Show Notes
Alice Grey waited 16 hours for chocolate to come out of a 20K machine. It never did.
Here's how she fixed it, got into Whole Foods and 140 stores, and why her first hire tripled the business.
Alice Grey is the founder of Mindful Monk, dark chocolate squares sweetened with monk fruit juice concentrate and sold in the fridge section.
She started making them in her kitchen in 2018 while pregnant with her second daughter and managing gestational diabetes.
Today Mindful Monk is in about 140 stores across Canada, Whole Foods is its number one store, and she just launched Cacao Blends, a single-serve hot chocolate line.
Key takeaways: Whole Foods lists through category reviews. After approval it took another 6 to 8 months to hit shelves, so plan for over a year. If you make it in-house, retailers like Whole Foods and Sobeys will ask for a food safety audit. Get a consultant or lean on founder friends. Alice passed her first one with 94%. Co-packers wanted her to swap ingredients, so she kept her chocolate in-house. For hot chocolate she found a co-man who used her ingredients. Vetting a co-man: price, MOQs, which brands they've worked with, and your gut. Your first hire should take over the task eating most of your time that you can train someone to do. For Alice that was production.
Find Mindful Monk:
Website: https://mindfulmonk.co/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mindfulmonkchocolate
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