849 Shibani Baluja: Founder & CEO of Lil’ Gourmets

0:00I 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.

0:09Kara Goldin: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. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time.

0:52Kara Goldin:I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job.

1:38Kara Goldin:Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire.

2:19Kara Goldin:Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Rula, online therapy designed to be easier to access and actually covered by insurance. There are seasons when stress, burnout, anxiety, or just life can feel like a lot. And when you're ready to get support, you shouldn't have to spend weeks trying to figure out who takes your insurance or whether anyone is even accepting new patients. RULA helps take the friction out of that process. They partner with over 100 insurance plans with patients, typically paying around$15 per session when using insurance.

3:01Kara Goldin:And instead of randomly matching you, RULA helps connect you with licensed professionals based on your needs, preferences, and state requirements. If taking care of your mental health is part of your plan this year, RULA makes it easier to begin and easier to stick with it. Real support covered by insurance when you need it most. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit Rula.com slash Kara Golden to get started. After you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you.

3:40Kara Goldin:That's R-U-L-A.com slash Kara Golden. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden Show. Today, I'm joined by Shabani Baluja, founder and CEO of Little Gourmets, the first fresh veggie first baby food brand bringing globally inspired meals to the refrigerated aisle at Whole Foods Market, Walmart, and beyond. And Shabani's journey is such a powerful one. She spent over a decade climbing the ranks at incredible large brands like Kraft Foods only to decide, it's time. I need to go and become an entrepreneur. And at the same time, she was navigating, growing her family, all of the things that she thought she wanted to accomplish sound familiar.

4:40Kara Goldin:When she finally became a mom, she made a bold move to go ahead and become that entrepreneur that maybe she was thinking about before that. What I love about Shobani's story is how she's combining her personal experience, research, her own journey prior to launching Little Gourmets, and now has an incredible company that she is not only the founder of, but also navigating and scaling. So very excited to have this conversation. So Shabani, welcome. So nice to finally meet you. Yes, Kara, thank you so much. It's so nice to meet you and I'm really excited to chat. It's 2026. Banking shouldn't still feel complicated.

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7:06Optional products and services may have fees or charges. Stated annual percentage yield and cashback for Chime Prime only. No minimum balance required. Checking account ranking based on a J.D. Power survey published October 20, 2025. For more information on APY rates, MyPay, SpotMe, and Travel Perks, go to Chime.com slash disclosures.

7:18Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Rula, online therapy designed to be easier to access and actually covered by insurance. There are seasons when stress, burnout, anxiety, or just life can feel like a lot. And when you're ready to get support, you shouldn't have to spend weeks trying to figure out who takes your insurance or whether anyone is even accepting new patients. Rula helps take the friction out of that process. They partner with over 100 insurance plans with patients, typically paying around$15 per session when using insurance. And instead of randomly matching you, RULA helps connect you with licensed professionals based on your needs, preferences, and state requirements.

8:01Kara Goldin:If taking care of your mental health is part of your plan this year, RULA makes it easier to begin and easier to stick with it. Real support covered by insurance when you need it most. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit Rula.com slash Kara Golden to get started. After you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. That's R-U-L-A dot com slash Kara Golden. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Rippling.

8:45Kara Goldin:Let's face it, most AI can give you business insights, but only Rippling can give you AI that takes action across your global workforce. That's where Rippling stands apart because Rippling AI is built on your live global workforce data with HR, IT, and finance all connected in one place. Say you want to focus on talent retention. Just ask Rippling AI, who are my top performers this year? And instantly get a workforce report flagging potentially at-risk employees with supporting data like comp ratios, recent performance reviews, and engagement metrics. Then Rippling AI can turn those insights into real action, like recommending a retention strategy that includes a 5 % spot bonus for top performers in your next payroll run.

9:38Kara Goldin:Just tap confirm to add it to next month's payroll run. So don't settle for AI that's all talk. Head to rippling.ai slash Kara Golden and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your business and take complex actions across your entire organization. That's r-i-p-p-l-i-n-g dot a-i slash Kara Golden. Sign up for exclusive access today. Very, very excited. So for listeners who may not be familiar with the Little Gourmets brand yet, how do you describe the brand and what makes it different? Yeah, so at Little Gourmets, we're all about getting kids to eat more veggies and flavors from around the world.

10:29So we're based on the research that shows a high correlation between our early foods and our future eating habits. So if we know we can introduce babies and toddlers to foods like ours early on, we can really help inspire them into healthy and adventurous eaters, squash, picky eating, and just make mealtime more joyful and nutritious.

10:51Kara Goldin:As the days get longer and warmer, I always find myself resetting a bit, thinking about what I'm eating, how I'm feeling, and honestly, how to enjoy the foods I love without feeling like I'm compromising anything. Because let's be real, there are certain comfort foods I don't want to give up. Fresh sandwiches, wraps, pasta nights, those are staples. And that's exactly where Hero bread has completely changed things for me. I was genuinely surprised the first time I tried it. The texture is soft, fluffy, honestly, exactly what you want from bread. Not dense, not off, just really good. Whether I'm making a quick breakfast bagel, a veggie packed wrap for lunch, or even doing a full pasta night with their noodles, it actually feels like I'm eating the real thing.

11:40Kara Goldin:And what I love most is how it fits into my routine. Hero Bread has zero to five gram net carbs per serving, zero grams of sugar, and anywhere from 11 to 32 grams of fiber, depending on the product. Some even have up to 19 grams of protein. So it's made it a lot easier to hit my fiber goals and make smarter swaps without overthinking every meal. And it's not just sliced bread. They've got tortillas, buns, bagels, even Hero Noodles, which have 32 grams of fiber, 12 grams of protein, and just 80 calories per serving. It really covers everything. No compromises, just flavor and options that actually work with how you want to eat.

12:25Kara Goldin:So if you've been thinking about making a few more mindful choices this season, definitely check it out. Hero Bread is offering 10 % off your order. Just go to hero.co and use code Kara Golden at checkout. That's Kara Golden at H-E-R-O dot C-O. So you spent over a decade at a very large company at Kraft Foods. And when, as you were there, you know, I think it's always an interesting journey for anybody who's spent time at large companies because they think, oh, I can just go be a founder. I'm sure you've had moments where you're like, what am I doing? But then you've also had moments where you're recognizing how different it was to actually go outside of a large company to go and launch your own brand.

13:23Kara Goldin:The buck stops with you, all of those things that I know very, very well. But what did you learn, I guess, in those early days of launching little gourmets that maybe you weren't as prepared for? Yeah, so I spent most of my time at Kraft in mergers and acquisitions. So 10 of my 11 years were in the strategy role. And I found it kind of at this point to be a little comical that I used to tell operators how they could better operate their business, you know, based on strategy and theory. And then I saw, well, strategy and theory only gets you so far, right? The execution, things don't always work out the way you think they are, the way they think they should on paper.

14:09And so that has been really eye-opening to see just how much harder it is to grow a brand than I think I realized during my days at Kraft.

14:21Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical.

15:05Kara Goldin:Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week.

15:47Kara Goldin:With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Rula, online therapy designed to be easier to access and actually covered by insurance. There are seasons when stress, burnout, anxiety, or just life can feel like a lot. And when you're ready to get support, you shouldn't have to spend weeks trying to figure out who takes your insurance or whether anyone is even accepting new patients.

16:30Kara Goldin:Rula helps take the friction out of that process. They partner with over 100 insurance plans with patients, typically paying around$15 per session when using insurance. And instead of randomly matching you, RULA helps connect you with licensed professionals based on your needs, preferences, and state requirements. If taking care of your mental health is part of your plan this year, RULA makes it easier to begin and easier to stick with it. Real support covered by insurance when you need it most. Thousands of people are already using RULA to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance.

17:09Kara Goldin:Visit Rula.com slash Kara Golden to get started. After you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. That's R-U-L-A dot com slash Kara Golden. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. I'm so curious. So you probably saw a lot of deals go through Kraft and helped analyze a lot of those deals. What would you say is kind of the big things that you, is there different points of a brand where you finally decide, okay, yeah, maybe it, whether it's for craft or anybody else, what would you say based on what you saw?

17:54Kara Goldin:I mean, they, they want to bring brands in, they want to bring only if they get to a certain size, what kind of growth, what kind of profitability, all those things, if you had to like boil it down. Yeah, yeah. So I think the key thing is synergies. And can we grow this brand better than someone else or independently, right? So does it fit into the portfolio? Does it fit into our core competencies? And can we bring value to it that others can't? Because that's what would allow us to bid higher for it and actually win in an auction. in terms of profitability. We would always at that point want to see at least a gross margin of 40 as a base so that we could take it to 50 or 60 with those synergies and really see that the brand could travel to the categories that we wanted it to travel to.

18:50So I'd say at Kraft, we learned like so many, I think big food companies have learned over the last 10, 20 years that if a company or a brand was too small, it really often got lost in a behemoth like craft was. And so we really did look at, we stopped looking at deals under, you know, 100 million or so in revenue, unless they really just could slide right into an existing portfolio. So in our earlier days, we were bringing in smaller brands. We brought in back to nature when it was just a few million dollars, but really found that it wasn't aligned with craft's competencies to grow a brand that small.

19:34And it just kind of got, brands like that got lost in the shuffle and we ended up divesting a bunch. I actually, when I was there, I divested a number of brands that we had acquired five to 10 years earlier and just saw that we were not good stewards of those brands. So I learned a lot about what not to do with a small brand during my time at Kraft. So, so interesting.

20:01Kara Goldin:So getting back to Little Gourmets, you were looking at starting your own family and went through a whole fertility journey that so many families go through. How did that experience shape your perspective on food and health? Yeah, so it's really interesting because I actually never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I'm the daughter of immigrant entrepreneurs and I saw how hard it was. And my family was always like, just don't do it. It's so hard. It's so hard on family too, right? But my infertility experience, so it went on for about five years to have my son. It was unexplained. And so I turned to an acupuncturist who had me start looking at what I was putting into my body.

20:49And at that time, I ate a lot of processed foods. I mean, I worked at Kraft, right? A lot of like fat-free, low-fat versions are, you know, our 90s definition of healthy. And so when I cut all that out of my diet, I cut out all processed foods, I really just felt so much better. I felt similar to you, right? I just, I felt healthier and I just like my, I didn't have those same kind of issues that I had for years with just being reliant on processed food. And so when I eventually had my son, you know, I credit him to a number of things, you know, of course, doctors and my acupuncturist, but also I think my diet.

21:29And so the first time I went to feed him, I'd say packaged baby food, I was really struck by the irony because packaged baby food is one of the most over-processed foods in the grocery store. And so this was, my son was born in 2013. So at that point, there was no fresh baby food. And so when I opened that first jar of, it was just organic carrots, the irony hit me. And during those years of just struggling to become a mom, I really promised myself that if I was ever lucky enough to become a mom, I would always do my best. And as I opened that jar, something inside me clicked like, no, this is not doing your best.

22:15And so I ended up, you know, putting the jar down and started the next struggle of motherhood, which was, you know, as someone who's working long hours and commuting and just like so many of us, right, how am I going to get this kid fed in time with food I felt good about? And I couldn't find anything in the grocery store to help me. And so I just started cooking all his meals and focused on introducing him to a variety of veggies and always use spices just because that's just how I cooked. And I really saw that impact as he became a toddler. He loved veggies. He loved really diverse flavors and he was so open to food.

22:59And that's really kind of what led me down that path because I started to, I got curious to say, why is this kid so into like really adventurous flavors? And started doing more medical research. And that's when I discovered that emerging infant nutrition research was proving a high correlation between our early foods and our future eating habits. And so what I was seeing with my son is exactly what I should expect to see. And then I'd say I put my craft hat on and really started studying the industry and seeing how this one we could do so much better and two there's such a white space and three as I talked to other parents and did surveys saw that they too were looking for things like I was more veggies fresher options just food they felt good about feeding their kids and so it still took me a couple years from there the idea just kept nagging at me and I was like no, I don't.

23:57I don't want to be an entrepreneur, but I couldn't get it out of my head. And so I eventually left Kraft to start it.

24:05Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Rula, online therapy designed to be easier to access and actually covered by insurance. There are seasons when stress, burnout, anxiety, or just life can feel like a lot. And when you're ready to get support, you shouldn't have to spend weeks trying to figure out who takes your insurance or whether anyone is even accepting new patients. RULA helps take the friction out of that process. They partner with over 100 insurance plans with patients typically paying around$15 per session when using insurance. And instead of randomly matching you, RULA helps connect you with licensed professionals based on your needs, preferences, and state requirements.

24:48Kara Goldin:If taking care of your mental health is part of your plan this year, RULA makes it easier to begin. and easier to stick with it. Real support covered by insurance when you need it most. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit Rula.com slash Kara Golden to get started. After you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. That's R-U-L-A.com slash Kara Golden. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro.

25:32Kara Goldin:Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job.

26:24Kara Goldin:Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire.

27:05Kara Goldin:Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. So one of the key things that I've heard you speak about, about little gourmets, is the veggie first concept. Can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. I think what we know now, we have a pediatric advisor who leads culinary medicine for the AAP. and what the latest science is, is absolutely veggies should be our kids' first foods. They should be repeated often. We as a society, our kids need to eat more veggies. We're seeing 80 to 90 % of kids have their only vegetable consumption be like french fries or white potatoes.