Founder Feature: Gabriella Labi and Tonya Reznikovich of Gato Dates

0:10Randomly, Leanne Rimes, the singer, buys our dates all the time, like on our Shopify, like is one of our customers, buys our dates, found us at Sun Life Organics. I write to Kristen after I see this article that she's written up. I DM her and I'm like, where did you find us? Like, how did this happen? and she's like Leanne shares them with her friends like I was at her house she was sharing them and I'm like thank god and that's how it happened I remember being like this is insane there's like a subset of our customers that are like these celebrities that are just like eating our dates and sharing them with other celebrity friends and that this is happening and that they feel compelled to even mention it in an article at Glamour magazine.

0:57That's mind-boggling to me. Hey everybody, this is Caitlin Bricker, Managing Editor at Startup CPG. We are back with another founder feature. Today I'm sitting down with Gabriela and Tonya, co-founders of Gato Dates, dark chocolate-covered, nut butter-stuffed medjool dates that are truly in a league of their own. These two met through mutual friends, soft launched at LA Farmers Markets, and built a loyal following completely organically. And it includes some celebrity names you're probably well aware of. We're diving into how they're positioning themselves in the premium confectionery gifting space and their strategy for scaling from specialty to grocery while keeping that Farmers Market magic alive and what's on the horizon for Gato.

1:42Full disclosure, I tried these at one of our grocery run events in San Diego, and I instantly regretted sharing them with my co-workers. They are that good, and they cannot be replicated in a kitchen. So if you're second-guessing, buying, or trying Gato, here's some advice from me. Just do it. Gabby and Tonia are the queens of the date, and as always, enjoy this episode.

2:09hey everybody welcome back to the startup cpg podcast this is caitlin and today i'm here with gabby and tonia co-founders of gato dates ladies welcome to the show thank you for having us we're excited to be here this has been a long time coming and it feels like a dream come true i have to say before we get into this everyone who's listening probably knows by now that i am likely the biggest date freak that you will ever meet and I had an opportunity to try Gato at the San Diego grocery run that we did. There were three in the bag. Unfortunately, I divvied them up between my co-workers before I even tasted them, handed one to Alex and one to Melissa.

2:51I took a bite and had instant regret because I said, damn it, these are the best date products I have ever tried. They were life affirming, life changing. I just need to give you your flowers for that because, oh my God, I'm excited to hear more. Caitlin, that was an amateur move, divvying them up. It truly was. I was like, wow, I wish I could take back. That may have been the biggest mistake of my life. So I may have just primed us a little bit for that. But Gabby, can you tell us what Gato Dates is for anybody who's not familiar? Yes, they are dark chocolate covered nut butter stuffed medjool dates in four different flavors.

3:35Pissachio butter, cashew butter and walnut, almond butter and peanut butter. So good. And I understand that you also just launched a pretty limited edition or new SKU too. Yeah, we did a banana bread flavor that sold out in 24 hours that we actually oversold. So I had to refund a few people so that everyone could get one because some people were ordering five plus pouches. And I was like, we have to just sharing is caring. But it's hopefully going to make a permanent comeback soon. I'm excited. I saw you sent me some and my order is coming today. Unfortunately, I haven't tried them yet, but that'll be a nice treat for later on.

4:14They're life changing. We're excited for you. Yes. I'm so excited, too. I feel like banana bread is such an underrated flavor. Maybe people think banana bread and they're like, oh, pandemic, baking. But it's so easy and accessible. And I feel like there's so much that you can do with to bring out so many flavors with banana bread. Well, this butter uses freeze dried bananas in it. So the crunch that you get inside the day is from that. And it's got a little bit of cinnamon, a little bit of vanilla. It's pecan and hazelnut. Like every single part of it just works. And it feels like you're eating the most decadent and indulgent banana bread on the market, except it's a date.

4:57It's also fun because it doesn't overlap with any of our existing flavors, which at this point is getting increasingly hard because we have quite a few. And this is like hazelnut pecan, which is haven't done that before. Oh, I'm so excited. I am so excited. All right, before we get more deep into the date world, I need to know more about you and your backgrounds and how we got here. So, Tonya, maybe you can kick us off. Can you tell us about your background? Sure. My background has absolutely nothing to do with food or CPG. I worked at McKinsey. I worked in entertainment. I did a lot of different things on the business side.

5:35I was at a startup that was building AI software before Gato. So I was never really a person who wanted to be an entrepreneur, whoever thought I would be on this journey. I was always so good working for other people. But now that we have our own baby, I don't know how I'd ever go back. I love it. So you're full time all in. Yes. As of January 2025, both of us. Wow. I feel like that's something that I don't hear too often. That's very impressive. We took the leap of faith and a lot of other founders told us, you'll know the moment when it makes sense and it will, something will just click and you'll know that you can't grow without spending 200 % of your time on this.

6:17And I think that moment came for us about a year in after being sort of part-time hustlers in 2024. Yeah, we've never looked back so far. Wow. So impressive. And Gabby, what about you? to tell us about your background? Initially, I was in real estate development, so very much not in the food or CPG world at all. And then I did a large pivot into health and wellness. I went to culinary school. I got certified as a nutritionist and health coach and Pilates instructor. And sort of, I think the four years of studying within that space, that sort of amalgamation created the Gatto date. And it was something that I was just making at home because I dealt with a lot of gut issues, inflammation, started working with functional medicine doctors that very much told me that eating paleo would be the best way for me to set my body to like a state of homeostasis.

7:14And I did that, but always wanted a sweet treat, always loved eating. My entire day revolves around what am I putting in my mouth next? So the Gato date was very much just how can I create something that I can enjoy every single day without the guilt that still tasted delicious, that still hit the sort of health boxes that I needed to tick. So yeah, that's my background into it. It's starting to make sense. It feels like this is the perfect match between the two of you, the ops and business background, the health and wellness background coming into one. And I got to ask, I think I have a good idea of what the name means.

7:55Is it a blend of your names together? You're a genius. You are the only person. Everyone's like, it's Kat. And you're like, not quite. It is in Spanish, but it's Gabriela, Tanya, G-A-T-O. And gato in French means cake. So we were sort of playing on that word as well. were an indulgent, decadent treat. Obviously much better for you than a cake, but we liked that play on words. It's short. We sent it to a friend of mine who's a creative director and he was like, that looks great. You did well. I was just thinking of it as I'm sitting here listening and I'm seeing your names on the screen and I was like, I'm going to shoot my shot and see if I'm right.

8:39And here we are. She connected the dots. Love that for me. So how did you two meet? Take us to that first time when Gato, I'm going to correct myself now because I've been saying Gato, so I'm just going to like call myself out. Gato is allowed. The only version that's not allowed is Gato. That's a no. OK, red flag for anybody that's going to say that. Just putting that out there. So tell us about that first time when Gato became a thing and the first time that you two met and you became a thing. I actually don't remember the first time Tonya and I met. I know it was like 2020 and we met through mutual friends.

9:17I knew Tonya's husband far before I ever met Tonya and Tonya and I knew of each other because my sister and Tonya knew each other. So we were always sort of in revolving circles. And then we met in 2020. I don't remember the exact instance. And when the first time that Tonya met the Gato date, that's now the Gato date, was at a Shabbat dinner that I was hosting. And she came, my ex is a great chef and we would host these Friday night dinners. And I used to sort of be in charge of dessert. He would never touch it. And so I started to get medjool dates from the farmer's market. I would stuff them with walnuts and cashew butter, coat them in vegan dark chocolate and then sprinkle sea salt on top and pop them in the freezer and serve them after dinner.

10:09and Tonya tried it and was like, whoa, these are really good. Like you should package up and sell these. And at the time I was building a Pilates practice and I was like, there's no way I'm starting another business, like no chance. But it very much became something that she would request and then other friends of ours would request. And it became like, oh, it's my birthday. Can you make a batch? Oh, we're doing a dinner party. Can you bring a batch to the dinner party? And at a certain point things got out of hand yeah tanya ran a favors and she wrote me a business plan email at the end of 2023 in december i still very much have it and it was like q1 to q4 this is how we're taking the date to market and it was very much like we're gonna launch at a farmer's market it.

11:02And then we're basically going to see. And I was like, I need to reroute it, honestly, because I'm sure it's hilarious now to look back on. Because at the time, neither one of us knew even what CPG was. I think a lot of people still don't know what CPG is. We didn't know that we were building a brand at the time. We didn't know that we were doing anything other than launching a product that we both loved eating, that we knew our friends and family loved eating at a farmer's market in LA which we go to every single weekend and we wanted to see if other people really enjoyed it as well but beyond that like we weren't really thinking about the big plan or the big picture until we showed up at that farmer's market sold out in three hours and we were like oh shit like we made fifteen hundred dollars and I was like we're gonna be rich we've got the next big who chocolate brand like this is it like we're gonna hit the ground running with this i still remember trying my first date and i remember biting into it and i was like what is this sorcery wait this is so good and so indulgent and it tastes like a slice of chocolate cake because it's like so rich and like moist and just there's so many different layers to it and you're telling me this is good for me and i remember going to the freezer and like opening the tupperware and just absolutely ravaging it.

12:25So yeah, that was a moment. It is funny to me because I've tried to make chocolate covered dates, stuffed dates at home. They do not come out like gato dates. I don't know what the hell you're doing in the kitchen. I don't know what your formula is like. Maybe there's a secret ingredient we're not seeing. I doubt it. Sugar, spice and everything nice, you know? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Farmer's Market would walk past our booth because Tonya and I worked them for five months and they'd walk past the booth and they'd be like no we don't need to try we make them at home and we'd like try them like compare them to yours see if they're any different whatever people would eat them and be like mine tastes nothing like this like what are you guys doing and it's really down to just the quality of the ingredients and at that time I was sourcing when we first launched we were making them in our kitchen and we were still sourcing the ingredients the same that I was sourcing when I was just making them for friends and family from the farmer's market.

13:26And it's just about using really high quality, incredible ingredients. You taste the difference. Like I would argue with anyone that says any differently, you taste the difference. There's a reason why ours tastes drastically different to anyone that's trying to make this at home because we're sourcing the best of the best. I would happily argue on your behalf as well. I mean, you heard it straight from me. I wish you could have seen my reaction when I first tried it. I didn't know what I was expecting. You know, I knew I was going to like it. I love dates. I love chocolate. I love nut butters.

14:02What's not to like? But there's just something so different about a gato experience that frankly cannot be replicated in a home kitchen. It's something you just have to try for yourself. When I was making them, I'm like incredibly anal and perfectionist. Tanya can attest to that. And when I was making them, it was very, very specific. How much nut butter is going in? How many nuts are going in? How much dark chocolate is being used? Okay, the salt's there to cut through the sweetness. Like what kind of dates are we using? All of those things also create the experience that you're enjoying, which is hard to replicate because like it's very specific to the way that we make the dates versus other brands on the market.

14:47And if anyone's ever made these dates at home, they know how laborious the whole process is. So I think there's a big convenience factor with Gato. Absolutely. I mean, convenience is queen these days, too. Like we want to maximize our time. So why not be able to just grab something somebody has already made for you? Yeah. And I don't think anybody really necessarily wants to be pulling out like a pair of pliers to remove the pit from the date and all that good stuff in the kitchen. Maybe somebody does. That's on them. I have to ask, how did you choose Medjool over any other variety of date? And do you see yourself expanding the types of dates that you're using for your products?

15:26medjool was the largest and was the one that I could fit the most amount of nuts and nut butter into it was really as simple as that like I knew that medjool had a different type of sweetness that I wanted it's that sort of like caramel type sweetness so I knew for size and like flavor profile it would hit the mark and then in terms of additional dates that we'll ever use I mean for our next product, which is a healthy Nutella spread, we're using a date flower that uses largely medjool dates, but it's somewhat of a mixture of different dates within it. I think we're definitely open. Medjools are incredibly expensive.

16:09So our date product, our hero product uses whole dates. So medjool works the best for that. But when we're using a date flower or we're using a date paste, using a variety, whether it's Bari, whether it's Neglet door, whatever it is, we have more optionality when we're doing that. So definitely going to expand the date range dependent on the product that we make. Another unsexy consideration here is just cost. So we currently pay per date when we pay our coat packer. And obviously stuffing a mini date versus stuffing a large day, we'll have to stuff double the amount or triple the amount. and that's going to get incredibly expensive very quickly.

16:53Also, we just did a comparison of Gatto dates to other dates on the market and our dates are like 30 to 50 % bigger and fatter and chunkier and we're so proud of that. So we intend to keep it that way. Can also confirm that it really is just a very, very unique experience. I've tried a lot of date products and yours stands out in my mind and seems like it's standing out for other people too. because I just saw that no other than Kristen Cavallari herself called you out. Tell me what that felt like. Very randomly, by the way. Like it wasn't even like us reaching out to her being like, hey, do you want to try some dates?

17:36Randomly, Leanne Rimes, the singer, buys our dates all the time, like on our Shopify, like is one of our customers, buys our dates, found us at Sun Life Organics. I write to Kristen after I see this article that she's written up. I DM her and I'm like, where did you find us? Like, how did this happen? And she's like, Leanne shares them with her friends. Like I was at her house. She was sharing them. And I'm like, thank God. And that's how it happened. I remember being like, this is insane. There's like a subset of our customers that are like these celebrities that are just like eating our dates and sharing them with other celebrity friends and that this is happening and that they feel compelled to even mention it in an article at Glamour magazine.

18:23Like that's mind boggling to me. To this day, Tanya and I are on Shopify every single day. We know every order that's coming in. We've had some fun names come in. Drop them. Let's go. Drop them. Customer confidentiality. Okay. Okay. Gotta respect it. It's crazy to see those names pop up and that it's one thing gifting people and then posting you. And it's like, OK, that's like part that influenced the strategy. But it's another thing when it happens completely organically. And a lot of our business has been built that way. I think launching at farmers markets in L.A., you get access to everyone.

19:01And I remember the very first market. It was Melrose Place. And when we were discussing launching, I said to Tonya, one of the first people I want to get it to is Alyssa Lynch, who I literally just had coffee with this morning, who's now one of my closest friends. And she's like a wellness influencer in the space. And I said, I want to get the dates to her. First farmer's market, she rocks up to the stand, okay, buys a box, goes to Leora Cafe and posts a TikTok of her saying, I love supporting small female founded businesses. And she takes a bite of the date and shows people on her TikTok. And that sort of thing kept happening.

19:42It was like, whether it was her or another person doing a farmer's market grocery haul on TikTok or posting us on Instagram, it was all organic. and because the farmer's market are like accessible to every single person you'll see celebrities and influencers and whatever we were so lucky we got really really lucky with it that that was the way in which we got into people's hands and then it made it really authentic because we had Addison Rae I remember posting us and we were dropping off at her office and she was buying us she wasn't getting gifted or anything like that after we obviously sent her some dates but she was going on our Shopify on our website and she was buying the dates because she loved them and she found us at the farmer's market.

20:25So it all happened very organically and we were so lucky because it creates real trust with their audience that this is something that they actually enjoy eating and it's not just like oh I'm posting it and I'm linking it and just got a gift in it and you feel the difference when you see that posted online. Yeah the other part of the equation that we're so excited is landing with our customers the way we intended it to is the whole like organic gifting component where our customers gift the people they love and I think it's a couple of different things so obviously people love gifting things they love to the people they love that makes sense I think there's also like a novelty component because we're definitely trying to play in that like high-end premium confectionary la de re giftable chocolate moment space and I think People are tired of getting gifted the same old stale gift baskets with the same old chocolate brands and we're such like a breath of fresh air.

21:27And then we've really leaned into giftable formats as well. Gabby has some behind her, all the tubes and the gift boxes. And we've just tried to make it as easy as possible for people to be able to gift this, whether it's a dinner party or a baby shower or a birthday or corporate gifting. and it's really working and has been an amazing channel for us. So more to come. You've clearly done a really great job at taking something that's so simple. The ingredients are so simple and you've made it into this luxury item. Even the packaging, when you get it, it feels like something you don't want to throw away.

22:04You're like, how do I reuse this packaging? How do I keep the tube? How do I keep the box? It feels like something that's very special. So well done. It's like a little jewel box. Thank you. And tell me about your strategy with D2C and retail. What is that looking like for you guys these days? All of it. We're doing all of it. Last year, we were pretty balanced. We were like 55, 45 roughly. So it was like almost an even split between the two channels. And we're pursuing both. And there are obviously a couple of brands that we always look up to in terms of their strategy and their expansion and their growth.

22:39And one of them for us is Fishwife. And we are obsessed with Becca Milstein. Shout out, Becca. And we always kind of look to her strategy as the North Star because she took this sort of maybe unsexy category, tin fish, like dates may not have always been the sexiest product on the market, like dates, prunes, old people. Like that was the vibe. And then created an incredible branding and packaging around it and started in specialty and then built like a really loyal direct to consumer following that would show up for the brand in so many different occasions. and Waze. And now look at them. They're in Costco.

23:19They're in Whole Foods. They're in every single big store. So I think we're starting. We have a similar strategy. We're obviously five years behind them. So we're currently mostly in specialty stores like Eataly and Happier Grocery and places like that, Meadow Lane. But we just got some really exciting grocery accounts that I still don't know what the policy is about talking about them. So I'm just not going to say it. safer. But we can announce that we've landed in like Jimbo's, for instance, in Southern California. But we have some three big accounts. One is LA based. One is New York, New York, Hamptons, Connecticut.

23:56And the other one is Dallas, Chicago that we're launching in very, very soon. And then a very large online marketplace that we've just landed in as well. So those are all coming online very soon. But for us, like building out D2C last year was all organic. And for us, the marketing component of that was get this product into as many people's hands. Because we know once people try us, the sort of success rate of them converting into a long-term fan is huge. Like we know that from working the farmer's markets and people trying our samples, nine out of 10 times, then people would buy the box of eight or the box of 20 or the three pack that we would sell.

24:40So last year, the strategy was just give as much of this product away as possible. We were getting sort of inbound for events every single day and saying yes to eight out of 10 of those whenever they felt like a right fit. And that was a lot of like Pilates events or different activations that were happening and other brands reaching out and that's obviously scaled and the type of brands that we're now partnering with and collaborating with we just did a giveaway at the start of this week that like I only just wrapped my head around but they reached out to us and it's with Fishwife Poppy and Luke's Beauty and they reached out to us to be the fourth brand as part of that giveaway and I was sitting down yesterday thinking about it and I was like never in a million years would I I expect that they'd go, oh, you know what?

25:32We found all of these great brands. We're actually going to tack on Gato as well into this mix because Gato is like as cool or as big or whatever. I'm like, we're the smallest one out of all of them. But they felt that we should be involved in that giveaway. It still blows my mind. Absolutely. Because I look, we look up to all of those brands. Like Tonya said, we're obsessed with Fish Wife and Becker and we literally accost her every time we see her. So it's crazy that we used to very much be the brand last year that would constantly say yes to everything because we were that small brand. And now we're at a point where we can really leverage sort of Gato name and our account and our following and our customer base.

26:18And now we're sort of the bigger brand that's collaborating with sometimes smaller brands and what we can do for those brands. Whereas last year, we were very much trying to work with anyone that would give us the time of day. So that's sort of been the D2C strategy for us. And now we're sort of dipping our toes into performance marketing and things like that. I don't know if you've seen any of our ads. I get them daily, multiple times a day. And every time I'm like, God damn it, now I need to go and place an order. You're everywhere. You're following me around the internet. We're trying it. We're trying it out.

26:52we think it's going to be a successful channel for us. D2C is always going to be important for us. When we left the farmer's market, we sort of had to transition that customer base that we'd been growing for a year and a half that were really like our brand ambassadors. And we had to transition them in a way that felt like, okay, they were still getting their farmer's market fixed. So on our website, we have an offering where you can select local LA delivery and every Monday and Tuesday, we have someone who works for us called Danny, who's amazing. You'll see him on TikTok. He does all the videos.

27:28He does local LA delivery and he still restocks our local direct LA accounts. So our coffee shops and eateries of the world. And then he hand delivers to people who order on our website. And we sort of wanted to keep that going as our transition from the farmer's market to make sure that we didn't lose all of those customers that we had grown to like see every single week. And then in terms of retail, Tonya and I were knocking on doors. Literally from January of last year, when we moved on to building this brand full time, it was Tonya and I getting on a plane, going up to SF, going to New York, going to Miami, going wherever we knew that people were purchasing us on our website and going to places, dropping off samples at maybe 20, 25 stores, going to Austin.

28:21And then we'd secure like four new accounts and that would really pay for the trip itself. And we always keep it cheap and cheerful. We're always staying in an absolute dump of a hotel. And that was the strategy of last year. Very much growing that way, we built real like relationships with those buyers. We know most of them by name and we have a real relationship with them or we know how we're being merchandised and we get sort of like preferential treatment in that way because we gift them merch in Q4 and we have this like really close-knit sort of community of retailers that are largely now on fair or on direct but this year is the year of groceries.

29:03As I'm listening to you speak, this thought is going through my mind. I'm pretty amazed at what we've managed to cobble together on a shoestring budget. I mean, you have celebrity sightings with your products. You're getting mentioned in magazines. These people are telling their friends you're following me around on the internet. And that means you're definitely following other people around on the internet. All of this in what, two years you've accomplished? Yeah, I mean, we always say that the farmer's market year wasn't year one for us. That was really where most brands take a six to 12 month runway to figure out what that brand is going to be, formulate it, figure out cogs and margins, figure out packaging, figure out co-manufacturer, figure out all of that.