[00:00:10] Ray Latif: Hey everyone, I'm Ray Latif and you're listening to the top podcast for the food and beverage industry, Taste Radio. This is episode 234, which features an interview with Jennifer Garner and John Foraker, co-founders of organic kit food company Once Upon a Farm. Just a reminder to our listeners, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please Save The podcast with friends and colleagues. Of course, we'd love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Few packaged food brands have an A-list celebrity and one of the industry's most respected leaders as part of their founding team. That's the case, however, with Once Upon a Farm, a mission-driven company that markets organic, nutrient-rich foods, including cold-pressed fruit and veggie blends, smoothies, and dairy-free yogurts. Jennifer Garner and John Foraker, who led Annie's for nearly 20 years and through to its sale of General Mills, joined Once Upon a Farm as co-founders in 2017, and have since been on a mission to increase awareness and accessibility of the products to kids and parents across the U.S. Despite their experience and resources, John and Jennifer will admit that the past three years have come with some bumps in the road. In particular, they'll note that they may have been overambitious and expanded the brand's retail footprint too quickly. Nevertheless, they view missteps as, quote, key learnings and a chance to improve upon their business strategy while maintaining a focus on Once Upon a Farm's core mission and values. In the following interview, Nosh editor Carol Ortenberg and I spoke with Jennifer Garner John about how they got involved with the company, identifying roles and responsibilities that would make best use of their time and skill sets, and their approach to disrupting a legacy category. They also discussed the importance of making the brand available beyond the coasts, innovating and validating new product concepts, why they believe that everything starts with the consumer. Lastly, they spoke about Once Upon a Farm's evolving relationship with the nonprofit organization Save The Children and the company's response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. I'm with my colleague, Carol Ortenberg, the editor of Nosh, and we are honored to be joined by Jennifer Garner and John Foraker, two of the co-founders of Once Upon a Farm. Jennifer, John, how are you? Really good, thank you.
[00:02:26] Jennifer Garner: Great, thank you. Happy to be here.
[00:02:29] Ray Latif: Well, thank you so much for joining us today. We're really happy you're with us. Let's get right to it. You both have been involved with the company for a little over three years now. Let's start with a little bit of the background and how you got involved with Once Upon a Farm. John, I read an article in which you described your experience as an exciting and terrifying opportunity. Talk a bit about that.
[00:02:51] John Foraker: Yeah, it was it was exciting because of the what I thought the potential for the brand was an opportunity to work with Ari and Cassandra had started the company a couple of years before and with Jen. Obviously, what was terrifying about it was it was very, very small. And I hadn't done very, very small early, early stage for a long time, many years. And I know, I just know how difficult that is and how hard that work is. And so I had been running Annie's, which was a pretty big company, and then took that public and sold it. And I was on General Mills U.S. leadership team. And it's like the opposite of everything I was just about to do. And there's some comfort in that, you know, when you get there, you have a lot of support around you. And so we had to figure out a lot of stuff on our own when we got to a small company.
[00:03:36] Ray Latif: And Jennifer, what drove your interest in joining Once Upon a Farm?
[00:03:41] Jennifer Garner: I was really excited by the fact that it solved a problem Once Upon a farm solved a problem for moms that I would have benefited from it was a problem that I had had which was just I made my kids baby food always when they were little and it's great if you're already in the kitchen. It's easy to do, but it is not always easy to do. You're not always in the kitchen. And the difference between what you make and what is available, the chasm between those two things is so enormous. And also what you make, sometimes you freeze it and then you don't know how long it's been in there and cleaning up is a mess. So some days are just too busy. And some days you look at what you have in the freezer and you think, I don't want to feed this to a baby. I don't know about, I don't know about this. So I just, I knew that, wow, if this company had been around when my daughter, my first child was little, it would have been my go-to trusted brand starting then and until now.
[00:04:43] Ray Latif: Yeah, you never really know how much you need a packaged option until there's beets on your ceiling and carrots on your floor. So I get you, I feel you.
[00:04:55] Jennifer Garner: Without a doubt. Then of course, it was a tiny company, but that was really appealing to me because I knew that I wasn't going to have to do whatever the heavy lifting was that John was going to have to do. John and I came into this very much as a team. Even though we didn't know each other well, we met, we had an amazing meeting, and we finished that meeting with a handshake, I'm in if you're in, and here we are.
[00:05:20] John Foraker: It's been a rocket. It's been a rocket. That seems like it was about, sometimes it feels like about 10 minutes ago and sometimes it feels about like 15 years ago. I know.
[00:05:31] Ray Latif: Well, that is truly the life cycle of an entrepreneur. For every year that you're in, it's like another five, it's actually five years. It's like, I guess, what do they call it? Cat lives, you have Entrepreneur Ally. Everything is multiplied by a factor of five.
[00:05:44] Once Upon: I don't know what the past eight months then have counted. I think you get an extra exponential factor for 2020.
[00:05:49] John Foraker: There's a three X multiplier on those. Yeah, for sure.
[00:05:53] Once Upon: Without a doubt. Now, Jennifer, you also had done a lot of work with Save The Children and grew up in a more rural area. I'm wondering how your work there also impacted your desire to join the company. Well, in several different ways.
[00:06:10] Jennifer Garner: Gosh, first of all, I have worked for Save The Children for the past dozen years. And during that time, the trend toward looking to businesses to kind of fill the gap for NGOs has that has widened. And what we can expect from our government has taken a little bit of a hit. So it only made sense that if I wanted to really help this organization that I know is helping kids like my mom, where she grew up, or like the kids that I grew up with, I needed to be helping on a bunch of different fronts. And one of them could be starting being part of a business and helping broker a deal between Save The Children and that business. So that was one big thing. And the other was in this initial conversation that John and I had, we really talked about Look, it's great. This is definitely would have been my choice Once Upon a farm, but I can't just work for a company that is feeding kids in Beverly Hills or in Santa Monica or in Connecticut. We've got to be feeding kids who don't have access to this kind of food. And John was on exactly the same page about it. And it became just part of our mission baked into the very, very fiber of the company from day one.
[00:07:25] Once Upon: Now we've heard a little bit about the conversation you two had, but John, as you alluded to, the company had two co-founders when you both joined. So what did that discussion of roles and responsibilities and deciding where everyone's time and skill sets were going to be of the best use look like?
[00:07:46] John Foraker: So I had known Ari and Cassandra for maybe 18 months to 24 months before I came in, I came into that company as an investor first. And Ari and Cassandra and I talked a lot about roles. And when you really think of them starting the business, Ari did like the business development side of the business, the capital raising side of the business and Cassandra really handled and the sales and Cassandra really handled product development and a lot of marketing messaging. So they still do a lot of that same stuff. And I came in with the idea that we were going to. To me, the space has changed a lot over the last 10 or 15 years and the opportunity to build a big business much faster than normal is or than it was 10 or 15 years. It was way higher. So I knew I was going to bring in some really experienced people when I came over, some people I'd worked with it. at Annie's before and just others I knew in the industry. So we talked about like how roles were going to evolve and what roles are people going to play. In these early stage companies, as you guys know, you've interviewed a lot of Entrepreneur Ally have to be really flexible because the businesses needs change really rapidly based on developments with customers or other issues. And so we've just operated really well as a team talking through that kind of stuff as we've evolved and the business has grown It's dramatically bigger than it was obviously then. And we've gone through stages of growth to where it's just surged. And so just trying to stay on top of that. But right now Jen really focuses on marketing brand innovation works with Cassandra on that. Cassandra is doing a lot of that same stuff. A lot of consumer insights work. And then Ari's working on business development, B Corp, the farm that you'll hear about in a little bit. And then I'm focused on a lot of other things, including a lot of business development and just the general stuff you do as a CEO.
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[00:10:22] Ray Latif: Jennifer, John mentioned that you have to be flexible as an Entrepreneur Ally I'm sure you also have to be flexible with your notion of success. And I have a feeling you have a different idea of what it takes to be successful in the packaged food industry when you started out and now in 2020. How has that changed? How has your perspective changed?
[00:10:41] Jennifer Garner: Well, working in the film industry is definitely, you have to be an Entrepreneur Ally be an actor. You're starting, I mean, I remember when I was starting out, every single role that I got came from scratch. It wasn't like one thing built to another. Even when I had kind of a little mini break and I would think, oh, things will get easier now, they didn't. They just went back, like I was back in the restaurant square one for years and years and years and years. And so you do have to kind of be able to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and move along. And we've felt a lot of those same setbacks and you just kind of can't let it get you down. If you believe in what you're doing and you're having a good time doing it and you love the people that you're surrounded by, then it's a very similar feeling kind of pursuit. As far as the idea of success, I mean, success to me is pretty similar. It's mom's coming up to me because I'm the face of this company, even behind a mask. I don't know how people still know that I'm me, but coming up to me and telling me, you know, we can't live without, oh, my mega veggies, or I am on my way right now to pick up. I heard that you just dropped at this store and I'm on my way to load my cart because I have to have everything available. That's my personal success. And then I've learned a bit talking to these guys about velocities and about, you know, about PODs and how many doors we're in. And I can talk a bit at a talk, but, you know, I have my own measure too.
[00:12:18] Ray Latif: The lingo is so important, right? I mean, if you can talk the talk, anyone's going to believe what you say, right?
[00:12:24] Once Upon: It's everything. It's so important. You just say a bunch of acronyms. I found sometimes nobody questions them because they don't want to admit they don't know that acronym. So you can just kind of make some up. Sometimes throw him into meetings.
[00:12:39] Jennifer Garner: I mean, yeah, as long as we have our ZXY, then I think we're really going to be OK for 2021.
[00:12:44] John Foraker: Men's favorite category captain.
[00:12:47] Jennifer Garner: All I want is to be a category captain. Gosh. I learned that term and I was like, hang on a second. Where do we try out? What's the audition process? We got to have this. I want it to be just understood.
[00:12:59] Once Upon: Category captain. I wonder what you get when you're the category captain. Is it a trophy, a ribbon? I'm not sure what arrives at your place of business. It's a trophy actually, Carol. Because that's us.
[00:13:12] Jennifer Garner: That's us.
[00:13:13] Ray Latif: If your favorite phrase is category captain, I assume that your least favorite phrase is slotting fees.
[00:13:22] Jennifer Garner: Yeah, I'm not a fan. But you know what, that's the kind of thing that John deals with, not me.
[00:13:29] Once Upon: There we go on those roles and responsibilities again. Yeah.
[00:13:32] John Foraker: The necessary evil.
[00:13:37] Once Upon: I think category captain is a great lead into this next question, which is how do you disrupt a legacy category becoming that category captain when your product can't sit on the same shelf as competing brands? When you were kind of faced with this hurdle, how have you approached this and what's worked and not worked?
[00:13:57] John Foraker: So when Ari and Cassandra started building the business out of San Diego, they started trying to work to get coolers in baby aisles. And at the same time, they started developing their own DTC business. And so they worked both those angles. Getting distribution for a refrigerated product in the center of the store where there's no refrigerators is a tough challenge. So they looked initially for places where the product could potentially play where refrigeration already existed. And when I invested in one of the points I was really looking at was how, how was the products performing over in the dairy case at Whole Foods, which is where they really started it. And it was doing pretty well. Um, it wasn't, it wasn't performing like the highest velocity stuff of their, obviously it's a very high velocity category. But it was performing really well. So we looked at that and decided that the way for us to build this into a pretty big business was to take that approach and then to message to moms and dads that they needed to find us over in this other area of the store. we positioned pretty closely to other kid yogurts. We know there's a lot of cross shop between the consumer that's in the baby aisle and that aisle. And that really worked. But the thing we really interestingly learned as we've evolved in Entrepreneur Ally stage emerging brand Entrepreneur Ally like controlled experiments. You're constantly trying things and learning and adapting and pivoting. And the single biggest thing that we learned over the first 18 months or so was that, most of our consumers were really kids, not babies. We were getting entry point with a lot of babies, meaning that was the first solid food. A lot of these parents that talked to Jen on the street were giving their kids, but the majority of our consumption were kids ages one through seven. And it actually reframed a little bit because If you remember how I was talking about this business when I joined it, it was like, hey, this is a baby brand and we're going to age this baby brand up over time into other categories because we think that's a really important way to just evolve the brand with consumers. What we didn't really realize is that we already were a kid brand. And that actually enabled a lot of change in our thinking in terms of the way we messaged and the way we developed our portfolio and the way our products look and feel. And a lot of that is coming over the next really three to four months. You'll see it market. But it's been pretty powerful and transformational. But it's a challenge. It is really hard to do. But we've been pretty successful.
[00:16:23] Jennifer Garner: The funny thing is John, I spent like a year and a half, two years wandering the world telling everyone far and wide that we were a baby food brand. And then it was like, hang on a second. Everybody's eating it. It's just food. It turns out if you're, if you're an adult, you can still eat this. You will digest it and love it.
[00:16:43] Ray Latif: Yeah, I mean, it's one thing to iterate and develop your branding and communication strategy, but how does that translate to your retail customers? You know, you can merchandise in a certain place and see if it works in one place. It may not work in the same place in another store, in another retail chain. So what are some of the most effective ways that you've been able to educate your retail customers, your retail buyers, about how Once Upon a Farm can support their kids' food set?
[00:17:13] John Foraker: Yeah, well, the most important thing is really always start with the consumer, right? And we really know who our consumer is, what she thinks about, what's important to her, the kinds of things she buys, the economic impact of her basket on those retailers. So we start there and we say, hey, you may not think that you should have baby food positioned over in the dairy aisle, but let us talk to you about the impact of that on this category, how highly incremental that is for this category. the shopper that you're going to be bringing into the store that's going to be looking for other innovation over in dairy. That was a really effective way for us to give that messaging. And at the same time, we were talking to the baby buyers as well and saying like, you know, we couldn't do this in every store because every store is not right for in aisle distribution in our refrigeration. But the better stores Save The high volume baby stores are. And so we would talk to them too about here's the part of our line that really needs to be in the baby aisle. You're going to Save The opportunity to you know, disrupt the aisle with a fresh concept, which, you know, has been very powerful over in the pet food area with what Fresh Pet did to the pet aisle. Most of these grocery retailers have a really big Fresh Pet business and they understand that idea. So talking to them while also talking over to Dairy and bifurcating the line so that we have some products in both places is That's the really complex part. But now that we've figured that out and it's really working well, it's very powerful because we're able to talk about the total box to the retailer, which elevates our messaging to a much more strategic level than talking about, hey, we're in a dairy category review or we're in a produce review or a baby review. We're elevating to the total chain, which opens up a lot of opportunities.
[00:18:57] Once Upon: That's a really interesting path in how you've gone about educating the retail buyer. I'm wondering about your plan to educate the end consumer and grow to become part of the mainstream set appealing to consumers coast to coast. Jennifer, I know you said that you didn't want to be a baby food brand that's just aiming at the Beverly Hills consumer or the San Francisco consumer. So I'm wondering what are both of your advice to brands that want to make sure they work for all shoppers and are not just coastal or urban shoppers?
[00:19:31] Jennifer Garner: Well, I mean, awareness is a huge part of it. Just knowing we're so little and new, knowing we're out there and knowing that your kids will love it and that it is different from something that's full of sugar. We have no added sugar. If your child is used to some stuff that's out there, they might take a second, but they will like it. So that's something in the middle of the country that is taking a minute, but our best advocates are our customers, the moms and the kids that we have. And it's just a process. I mean, as far as I know, but I know, John, you'll go deeper in that.
[00:20:06] John Foraker: Yeah, so some some of the people who are listening to this podcast may have seen the way we launched the brand and we basically we went pretty broad in Jen and I came over in late 2017. We developed a marketing and communication strategy around what we're going to do. We went out and talked to. all the leading retailers in the country, and we really launched into around 9,000 doors in the middle of 18, so very quickly. It was exactly the opposite of what I'd recommend almost everybody do. And if you're listening to this, you shouldn't do that unless you have a certain few assets. One of the assets we had was the ability to generate billions and billions of earned media impressions and awareness driving activity with Jen because of her deep involvement with the brand. And we had a lot of experience around the brand, too. And we were able to do it. Actually, we were able to, in most of the places that we launched, we were able to get to sustaining velocities quickly enough to hold. And then we've been building from there and velocities have doubled and tripled since there. And so now we've got a really strong foundation, but most companies would do it a little bit differently, I think, which is you'd probably, you'd start out small, maybe in a few retailers and just build it out and build a success story. But we knew we had a pretty transformational opportunity here in kid nutrition, and we wanted to make that impact fast. And so we took a higher risk, higher reward approach, and we had the right assets in place to do it.
[00:21:31] Once Upon: And one thing I've been particularly impressed by is your commitment also to releasing products that meet the WIC program standards and making sure that consumers of all income levels can purchase Once Upon a Farm products.
[00:21:46] John Foraker: Yeah, everybody told us we couldn't do that. After you actually read the rules around that, you can convince yourself you can't do it because it's so hard.
[00:21:54] Jennifer Garner: I don't know if we should have done it, but from a profit standpoint, but I know that we needed to do it.
[00:22:03] John Foraker: Yeah. Yeah. And we talked a lot about this as Jen mentioned before, it was like foundational to the DNA of us getting together and this brand. And so we decided to do it at the exact time that we were doing all that other stuff. And so We're now certified with a specific line of products in a number of really important states like New York and Florida and Texas and are building that business really surgically with retailers like H.E.B. and Wal-Mart in places where we can access that consumer. It's just a very different business but it's very important to us that we're working on that end of the barbell as well at the exact same time as we're building the broad brand.
[00:22:38] Jennifer Garner: John, I think I announced at Expo West that we were gonna get WIC up and at them before we were actually had any plans at all. And it just, you said, well, okay, I guess I know what my next year looks like.
[00:22:50] John Foraker: Yeah, I remember that. We had no public plans. We had chatted about it. We're sitting on the stage at Expo West and Jen goes, it's in March, I think. And she's like, yeah, and we're going into WIC. And I'm like, all right, we are. January of that following year like right right before the beginning actually right after Christmas was the first email from our first big state that approved us. It just happened literally about like eight or nine months later. So.
[00:23:18] Once Upon: What's your advice then on balancing mission and profit then for brands? Because we have so many brands in the natural foods category that have amazing missions and amazing goals, but they really also need to make money in order to achieve those goals.
[00:23:34] John Foraker: Yeah, the way I think about that one is it's a lesson I learned earlier in my career working at Annie's and talking to a mentor of mine named Gary Hirshberg, who founded Stonyfield. Most of these entrepreneurs know him, but it's the idea that you have to have a really strong business model. It's like you need an economic engine to pull your impact train. So we thought of it as We need to have a really strong core business that's going to develop really strong operating profitability over time as we scale it. And that's going to allow us to fund the lower margin or even negative margin investments that we're going to need to make in some of these other initiatives that are super important to what we stand for as a brand. That's how we plan to do it. And that's how we did it at Annie's. And I think a lot of other leaders in purpose driven brands have taken that same approach.
[00:24:23] Jennifer Garner: One of the things I love about being in the WIC business is that I feel like in the organic world, things are more expensive, more elite, fancier and fancier. You know, just looking for what the next incredible ingredient is gonna be instead of looking at how can we make this more accessible? How can we go down and out so that it's for everyone instead of this select, select few? So I love just, I don't know, pushing our colleagues and proving that that you can do it and you should.
[00:24:56] Once Upon: Well, speaking about innovation, it's the holiday season, often when we see some exciting innovation come from brands. Tell us a little bit about what Once Upon a Farm is doing this holiday season. This is just the coolest.
[00:25:12] Jennifer Garner: My mom grew up very poor on a sweet little farm in Locust Grove, Oklahoma. And my uncle Robert and my aunt Janet live there now. And when I first started working with Once Upon a Farm, we started joking about my family farm. growing for our company. And sure enough, John said, that's a great idea. Let's do it. So I called Uncle Robert, who'd been a plumber for 40 years and said, how would you feel about becoming a farmer? And he's now a biodynamic farmer in the middle of Oklahoma on this tiny little spot. And so they have been growing, Uncle Robert, Aunt Janet, and a couple of family friends, they've been growing sweet potatoes this year for Farmer Jen's sweet potato pie. And this is a real labor of love. I mean, they work their tails off. We actually have an amazing biodynamic farmer who comes down and mentors them, shows them what they're doing. They say they're the only ones that they know who are actually growing organic produce. So I go and help plant, I go and help harvest, I go to visit and love it so much. I've been to this farm since I was a little girl. And I just helped harvest for our Farmer Jen's sweet potato pie. The exciting thing is some proceeds from every pouch go to Save The Children, which is definitely needed, especially right now. And the other fun thing is that I got to work on the recipe with Cassandra Curtis, who's our marvel in the kitchen. And it comes from my grandmother, Exie Mays, sweet potato pudding recipe. So it tastes to me like the holidays. It tastes like family and the thought that my grandma XC who's on the other side of my family. The thought that this tastes just like what she made, but there's no sugar added when I have such a clear memory of her scooping back into the sugar again and again like is just mind blowing to me.
[00:27:11] Ray Latif: Well, is it OK if adults eat the product too? Because it sounds incredible.
[00:27:16] Jennifer Garner: I received some early pouches yesterday and I will say there are none left. And it was all adults. My kids were like, we didn't even get to try. And I said, I'm so sorry. Next time.
[00:27:29] Ray Latif: Yeah, Jennifer, I want to go back to a point you made earlier about your consumers being your best advocates. Are you offering them guidelines? Are you kind of speaking to them in a way that's going to help them sort of be evangelists in the way you want them to be? Or is everything organic when it comes to how you message and communicate about the brand? Is it always in constant evolution?
[00:27:55] Jennifer Garner: We have a pretty great social team and a pretty great communication with people who are on our distribution list and our mailing list. And it's easy to see what there is to love. It's right there on the package. We don't have funky ingredients. We are cold process. We are, you know, we're HPP. You know, we have cool ingredients that are great for brain growth or for immunity or for all kinds of things, healthy fats, and just great fruits and veggies and coconut milk and pumpkin seed. Like there's nothing not to love. So that's all right there on the package. But we also are communicating. We do have a select few influencers, you know, mom influencers, momfluencers, I don't know what you call them. that we talk to more specifically and really have as part of the family. And they're amazing. They're really evangelical in their support and in their, just the way they love to sing it out.
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[00:30:03] Once Upon: Well, as you're developing new products, I assume you're getting a lot of feedback from all those moms about what they want to see, what they don't want to see. So how do you balance that feedback as well as what you're hearing from retail buyers and internally where your goals are? and create these new products and then validate the potential for them versus, you know, sometimes it's a little hard to tune out some of the noise and say this really has market viability.
[00:30:35] John Foraker: We worked really hard to build our direct to consumer business. It's not something that when I was coming in here and we were thinking about strategy that we were saying, hey, we wanna build that into the biggest business it could be. It was more, can we get the foundation under this business so that it can be a really solid profitable business? But more important than reaching consumers directly for the ones who wanna get us. to give us access to them for learning, and for us to try things, and us to launch unique items online, and for us to use them as survey panels for Consumer Insights. So we've done an amazing amount of Consumer Insights work. And we continue to do it. And by the way Annie's did too. That's that was one of the key star success over 20 years was just we we got really close to our consumers and we were very empathetic and tried to really stand in their shoes. And so we do that here. And I'll say this too. Like even when you do all that and you try stuff it still doesn't guarantee success. Like innovation is really hard. And we just got to be focused on being better and better and better at it as part of our core culture. And connections with consumers like that Save The core of that.
[00:31:48] Ray Latif: When you are thinking about that big, broad opportunity, the mission of the company, how do you take into account significant changes to your business strategy? Or how do you take into account that mission when you are making significant changes to your business strategy?
[00:32:04] John Foraker: Well, the mission never really changes and the core values never really changed you know when one of the key things I learned at Annie's is it took me way too long to like lockdown on a mission and core values. That happened years after I got there and years before we went public. But if it had happened right at the beginning, I think, at least in terms of my involvement there, I think we would have gotten a lot bigger a lot faster. We did that day one here. So when Jen and I came in and Ari and Cassandra and I, we sat down and we wrote all that out. those things don't change. What can change, you know, Save The tactics, the strategies around where you want to take the brand, what customers, how you want to approach the market and all that. So I think of those as the constants. And to me, the challenge is, is is growing a brand, being buffeted by all these forces and opportunities and threats that come up and remaining true to your core mission and your core values and not compromising on those when you're like coming up to the rail sliding around a curve. That's where those have been hugely helpful to us and we haven't compromised our core values at all. We've adapted and changed and grown and the business has gotten to be pretty sizable now. And I really think that if we didn't have those foundations in place, it would have been easy for us to lose sight of who we are.
[00:33:23] Ray Latif: Jennifer, you mentioned this earlier, which is that there have been some times where the brand and the company has fallen down or fallen short of their goals. It can be easy sometimes to point fingers and say, you know, this is this person's fault, this is this person's fault. But how do you stay on track when things don't really work the way they're supposed to? How do you maintain that sense of mission and focus when things don't go the way they're supposed to?
[00:33:52] Jennifer Garner: Well, first of all, there's a difference between pointing fingers and saying, this is someone's fault. This is someone's fault. And looking strategically at any business and saying, this could be working better. I don't know if this is the best fit. I don't know how can we maximize this role. And John has been an incredible leader in that way. And yeah, there have been times where we grew really big really quickly. We went to retailers that we probably would have been better off waiting a few years before we were better known, before we were in a retailer or two. But that's OK. Something I've learned is that you say key learnings. We made some key learnings, and we pivoted, and we were really nimble. And that's part of why we're category captains. But keeping the mission front and center, I mean, it can expand, and it can deflate a little as far as how much money and how many resources and energy you're putting toward it. But it doesn't change. For us, one thing that shifted this year is Save The Children started working in, you know, started feeding kids for the first time. Really, it's since, well, certainly in recent history, although 100 years ago, we started feeding kids as part of what we are doing But when the pandemic hit, there was really no option. You can't ask kids, you can't supply them with educational materials and not lunch. And we knew how many of the kids that we serve, all of them, rely on school for food, for lunch, breakfast, an after-school snack if they're in our programs, and often going home with backpacks full of food for dinner for the weekends. and for their families as well. And that just really only led to Once Upon a Farm increasing our relationship there, which has been very rewarding for me.
[00:35:45] Ray Latif: And I'm sure rewarding for everyone that you're serving, everyone that you're working with as well. Kudos to you guys for being involved, especially at the most difficult time in modern history.
[00:35:55] John Foraker: Yeah, it's foundational. Again, a lot of experiences that I had at Annie's I brought over here. And one of the experiences I've had at Annie's was Developing relationships with really important foundational organizations that we can scale with as we grow. There were relationships over there that started out small that turned into really significant numbers every year that we were contributing to those organizations and I expect this. Save The Children thing to be exactly the same. It's going to be a core part of what we're doing. We get to be a company that's 10 or 20 times bigger than we are now. The resources flowing to the company will reflect that as well. And we want to be a core partner, not only to support the work that they're doing that's so aligned with what we believe, but also just to help get the message out about their organization and just to share it broadly so that others can support that as well.
[00:36:44] Once Upon: Would you recommend that emerging startups sort of identify those key partners early on in their development if they are a mission-oriented food or beverage brand and then kind of grow together? Is that something like your core values you should really start to think about even before you can maybe give a whole lot to those programs?
[00:37:05] John Foraker: Yeah, again, I think it's when you start out, I don't think it's the amount that matters. It's more like, does it fit your mission and purpose? And are you aligned with it? I think the mistake that too many people make, and I've made this mistake before too, is thinking of those things like, almost like as campaigns or periodic. And I think it's much, much more powerful to As you develop your mission and what your business stands for to lock onto those relationships and really view them as like, hey, this is going to be a 50 year partnership. And we're going to build like depth in this thing. And if I'm successful, you're going to ride right along with me and vice versa. And there's this mutual interdependency that is super powerful. And that's the way I think it becomes the most meaningful, not only for the brand, but for the social and positive social impact that that organization can leverage with the resources and just all the energy that comes from the company on the other side of it.
[00:38:03] Ray Latif: Now, one of the things that 2020 will be remembered for is the Black Lives Matter movement. And in June of this year, there was an enormous amount of interest in how Americans can support the movements. And companies got involved in a number of different ways. And I'd love to hear about how Once Upon a Farm addressed the issue of racism and inequality in our country, especially when you personally might have an emotional response to it, but the company as a whole needs to have a strategic response.
[00:38:41] John Foraker: Yeah, I'd put ourselves in the bucket of just almost about every other company or every other person I know, especially in this industry, we were sitting there going like, well, we're not racist, but is that enough? Like, I think in the conscience of a lot of people and industries and businesses in the past before these systemic issues rose in the way they did this last year, that people thought that was enough. We talked a lot as a leadership team about, we need to do something, but what can we do in the context of what we can make the biggest difference with? And we came down on. We had a lot of really experienced people who were working in our company that cared about this issue. We know that we're in an industry that is largely white. The consumers that we're serving don't look like the industry that's serving it in general. And we knew that BIPOC founders and businesses face additional challenges on top of the ones that every other emerging brand faces to grow from small. So we developed our own program called the Entrepreneur Ally Program. We went out and we chose three brands and asked them to participate with us. It's Partake Foods, A Dozen Cousins, and Pipsnacks. And we developed this relationship with them where it's not like me mentoring the entrepreneur there. It's like our entire organization mentoring and supporting the organization, including access to capabilities, resources, relationships. And the concept is, All of these Entrepreneur Ally great Entrepreneur Ally have a great shot at success. But what can we do to help make them more successful and increase the odds of that. And the end goal of it really is to to help accelerate the success of companies like this to to bring more power and influence to BIPOC Entrepreneur Ally brands in the space. to attract more capital to them. You know power and influence are often linked to wealth and creating wealth in that community through the combination of success and building big powerful enterprises that can drive positive social impact and awareness is a really powerful thing. So we're doing that right now. It's gone really well. We're learning a lot. We're actually developing a blueprint, if you will, that we're going to release to other companies who are interested in trying to do this in their own space or in their own verticals or however they want to do it. And we're working with a bunch of resources to help us get that put together so we can share that in the first quarter of next year. So that was our way.
[00:41:13] Jennifer Garner: It is the coolest coolest thing that we do. I'm just so impressed by the depth and talent and commitment of everyone who works at Once Upon a farm and how eager and excited they are to share what they know their experience and expertise with these companies and just the overall sense of camaraderie of just mutual respect, mutual appreciation is, and the relationships, the relationships that I have with these founders now, it's just one of the coolest. I love this idea. I love the way you've made it happen. And it's also really targeted. It's not just like, you know, just go for it. What do you need? It's very specific. Right now, we're trying to build this. Right now, we're thinking about hiring this person. Who do we talk to? Right now, we're looking at brokers. I follow along. I love all of it.
[00:42:08] John Foraker: Yeah. And we've gotten so much out of it too. That's what's interesting is, you know, we don't own equity in these businesses. We're not doing it for financial gain. We're doing it for positive social impact that we know that our consumers would want us to do. And we want to do, but we're also learning a lot, you know, small Entrepreneur Ally I've been one a couple of times, like, Sometimes they can get in this mindset like I'm small. This is hard. There's all these companies out there that have these capabilities and resources that are way bigger than me. And what I think you lose sometimes when you're in that struggle is the fact that real innovation and real breakthrough ideas come from entrepreneurs struggling like that. And so we'll see things that these Entrepreneur Ally doing and we already have and we're like wow that is so smart. Can we borrow that idea. So it's very mutual, which I think creates the foundation for really a long-term relationship that hopefully will be very successful along the lines that I outlined before. I hope all three of these companies are wildly successful.
[00:43:08] Once Upon: I think it can be hard though for other brands sometimes when they look at these large systematic problems and you're a small emerging brand, how can I make an impact? How can I find that place where I can be additive and create a change when you're dealing with these massive societal problems. And so I think the story of Once Upon a Farm and some of what you've done with WIC, with this program, with other efforts like Save The Children, is just impressive because it shows how you can apply tactics to larger problems in our country.
[00:43:45] John Foraker: Yeah, thanks. Most important thing is you just have to start. You know, I learned a long time ago, you can worry about it not being big enough or you can worry about whether it's exactly right, but the most important thing is if you have positive intent in your heart and you're coming at it with real empathy and desire to make positive change, there's very little downside from just starting. and learning as you go. Like every entrepreneurial organization is learning two steps forward, one step back. I'm sure we'll Save The exact same experience in our EAP program, just like everything else we've done. But the goal is to make it really a big success. And you just have to start and Save The courage to start.
[00:44:23] Ray Latif: Jennifer, John, I think I can speak for Carol in saying that this has been such a fantastic interview. We're so honored to be able to sit down with both of you. Thank you so much for taking your time to be with us. And thank you so much for your leadership in our industry. You know, the initiatives that you guys have been talking about are just incredible. And I think that our audience is going to learn a lot and perhaps undertake their own initiatives to make our industry and make our world better. Thank you. We're excited to be here.
[00:44:49] Jennifer Garner: Thanks, Ray. Thank you, Carol. Thanks so much for having us and chatting with us about all this fun stuff.
[00:44:59] Ray Latif: That brings us to the end of episode 234. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks to our guests, Jennifer Garner and John Foraker. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to askatasteradio.com. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
