The Evergreen Strategy Generating Millions… And Better Products

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0:51hello friends i'm ray latif and you're tuned into taste radio the leading podcast for entrepreneurs makers and innovators in the food and beverage industry Emily Grodin walked into Expo West 2026 as the founder of one of the fastest growing brands in frozen breakfast. But just a few years ago, she was hand-making waffles in a shared kitchen and pitching corner stores with a toaster and a duffel bag. In this conversation, Emily explains how she turned a personal frustration into a breakout brand built on clean-label frozen waffles and pancakes made with real whole food ingredients. She shares why she refused to compromise on quality, even when it made manufacturing more difficult, and how Evergreen is leveraging protein innovation, strong retail data, and a sharper family-focused brand identity to scale across channels.

1:53Hey, folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I'm supremely honored to be sitting down with Emily Grodin, who is the founder and CEO of Evergreen.

2:01Emily Groden:I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much for taking the time. We're on the final day of Expo West here, and I'm glad that you are bright and lively and just generally in a really good mood, it seems like, which is amazing, you know, because I think last day of Expo West, you can typically find people not in that position. Well, I'm just glad that I still have a voice. Wednesday night, I did not have a voice, and I thought it was going to be a really long two days. But no, I love Expo. It's my favorite week of the year. I love seeing friends, old friends, meeting new friends. It reminds me why I love this industry so much.

2:36Emily Groden:I think everybody at the end of the day is in it for the same reasons. We all want to make our food system a little bit better, and we all want to see the other person, the people to our left and our right win. So it's just, it is exhausting for sure, but really invigorating. How many expos is this for you? This is our fourth. Fourth. Which is kind of nuts. You missed the first one, right? Yes. I was at a dinner last night with some folks who'd been into like 14 or more and I cannot imagine. But no, this is number four. And it's very cool to see how every expo is a little bit different as you grow and, you know, your goals change and you have more friends every time.

3:13Emily Groden:But I really do. I love this week. Yeah. And I referenced that you missed the first one because you started your company in what year? 2020. In 2020. There was no Expo that year. There was no Expo that year. I also didn't know what Expo West was at that point. I had no experience in this industry, truly did not know that Expo West was a thing. Well, you know, it's a thing now. And you know that this industry is absolutely insane and crazy and fun. Yes. And it's really fun when you come to an event like this, when you have new products. and you, Evergreen, have just launched a new line of frozen pancakes, which is amazing.

3:49Emily Groden:We actually launched two new lines this week. Because why stop at one? Why stop at one? What do you can do two? And the two are? The two are our pancakes, which you referenced and we're so excited about. But we also launched our first protein line. Ah. Yes. For some reason, I thought you already had protein. But now I understand why you have some protein pancakes and waffles on the table here. Yes. We have been asked for years at this show for the last few years, we've been asked when we were going to do protein. And we held off for a really long time because we'll get into the story of how Evergreen started, I am sure.

4:23Emily Groden:But kind of the hurdle that we always ask ourselves when we are innovating is, is this something that I would want to feed to my kids? and everybody who was doing protein in the beginning, largely the protein sources were kind of highly processed, soy, you know, isolates, I can't even pronounce the words. And that just felt really inauthentic to who we were and not something that I would want to give to my kids. So we held off for a long time until we figured out that, hey, we could actually get a really high amount of protein. We've got 10 grams per serving in our waffles, protein waffles, 15 grams per serving in our protein pancakes, but it's just from Greek yogurt and egg whites.

5:01That is incredible. And I just took two bites of your pancakes with chocolate chips. And then I believe that's the protein pancake, which I eat a lot of protein pancakes. And this looks like what I would make at home, which is pretty awesome. You know, sometimes when you see frozen items like a protein pancake, they don't look anything like the homemade version. And this looks exactly what I would make at home.

5:25Emily Groden:Love it. Yeah. Great job. Thank you. And they taste amazing. There's no compromise in flavor. If you've heard me say anything over the past three days, it's do not compromise. The consumer doesn't want any kind of compromise when it comes to flavor. You cannot come to market. This is my 15th year of Expo West. 15 years ago, you could get away with saying, okay, it's a little grainy. That's a little bitter. This doesn't taste perfectly or it doesn't taste exactly like the legacy products that I'm used to. 2026, you can't do that. Yeah, no, totally. And we have talked a lot on our team. And, you know, again, people have been asking us for protein for years.

5:58Emily Groden:We finally launched it. I had one person say, like, really, protein now? Isn't protein done? We do not believe it is. And we also think that there is kind of a trajectory that all trends take. First, it's just getting it on the shelf, right? People just want to check the box and get high-protein things on the shelf. And then kind of the next step is make it taste really good. That's kind of phase two. And then phase three, which we believe we are now entering, is clean it up. And that's what we're doing with ours. We're just using real protein sources that you probably have in your fridge already and putting it into our products.

6:35There's a reason for being for every brand. Your reason for being for creating Evergreen was what?

6:41Emily Groden:My kids. This is truly the biggest surprise of my life that I am a frozen waffle and pancake maker. I graduated from Harvard Law School 11, almost 11 years ago now, and was set on a career in corporate law. But it sounds fun. This is way more fun. They did not let you wear pink jumpsuits in big law firms. I will say that they don't let you make protein pancakes. They don't let you make protein pancakes either. Yeah, no, I love this career, but it is a surprise. long story made a lot shorter, basically have my now seven-year-old and I was working a lot as a corporate lawyer. And so as much as I wanted to make her breakfast from scratch every morning, knew that was never going to happen.

7:27Emily Groden:So started looking for those quick and easy solutions and frozen waffles seemed like a really obvious option. You can always have them on hand in your freezer. They take like 30 seconds to heat up. I didn't want to feed her that brand in a yellow box and went looking for a better for you option that kind of checked my nutritional boxes. And to my dismay, I started flipping around kind of quote unquote better for you brands packages at the time. And the ingredients were all the same. I had to Google a bunch of stuff. There wasn't really much nutrition in there. And I kind of sat back and I was like, I really don't want to settle for this.

8:02Emily Groden:And instead bought a mini waffle iron from Amazon and started making waffles on Sundays. And I'd make these big batches. I'd stick them in a Ziploc bag and put them in the freezer. And that's what we pulled from during the week. And kind of what I put into it was just what I had in my fridge in my pantry. I took out my blender and I threw in whole fruits, whole veggies, whole grain, wheat flour, eggs, nuts, spices, and literally blended it all up together to make the batter. And over the course of about a year, I watched as my daughter just devoured them. She made my life so much easier in the mornings.

8:38Emily Groden:And I actually made the train on time to get into the office, but it also just made me feel so much better. You know, I was a mom struggling with a lot of mom guilt because I was working as much as I was and to know that I could give her something that she loved and that was good for her made all the difference in the world. And I kind of sat back at the end of that year and was like, I'm probably not the only mom out there who wants something like this. And so set off on this really wild journey that I've now been on for six years to try to figure out how to get a product on a grocery store shelf with no CPG experience.

9:10In the middle of a pandemic.

9:12Emily Groden:Oh, in the middle of a pandemic. Yeah. With a very small child and soon to be a second child. So that sounds like a story where you might have a screeching halt after year one. How did you find yourself navigating the industry in those first 12 months, how did you find a reason to keep going when, of course, and I'm assuming things were going well, but, you know, still very, very tough that first year? Every year has been tough. You know, I feel like it's almost like having kids that get older. It's like bigger kids, bigger problems. But it's, you know, that's also what makes it fun figuring out how to solve the problems and the challenges.

9:48Emily Groden:That first year or so, I got certified to work out of a shared commercial kitchen, started making our waffles myself. I dropped down to part-time in my job, so I was still working as a lawyer three days a week. What month was this in 2020? This was late 2019 because we actually hit shelves second week of March 2020. Okay. Perfect timing. Perfect timing. So got certified to work out of a shared commercial kitchen. I would go to Whole Foods and Costco to get my ingredients, and then I would go make the waffles. I would not recommend that if you're looking for good margins, but I could make 46 units, 46 bags of our waffles in a day.

10:23Emily Groden:So 90 to total bags in a week. I took those samples, put them in a duffel bag with my household toaster and started walking around the corner stores in Chicago. And I would walk in and basically say, my name's Emily. I make waffles. I think they'd be great here. Can I toast them up for you? And to my surprise, everybody was like, sure, you can plug in your household toaster and toast me up some waffles. But that's how we got our first few accounts. And then perhaps with an inflated sense of confidence after getting a few corner stores, I sent a cold email to the Midwest office of Whole Foods. How'd you get your email address?

10:57Emily Groden:I'm a very good Googler. Okay. There's a theme throughout my whole story, which is that I'm very good at Google at finding things, manufacturers, you name it. But anyway, so dropped them off samples. And about two weeks later, I got an email back and they said, we love them. We want to bring them in. And they were like, how many stores do you want to start? And you can start real small. Like one store. They gave you the option of how many stores you could be in? I mean, it wasn't within the Midwest, you know, within Illinois. But even then, there's still quite a few. Well, I said, how many stores are in Illinois?

11:26Emily Groden:And they said 28. And I said, that sounds great. And then immediately was like, oh my God, how am I going to supply 28 stores? I'm making these by hand. Fortunately, found a, thanks to Google, my friend Google, found a small manufacturer outside of Chicago pretty quickly. Did our first manufacturing run in January 2020. that first pallet got picked up later that month and then hit shelves second week of March 2020. You were financing all this on your own, I assume. For the first three years, didn't fundraise or hire for the first three years. So just imagine just me, no experience, stumbling around in this very complicated world trying to figure out how to make it work.

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12:42I mean, did you feel like it was a bit of an advantage that you could pay for things on your own to start out?

12:48Emily Groden:Yeah, it also definitely slowed our growth in the beginning. A lot of people ask, how long have you been at this? I'm like six years, but it really kind of feels like three because not having a single team member, I didn't even know. I didn't know what a promo was, like an in-store promo. I didn't do promos for the first several years of the business because I thought like the grocery store did the promo. Right, right. When I say I knew nothing, I knew nothing. I've learned a lot in the last six years. Yeah, you're not the only one who's heard the term CPG for the first time. And I'm like, what's CPG?

13:17What is that? You know, the first.

13:18Emily Groden:I was that person for sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. You know, when you first launched, I saw Evergreen. You know, there was a good amount of hype about the brand. And I remember the green bag and I remember it being in the office. And I always wondered to myself, who is this for? And I don't mean that in a negative way, because I think it spoke to me in a really positive way. but you know I'm an adult and I feel like this is a product for adults but I see your new packaging now and your protein pancakes and your waffles and in your story about how this was a brand for your kids has your target consumer or your sense of who this is for changed at all has it evolved at all as the brand has grown I love this question because you hit on exactly the reason that we rebranded.

14:01Emily Groden:No, the target consumer has always been families with young kids. I just didn't know how to speak to them and didn't realize that I should be using our packaging to do so. We had white packaging with very kind of our logo was in green, different shades of green, very kind of sharp corners. And when I hired our first marketing hire back in 2023, she came to me and she was basically like, Emily, what is your goal for the brand? And I said, I believe we can be the next big frozen breakfast brand. She said, great. I think you are a leader who can do it. I think we have a product that can do it. Well, let me tell you the brand, not going to do it.

14:46Emily Groden:She was like, this is not the brand that's going to be the next big frozen breakfast brand. So we actually took Expo 2023 and use it as a really scrappy way to gather a lot of data from a lot of people. And everybody who came up to our booth, we asked them kind of about their experience with the packaging. And just like you said, people were like, you know, it speaks to me as like health first. Like it looks like the healthiest frozen waffle to me. Some people were like, is it vegan? Because it's green and like evergreen and like looks like plants. And then the number one piece the feedback we got was we love them.

15:20Emily Groden:They're so much more delicious than we thought they'd be. And we were like, hmm, we're delighted that you love them, but also problematic that you didn't think they'd be good. And what we discovered was exactly what you said. We were sending the wrong message to our consumers. Frozen waffles are fun, right? You know, we walked in here and I gave you a scratch and sniff cartoon sweatshirt. Which I can't wait to put on when I get out of this monkey suit of mine. It goes over monkey suits lovely too. No, but you know, it's a scratch and sniff sweatshirt that smells like maple syrup. And the whole reason we wanted to do that is, you know, I would say for most people, some of their earliest food memories come from breakfast.

15:59Emily Groden:You know, for me, my dad made us pancakes out of a box every Sunday. Like I can still smell those pancakes walking down into our kitchen. I can still feel like the stickiness of the maple syrup or like the fake maple syrup actually at our house at the time on my fingers. And, you know, I can still remember Saturday morning cartoons afterwards. It was always Doug and Rugrats for me, but there's so many nostalgic, happy, warm memories associated with things like waffles and pancakes. And we were not hitting on that at all. So we totally flipped the branding on its head. We took the white packaging and we replaced it with these really vibrant colors across the rainbow.

16:38Emily Groden:We got rid of our really kind of sharp corners, logos, and went with a font that was round and kind of almost like you look at it and it feels like a hug, you know, even the V is a nod to a heart. And then we also infused personality into it and hinted at that this is for kids or for families with kids without, you know, plastering a cartoon character on the front. But so for example, you know, the cooking instructions I'm looking at right now on the back, there's a speech ball that says easy enough to make while half asleep. And on one of our other packages, it says you wish your kids got ready this fast.

17:14Emily Groden:And so in that way, we're kind of nodding to the parental experience, right, without making it so overly kid focused that it turns away adult consumers as well. To be the next great frozen breakfast brand, I think that accessibility and affordability is critical. I think you're addressing part of the accessibility part of this in your packaging, in how you're positioning the brand for families. That's not all of accessibility. That's part of it, getting people to feel comfortable with wanting to buy and have this product in their freezers. But I think in general, if you want people to eat better, they have to be able to find it in the retail stores that are near them and also be able to afford the product.

18:02You mentioned the brand in the yellow box that is ubiquitous, that is affordable, may not be the most nutritious and healthy thing to eat, but it is available to a lot of folks. How do you think about and incorporate affordability and accessibility into your growth strategy?

18:20Emily Groden:Yeah, we, as we have innovated, you'll notice our original line, our mini waffles are in bags. and they look and feel and taste different than your typical frozen waffle. And they are delicious, but different. They come in different flavors, you know, carrot cake, peanut butter, banana bread. They're a smaller size. And again, they're in bags. They're in bags because remember, I started making these out of a shared commercial kitchen and I was like, how the heck am I supposed to seal a carton? But like a bag, I think I could get a heat sealer on Amazon for 25 bucks and figure that one out. So that's why they're in bags.

18:57Emily Groden:turned out that was a huge competitive advantage for us as a new brand entering the space, you know, in a sea of boxes, it helped us stand out in the beginning. But as we've innovated, we made the conscious decision to move to cartons so that our products start to look and feel and taste a little bit more like what folks are used to seeing in frozen waffles. Because if we're asking them to make a trade and spend a little bit more, then we want all the other friction to go away. And so that was kind of the reason behind moving to cartons. Making sure we hit the right price point has been really important too.

19:36Emily Groden:My goal, and if you step back to, you know, this started as a brand for my kids, but has really evolved into, I believe all kids in the U.S. deserve better food. Only 10 % of kids in the U.S. get the daily recommended intake of veggies, which is a really sad statistic. And it's not like that doesn't have any impact on their health. It leads to an increased risk of a whole host of diseases later in life. Yeah, I mean, that's where I think, just to interject for a second, like public health and entrepreneurship can really work hand in hand because the big players are not going to change their ways.

20:14They have no reason to, they have no incentive to.

20:16Emily Groden:And it's hard when you're that big, it takes so long. Yeah, and the margins are really thin and they're just doing a lot based on volume. So it's incumbent upon entrepreneurs to lead the path to change the system as a group. I applaud you for what you're doing. And I think, you know, again, the 10 % number that you just quoted is just ludicrous. Ludicrous. For a country like the United States. I could not agree more. So, you know, we have hidden veggies in all of our waffles as well as, you know, we're 100 % whole grain. We use avocado oil instead of seed oils. We use maple syrup instead of refined sugars.

20:53Emily Groden:And so my ultimate goal, I want to be on every grocery store shelf. You know, to me, Evergreen is not just a natural channel brand. It is a mass channel brand as well, because I want to be within arm's reach of every kid in America. I'd love to do a big K through 12 business at some point. You know, yes, that's a nice channel to get into as well, but more so for the mission, because that's, you know, where you access all the kids. So we've been, you know, really thoughtful in how we price. We're always going to be more expensive than that brand in a yellow box just by nature of the ingredients that we're using.