In short
Katie Lee (Katie’s) explains how her restaurant business pivoted during COVID into a national CPG frozen pizza brand, hitting ~$2M sales in 2023 and pacing for $24M in 2024, expanding to 6,300+ retail doors (Target, Sprouts, Whole Foods, Publix, Wegmans). She also discusses scaling challenges (e.g., producing 400,000 pizzas in three months for Target), maintaining restaurant-level quality, learning CPG distribution/merchandising, and expanding beyond pizza into sauces, pastas, and pasta bakes while building a new automated manufacturing facility to lower price.
Guests
Katie Lee, founder/chef/restaurateur of Katie’s; author of Unemployable; previously ran four St. Louis restaurants and says she’s been clean/sober for 15 years after addiction and a halfway house.
Key claims
Flavor and “restaurant-quality” technique drive repeat purchase; growth required systems, data, and packaging changes; she’s motivated more by freedom/creativity/impact than selling.
Notable examples
50,000 pizzas sold in six weeks to St. Louis; Walmart “Golden Ticket”; Target chain deal; Target rollout required 400,000 pizzas in three months; new packaging moving from simple clear cryovac to story-supporting formats.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOIntroduction to Flavor Creation
0:00 to 0:23
Learn about the importance of flavor in beverage retention.
“Getting consumers to trial a beverage is easy, but how do you keep them around?”
Introduction to Flavor Creation
0:27 to 0:37
Learn about the importance of flavor in beverage retention.
Katie Lee's Journey to Success
0:49 to 1:42
Hear how Katie Lee turned a crisis into a thriving food brand.
“It was a crisis response that turned into a national business.”
The Growth of Katie's Brand
1:42 to 2:25
Explore Katie's rapid growth and retail expansion amid challenges.
“Katie's suddenly had to figure out how to produce 400 ,000 pizzas in three months.”
Katie's Early Life and Career
2:37 to 5:04
Katie discusses her background in restaurants and early challenges.
“And thank you so much for being so kind as to send some of your delicious products for me to try out.”
Overcoming Addiction and Building a Business
5:04 to 6:16
Katie shares her struggles with addiction and lessons learned.
“And like you said, there's a lot of drinking and drugs, especially during that time in the 90s, early 2000s.”
Risk and Perspective in Business
6:16 to 8:07
Katie talks about her high tolerance for risk and perspective on success.
“When you talk about risk, is it because you feel like you have nothing to lose or because you already lost everything and now you have everything to gain by taking that risk?”
Adapting to Challenges During COVID-19
8:07 to 10:58
Katie explains how she pivoted to frozen pizzas during the pandemic.
“And when COVID hit, like a lot of restaurants, you had to pivot.”
Adapting to Challenges During COVID-19
14:10 to 14:33
Katie explains how she pivoted to frozen pizzas during the pandemic.
Assessing Competition in Premium Pizza
14:33 to 17:40
Discussion on how Katie's evaluates competition and their focus on quality ingredients and packaging.
“Your inbox should reflect the parts of CPG that matter to you.”
Show all 21 chapters
Shifts in Consumer Behavior
17:40 to 21:55
Insights into changing consumer preferences for restaurant-quality meals at home.
“lower and absolutely at a point where we always want people to know that we are premium because we are hand stretching and doing all these beautiful things.”
Expanding Beyond Pizza
21:55 to 23:17
Exploration of Katie's expansion into sauces, pastas, and other products.
“And even when I'm holding a jar of your pasta sauce, which I am right now, your arrabbiata, it feels like a small batch restaurant quality product.”
Planning for Growth and Target Launch
23:17 to 27:11
Insights into the planning process for scaling operations for a major retail launch.
“Well, I'm not going to grill you on what categories you're getting into, but it sounds like you're going to have the space and the ability to produce them with this new facility.”
Building an Effective Team
27:48 to 28:00
Discussion on the importance of team dynamics and leadership in achieving business goals.
“It definitely helps when you have good people, committed people on your team.”
Building a Resilient Team for Success
28:00 to 36:22
Learn how to build a strong team and navigate challenges in the restaurant and CPG industries.
“Who were the most important people on that team?”
Impacts of Good Food on Lives
36:22 to 36:41
Explore the significance of providing quality food and how it enriches people's lives.
“I'm thrilled for where you are personally and professionally.”
Supporting Beverage Entrepreneurs
38:22 to 42:01
Discover how Pilot Project Brewing helps entrepreneurs launch and grow their beverage brands.
“We always have fun with those types of events.”
Building Brands Through Collaboration
42:01 to 42:51
Explore how collaboration and equity stakes enhance brand development in beverages.
“Like we're putting our name on the line.”
Understanding Consumer Trends
42:51 to 44:27
Learn about the evolving consumer preferences in the beverage industry and data's role.
“And that's where, what's Jordan saying, is like the flexibility that's required of our system, of our network is paramount.”
Innovations in Beverage Production
44:27 to 45:57
Discover the innovations shaping the beverage landscape, including NA products and functional ingredients.
“So being able to utilize, you know, new hop varietals that are new to the market, anything that's kind of on a technological advancement.”
Opportunities for Collaboration
45:57 to 46:35
Understand how to connect with Pilot Project for potential collaborations and applications.
“The uncertainty around hemp makes it even more important to have a partner like Pilot Project that can work with you on not just production, but innovation and new product development as well.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Getting consumers to trial a beverage is easy, but how do you keep them around? Flavor makes it happen. At Virginia Dare, we build flavor systems from the ground up, with clean label, natural options, all while making the harshest functional ingredients taste delicious. And we specialize in sweet flavors, like a rainbow sherbet prebiotic soda, or a matcha latte flavored protein shake. Learn more at virginiadare.com.
0:36Katie Lee:Hello, friends. I'm Ray Lateef, and you're tuned into Taste Radio, the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage. Building a thriving CPG brand wasn't Katie Lee's plan. It was a crisis response that turned into a national business. When COVID threatened her four St. Louis restaurants and the livelihood of 150 employees, the chef and restaurateur created a line of frozen pizzas simply to keep her team working. That pizza became the foundation for Katie's, a food brand that grew from roughly a$2 million business in 2023 to one on pace to surpass$24 million in sales this year.
1:25Katie Lee:Katie's is headed for more than 6 ,300 retail doors by year-end, including every Target and Sprouts nationwide, as well as Whole Foods, Publix, Wegmans, and other major retailers. But the growth hasn't been without its challenges. When Target awarded Katie's a national rollout, Katie's suddenly had to figure out how to produce 400 ,000 pizzas in three months. Now, as Katie's expands Beyond Pizza into new categories, She's also building a new manufacturing facility as the company navigates the challenges of maintaining restaurant-level standards and meeting the realities of national grocery scale.
2:07Katie Lee:Katie shares what she had to learn the hard way about CPG, how she navigated the brand's explosive growth, and why she's ultimately more motivated by freedom, creativity, and impact than by a big exit.
2:25Katie Lee:Hey, folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio right now. I am supremely honored to be sitting with Katie Lee, who is the founder of Katie's. Katie, it's great to see you. Oh, it's so great to see you. Thank you. And thank you so much for being so kind as to send some of your delicious products for me to try out. Before this interview, I was talking to you before we hopped on the mics and said, I haven't tasted pasta, pizza and pasta sauce like that in a very, very long time, if at all. You make some really, really good food. Well, thank you. So I appreciate that. I'm a restaurateur, a chef. And so that's kind of what you're getting.
3:03You're getting a restaurant quality product in the frozen aisle.
3:07Katie Lee:Yes. You're also an author. You're the author of the book Unemployable, which you also sent me an advanced copy of, which is fantastic. The Katie Lee story. It almost sounds like a sort of cable movie with the Katie Lee story. But no, this is a fantastic book. And I was hooked when I saw the back of it because the back has a quote from you, which says, my entire life from a young age, my father would say, Katie, you're just like me. You're unemployable. What does that mean? I think it means that you might not be able to work for someone else. Okay. Due to many factors. And our factors may not have been as, you know, that we're like extra brilliant or smart.
3:51They might just be that we're a little bit wild and difficult. That was how he was. And it turns out, I say nature or nurture is impossible to track. But regardless, I ended up very similar to him where I kind of wanted to do it my own way. Yeah.
4:09Katie Lee:And you did it your own way from a very early age. According to my notes here, you dropped out of high school at 15. Is that right? I did. Yes. Dropped out of high school at 15 and was kind of a troubled kid and landed, I always say, in one of the only places that'll take anybody, restaurants. So got lucky because I absolutely dove in, loved it, and it's the only thing I've ever done. And opened my first restaurant at 25, and 18 years later, here we are. Started your own restaurant in your 20s, but it wasn't always the most perfect journey, at least at the outset. You struggled with addiction.
4:51My story hasn't been easy. I would say one of the things that is important in the book is that no one's is and how you keep going. But yeah, I struggled with addiction from a very young age. One of the reasons I dropped out of high school, landed in restaurants. And like you said, there's a lot of drinking and drugs, especially during that time in the 90s, early 2000s. I just fell deeper and deeper into it, opened my first restaurant, the pressure, like you said, the success. All of it was way too much. And I spiraled and lost it, lost everything and ended up without anything and living in a halfway house for six months.
5:35And that was 15 years ago. And I've been clean and sober ever since and built my business that you see today from there. So it's been quite a journey. I would say my addiction is kind of one of the superpowers. I went through a lot, learned a lot, and have some good grit from it.
5:56Katie Lee:What's one thing that you learned from the experience that really helps you as an operator today, both as a restaurateur and a CPG founder? I think I have a very high tolerance for pain. I believe you need that when you're scaling a company like we are. I also think I have good perspective about what's important. so some of the challenges that I face every day don't quite bother me as much because my perspective is I'm here and alive and you know I'm doing well so I think both of those things a high tolerance for pain and risk and a perspective about what's important have served me really well especially during this past year where the growth has been monumental and you've got to hold on for dear life to make it through it.
6:51Katie Lee:When you talk about risk, is it because you feel like you have nothing to lose or because you already lost everything and now you have everything to gain by taking that risk? Yes, definitely a little bit of that. And then I think, like I said, just a perspective that for me, what people consider a loss, I'm just really, truly grateful to be here. I work with my family. We've got 500 employees. And it's been an incredible journey. And I know I'm always going to make it. That's the other thing is I know that if I've made it out of addiction, built this business, I can do much more than maybe some people realize that they can do.
7:36And so I have this confidence that even if we lost it all tomorrow, I'm going to be able to dig down deep and build it back up again and be OK. So my risk tolerance, yes, it's a little bit higher than everyone else's because I know I'll make it. And I also am grateful to be here. And I know that I've been at the bottom, so I've survived that. I'll be OK.
8:03Katie Lee:Well, Katie's almost lost everything and not by your hand by the pandemic called COVID-19. And when COVID hit, like a lot of restaurants, you had to pivot. You had to figure out another plan, especially because so many people owe their lives and their careers and their incomes to you. And Katie's pivoted into frozen pizzas. When did you realize that your consumer brand or what was becoming a consumer brand could be this big business that even outpaced your restaurants? Yeah, a couple of moments. I mean, first, like you said, we were faced with the death of a business, the death of, you know, everyone around you.
8:49It was a very scary time. Some people freeze. I jumped into action and we immediately prototyped a frozen pizza. I realized I've got to keep all of these people working. People are the most important part of a business. If you lose them, you lose everything. And rehiring that team is almost impossible. And you saw a lot of restaurants not able to reopen because of that, understandably. And then I also had bills to pay and keep the lights on. I had two restaurants at the time and 150 employees. So we prototyped this pizza. We got it out. And immediately there was this, I've never struck gold, you know, I've always worked really hard.
9:33And this was a striking gold situation. And part of it was we sold 50 ,000 pizzas in six weeks to the St. Louis metro area. Part of it was people were really rallying around restaurants and small businesses. and so at first I thought well that's just it that's all it is but it continued and then grocery stores began to call us and we figured out how to label a pizza and get it distributed to grocery stores and learned a ton about CPG very quickly is that was growing I realized we had something But it really wasn't until last year when two things happened. I won the Walmart golden ticket. And then I also got a full chain deal with Target for my pizzas.
10:23When that happened, we went in, we made all of the pizzas for Target. We launched full chain. And then we shot very quickly to the top of the leaderboard there with sales and growth and all of that. And that's, I think, the second moment where I went, okay, now we've reached a national scale. We're able to serve as a national retailer and the nation loves it. So the last year since that moment has been a whirlwind of growth and just excitement for our team and what we're capable of. It's a really amazing thing.
10:59Katie Lee:For Target and Walmart to pick up your brand, they have to have consumers, their customers really love what you're doing. Yeah. What you're doing is making super premium food, super premium pizzas. This is not your everyday frozen pizza. And it comes at a premium price point. Well, when we made the pizza, there was not a lot of development that went into it because of the urgency just to survive. So the pizza that you see today was created in that 48-hour period. It's hand-stretched, just like the restaurants, wood-fired. It's made with ingredients like barata cheese, Samarzano tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil.
11:38We're chefs, we're restaurateurs. So we just made a restaurant pizza, sealed it, froze it, and then sold it. Not really realizing that that was something that was not out there, especially at scale. And so I think what you're seeing is people are trading restaurants right now for the grocery store for a lot of reasons. And we're this restaurant quality premium product that's made with the philosophy of Italian cooking, which is great technique, really great ingredients, and keep it simple. It really wasn't a well-thought-out plan. It's just what we do. And it turns out that that was something that the consumer was craving.
12:27Katie Lee:I'm going to take issue with you saying it was not a well thought out plan because it sounds like everything you did was intentional, at least when it came to the food. The food has to be the most important part. Otherwise, you don't have anything. Yeah, it was what we do. So we decided we're not going to change what we do. So you're right. It was thought out, meaning we stick with our principles and we stick with what we do in the restaurant. But I think had we had more time, we would have thought, we've got to make this a frozen pizza. And let's look at all the frozen pizzas and let's try to change and do something.
13:02And that just didn't sit well with us. And it wasn't what we do. So I think you're right. There was thought. There was 18 years of thought owning restaurants. But it all came together pretty quickly. Hey, listeners. This September 10th roundup brings jobs at cpgjobs.com from Barrel RM, Revolution Brewing LLC, and Good to Grow. Harkin Sweets, Russian River Brewing Company, and Trade Turbine keep it rolling. Check opportunities and apply today. Need great people? Put your opening before category pros following the industry. Reach operators, sales leaders, supply chain pros, and retail buyers spending more time with candidates and less on mismatches.
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14:33Katie Lee:to market and grow. Your inbox should reflect the parts of CPG that matter to you. Choose from BevNet's seven free newsletters covering beverage, food, beer, spirits, careers, education, and more. Sign up and select your favorites at cpgmedia.com slash newsletter. Did you look at the freezer aisle when you were preparing to expand availability and distribution of Katie's? Did you look at what was out there and say, hey, you know, we can be better from a packaging standpoint? Obviously, you're better from an ingredient standpoint. Can we be better from a label design? I mean, how did you assess the competitive set for premium pizza?
15:17We always want to be better. Some of that is looking at competitors. A lot of that is just looking at our food and understanding the culinary world out there and how we can just be better. So yes, we're always, always trying to improve, but we're getting a ton of data now because instead of restaurants, we're reaching millions of people. Data helps us immensely with packaging. Our packaging right now is very simple. It's like a clear cryovac bag that you would find in a restaurant with a sous vide machine. And what we're finding is that is not always merchandised very well. and it also doesn't allow us to kind of tell the story every time about what we're doing.
16:06So we're in the process of improving our packaging to support the story, the pizza, and then let the merchant, you know, at the retailer level, allow them to merchandise the product a lot better. So we absolutely look at the world and see what is changing new ingredients, new techniques. And then, yeah, for competition, I think it's more like the data and what is the customer, what does the retailer need and how can we make it more accessible to them? And like you mentioned, price point is a big sticking point for me, especially my goal in all of this was to bring a clean product. We only use extra virgin olive oil.
16:52We use ancient grains. We use premium Jesus, to the masses so that everyone can enjoy it and it's not just like this top tier group. So I'm in the process of building an amazing facility. I currently have a facility. We manufacture all of this and I want to always do that so that we can control the process and the technique. But we're building a new facility that will allow us to get that price point down pretty quickly within the beginning of next year so that more people can be reached and it's accessible to all.
17:29Katie Lee:What's your target price point for the pizza? I would say lower. Let's start there. Okay. But that's all being determined right now. It depends on some factors, but absolutely lower and absolutely at a point where we always want people to know that we are premium because we are hand stretching and doing all these beautiful things. But we want to be able to get it to a point where it's more accessible. So lower is my answer. Okay. Okay. I want to go back to your point about people trading restaurant experiences for restaurant quality meals at home, because it's very clear that that is happening right now.
18:08Katie Lee:And it's ironic because you operate restaurants and a CPG business. Have you seen a shift in consumer behavior at this point where in your own restaurants, people are not coming as often or are looking at the option to make food at home as a more realistic and affordable option? So I'm in a great position where I've operated my restaurants for 18 years. I have four of them. They're all in St. Louis, in my hometown where I was born and raised, our sales are up 5%, which for us is actually low. Normally we're up 15%. So being up, I think right now in this climate, I'm going to call it a major win because a lot of my peers are down quite a bit.
18:54I definitely notice something's happening, but I think the longevity and the awareness of my brand has absolutely helped me. and you know it's crazy i just opened a new restaurant this year while all of this is happening with cpg and cpg the frozen business which i've got the pizzas the pastas the sauces the lines are growing the door counts increasing we're 10xing and there's this incredible growth but in my heart i'm a restaurateur so i've opened another location i'm working on a new concept that will be open in a year and a half. And I, for some reason, just can't get away from what I truly love and do, which you get to experience in my products in the grocery store.
19:45But I'm having this like cognitive dissonance about restaurants are definitely suffering and this CPG business is taking off. Kind of what do you choose? And maybe, you know, like we talked about earlier, The wild risk taker in me is like, I'm going to bet on both of them and just try to make both better. So that's kind of what we're doing.
20:07Katie Lee:Yeah, well, you're a restaurateur at heart. And CPG founders, in my opinion, aren't born. They're trained or they are students. That's the truth. Yeah, yeah. But what did being a restaurateur and what does a restaurateur help you or how does it help you as a CPG founder? I believe it's our secret weapon. As a restaurateur, it's more than food. Food is obviously key and being a chef as well. And I have a chef collective that works with me. We understand food. We can develop things incredibly quickly because of the restaurants, not just because we have the chefs and we're trained in this and it's our passion, but we have a pool of people that are eating with us, a thousand people every day that we get to test products on.
20:55So for development, it's a secret weapon. I also think I understand what goes into a meal and what goes into a meal is not just the product, it's the story. And so if you can bring beautiful ingredients, beautiful technique, that's something that restaurants do well, that tells the story. And then the packaging, the way we present it, the book that I'm coming out with that really shares the history of the company, how we got here, and all of those things combined, hospitality and what goes into a meal, I think helps create a really special product that people are attracted to because they're getting more than something in a box.
21:41They're getting a story. They're getting technique. They're getting real people that have been doing this craft for decades.
21:50Katie Lee:I would agree. You definitely feel like you're getting the experience of a restaurant when you're eating your food. It feels different. And even when I'm holding a jar of your pasta sauce, which I am right now, your arrabbiata, it feels like a small batch restaurant quality product. It doesn't feel like a mass market product, even though these products are and will be sold, you know, across America at some point. When did you decide to expand beyond pizzas and into things like sauces and pastas and pasta bakes? We didn't even talk about the pasta bakes yet, which are also amazing. I've got this beautiful menu and pizza is just one part of it.
22:29I mean, pasta is a huge part of our story. Sauce is a huge part of our story. And so to bring the restaurant to people, I realized I've got to bring all of these wonderful things that we make to them. So pizza was an easy entry for us. But, you know, in order to tell the story, in order to bring all these beautiful things to everyone, we had to figure out how to scale multiple lines. So we have the pasta bakes, we've got the sauces, we've dried pasta, olive oil, and definitely more is coming. We're adding a few new SKUs and flavors to target this fall in a big tower with the book. And then next spring, we have in development some other new categories even.
23:17Katie Lee:Oh, interesting. Well, I'm not going to grill you on what categories you're getting into, but it sounds like you're going to have the space and the ability to produce them with this new facility. When is that coming online? That'll be online at the beginning of the year. So it's under construction right now. It's beautiful. It allows us to continue the important things that we're doing, the wood fire and the hand stretching, using our great ingredients. But it automates some of the things that need to be automated, like packaging, like boxing, all of the things that the craft isn't important to.
23:51We're going to be able to automate. We're
23:59creating more and importantly, getting the price down so that we can reach as many people as possible with a really clean, healthy product.
24:09Katie Lee:Whenever I talk to founders that own their own manufacturing, they always mention that it's almost like two different businesses because on the one hand, you have sales and marketing. On the other hand, you have manufacturing. In your case, it seems like you're running three businesses because you have manufacturing, restaurants, and sales and marketing. So I imagine your days are pretty stretched, Not unlike your dough. But when you get that phone call from Target or that email and they say, hey, we want to put you in all these stores across the country and you realize you have to make 400 ,000 pizzas.
Read the full transcript
24:36Katie Lee:Yeah. That would also necessitate the creation of a larger facility. How did you plan for all this and make sure that you were hitting the ground running when the Target launch happened? Because that is a kind of make or break moment for a lot of brands. And if you're not as buttoned up as you should be, if things aren't delivered on time, if the product doesn't meet the standards of Katie's, you might be out of target within a matter of weeks. A couple of things. Incredibly delusional. You've got to be a little delusional to say to a team, we're going to do the impossible and I believe it. And they have to believe that I believe it.
25:15So it's that. It's staying in the moment. It's one thing at a time. It's one day at a time. and then once you get your bearings and you've accomplished maybe the first impossible hurdle, you get a lot of confidence and you get to step back and say, okay, now we need to put systems together and now we need to build the team and now we need to do all of that. But in the very beginning, it was all hands on deck. We're going to do an impossible thing. You all are going to be so proud that you did this impossible thing and just put your head down in one day at a time. Do it. Don't look at the end 400 ,000 pizzas.
25:53Look at what we have to do today. And we just really, it was a grit story where a team came together and built the impossible. And then after that, it was okay. We're not done yet. The race isn't over. Now we've got to keep up pace and make it better. And it was my job to bring in people, bring in equipment, bring in a plan, a strategy, look at the tea leaves and put together things that could help the team do what they do. But I wouldn't say, you know, it sounds easy. It's always a challenge. Every day is a challenge. Every day we're faced with, you know, an impossible task or a disaster. And it's just really the mindset of stay in the moment, get as much done as you can, the best you can.
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27:48Katie Lee:400 ,000 pizzas in three months. I honestly don't know. Hand stretched. Hand stretched. Yeah, I have no idea how you did that. It definitely helps when you have good people, committed people on your team. Who were the most important people on that team? Was it an operations manager? Was it a sourcing provider? How did you determine the, I guess, hierarchy of importance when it came to hiring the right people? I don't know if I can give credit to any specific person, but I would say, you know, my head chef, Jake Sanderson, is cut from the same cloth as me. He loves a challenge. He loves to build.
28:26So he and I really kind of spearheaded the thing. But a lot of credit goes to, I think, what we went through with COVID that bonded us. Just the fact that we have this restaurant, these four restaurants that we could pool people from. And the restaurant business is, in my mind, the hardest business in the world. And we were already really good at the hardest business in the world. So that challenge for us was, okay, let's get as many of these restaurant people over here to kind of show the team what people are capable of. But yeah, Chef Jake Sanderson and I, my brothers. There were a lot of really important people during that time.
29:12And I would almost say the whole team. It takes a whole team to do something like that. But, you know, again, we just didn't know what we didn't know. And we didn't know that that was impossible. We just knew we had to do it. And that delusion took us pretty far.
29:29Katie Lee:Yeah. Well, ask most entrepreneurs if they would start a business, if they know what they know now. And typically the answer is no. So 99 % of the time, you just know, right. It's better if you don't know. It's really better. To achieve the impossible, some things are just not going to work in the first go around. What was the most challenging part of getting prepared for that target launch? You know, you mentioned it earlier, like we did not know CPG. We did not understand distribution. We didn't understand markdowns, promotions, merchandising. And those have been big challenges is learning the business at the same time that we are at a national scale.
30:09That has been the challenge for all of us is trying to play catch up with the incumbents who have been in the industry for decades and were really starting out. So it's a lot of making big mistakes, analyzing data, data that we didn't even know existed until recently and learning that there's a whole chain of events that take place from it leaving our facility until it getting on shelf and then a whole chain of events that happened on shelf that we did not understand. And so that has been a great challenge for us. And really, I think kind of the exciting part of the year is we are getting our PhD in all of it pretty quickly.
30:57Katie Lee:It's clear that you're ready to step on the gas and have been stepping on the gas. It's also getting more expensive to run a CPG brand. It was very expensive to begin with. Now it's getting even more expensive for a variety of reasons. How do you intend on continuing to grow as fast as you are while maintaining the standards of what got you here in the first place? That's the number one challenge. which is I said in the beginning, I want to be able to scale this while still honoring what we do. So that's our core philosophy. And that's where everything is based on. And there will be moments and there have been moments when you have to say no, and you have to slow down a little bit.
31:44But we're also faced, like you said, with this incredible opportunity. And, you know, if I had my choice, well, first of all, I'm always going to move quickly. That's just in my nature. But if I had my choice, it might be a little bit slower, but I'm also faced with an opportunity. And the opportunity is that our brand is wanted, needed, not just by the retailer, but by the consumer. And I want to be able to capture that excitement at the same time. So you take it all as it comes. I want to be able to service all of this excitement, but there are moments and there have been where I've had to tell a retailer no, or had to say, let's hold off on that idea until, you know, the next quarter or the next moment, because I don't want to compromise what we're doing.
32:34So a little bit of both, but, you know, I would definitely agree that we are in the fast category right now. And that is risky. There's risk in that. But you just hope that you're holding on tight enough and that you can pivot as quickly as possible and make the right decisions to make sure that we maintain our philosophy of bring a great, healthy, beautiful product to the masses.
33:01Katie Lee:I think it's pretty clear when you would and why you would say no. But what gets you really motivated to say yes? The potential of what we can do with the team. There's other opportunities. I'm an artist, you know, at heart as well. So being able to create more products, being able to create more art within the company, I think so those yeses bring those opportunities. They also bring great opportunity to the people on the team. and they get to develop these careers within the company. The yeses are more doors, more people, more opportunity to tell the story and impact. You know, that's what it is.
33:47Katie Lee:A lot of people open their own business because it's financially rewarding or because they feel like they don't want to work for anybody else. In CPG, we're guilty of this and really talking about and highlighting the brands that have made it, that have sold for large amounts of money. And maybe I'm using the wrong word and saying we're guilty of it. I mean, we report on it. But people read those stories and they listen to those podcasts most often, those that are about successful founders and brands. How motivated are you by a financial outcome? I think I've already made it. The important thing for me is freedom.
34:27The important thing for me is to be able to create and build. And that's, I think, why I'm an entrepreneur. So for me, I've made it. The idea of me selling today is a no. I would lose the opportunity to do all these challenging things, create this great story with these great people. So for me, the moment that I have always dreamed of, the freedom moment, the moment where I can create build has already arrived. And I feel very lucky about that. So now it's just continuing what I love to do, which is build impact. And, you know, you do hear those stories, you hear the Simply Elizabeth story that just came out.
35:11And it's wild. And it's amazing. And, you know, someday that might be our story. But right now, for me, as cheesy as that sounds, I really feel like we've done it and we've done the special thing and the wonderful thing that I've always wanted to do. Will that be a cherry on top someday? Yes, but today the answer would be, I don't want to stop what I'm doing today. So there'll be many more years of Katie's and myself and my team building this thing.
35:42Katie Lee:You've done a wonderful thing in that you're giving people good food. My dad, who was in the food business, always said that, you know, we're not just selling food. We're giving people good food to eat. We're enriching their lives through good food. And I feel like that's honestly what you're doing. Not to sound sappy or cheesy as well, but when I ate your pizzas on Sunday and I made your pasta on Monday, I felt good about it. And I felt happy that I had this opportunity to eat good food. And I hope that Katie's becomes much more accessible and, you know, to your point, a little bit more affordable for many people so they get to eat your good food as well.
36:19Katie Lee:In the meantime, Katie, thank you so much for such a great conversation. I'm thrilled for where you are personally and professionally. And I feel like there is such a great runway and such a great foundation for growth for Katie. So congratulations on everything you built to this point. Thank you so much. This was great and I really appreciate it. And thank you for all the compliments on the food. I agree. As you should.
37:11Katie Lee:If you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Check us out on Instagram. Our handle is BevNetTasteRadio. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at tasteradio.com. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
37:51Katie Lee:Hey, folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I'm supremely honored to be sitting down with Jordan Radke and Dan Abel, the co-founders of Pilot Project Brewing. Jordan, it's great to see you again. Yeah, likewise, Ray. Dan, how are you? I'm great. Thanks for having us. Thanks so much for being with me. And thank you so much again for hosting our Taste Radio Chicago meetup last month, a fantastic event that you guys hosted at your location in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. Really well attended and just heard a lot of really good feedback from folks about the networking and of course your amazing space, which was so welcoming to our guests.
38:32Katie Lee:Thank you again. We always have fun with those types of events. The fact that you guys were able to bring so many people from the industry is massive for us, too. So thank you. Yeah. And I think listeners probably identify Pilot Project Brewing with beer. And you do make beer and you sell a lot of beer and you work with beer companies. But Pilot Project itself is a concept that goes well beyond beer. And I'd love to start from the beginning. Jordan, just talk a bit about the origins of Pilot Project and how you got started. Yeah, I think part of the origins is understanding where Dan and I came from.
39:09So Dan and I have known each other since we were five years old, growing up in the same town in Minnesota. We went to the same college in Wisconsin, UW-Madison. And then after graduation, kind of split ways into our different career paths. And it was really nice and interesting to kind of get a phone call late one night with Dan proposing this idea of essentially a co-pactor that is just adding additional services in terms of building brands, but also accelerating brands growth. And so that's kind of where it started in terms of working with startups or breweries at the time that had, you know, small goals and just helping them achieve those goals.
39:49And throughout that time, the business model has changed. It's grown. We've worked with hard kombucha. We've worked with obviously beer, but now really delving into NA beer, NA RTDs, alcoholic RTDs, and now even into the hemp space as well, at least through the rest of this year.
40:08Katie Lee:It's pretty remarkable given that there is so much interest in differentiated concepts in the beverage industry. You meet founders and I meet founders every day who are coming to market with really innovative ideas. But how does Pilot Project support these founders, especially when you're considering the breadth of ideas that are out there? I think about the analog that we often draw to the music industry. So back to Jordan's origin story, after we split apart and following college, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career playing music. And to the question that you're asking, one of the things that I came to LA with at that point in time was a brand.
40:56That was my name or the band I was playing in. And then a selection of ideas, i.e. songs and performance and all that stuff. But then I had all this infrastructure built around me in the music industry to then take those concepts and bring them to light. Right. I didn't build my own recording studio. I didn't go around the country knocking on the doors of radio stations that work with a record label. So when you think about a brand coming to us at Pilot Project, which is effectively a record label and recording studio for the beverage industry, what we want to see you come with is a great idea.
41:30Like what is the next idea? What's the next trend that hasn't been established? But then further is that you have to have the vision. You have to be the entrepreneur that can actually deliver on what you're bringing forward. So we really look for three different things. We want to make sure that you got a product that's good. We try it right there beside you when you come in and audition. We want to make sure that you have brand vision for what direction you can take this organization or this beverage. And then we want to make sure that you're the person to do it. We're a portfolio business. So when the brands are coming to us, pitching us the next great idea, we're taking an equity stake in these businesses.
42:06Like we're putting our name on the line. We're taking the risk with you. We're literally jumping in with you. And so, yes, can we technically produce your product? Absolutely. We can produce it 100 cases at a time or a million cases at a time. But then to what Jordan was getting at, we have the distribution team. We can validate your products in all of our different tasting rooms with comparative data beside 50 other unique SKUs, unique products. And then when we go out to market, it's not just about brokering a deal with the next distributor. We have big box retail partnerships across the country.
42:40We have independent retail relationships in major cities like LA, New York, and Chicago. we're a flywheel well beyond just production. And that's where, what's Jordan saying, is like the flexibility that's required of our system, of our network is paramount.
42:58Katie Lee:Part of building a great brand means understanding what that consumer wants, not just today, but tomorrow. And as we've touched on, there's a lot of things going on in beverage that can be pretty enticing to modern consumers that feel innovative, that feel different. But based on what you've seen, over the past, say, five years or so, what's really sticking? What's really resonating with modern consumers? You know, we're on top of a lot of the different studies and data that kind of comes through. I think we've all seen some of the recent studies that are kind of comparing some of the younger generation drinking with, you know, different occasions.
43:37So I think for us, it's always been a variety, you know, where we kind of came in as this brewery incubator. But the idea wasn't to help five different clients that did five, you know, branded IPAs. The idea is to fill our portfolio with pockets of new and interesting trends. So that's why we've worked with the NA beer. We've worked with the NA RTDs and the hemp drinks. But I think in terms of what consumers are looking for is a lot of what we kind of consider as well. Data is a huge factor. So are they able to kind of compare their data, their drinking habits to anyone else online, whether that's apps or just using online databases and with the influx of AI nowadays, who's to know what that's going to look like in a year or even by the end of this year.
44:26We also focus a lot on innovation. So being able to utilize, you know, new hop varietals that are new to the market, anything that's kind of on a technological advancement. One of the fun things that we've been able to do with NA beer recently is working with Nagardo, which is a mushroom based product that kind of helps with the stability of NA. And so we can kind of reach out to our vendor list and our nice, welcoming community to kind of see what the next sort of ingredients are. And then that can kind of help push what the new trends are as well. The approach that I generally have with any brand that's coming to us, if they say all of a sudden that they're a protein company, well, great.
45:10That's a good way to enter the market because we know that there's a market for it. But how are you building your brand in a way that can actually translate across a spectrum of beverage? Because we know how fickle consumers and time are. But to be more direct to your answer, I mean, we are seeing a ton in the protein space. We are seeing a ton in the mushroom, you know, viability space. And then I'm also, as people are starting to think about the what ifs, you know, post the hemp laws that currently caught in question is like, how do those brands pivot based off of whatever decisions there are and what are tangential ingredients to that type of product?
45:52And I think all of those things are what we're seeing more than anything else. Yeah.
45:57Katie Lee:The uncertainty around hemp makes it even more important to have a partner like Pilot Project that can work with you on not just production, but innovation and new product development as well. Guys, I can't thank you enough again for hosting us in Chicago and for this fantastic conversation today. Really appreciate it. Just for our listeners, if someone wants to reach out to you, what's the best way to start a conversation? Well, there's a few different ways. One, if you're interested in applying, visit our website, www.pilotprojectbrewing.com. There's an application there. Otherwise, if you just have interest in other ways, feel free to reach out to hello at pilotprojectbrewing.com via email.
46:41Lastly, we have a very active social team. So if there are ever things that you want to do collaboratively online, we're at Pilot Project Brewing and at Pilot Project MKE on social media.
46:52Katie Lee:That was very thorough, Dan. Thank you so much. Usually someone just mention the website, but I like that. You've got a lot of different ways to reach out and connect. So thank you so much once again jordan dan really appreciate the time and let's definitely stay in touch thanks ray see you soon absolutely
From the publisher
Building a thriving CPG brand wasn't Katie Lee's plan. It was a crisis response that evolved into a national business.
When the COVID-19 shutdown threatened her four St. Louis restaurants and the livelihoods of 150 employees, the chef and restaurateur created a line of frozen pizzas simply to keep her team working. That pizza became the foundation for Katie's, a CPG brand that has grown from roughly $2 million in revenue in 2023 to a business on pace to surpass $24 million in sales this year. The brand is also headed for more than 6,300 retail doors by year-end, including every Target and Sprouts nationwide, along with Whole Foods, Publix, Wegmans and other major retailers.
That kind of growth hasn't come without some serious operational challenges. When Target awarded Katie's a national rollout, Lee suddenly had to figure out how to produce 400,000 pizzas in three months. Now, as the brand expands beyond pizza into new categories, she's building a new manufacturing facility while working to preserve the restaurant-level standards and culinary approach that set Katie's apart in the first place.
Katie shares what she's had to learn the hard way about CPG, how she and her team navigated the brand's explosive growth, and why she's ultimately more motivated by the freedom to create, build and make an impact than by a big exit.
Show notes:
0:20: Katie Lee, Founder & CEO, Katie's – Katie discusses her new book, Unemployable, which chronicles the unconventional path that took her from dropping out of high school at 15 and struggling with addiction to becoming a successful restaurateur and entrepreneur. She explains how she essentially brought the restaurant experience to the freezer aisle, using hand-stretched dough, wood-fired cooking and premium ingredients to create KATIE'S first line of pizzas. She talks about the brand's Walmart Golden Ticket and full-chain Target rollout, including the challenge of meeting the massive production demands that came with those opportunities. Lee also explains how her restaurant background gives KATIE'S an advantage in CPG: her team can develop products quickly, test them with thousands of restaurant customers and apply decades of culinary experience to ingredients, technique and hospitality. She believes consumers are increasingly looking for restaurant-quality food at home, but says the experience extends beyond the food itself to storytelling, presentation and the people and craft behind the product.
Brands in this episode: Katie's
