write back. Was there also then followed by a survey of how you were starting to collect the data? Because Ava, you mentioned looking at the data. What was the feed loop of getting the feedback from your testers?

14:20Bianca Fernandez:Totally. So we would send out beta tests and waves. So the process was like we would email people in our community or people outside our community like Bianca at the time. We'd get their confirmation that they want to receive the beta test. We'll give them like a few weeks to bake the product, taste the product. And then in a few weeks time, we would follow up with a type form survey with a bunch of, it was a long type form survey with a bunch of very detailed questions, asking them for feedback. So yeah, that was it. And then we just like continued to kind of build that relationship with influencers.

14:55Ava Lichauco:I love it. I think that is such a great approach. It's simple, it's practical and impactful. So I know that you just launched on November 10th of this year. and speaking to two plus years, it sounds like, of testing, iterating, then to go to launch, what was some of the strategy around going to market? So you had the testers, you know, okay, we got it pretty damn close to where we want it. We're going to hit going live. We're going to hit publish. I would love to hear the strategy and the mindset around that moment?

15:37Bianca Fernandez:Yeah, so we went public with the company May 1st of this year, aka that's when we started posting super heavily on social media. So between May 1st and November 10th, it was really just like posting relentlessly and incessantly on social media, trying to get as many views as possible. um over the summer we also hosted a bunch of pop-ups one of which you went to at larry so we reached out to a bunch of coffee shops around the city to essentially let us um host a pop-up our our shtick was kind of like if you let us kind of just like set up a little table outside of your coffee shop or inside your coffee shop we'll give all of your customers between this time frame literally free desserts like we are not you know we're not selling them or anything We just gave people free desserts in exchange for their feedback and their follow.

16:33Bianca Fernandez:So that was really our strategy. We hosted quite a few pop-ups across the city. Almost all of them, we literally sold out. Or rather, we, yeah, I guess for lack of a better term, like sold out of our samples pretty immediately. Like we would host the pop-ups for three hours or so. And then we would run out of product within like the first hour and a half. So that was like a really good indication. And we had a lot of people repeatedly going to our pop-ups as well. So yeah, and actually what our influencer coordinator right now, she learned about us because she went to a pop-up. So it was just like all very organic.

17:10Bianca Fernandez:Yeah. So we hosted that. Basically that was like our version of a grocery demo without having access to a grocery to host us.

17:18Ava Lichauco:Again, a really good scrappy make it work approach, which I love. I personally feel like those boots on the ground, talking to real people to your point of we could kind of guess in our heads who our consumer would be and what type of feedback they would give us. But you did a lot of relationship building and still are. And I think that's such an impactful way of getting a pre-launch brand on the radar and getting people excited and really getting that buzz going. Yep, exactly. Very cool. So you officially launched in November, not even a month in. What is the strategy or just even vision for the year ahead?

18:07Bianca Fernandez:Yeah, I mean, we're going to take things actually really slowly. A lot of food brands want to sprint immediately to retail, and that's not what we're trying to do. We're going to try to maximize D2C for as long as possible. So right now you can shop our products on our website and then soon to be on TikTok shop. And this is very intentional for us because our cogs right now, they're actually really good, but I want to get them lower. And the way we can do that is through ordering a lot more products from our co-manufacturer, just like manufacturing more products. And so I don't, excuse me, I don't want to enter retail right now where our cogs is not at a place where I'm personally comfortable.

18:50Bianca Fernandez:So we're going to stick to direct-to-consumer and TikTok shop only and really utilize our relationships with influencers to get the product out there. And then next year, I'm actually, you know, I'm having beginning conversations with some retailers and some distributors as well. So next year is when we really turn on retail.

19:11Ava Lichauco:That totally makes sense. And I think that's also a good strategy in the sense of if you feel like you're not ready, not pushing yourself. I think so many founders just want to feel like they have to check a box or they put pressure on themselves that they don't necessarily need to. So thank you for sharing your approach and your point of view as a founder because I love having multiple different ways of going about building an emerging brand on the podcast. And I know someone who may be contemplating that strategy. I'm sure this will be helpful to hear and understand your point of view too.

19:54Bianca Fernandez:For sure.

19:55Ava Lichauco:Bianca what type of advice would you share with someone who maybe is approached by a brand to become a co-founder or to totally change gears and jump into a startup I would love to hear just yeah your advice on on taking that leap so when I was asked to be co-founder I was super

20:21Bianca Fernandez:super excited. Actually, when I read the email, I like jumped around my house and danced because I was so excited. But I've never been in the CPG space. So it's really scary, right? I would suggest talking to as many people as possible for advice, especially your close friends, because they know you best. And just reading through everything, speaking to lawyers, and just making sure everything is as flush as possible. And that you realize that this is a lot of work, especially in the beginning. Like I also have my food blog on the side and then there's Oh So Easy. So keeping the balance is a lot and just making sure that you incorporate self-care.