739 Mark Brooks: Co-Founder & CEO of Brainiac

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to The Kara Golden Show.

0:45Kara Goldin:Today, we're diving into something you probably don't think enough about, brain nutrition. We obsess over protein and collagen, but we count steps and do all of these other things. But when's the last time that you thought about feeding your brain? So my guest today, Mark Brooks, is the co-founder and CEO of a company called Brainiac, which is a company dead set on closing the brain nutrition gap with snacks for kids, but not just for kids. I got to enjoy plenty of them as well. And same with my teenagers too. So I think that there is definitely a wide desire for this product. So Mark's not just a founder.

1:35Kara Goldin:He's a builder who scaled major food brands before deciding to tackle one with one of the biggest overlooked problems in our diets with Brainiac. He's betting big on omega-3s, choline, and science-backed nutrition to fuel focus and memory, starting with kids. And by the way, Brainiac is already on shelves at Target and Walmart, Whole Foods, you name it. So I can't wait to get into the science and the journey and the hustle and the hurdles and what it really takes to build a better-for-you brand as Mark is doing. So welcome. Thank you, Kyle. Thanks for the introduction. Absolutely. So let's kick it off simple.

2:18Kara Goldin:If someone's never heard of Brainiac, how do you describe it in a few sentences? Yeah, we look to put the nutrients that we need, that our brains are made of and connected by, that we should get from foods like salmon and trout and broccoli and liver that my kids don't get enough of. And we put them into foods that they do enjoy, that they have every day. So we're looking to bridge the nutrient gap because I didn't realize that our brains need nutrition in the same way that our bodies do. Yeah, definitely. So was there a personal aha moment besides you deciding, I'm going to go do it again and start something new?

3:00Kara Goldin:Was there an aha moment that really sparked the idea that this could be a product that is needed on the shelf, but also a business that could scale. Yeah. Credit goes to my co-founder, Jonathan Wolfson. He was having his third child and little Booker, there was a point very early on where he was diagnosed with failure to thrive. Essentially, that just means you're losing weight when you're supposed to be gaining weight. And Jonathan's dad is a neurologist. His brother-in-law is a neurologist. And so immediately, they kind of rallied around trying to figure out, so if he's losing weight, what is that?

3:40And it turned out he wasn't able to breastfeed at the time. And he and I had been working in the field of omega-3 DHA, one of the core nutrients. We had a science nutrition advisory board of the academics that really ground the science. And so he kind of connected these dots of, I need to get the right nutrients into Booker so that he can start to thrive. And in the conversations with the advisory board, they said, look, there's really good infant formula out there. So let's switch over to infant formula to supplement feeding. These are the nutrients you want to make sure are in there. But while you're doing that, what about your older kids?

4:21And obviously, kids that are older, and you say, well, I mean, they eat fine. But are they getting the salmon, the trout, the liver? And of course, no. Even mine who, they'll have, they enjoy salmon, they'll enjoy broccoli, but not every day. So you really need to understand a key point, which is that your brains are developing into your teenage years, and they're made of, structured of the things that you get from food. And so that's where the connection came the aha moment for Jonathan. Obviously, he had a bit of an insight with his having grown up with his dad being a notable neurologist. He made that connection and gave me a call and said, hey, we're going to start this company where we're going to get people, we're going to feed people's brains.

5:13And we started with yogurt. And that was a head scratcher for me, but then quickly, quickly it kind of formulated.

5:19Kara Goldin:So interesting. So what were you doing before Brainiac? yeah before brainiac so jonathan had started a company founded a company that was all things algae if you think about algae it's a single cell plant and if you take that um and you can put it into fermentation tanks and it produces just as any plant if you think about an olive uh olive oil plant and it's rich in olive oil it's also got other nutrients in it you can extract the oil where you can do the same with algae. And so you grow the algae in a tank, you compress it, and you can get oil. So what we were doing, he started it as a biofuels company, an alternate source of fuels, then lubricants, personal care, and then I came on board to look at the food business and try and look at it as a different place to get foods like protein, like oils, and introduce those into the diet.

6:15And when we did that, I joined that in 2014. It was kind of one of those kind of, from a food perspective, it was a little icky thinking about algae, which didn't have the best connotation. But now I think it's much more natural kind of people think sea vegetable, you think macro seaweed, you think some of those other sources. And we launched a brand called Thrive, which got on as a cooking oil that was super healthy, super heart healthy. so kind of this this pattern of taking something that's new where there's low awareness by the consumer but it's generally good and better that you have to then educate the consumer with good branding hopefully clear messaging and founded on science so so interesting so i read

7:02Kara Goldin:your description of the brain nutrition gap can you share a little bit more about that and why every, not just parent, but I think every human should really be worried about this. Yeah. So if we start with, so our brains are made of, so there's a lot of water. After water, it's fat. The number one fat that our brains are made of, the building blocks, is omega-3 DHA. And then you think about our brains are a bunch of electrical signals crossing, and they have neurotransmitters. Those neurotransmitters are made of something called acetylcholine of which choline, which we get in our diet, is a precursor.

7:44So that gives us these two nutrients. And we get nutrition from all sorts of places. The real question is, do we get enough from our regular diet or is there a gap? And what we did, so we researched, there's a study done periodically in the US in conjunction with the National Institute of Health and it says what nutrients are we getting enough of and what are we in deficit so we looked at that and determined that we get about 20 percent of the omega-3 dha that we need on a daily basis just 20 percent and if that is the number one structural element of your brain then there's an opportunity that there's a deficiency there that's really important and as a parent i've got three kids, the amount of additional tutoring or music lessons or all of those things that we do to inspire our kids' growth.

8:35But if we're missing that number one building block, whether it be the DHA for the structure or whether it be allowing our electrical signals to pass, there's an opportunity. With choline, it's the same. We get about 60 % of what we need because you can get it from broccoli and eggs. But there's still, in all of our diets, And of course, when you look at the data, they stratify it by age group. Early days, when we're breastfeeding on infant formula, we're in good shape. And then it falls off of a cliff and never recovers all the way through the age gaps. And why we all should care is because you need it for development of our brains, but also performance of our brains for us.

9:18And then as we go into our later years, having omega-3 DHA every day also helps plasticity of our brains. which can help to ameliorate symptoms of cognitive decline later. And then across the age groups, there's a lot of very strong research to do with the link between DHA helping symptoms of ADHD and other learning challenges. And so it can really help in that space as well. So trying to just find the easy way of doing it, because why hasn't someone fixed it? Well, because it's really hard to get people to have salmon every day, to afford it, to like it, to know how to cook with it, and some of these other nutrients to try and get it into our diets, whether that be kids who might be picky eaters or even ourselves.

10:09Kara Goldin:So you're making brain nutrition more accessible when you launched. How many SKUs did you start with? I think the short answer is way too many. And that's something that I think we all sort of fall into. Um, uh, because part of it is you don't, you don't know. We actually started in, in cold chain yogurt. Um, our first products, our first products went on second half of 2019 and we quickly got, um, some, some national scale with, uh, Whole Foods and Target. And we were delighted come the beginning of 2020, um, to have, to have, you know, our new brand, our new yogurt sitting on those shelves and then march 10th of 2020 pandemic hit and cold chain was a terrible business to be in um stores were shutting foot traffic in stores was terrible people were using those refrigerators for just a few skews that were going to be there for online pickup you know target very much reoriented itself to having its stores effectively serve serve people who were driving up um and so thankfully we also had a shelf stable product in apple sauce um that we were just trying on amazon and then overnight the opposite happened where whereas cold chain froze if you excuse the pun the shelf stable just went crazy and we uh we we became number two number three apple sauce on amazon noticed by walmart you know and so accidentally you know we we were in we bought a yogurt tube machine we'd installed it we were using it we had yogurt drinks uh you know we were quite deep on that side.

11:50We had our co-packers set. We were producing at scale. And fairly quickly, we reoriented during the pandemic to be a shelf-stable company. Otherwise, from a working capital perspective, it would have been impossible.

12:04Kara Goldin:How long did that take for you to make that quick but important shift? Emotionally, quite a while, actually. Because we started this thing sort of 2018, 2019, you're working on nothing but getting the product right, you know, getting the flavors right, getting the packaging right, you know, the journey. Um, and, and you finally get to launch. And so coming out of it, we probably, we were probably out 2021. We were probably out of yogurt, um, and, and fully into the shelf stable, um, snack products that we have. But yeah, It was definitely managing retailers as well in terms of how to best transition ourselves.

12:49Because during that time, we had Walmart take us on. And managing the exit from Walmart was actually probably one of the more notable things we did well. Because we still have that relationship today.

13:02Kara Goldin:That's incredible. So how did you manage that? What was sort of the key aspect of it? the most important thing, I guess we all have others, other than the relationship with our consumers, but the relationship with our buyers to be listening and to understand what they need is something from, you know, we started in probably 300 points of distribution four years ago. Um, and we're at 30 ,000 points of distribution just with Walmart, um, today. And in that going, going to the buyer who believed in that product for kids, for yogurt, um, and saying, look, for these reasons, we're going to have to take a beat and take a pause on yogurt, but tell me what you need in us making that decision.

13:46And we told him the why, the economics. And we agreed a transition period, and during which he then spoke very highly to his colleagues in the other sets that we were a company that were going to stand by, not leave them with an empty shelf and then also invest behind the product. And so that kind of gave us the leg up to then get our distribution quite quickly with Apple Source into Walmart.

14:15Kara Goldin:That's great. I think what you're describing too is kind of, you know, basically owning that there is an issue and there's a problem versus actually having the retailer come to you and say there's a problem. that it's just a whole different conversation. Yeah, very much. And we still, when you have periodic stockouts or when each of these different things, it's far better if we're leading with that discussion. And we have one, we have some conversations where the skew isn't quite right and it's not because of the concept necessarily, but maybe the price point isn't there and if. And we found our recent success where we've kind of, it's, I shouldn't, you don't want to say it out loud, but we're hitting our stride, has been in consultation with buyers, where buyers have come to us even with some product innovation ideas.

15:12And could you guys look at this and could we partner on? And that kind of creates a closer bond in terms of how you do things and why you're doing them.

15:21Kara Goldin:Definitely. So when you went to this format, you had how many SKUs versus today? Have you shifted? Have you grown? Have you shrunk? How do you think about it? Yeah, so we've definitely grown. So we're definitely, we probably entered Apple Source with three SKUs. Today, I've got 12 SKUs across two categories in Walmart. I think I'm going to have 12 SKUs in Target, but across four different aisles. and in some way like Thrive Market that's an incredible retailer and partner for us as well, they probably do have 20 SKUs as well. And the thing for us is we're conscious of making sure that we don't go too heavy on SKUs, but when we've got kids enjoying the product as our end consumer, there's a certain fickleness to the consumption.

16:25And so my my daughter love, love, loved the strawberry apple every day until she hated it, you know, and that, and that period of time wasn't. So, so then she was able to go into a different flavor. So if we can put tools in the toolbox, you know, so there's something in that lunchbox every day, uh, for my middle schooler or my elementary schooler, um, that's kind of what we do. So we try and make sure now you won't see me do six flavors of the same item. Cause then I think I'm

16:53Kara Goldin:just diluting but three so how have you gotten the word out about brainiac so it's one thing to be able to have maybe some relationships out there with retailers but you also have to back it up with telling people that you're actually going to the shelf so how have you done that well yeah and as a small uh you know startup company you know where we're not able to do much top of funnel um work You know, so we've got to start with that first three feet, you know, so our packaging is something that we've been pretty agile on making sure we can refine the messaging because it has to do, it's got a heavy lift, right?

17:34It's sitting in traditional parts of the grocery store where there's normally one very large incumbent. And then we come on as a challenger brand. And we've got that point of difference and that small premium, but premium need to need to feel as obvious as we can make it. So a lot of the work is done there. A lot is done using retailer specific influences and trying to find those partnerships. And then we ladder up to relationships in more earned media, so folks like Good Housekeeping, where we've got some Good Housekeeping awards and some product picks. So that's probably the spectrum that we have.

18:24We're not putting a lot into media. Obviously, we do some of the fundamentals on digital. And then our biggest investment is looking at the retailer digital channels and then working, thinking about Walmart.com, Target.com, Thrive Market, and working with their tools for awareness and trial. That's going to be our biggest investment. The categories we're in, around about 40 % of the purchases originate online, even if they're picked up in store. and so just sort of mapping that that path to purchase for the consumer has been a focus

19:03Kara Goldin:has online really uh i would guess you've been in the industry for a long time so uh has that really surprised you how much of a uh uh channel that is for you you know i so no partly because Because what hasn't surprised me, so I'm in the Bay Area, and so within community, there's a lot of quite traditional started in D2C businesses that then went retail. And when you think about when we looked early at the consumption of our product, we did a bit of D2C and fairly quickly determined that the consumer experience, you're not going to go shopping for groceries in different own brand stores. Maybe we had some subscriptions that work like that.

19:58We also quickly realized that Amazon can be a vehicle and it's a visible vehicle. It's somewhat advertising as well for trial. It's not necessarily a source to scale a business for relatively accessibly priced products. uh so in thinking though and we launched into the pandemic and so we benefited from there were a lot of people choosing their shopping lists and their reorder stuff online and making sure they could just drive by and pick it up and so we kind of just went with that momentum um and i think that's we've and we went early on walmart.com i think uh perhaps ahead of some of the other folks in the category.

20:46Seeing the intent that Walmart had with a digital channel, how they're investing behind it, how the Walmart Connect team is excellent and wants to partner with you.

20:58Kara Goldin:So where do you see the brain food category in the next five years? Do you think you were early in launching this? Obviously, things like DHE and Omega, people know what that is, but not actually putting it into real food and to packaging as you have as well, and really telling people, educating people about the importance of this. I mean, it often takes the early people in a category longer because they've got to educate, right? Not only the consumer, but also the buyer that is going to give them some shelf space. But where do you hope that the brain food category goes in the next five years?

21:48Kara Goldin:And where do you think it's headed? Yeah, when we started, it was very foreign to a lot of people, the idea. And it's interesting, right? Because I've got a, you know, I'm drinking coffee here and I know that there's a link between drinking coffee and cognition, right? It's that early pick-me-up. And so there are a few things that we consume that we know that, but we're not thinking of it as investing in the health in the same way that we went through that period where we knew that calcium, I should drink milk because of calcium because my bones need calcium, they're made of. And the same way protein, we spend a lot of time and money thinking about protein for our muscles and our body fitness.

22:31And it's kind of intuitive when you then think about this. so i think that we have seen as we've seen success as we've you know our job is not to go in and um be the category leader we're there to go in be a challenger brand be the functional science-based option that can help to grow a category as well for the for the buyer uh we've seen as we've gone in and seen some success we've seen some meet to you know some of the some of the lead brands start to put the nutrients in um and so you know rising tide also helps you lift all ships in terms of that awareness that you see as well. And I've seen a big difference in terms of it surprises me still.

23:14So even last week, I was in a grocery store, and as probably all of us in CPG, you get chatting to people who are in your aisle, and have you seen and have you tried? If I buy you this, would you try it? And I started to talk about the brain nutrients, and the lady said, no, no, I know DHA. DHA is really important. My son has ADHD and I can't afford the supplements, so I try and do the best I can. That awareness of the nutrients, I think, is increasing. I think we're playing a role as being probably the first to bring it into mainstream snacks. I think people are doing a good job when you think about cognitive nutrition in the adult space.

24:00There's some folks doing a really nice job there. Um, and, uh, you know, when, when we're thinking about for me, um, and part of our challenge, cause we like to make things hard is I get to, I've got to sell to the buyer. Why put us on? I've got to sell to the mom and dad. Why pay extra? And then I've got to make sure the kid wants to eat it twice, you know? So I've also got to make sure the products there. So I think we'll, I will see ourselves looking at different product ranges. We'll look to also look for new, nutrients. We just launched a product with Target that brings milk fat globule membrane, which is a key component of breast milk.

24:39We're the first to bring it into foods. It's been in infant formula. And we're the first to cross the aisle in the baby aisle and bring it into first foods. And it has amazing science sitting behind it in terms of cognition scores for kids, particularly in combination with DHA.

24:58Kara Goldin:And that's just at Target right now? That's a target and it'll be launching into Thrive and other retailers soon. And what is the name of that SKU? So that one is, so it's under our Little Brainiac range and we banner it Neuro Plus, just to show that it has that enhanced nutrition. Incredible. So which Brainiac flavor disappears fastest in your house? So we launched, Walmart came and said, look, we love what you did in applesauce. Could you do it in fruit snacks? a functionally additive fruit snack would make a ton of sense. And so we launched fruit snacks and we just launched a mixed fruit. So just different colors, different fruit juices in.

25:45And I just, I can't keep them on the side. And that's, but early days, that's been exactly the test. So we get new products. I just leave them out. And the ones that go launch and the ones that are still sitting there, done. Because if my kids aren't stealing them, you know, and they used to, there was one product we did where they opened it from the bottom so it didn't look like they'd taken them, which was...

26:14Kara Goldin:I love it. Well, Mark, thank you so much for dropping by and sharing the Brainiac story. Everyone needs to try these incredible products from this great company, Brainiacfoods.com. But as I said, it's in many incredible stores as well as online. And if you love this episode, share it with a friend, drop a review. And thank you so much, Mark, again, for coming and sharing all about it. And until next time on The Kara Golden Show. Thank you. Thank you, Carmen. Thanks again for listening to The Kara Golden Show. If you would, please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit.

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