Founder Feature: Lindsay Hancock of My Better Batch

0:02Caitlin Bricker:Are you going to crush it on Amazon this year? It's such an important channel, but it's so hard to do alone and most agencies are a total ripoff. We can't afford$5 ,000 a month and a commission on our sales. They just don't get it. That's why I love our partners at Daybreak. They are full service, meaning they do the creative work, the listings, the logistics, and of course all the ads, all with the most reasonable retainer out there. I work with them personally. I'm so grateful we have such a good partner to recommend out to you, our community. They do evaluate your product first to see if it might be a fit.

0:31Caitlin Bricker:So if you want them to have a look, email them. Startupcpg at daybreak.agency and they'll do a free audit for you. Good luck, everyone.

0:52Caitlin Bricker:I design these really with the target shopper in mind. the mom who's got too much on her plate, is rushing through the store, and wants to feed her family something that isn't full of junk, that still tastes really good. I want you not to have to give up quality or taste by taking a shortcut. I mean, you're a mom just like me. We got too much to do and not enough time to do it. And sometimes you just need a win. And so I want this to be the win that you can grab and make your daughter happy, make my boys happy, and just something simple that you can pick up and you know that you can rely on.

1:29Lindsay Hancock:Hey everybody, this is Caitlin Brooker, Managing Editor at Startup CPG. We are back with another founder feature. Today I'm sitting down with Lindsay Hancock, founder of My Better Batch, a clean label cookie mix designed to taste just like homemade cookies. Lindsay's taking us behind the scenes of her journey from helping build a company acquired by Kind Snacks to starting over as a single mom at 40, shipping her first order in April 2024 and somehow baking thousands of cookies in an Airbnb to prep for her first ever trade show. Hint, hint, it was the Startup CPG section at Expo West 2025. We're talking Target Accelerator wins, the reality of being a solopreneur in CPG, and why she's heading back to Expo West 2026 to be a part of the Startup CPG section for a second year in a row.

2:18Lindsay Hancock:As always, enjoy.

2:24Lindsay Hancock:Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin, and today I'm here with Lindsay Hancock, founder of My Better Batch. Lindsay, welcome to the show.

2:33Caitlin Bricker:Thank you. It's so nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

2:35Lindsay Hancock:It's great to have you here. I have you here virtually, and I'm going to see you again in a few weeks. Yes, it'll be here before we know it, won't it? Oh my gosh. It's the event of the year, pretty much. Expo West. This is what everyone talks about everyone's planning for this for basically a year leading up to it. So before we get to that, can you tell us what My Better Batch is?

3:00Caitlin Bricker:Absolutely. So we sell a cookie mix and it is a clean label cookie mix made with non-GMO ingredients. And I design these mixes to taste like homemade cookies. Usually there's a really distinct difference in a cookie that's made from a mix that you get off the grocery store shelf and in a homemade from scratch cookie. And my goal was to bridge that gap. So to give you a shortcut that you could feel good about taking and feeding to your family.

3:26Lindsay Hancock:And they are excellent. That's what we chose to give Santa.

3:30Caitlin Bricker:Heard that.

3:31Lindsay Hancock:Yes, he enjoyed them. He loved them. We got the chocolate peppermint ones from Target. And it was, I got to tell you, I was so overwhelmed with the options that were in Target from the candy to the cookies to all the things, all of the baking mixes. And then I saw your product on the shelf and I was like, oh, I don't even need to read the label. I already know it's good stuff in there. This is coming home with me. And it made my life so much easier when I saw you in the sea of products because I just knew I can trust this product. We're going to love it. My daughter's going to love it. I feel good about the ingredients.

4:07Lindsay Hancock:Let's do this.

4:08Caitlin Bricker:Well, that means so much to me. I I mean, that is why I created this brand. And so to hear that resonating, that means a lot.

4:15Lindsay Hancock:Why did you choose to create My Better Batch?

4:17Caitlin Bricker:Sometimes I wonder. I wonder that. I've spent my career in food. I started on the retail side and then made the change over to the manufacturer side. Had an opportunity to build a company from the ground up that we sold in 2019 to Kind Snacks. And then for the next couple of years, had an opportunity to be able to be part of something much bigger than I had ever been part of before. At that time, things were changing for me professionally. We had been acquired and every acquisition, there are changes that take place. It wasn't bad. It was just change. And also simultaneously, my personal life was kind of was falling apart.

4:56Caitlin Bricker:I ended up going through a divorce that I didn't see coming. And I felt like, you know, here I am, a single mom at 40. And I am asking myself, like, what do I want to be when I grow up. Do I want to continue down this path working for a brand? And there is, you know, so many positives associated with that, especially when you're part of thriving company like Kind Snacks is. Or do I want to start something of my own? And so that was kind of the catalyst. Like it was time for me to take a risk and I chose to go down this path.

5:28Lindsay Hancock:Thankfully you did. I mean, I feel like a lot of us have these moments in our lives that we look back on. And in that moment, they probably feel like, wow, my life is over and I don't want to speak for you, but maybe it felt like that for you during those tough times. But look what's come out of it. Now, are you able to look back and say, this actually changed the trajectory of my life?

5:49Caitlin Bricker:Absolutely. I think when you're going through it, you're exactly right. It feels like you're never going to push through it and that it is a negative experience. And how on earth am I going to turn this into something good? Looking back now, it was a gift. Each thing that I went through was a gift that allowed me to move on to something else. The way I describe that part of my life is like the puzzle pieces. They were all thrown out on the table. And I just needed to put the puzzle pieces back in place. And they were going back into place. They were just different places than they used to be. And so that takes a little bit of getting used to.

6:24Caitlin Bricker:But yes, definitely look back now. And I'm very thankful to have gone through that time in my life.

6:30Lindsay Hancock:Good for you. It's good to have that perspective, too, because you can really see the timeline of your life coming together and coming full circle in many ways. So what does it feel like coming from a company that was acquired by somebody so large, like kind, to now becoming, are you still a solopreneur? What does your business model look like today? Yes, it's a small team for sure.

6:53Caitlin Bricker:And I use a lot of outside consultants that are kind of like specials, allow me to work with people that I can't quite afford to have on my payroll just yet, but are experts in their area. And so, yes, I mean, I am operating with a bare bones team right now. And we've been very fortunate to grow and gain momentum relatively quickly, especially in food. We shipped our first order in April 2024. And so we're not even two years in yet. And 2025 was a huge time of growth for us. And we've got some incredible momentum as we've gone into 2026. I cannot believe April 2024 was your first product at the door.

7:35Caitlin Bricker:To be honest with you, we started shipping in April 2024, but that was orders through our website. There really wasn't any distribution gained until December 2024. That was through the Sprouts Forager set, which, you know, that was the 90-day stint in the Forager set where they allow new brands to be in store. And that was a great opportunity for us to kind of be able to test, like, does everything work? Does our supply chain work? Can we get product there? You know? And so we were in most of their stores with three flavors. And so that was 90 days, but that was in and out. And so, you know, it's great to have, but it was an ongoing business.

8:11Caitlin Bricker:And then we really didn't see additional distribution until we started shipping in April of the following year. So last year, 2025, to Thrive Market. And then we slowly began adding retailers. So here in the Southeast, we added Lowe's Foods and the Fresh Market. We were very fortunate to start working with Target very early on. they became an early adopter of My Better Batch, which, you know, I designed these really with the Target shopper in mind, the mom who's got too much on her plate, is rushing through the store, and, you know, wants to feed her family something that isn't full of junk, that still tastes really good.

8:48Caitlin Bricker:And so that was a huge opportunity for us. Actually, believe it or not, last year at Expo, met the Target accelerator team in the startup CPG area, they came through. And as a result of that I was accepted into the Target Accelerator program. So I was one of four brands in their cohort last year, food brands. And that was a huge opportunity for my little business.

9:12Lindsay Hancock:Wow. That is an excellent segue because you were in Startup CPG section in 2025. So that's a huge win for you getting into the Target Accelerator program through that connection that you made at the show. What other wins did you have in our section?

9:30Caitlin Bricker:So last year's Expo was our very first trade show. I've been to Expo many times, but it was brand new for me being there with my better batch. You know, what's funny is I really took for granted the fact that up until this point, I've sold a ready to eat product. I've never sold a product that requires preparation. I'll tell you, I made thousands of cookies in my Airbnb to get ready for Expo West last year. And when I tell you thousands, I am not exaggerating. So I wasn't quite sure what it was going to be like for us. I had never been part of the Startup CPG section of any show, but it was a great experience for us.

10:06Caitlin Bricker:There are several opportunities that came out of those couple of days at Expo West. There was a lot of traffic, which is exactly what you want. You know, you want to have people coming by, not just people. You want to have the right people coming by. I believe that quality over quantity for sure. But it gave us an opportunity to get our product in people's mouths and get them to try it and get excited about it. And so we met many retailers. We began to form many relationships. And there's product on the shelf today because of those interactions.

10:40Lindsay Hancock:Well, I never considered the logistics that would go into preparing your cookies for a trade show.

10:48Caitlin Bricker:Yes, it is complicated. I mean, I go and I just shipped my pallet. My pallet actually just arrived for this year and I'm shipping a stand mixers. I mean, just all the things that I need to be able to make the product. You know, hopefully someday we can find a better way to do that. But we needed to make sure that we had enough cookies to share. And I think we ended up making about 2000 cookies that we cut. And we had like 4000 samples total.

11:17Lindsay Hancock:And did you go through all of them?

11:19Caitlin Bricker:Yeah, just one of them.

11:20Lindsay Hancock:I think that speaks volumes to the volume of traffic that comes through the booths and through the section.

11:28Caitlin Bricker:The show is just, it's immense. And so you just kind of wonder, especially as you're picking your booth, like outside of startup CPG, when you are, you know, you're working on getting into the show, you're looking at different sections and you're just kind of unsure is it's going to be a spot that gets a lot of traffic. What I know about being in the startup CPG section is you guys do so much to be able to drive traffic to the section. And like I said, it's not just any traffic. It is the people that we want to talk to. And so that is huge for brands that have the opportunity to be part of that.

12:01Caitlin Bricker:Not just for Expo, but for all of the events that you guys are doing right now.

12:05Lindsay Hancock:We're so grateful for the partnership with New Hope to be able to have that section and offer this to the brands because it's huge for us. It's huge for you. And it's worked so well that you're coming back for a second year and you're going to be back with us again in 2026.

12:21Caitlin Bricker:I am. It's kind of like having kids. I kind of forgot, you know, you have another kid because you forget what it was like having the first one. And now I'm thinking to myself, oh, my gosh, I've got to start baking again. I've got a lot of baking to do when I get out there.

12:35Lindsay Hancock:What are you hoping to achieve for your second year at Expo?

12:39Caitlin Bricker:So I think it is it's continuing to cultivate relationships that have started. I mean, I've been very fortunate to be in this business for a long time, not just selling cookies, but just generally speaking. And so, you know, this is a big, small industry is what how I like to describe it. And so, you know, you get to see a lot of friends that you only get to see once or twice a year. And so that is really nice. But to continue to cultivate relationships that we started last year and then to meet some additional retail buyers in some of the places that we are not yet and would like to be.

13:11Lindsay Hancock:What are some of your dream retailers who are you hoping to meet at Expo this year?