Founder Feature: Sheena Hamby of Mac Squares

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1:02The idea came from just feeling a need that wasn't met while my daughter was in the hospital going through chemo. I just needed something fast. I needed to get from her chemo room to the family kitchen across the hall in less than five minutes. My mom was always going, how can I make something that's great for her that's fast? So I froze the mac and cheese and then I was like, you know what, let's try to bake it. And then my daughter actually ate it. Then I did the baked mac and cheese and it just became a hospital sensation. And it became a sensation with people at sporting events. It then became a sensation with everyone.

1:43So now we're here.

1:47Hey, everybody. This is Caitlin Brooker, Managing Editor at Startup CPG. We are back with another founder feature. Today I'm sitting down with Sheena Hamby, founder of Mac Squares. Baked mac and cheese frozen into squares made with real aged cheddar cheese straight from the block, fresh milk, eggs and spices, zero cheese powder. Needing a fast comfort food that wasn't messy, Sheena created Mac Squares in a hospital kitchen while her daughter Nova was going through chemotherapy. Nurses and doctors started stopping by asking what she was cooking. Her family ate them, her kids ate them, they ate them cold, they ate them hot, and customers are even hiding the salmon skew in their deep freezers.

2:27We're diving into how frozen food is really just time travel. I'm absolutely mind blown by that. Preserving the product at the exact moment it was made. We're also getting into her journey from hospital kitchen to her first retailer that came from a startup CPG event, Swamp Rabbit Cafe, all the way to the fancy food show in New York City and the sign that changed everything. It was a literal sign, so keep your ears open. And why Snags as a founder should actually excite you because it's just something else that you need to figure out and problem solve. You might hear this from Sheena on this podcast.

3:03I feel this from her. She's a very humble founder. But her product is going to be huge. It's changed her life. It's changed her daughter's life. It's changed countless families' lives who have had the experience of Max Squares. I think that this is a brand that you should be watching for and definitely go and buy some and feed your family and see what they think. We hear from founders on this podcast every week. If you're a brand and want to get new opportunities right in your inbox, text CPG to 833-605-7002. That's 833-605-7002 and we'll get you hooked up. As always, enjoy.

3:47Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin, and today I'm here with Sheena Hamby, founder of MacSquares. Sheena, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I love it. I feel like you are a very humble founder. I don't even know if you realize how good of a product you have in front of you and how big your brand is going to be. Do you realize this? Honestly, you're not the first person to say that to me. Maybe a third person. I feel like I know. I do know. Then on the other end, when you're in founder mode, in building mode, you have the long goal on mine, but you're just focused on the moment, like achieving the small steps to hit the big picture.

4:33So it's just maybe it's just not surreal to me yet, but I understand. But I'm just in the moment. I love it. Well, I think everybody's in for a really good episode. And before we get into everything Sheena and everything Mac Squares, tell us what Mac Squares is. Mac Squares is simply baked mac and cheese frozen into a square or a cube, however you would like to define it. That's it. That's it. And if anybody's watching the video right now, you can see Sheena has the bag that the squares come in and then frozen squares. That is simply how they're delivered. It's a very simple product, but it is delicious.

5:11I've tried them myself and they are wonderful. As a toddler mom, I know you can relate. We do not have a lot of time in our lives and kids love mac and cheese. So this is perfect. It's already something that's time consuming to have to think about the food that you're going to put on the table for your kids, but you are creating a solution for moms and dads everywhere. So tell us, where did the idea for Max where it's come from? The idea came from just feeling a need that wasn't met while my daughter was in the hospital going through chemo. I just needed something fast. I needed to get from her chemo room to the family kitchen across the hall in less than five minutes.

5:55I need food to be done and bad. My mom was always going, how can I make something that's great for her that's fast? All I thought about was fast and good. So mac and cheese was not the first concept. It was a different concept, but it was too messy. So then I froze the mac and cheese and I was back and I was like, oh, that only took me less than three minutes. So it wasn't baked. It was just stove top, but it was too messy once I warmed it up. And then I was like, you know what, let's try to bake it. And then my daughter actually ate it. the first mac and cheese that was stole top I froze she threw it on the floor and it became messy so I was like that actually worked it was less than three minutes but I need something that's not messy don't want to clean up I'm a single mom well I was engaged at a time I'm pregnant with Halo and I'm going through chemo with Nova so of course I just needed everything to be simple then I did the baked mac and she actually ate the baked mac and cheese and it just became a hospital sensation and it became a sensation with the people at the sporting events and then it became a sensation with everyone.

7:00So now we're here. Huge success when a toddler actually eats what's put in front of them. But a huge success also because you were cooking in the hospital. Yes. Walk me through that. Were you doing boxed mac and cheese? Were you making mac and cheese from scratch? What did this look like? I want to envision myself in that kitchen with you. When you go on the chemo floor, I don't know if every children's hospital is set up with the kitchen, like a lounge area, when you first go into the hospital on the chemo floor, you have like a full kitchen, stove, oven, refrigerator, everything that you have at home.

7:37So initially I used Oxmat, the craft mat, but then I realized Nova wasn't getting better and I knew I couldn't use the cheese sauce. I knew she was allergic to dairy. So I had to switch a lot of things up and make it everything from scratch. And parents will come by, nurses will stop in, say, oh, it smells really good in here. They'll just be like, what you cooking? So they'll come in, check. I'll give them a little taste, a little sample before the finished product. And they just absolutely loved it. So that's how they became interested in it. But in the hospital, just cooking it per se. It was a lot because word about Nova, like, oh, what if the doctors come in while I'm not there?

8:22Then you got to clean up the kitchen and wait for the next person and make sure everything is labeled and sanitized. But I feel like the hospital kitchen was a lifesaver because we practically lived in the hospital. Like when you're a kid going through chemo, you don't get to live in the hospital. You live in the hospital. Like there is no home. You go home for two, three days and back at the hospital. Wow. I have personally never experienced something like this. And just to hear that from you, I mean, I truly can't imagine. How is Nova doing today? She's doing great. This July 20th, she enters the virus clinic, so we're doing great.

9:02Wow. Congratulations. Yes. Wow. And what is she thinking about Max Square is becoming this product that people can actually buy now. When she see it, she always want it. But I'm always telling her, no, Nova, no, because you're going to get tired of it and you're not going to like it when it's time to show off, girl. When the time matters, I need you to still love it, you know, because kids are human too. So we get tired of foods and they get tired of foods. And I don't let her eat it all the time because I don't want her to get tired of it. Of course. But Halo, the baby I was pregnant with, he can eat it every day.

9:38Yeah, he asks for it every day. Nova eat hers cold. Nova like hers cold. Good for her. You know what? My daughter just recently discovered that she likes pizza cold, which she doesn't really eat the pizza when it's warm, but she's like, wow, like this delicacy of cold pizza. That is true for sure. It's good. Cold pizza is good. And it makes it easier for us too. See? I mean, elevated convenience. All right, so I have two questions for you. I have lots of questions, but we'll start with two. So that experience that you had in the hospital with Nova, were you eating hospital food at the beginning and you were just like, you know what, we need to change course here?

10:15Or did you feel like from the start, let's do something different? No. So I ate whatever she ate because it was just easy. She used to be real simple. She just ate broccoli, watermelon and french fries all the time. And then one day she stopped eating it and she lost her appetite. But the hospital have organizations like Cure to come and they feed you like they bring you Chick-fil-A. They bring you the best food from barbecue place spots. They feed you. So you're eating like real food. It's not like you're eating just hospital food. But she didn't want any of it. So it was in that moment where I realized, okay, maybe I should start ordering something I feel like she would eat.

10:55So I was just experimenting or wasting money ordering things, trying to get her to eat, even though she didn't have an appetite, but just trying to find something she was interested in. And then the moment came, okay, you have bills. You have another child. You got to take care of yourself. You have doctor's appointments. You can't be wasting any more money. You got to figure it out. So that's when a thought process of developing something that fits NOVA need came into play. And I see it right on your packaging, comfort in seconds. And I think a lot of this plays directly into your experience with the hospital and then directly into comfort foods because you were able to create something to bring that comfort of home in a square form that's ready in seconds that your daughter also said, I'm good with this.

11:45I can do this. That's true. So when I introduced it to my family, so funny story, when she rang the bell, a lot of people think because you're ringing the bell that you're cancer free. But it's when you enter Survivor's Clinic that you're cancer free. So ringing the bell, my family was like, OK, yeah, that's it. Like, what have you been doing this whole time in the hospital? You know, I'm like, oh, nothing. Just when they're caring for Nova, blah, blah, blah. But really, because I'm no longer in survival mode in the hospital, now I'm in survival mode on the outside because I don't have the support I had when I was in the hospital.

12:20In survival mode on the outside that I forgot I was giving her on the inside. So I'm telling her doctors, hey, Nova's not eating. Something's wrong with her. When in reality, it's because I wasn't making what I was making in the hospital. and then she rang the bell January so in December we had a family gathering and I made mac squares so I was like oh I'm gonna make these mac and cheese squares and they were gone before the party started and I was like oh you guys like those and they were like yeah I was like this is what nobody used to eat in the hospital so then they were like oh so that's what you was doing in the hospital yeah just becoming a food network star it's fine for sure I think it's really interesting the fact that you basically were running an R &D facility from a hospital kitchen because you have the nurses coming in and out.

13:10They smell what you're cooking. And then you were able to use them as taste testers. Like you really worked the environment that you were in. And it sounds like you made the best of what was an unfortunate situation. Of course, nobody wants to be in this situation. And you're like, you know what? Here's my resources. I have a kitchen. I have a team of R &D staff, essentially, your daughter included. Let's make this thing work. What did that feel like to have that experience where you were put in the situation, forced into the situation, essentially, to then be like, I actually have these resources here that can change the course of our lives.

13:47So you want to know what it felt like? I want to know what it felt like. Honestly, I didn't think about it in that moment. it wasn't until her oncologist Dr. Keller tried the max square and I want to say it was the Super Bowl in 2023 something with football was happening it was like a big game it was a big game happening and he was holding Nova he was like I'll hold Nova he said I'll hold her while you do what you need to do so he went into like the family lounge area he held her and watched football on the big screen and I was in the kitchen just making her some food. And then I came back and he was like, score.

14:28And I was giving Nova the food. And he was like, oh, what do you have here? And I was like, Mac G Squares? And he said, oh, okay. That's all he said. I got Nova. I gave Nova one. I got her. And I was walking out and I turned around. I was like, here, try one. And he tried it and he was just like this. He just said, this is so good. And I gave him the whole tray. And I need everyone to know we're not talking about like Kraft mac and cheese blue box in a square frozen. Tell us about the ingredients you're using on these products, because when I look at it, it sounds like something that I would be served at like a Michelin star restaurant.

15:08I mean, it is Michelin star in a bag. No. So we do not use any cheese powders. We do not use cheese sauce. We use cheese off the block, non-GMO cheese. We use just milk, eggs, spices that I make myself, and just less than 1 % of sodium citrate. That's it. You have three SKUs, correct? We have five. Five. I sell the other two at the farmer's market. Oh, okay. We have truffle spinach, aged cheddar, miso salmon. All of our skews are made with aged cheddar except the dairy-free, obviously. We have dairy-free and then we have a limited edition skew every month because every month is a different flavor.

15:57Very cool. And I wanted to ask that question because I know you have the truffle skew. And when you look at those ingredients, it's not truffle flavoring. It's actual black truffle in the mac and cheese. Absolutely. It's unreal. And then someone at the fancy show asked me, how did I come up with the different flavors? So when I first made the mac and cheese squares for Nova, it had spinach. It had salmon. Sometimes it had chicken. So I just took the different ingredients from the first square and made it its own skew. That's all. I think it's so smart because especially you're expanding into dairy-free, which there's a ton of people that either have allergies or they're vegan or intolerances, a whole slew of things.

16:46And you're able to say, we have the original, we have a salmon one, we have a veggie one, and we have a dairy-free one. To be able to reach that many people, like, why wouldn't you try it at that point? So, I mean, the reality of it is the first ones were dairy-free because they were made with oat milk. Because Nova was allergic to milk. Nova was allergic to dairy. And quite frankly, to me, the dairy-free ones taste better than the regular cheddar. That's just my opinion, but that's how I feel. And Nova, I'm sure, is thinking the same thing. Yeah, she really doesn't care if she eats anything. No, anything on me.

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18:28Well, I have some questions about how you're operating your business too, because you and I talked before this and I saw on your website that it said pre-orders available now for July 13th. We talked and I quickly found out that you do pre-orders a few times a month and that you are fully launched out into the world, ready to go, ready to service your customers. So tell me about how you run your D2C operations. online D2C is based off pre-orders. So you just order in advance and then we ship it out twice a month. It's no different than when you're ordering cookies and they say you order these cookies and they ship out in three to four days.

19:12Hours is just a little longer, but it works because it allows us to control our logistics, our production process. It's just strategic growth, that's all. So it works for us. However, we're going to be getting away from that model soon. That means we have really expanded. That is the only reason we're getting away from that model. So we'll definitely keep you guys updated and more flavors will be on the website. Wow, I'm excited. I have to order some for my daughter and I'm sure she's going to be a freak for these. I don't know. Usually the parents who eat them before the kids. It sounds like it, especially hearing what happened with your party.

19:52Yeah, that's typically you hear when I get feedback from customers and new customers. They always say that. I have one family out in Pennsylvania. She emails pretty often and she says, I get this salmon bag for myself and I just hide it in a deep freezer. And I'm like, OK, that works for you. So you think you're getting it for your kids, but you found out it's really for you. That is so funny. First time I found out about your brand was when you applied for our first ever K-He grocery run in Denver. And I saw your products and I was like, this is cool. I've never seen anything like this. We put your products in front of K-He.

20:32They wanted you on the floor at the show. Can you tell us what your experience was like at that K-He grocery run? Girl, you know what my experience was like. It was so overwhelming. man my dad had just passed away like in January so he was the one who was helping me launch Matt Squares so I had like fell into this really really deep depression and I was just like I'm not gonna do it no more then I met this lady she is the CMO of Beautiful Curliny maybe she's like 13 14 year old girl who owns a baby doll company. And she said, you need to be part of Startup CPG. She said, I'm in the group. I don't know why, because I don't have a CPG product.

21:17I just like to know stuff. And when she told me that, I went home and I joined the group. And that's when I saw Kihi, I applied. And so when I got there, I got off the plane and I'm walking to the hotel. And I said, I don't know why I'm here. I should have just stayed home. Like, I don't even want to be here. I don't even know why I'm here. These are my thoughts. And my dad's name is Curtis. So while I'm walking to the hotel, about two blocks before the hotel, the street name was Curtis Street. I just got the chills. I just sat on the curb. I took a picture and I was like, no, this is your sign.

21:51This is your moment. Let's go. Let's do it. And then I got there. Gene with the cubes, the cubes made fresh citrus. He helped me along the way, helped me become comfortable, made sure I was okay. Got to the event. My warmer stopped working. I remember. It was just a lie. And not just all I try to remember is like, no, the street sign is just like the street sign, the street sign. But then I had such a long line of people. I just really didn't even know how to explain my own product. Like I knew exactly what it was. I didn't know how to explain the product to the people. so I just got to the point where I was just like it's just mac and cheese in the squint he's in the bag it's just mac and cheese here try like I'm just like literally giving it out like people and they're just all in these lines just listening to the story and listening to what the product is because they see that I'm pouring down sweat and they understand that what I love about the Kiki show is they understood the product immediately I mean instantly which was different from the fancy show because they didn't understand the product.

22:58But anyways, like they understood the product instantly, which made it better. I had this one lady just walk up to me and she said, you're doing great. I don't care what nobody say. I don't care what you look like, but I just want you to know that you're doing great. And so that was real comforting for me. And it just helped me calm down. It was like, okay, okay, let's do this. So after that, hearing comforting words from other people actually helps. Like no matter what people say, like, oh, does it matter? What other people see doesn't matter, but it do. Because when other people acknowledge that you're trying hard and other people see what you're going through and then they acknowledge it, it actually brings you comfort.

23:38It brings you relief. So I was able to really get in the zone and say, start talking to myself like my dad was there, my mom, my brother was there. So it actually, in the end, it worked out. It was a great show. I absolutely loved it. Got a couple deals from that show. Swamp Rabbit Cafe was my first grocery store and we're still at Swamp Rabbit Cafe. We actually have a demo there on the 12th so I loved it. And I know the Sprouts team was swarming you over there too. They couldn't get enough. We're still in contact. Gotta get Sprouts ready. Because you know every grocery store is different. So we're working on it.

24:15It's a lot of work. Frozen is a lot of work. Someone asked me, what was you thinking getting into Frozen? I didn't know anything about the food industry at all. From personal experience, I don't know if Frozen is harder than beverage. I don't know if it's more challenging than having a snack or a candy brand. I wouldn't know that because I started apparently in the most challenging category of food and beverage. Lots of logistics weaved into there. And from what I've heard, it is not easy. Yeah, it's definitely has been a challenge, but it's OK. I love it. I have to give you your flowers because that show was in February and with your dad passing in January.

24:57That's a lot on one person's shoulders and you crushed it at that show. So many people were talking about your brand. So many people were talking about you after it. And really, like when you and I first met at that show, I was like, oh, this is my friend. Yes. You were the first person I found when my warmer went out. Well, you really did a great job. And I am just amazed by how much you've carried on your shoulders with your daughter, with the loss of your dad, with everything that you're doing and choosing to operate a frozen brand. We'll add that to the list. That's my other baby. Anything that you want to share with founders about challenges that you've run into operating a frozen brand or operating a CPG brand in general?

25:41Any advice that you'd want to throw out there, insight that you want to share? I would just say as for frozen, like sometimes we are discouraged by what other people think and what other people say. But especially when it comes to frozen food, it feels like, oh, it's not going to taste the same. It's a compromise. but when it comes to frozen food you just look at it like time travel like all you did was hand them for example mass squares here I'm going to hand you this square in the moment that it was made we just froze it to preserve it that's all we did and you warm it up and it tastes just like it came from out the oven you can't do that with shelf stable because if a mass squares was shelf stable, it takes away the magic of it, the taste of it, the nostalgia of it.

26:30We have shelf stable. If it was in the refrigerator, it will only last five to seven days. Don't be discouraged because you have a frozen product. If a customer like it, they're going to buy it regardless. It doesn't matter. That's definitely what I would say about frozen. Like frozen food, it's in the future. It just meets you in the future. That's all. That's how I'd like to look at it. This analogy for time travel is blowing my mind right now. I love that. I love that. I feel like you need to use this as a tagline. I mean, because if you think about it, how can you make great mac and cheese that's for everybody without all the, as many say, bad ingredients?