Dan: Welcome to the "Achievers Toolkit" podcast: Your Practical Knowledge to Accelerate Your Success. This exciting episode focuses on three key activities for speeding your entrepreneurial path to success.

Gwen Burlingame of Beckon Ice Cream shares how she and Katy Flannery, her co-founder, founded the lactose-free dairy ice cream company out of necessity, their need to eat ice cream without major stomach discomfort. After Katy turned up the perfect recipe, they began enthusiastically selling the ice cream at a Boston Farmers Market about four years ago. Today, they're distributed nationwide, and are on an exciting upward trajectory, plus they are living their mission to spread the joy of ice cream to everyone. Here is their story. So, Gwen, tell me a little bit about where you grew up. What's your background?

Gwen: So, I'm from Springfield, Virginia. It's a suburb of Washington DC. So I grew up there with my family. I have an older sister. Great upbringing in, like, a very heavily populated area of Virginia.

So, I went to Villanova University. So, I graduated from there in 2012. I majored in marketing and international business, it was a great experience, definitely gave me kind of a taste of what I wanted to do. I knew while I was there that I really wanted to do something in brand marketing. I was really interested in that. And while I was there, I interned...well, I did a study abroad semester and interned at L'Oreal in London...

Dan: That's interesting.

Gwen: Yeah, came back and did an internship there in New York, and then that's where I ended up working after college.

Dan: Okay. So, now I know a little bit about your story, and I know Beckon Ice Cream and your friend, Katy. Katy went to Villanova as well.

Gwen: She did, yeah.

Dan: So, the two of you didn't come up with the idea while in school?

Gwen: No. So, we were friends in college. We were actually roommates our senior year, but Katy was a nursing student. So, we both graduated and went off to separate careers. I worked at L'Oreal in New York City, worked in kind of various roles in digital marketing for the luxury division at L'Oreal, and then moved over to Kiehl's, which is one of their skincare brands and...

Dan: I have heard of it, yeah

Gwen: Yeah. I worked on their international business development team, specifically in the APAC region, which was really, really interesting, and then moved over to brand marketing and managed the sun and lip categories.

But Katy, at the same time, she had graduated and moved to Washington, DC to work at Georgetown hospital, and then move back up to Boston to be a pediatric ICU nurse at Boston Children's. So, that's what she was doing when she actually kind of came up with the idea for Beckon. She's lactose intolerant. And so, she spent her days off from nursing, kind of experimenting, trying to solve her own problem. So, that's kind of where the concept came from.

Dan: The problem at that point in time is she loved ice cream and she couldn't eat it.

Gwen: Yeah. So, Beckon is the first and only premium ice cream on the market that's real dairy, but lactose-free. So, it kind of came out of Katy's own personal need because, you know, Katy and I both came from families that loved ice cream, so it was definitely like a daily occurrence in both of our households. You'd have ice cream after dinner every night. And so, she grew up being able to eat ice cream, loved it, and then when she was about a teenager, as many people do, develop lactose intolerance as they get older, she started to notice that it just wasn't sitting well with her. And so, she kind of went on this food journey to try to figure out what worked for her and, you know, what was causing all of these issues.

And so, while we were in college, she would, she discovered Whole Foods for the first time. It was kind of like this amazing place, this Mecca, of all these different types of special diet foods. And she would experiment with, you know, the non-dairy options on the market, but they didn't have that same taste and texture that she really knew and loved from growing up. And then she would try to eat regular ice cream and definitely suffer the consequences. So, she used to tell us that she would one day make the best lactose-free ice cream, and she would make us do taste-tests because she always felt left out.

You know, when we were in our house senior year, sometimes we would take study breaks and go out for frozen yogurt, and she would not be able to participate. So, she would bring home like her Lactaid sometimes to the house and would do taste-tests and be like, "You see, doesn't taste that different," but it did. So, I think that kind of set her on this path that, you know, when she had a little bit of extra time on her hands, how can she solve it for herself? So, that's kind of how it got going.

Dan: Now, as I shared with you earlier, I'm lactose intolerant. I had a very similar story to Katy. I was fine when I was a kid, but when I got to college, I noticed that I had an issue with milk. But what I do is I use pills, right? You can use the Lactaid pills. It's got the lactase enzyme in it. She wasn't satisfied with that, taking that and eating regular ice cream.

Gwen: Yeah. So, she did that at first. Those pills aren't necessarily dosed to the specific person and kind of their enzyme need, and they're not dosed to necessarily how much dairy you're eating or how much lactose is in that dairy.

Gwen: So, she ended up taking like eight pills before she would eat ice cream, because, otherwise, she risked. She would always call it like playing roulette, because she like wouldn't really know. She'd be like, "If I take six, am I gonna have a problem?" This was like an issue on dates. So...

Dan: Very uncomfortable, yeah.

Gwen: Very uncomfortable; And she'd always say that, you know, popping a few Lactaid pills wasn't like the sexiest thing to do on a date, so she kind of removed that from her repertoire a little bit. But, you know, we've talked to a lot of customers who also just don't like the taste experience. You know, ice cream is something that's supposed to be fun. It's something that you can enjoy with friends and family and having to, you know, take a pause and eat a chalky pill before you're supposed to enjoy something that's really satisfying isn't the best experience. And so, we're really trying to bring the joy back to ice cream, you know, remove that hesitation, and remove also something like that where you're having to add something uncomfortable or unpleasant to an experience that should just be pure happiness.

Dan: Right. Gotcha. So, that was your clear motivation or her clear motivation for coming up with a better solution?

Gwen: Yeah.

Dan: So, you're working at L'Oreal in New York.

Gwen: Yeah.

Dan: She's up in Boston exploring these various concoctions of lactose-free ice cream. How did you get together? What's, you know, where's the connection?

Gwen: So, we were at a kind of college reunion with all of our friends that lived together. And she was talking about really wanting to start this. She had the recipes, she was feeling really good about them. And I've always been interested in entrepreneurship. And, you know, the more she spoke about it, the fact that 25% of the United States is lactose intolerant to some degree. And the demographics that are highest in lactose intolerance are also the fastest growing in the US, and there were no premium offerings on the market, that to me just felt crazy. There was just such a clear need in the market, and so, I just thought it sounded really exciting trying to solve a very clear problem.

So, at first, I just was kind of helping her explore the idea, but it kind of snowballed into...You know, she wanted to jump into a Farmers Market. We got accepted into the Farmers Market. We got accepted into an incubator kitchen up in Boston, which is basically like a shared space kitchen, almost like a co-working space for food brands, because you do need to be in a licensed commercial kitchen to sell food products. So, that kind of, that along with getting into this kind of high profile Farmers Market in Boston that's kind of competitive to get into, that really motivated us to get things going.

And so I, for about six months from like, April to October of, this was 2015, the first year that we did it. I would finish work on Fridays at L'Oreal in New York, and I would take the Megabus because that's all I could afford to do over and over again. I'd take the Megabus up to Boston. We would work in the incubator kitchen all day on Saturday with the help of our friends and family who were in the area, and then sell ice cream all day Sunday at the Farmers Market. And then I would rush to South Station in Boston, get back on the Megabus, go home, and work a full work week. So, that was kind of definitely an extreme version, but that's kind of what we did for almost two years, because we kind of took the winter off, started it the next year. But then towards the end of that summer, we decided to leave our full-time jobs. So, that was the second summer in 2016, leave our full-time jobs and try Beckon in full time.

Dan: It's a very interesting story because you talk about your dedication, right? You had to put in two years, and you didn't know what was going to come from that. So, what was it that kept motivating you during that time?

Gwen: I think, definitely, the customer feedback and, you know, the people who would continuously come to our booth at the Farmers Market. We have like regulars, regular customers. And then in that second summer, we started to get into a few independent retailers around Boston. So, we were getting into a few stores, people were excited about the concept.

And then what really kind of pushed us to go full time was getting accepted into a few Whole Foods Markets around Boston. So, at that time, you were able to go in local into individual Whole Food stores. So, we...

Dan: As opposed to nationwide.

Gwen: Exactly. Or even regional. So, we went into a few specific stores, you know, kind of went in with our little cooler, pitched to the buyer, and got in as part of their local set. And so, that was something that really pushed us to move forward. And a little bit later in that year, we realized after self-delivering and hand-delivering to...at that point, I think that we were almost at around 15 Whole Foods around the Boston area. We're like driving around in our little van, had a cooler in the back.

We knew that we needed to kind of scale our production. So, we did move to a contract manufacturer, so someone that helped us make it at a larger scale, and we started to explore a relationship with the distributor. So, that was kind of our next step. And to do all of that, we really needed to be focusing on it full time.

Dan: So, the contract manufacturer, I'm a scientist by background. Not very many people know that but I'm always curious in the little details. So, how did you get a contract manufacturer? Where do you find something like this? And are they in Boston? And what quantities are you ordering? I mean, will they do any quantities or...?

Gwen: No. So, it's definitely like a little bit of a chicken before the egg conundrum because, you know, you need enough volume to get a contract manufacturer interested, because they run a business as well. So, you have to have enough to get them interested. But at the same time, you need them before you can really scale to a high volume. So, it's really about finding someone who has the capacity and the flexibility and also the willingness to kind of work with you on your recipe, because you also have to scale a recipe from, you know, working in an incubator kitchen on to larger-scale production equipment.

So, we were lucky we found through...Gosh, now I'm not even sure how we found him initially, Google searching. It feels like an underground society, co-packers. It's not something where you can just easily find them. There's not really a directory. But we found someone local to the New England area who helped us get started. And utilizing kind of their expertise and also the board at the incubator kitchen where we started, that really helped us kind of get going.

And then, you know, we've since kind of scaled a little bit larger to another co-packer and things, so we've been lucky in finding good partners. I think that that's really important in any business venture is finding good partners who are going to help you along the way.

Dan: And it sounds like you did, right?

Gwen: Yeah.

Dan: So, with this initial co-packer, is that what you...

Gwen: Co-packers.

Dan: Co-packers.

Gwen: So, contract manufacturers.

Dan: Okay. Because you mentioned a number of reasons why they, you know, the challenges, but I suppose one of the major challenges is just having belief in you.

Gwen: Yes.

Dan: You know, right? I mean, it's just like you have to convince them that this has potential, right? So, it's a selling job as well.

Gwen: Definitely. Absolutely. And they really have to need to see that. So, having certain proof points, like, I think for us, the fact that we're going into more Whole Foods, we were in discussions with, you know, a distributor, that was really helpful.

And also around that time, and this was a little bit after, so it probably didn't play into that decision. But we were also putting ourselves out there to get kind of our business idea out there. And we did a pitch competition with Sam Adams. So they do this "Bring the American Dream" pitch competition, and we won the national pitch competition. So we got some mentorship from the Sam Adams team, and we were able to, you know, have somebody to go to with questions. So, that was really helpful in kind of those early days, kind of figuring out some of the logistics around production and sales and operations and all of that.

Dan: So, they were very helpful in guiding you in the future, right?

Gwen: Yeah. And we had a few different mentors. I think that that's really important to be, you know, especially if you're going into an industry that you're not familiar with, which Katy and I, neither of us came from food. So, we were having to really seek out people who had been there before, and who are also willing to give us their time. And we have a number of people. And we really have at every stage that we could go to with questions, and I think that that's really critical.

Dan: Let's explore that for a minute. So, mentorship is critical. And you hear that from a number of entrepreneurs. The interesting thing is you didn't know your mentors before you started.

Gwen: No.

Dan: Right. And so you found them along the way?

Gwen: Yeah.

Dan: And how did you find them? In general sense, it was what you needed at the time, what you searched for, talking to people? Tell me a little bit about that search.

Gwen: So, one of the first things we did, and I actually think that this was so helpful to us even getting that first kind of like push forward. When Katy and I first decided to move forward with the business knowing nothing about the food industry, we were walking around Whole Foods and just kind of looking at brands that we admired, whether it was like, we like their packaging, we like their story, or we loved their product. It didn't really matter.

We would look on the back and see, could we figure out an email address or some way to get in contact with their founder? And, you know, we cold-called people and cold-emailed founders. And a few different people gave us, like, an hour of their time on the phone, people who didn't know us at all. So, the founder of Quinn Popcorn, the founder of Purely Elizabeth, the founder of Orpheus Homemade, these are all kind of brands that you'd find in your local Whole Foods, kind of talked to us about how they got started. And we started to kind of track commonalities around, what were the first steps they took? What did they need to do and kind of get in line? And that was really, really helpful to us because it gave us a sort of roadmap to follow. And I think we were so excited about then also the prospect of being a part of the food industry because we could tell it was really a community. There were people who are really generous and willing to help new entrepreneurs. And that was also really exciting for us. So, yeah.

Dan: Right, encouraging. And...

Gwen: Absolutely.

Dan: You didn't know that ahead of time, but you get into the business, and all of a sudden, you're like, "Wow, this is another marker of why we want to continue doing what we're doing."

Gwen: Definitely. And being a part of that incubator kitchen and Farmer's Market was another really great community for us to be a part of. There were other entrepreneurs who were around our size and kind of who were having some of the same questions, and struggles, and things that we were. And so, we had other people to try to kind of work through those with.

And then there was another brand who was a bit further along, owned by a husband and wife. Their bakery was actually in the same building as the incubator kitchen. And they run a company called 88 Acres. It's a seed-based company. They're incredible, and they're still our mentors to this day, and, like, we call them multiple times weekly. They are now in the same office building.

Gwen: Like, we literally followed them because we love them so much, and they're so helpful to us. So, it really does make such a difference in the journey if you have people around you who you know you can just pick up the phone and call when you have an issue, so...

Dan: It's so important, but it's also, I have to tell you, it's wonderful to hear you mentioning their names and giving them a shout out, right? Because you're so appreciative...

Gwen: Oh, my gosh...

Dan: ...of what they did.

Gwen: ...we wouldn't be able to have gotten here without some of them. It was really nice. I had not spoken to the founder of Orpheus since years ago when we had first called her and she was so sweet, and she gave us her time. And then I was speaking on a panel last month, and she was there. And I saw her in the bathroom, and I was like, "I don't know if you remember me but..." And she did, and it was so nice. And she was like, "I'm so glad to see that..." You know, that was helpful, and so, just kind of a reminder of to try to, and hopefully, we make it far enough to be able to give some kind of advice to somebody in the future.

Dan: Yeah. And I'm sure you'd be more than willing to do that, right?

Gwen: Yeah.

Dan: If someone calls you, now, you'd be happy to help.

Gwen: Yeah, absolutely.

Dan: It's also another part of it. I think successful entrepreneurs are often people who want to help other people.

Gwen: Yeah, we've definitely seen that from many of the people who have given us help, too.

Dan: So, you now are in the co-packing. You've expanded to a second facility. You're regional at this point in time?

Gwen: So, at the beginning of 2017, that's really where we started kind of expanding our footprint within New England. So, we were fortunate enough to be a part of a kind of early-stage natural food program within one of the key distributors in the natural food industry. So, that was really lucky for us, because that kind of gave us a way in the door with a distributor which can sometimes be a really scary thing for a small brand, but with a little bit more hand-holding. So, we're really lucky in that way. So we are a part of the Unify Next Program, that's the name of the distributor.

And then kind of through having that partnership, and then also, you know, what we've been doing with Whole Foods up until that point, we were able to expand into the North Atlantic region of Whole Foods, which is basically New England along with some other regional stores. So, at that point, we're in about, think we ended that year in about 150 stores. But that was also the year that we kind of ran into like our first major hiccup along the way, so...

Dan: I'm interested in that. Tell us about the hiccup.

Gwen: Yeah. So, kind of through working with all of these different retailers, and, you know, we were, it was just Katy and I. And so, we were going into stores, and we are doing demo'ing and, you know, where you give out samples in the store, and we were talking to customers, much like we did at the Farmers Market. And at that time, we were actually under a different brand name. So, we were called Minus the Moo. And it was the same brand name that we had, had at the Farmers Market. And we ended, you know, just really kind of pressed go and quit our jobs and kept going and got into stores, and really not taken the time to say like, "Okay, what are the things that we're now making choices to build our brand upon? Like a brand name. And, you know, should there be anything that we consider before we go into retail? We didn't really do that.

So, we realized after we're in some of those stories, that Minus the Moo was confusing to customers because our product is made from dairy. So, we use the enzyme to remove the lactose. And so, they were, a lot of customers were thinking it was dairy-free. And so, we kind of had this aha moment where we realized that if we really wanted this to be successful, we needed to take another look at the brand and how it was being communicated to customers.

Dan: Right. So, that's obviously a huge challenge because you have all your base of customers who know you as one thing, and now you're going to switch names completely. You're gonna switch the brand. So is that the hiccup?

Gwen: That is it, yeah.

Dan: So, what happens? What happened? You know.

Gwen: So, we ultimately decided to make a change in the brand name. We ended up working with a really wonderful design team to redesign our packaging. We decided to rebrand to Beckon because it was kind of this concept after talking to our customers. A lot of them had said they had left ice cream altogether or they could no longer have it. So, we called it Beckon because it was your call back to real ice cream for people who previously kind of thought it wasn't for them anymore.

And, you know, at that point in time, there was such a big switchover. We had to kind of time it perfectly so that we could, you know, have the new packaging and the new codes and all the things in the background that you don't think about in the kind of supply chain worked out perfectly so that, you know, we weren't having out of stocks and all of that. But we decided to rip the band-aid off and try it. And I think that one of the things that really helped us there was talking to our partners at our retailers at the distributor, and really having their support. So we still are really, really grateful to this day that they kind of got behind that project with us, because otherwise, we might not have been able to do that. And I really feel like we needed that the brand is so important to the foundation of a company in really communicating what they stand for. And I think that we have that now with Beckon.

Dan: The brand is the foundation.

Gwen: Absolutely, yeah.

Dan: So, you called it a hiccup, and I understand it was a lot of work. What happened to sales at that point in time?

Gwen: So, we did have to kind of take a little bit of, we always say like our foot off the gas a little bit, just to make sure that we were able to kind of do that changeover. But we were fortunate in that, you know, with the support of our retailers, we are still able to kind of move forward through that year. And because of, you know, the changeover, it was shortly after we launched the redesign, and this was in June of 2018, that...

Dan: Recently.

Gwen: Yeah.

Dan: Very recently.

Gwen: Yeah. I know it feels like forever ago, but yes. Whole Foods decided to take us national shortly after that. So, we went from one region to all, and now we're available nationwide with them.

Dan: Congratulations.

Gwen: Thank you. Yes, we launched at about a year after that rebrand, so almost, so May of this year.

Dan: So...

Gwen: It ended up okay, but at the moment, it felt very painful.

Dan: I'm sure. And it was just the two of you? Just you and Katy doing this, the only full-time employees?

Gwen: So, after the rebrand, we hired our first full-time employee in September of 2018.

Dan: Wow, frankly, congratulations because that's...kudos to you for doing all of that, just two people.

Gwen: Thank you.

Dan: So, you're leveraging clearly your suppliers and other, I guess, part-time people to help, and...?

Gwen: Yeah. And we use every single favor we could ever possibly pull with our friends and family.

Dan: I think that's another common characteristic of entrepreneurs, right? You have to ask for favors in people you find are willing to help.

Gwen: Yes, absolutely. And, you know, I think that also having the willingness to put yourself out there and ask, and even ask it by way of like the mentorship and advising, that also kind of, you really do have to put yourself out there to be able to do that. But you'll find that people are so generous.

Dan: Absolutely. But I think entrepreneurship is not for the bashful.

Gwen: No. Katy always says that when we're, you know, when she would be trying to, you know, seek out somebody that she really admired to talk to them about what they were doing. She would always say that it would border on, tenacious would border on stalking, like that's what she always say.

Dan: That's in line, right?

Gwen: Yes. Exactly.

Dan: Staying in touch but not being overly over the line.

Gwen: Yeah.

Dan: Let's talk a little bit about financing. And you don't have to tell me anything proprietary, but I'm just wondering, where did you raise the money to do all of this?

Gwen: So, when we first, first started, kind of really early days, Katy and I were pretty much utilizing our own money. Luckily, Katy was smart, had some savings. Somebody gave me a credit card. But we were really kind of doing it all on our own. And then we...once we reached a point where we really couldn't do that. And this was still very early, like once we were at the Farmer's Market, and having to have even working capital from, like, week to week to buy ingredients. We had, you know, a few family members that lent us money. Not huge amounts, but just little things to kind of get us through that point in time. And then once we really got into, started getting into stores, we made the decision to start bringing on some angel investment.

You know, a lot of people will do a friends and family round. We do have some friends and family in our round. But for the most part, like we didn't really, we really had to look external of that to really be able to fund the venture. And so, we did raise some angel investment from kind of, we call them friends of friends or people kind of outside of that circle, as well as from our alumni network.

Dan: At Villanova?

Gwen: At Villanova. And then also some individuals that we met through, we did an accelerator in Boston, accelerator program. So, just kind of networking through there. And we brought in that first round over a long period of time, so as we were kind of growing. And then this past year, we raised a second convertible note round from an angel group.

Dan: Wow. Because you're now going national. So all of a sudden, you need more working capital.

Gwen: Exactly.

Dan: You need a lot of money to...It's wonderful, right? People want to buy your product, the retailer loves it, you're getting sell-through, where's the money come from?

Gwen: Yeah, exactly.

Dan: So, just without, I don't need to know the specifics, I'm just more curious about your time, like how much of your time is spent on the business, and how much has been spent on raising capital?

Gwen: So, it's definitely...we always joke it's a full-time job. But running a business is like five full-time jobs. So, we really do, it kind of, you know, depending on how you go about funding your business. It does seem like you're kind of always in that process, kind of finish. Maybe you have a very short time period of reprieve, but you really have to be looking ahead to the next raise.

And part of that, it's just like if you really want to be growing the business quickly and ensuring that you can maintain your competitive advantage and all of those things. So, I would say it's always kind of in the back of our minds. But we have to kind of, we try to divide and conquer Katie and I.

Dan: Okay. You would have to do to run the business and to raise the capital. Right now, are you in the middle of raising capital or you're able to focus on growing the business?

Gwen: We're about to start another fundraise.

Dan: Lucky you.

Gwen: So our first equity round. Yep.

Dan: Okay. Well, hopefully, that goes well.

Gwen: Thank you.

Dan: So, where are you now in the business? You mentioned national and Whole Foods. Tell us a little bit about where you are now.

Gwen: Yeah, so we're in about 1,000 stores nationwide. Whole Foods Market is our largest account, but we have a number of other regional retailers. In this area, we're in Kings, Shoprite up in New England we have a number of other regional players that we've kind of been in a longer period of time, but then we also have some even on the west coast in the Midwest. So, Whole Foods is still our biggest but we have a number of other ones. And then we're also, we sell off our website as well. So you can buy Beckon off of beckonicecream.com

Dan: I saw that, by the way.

Gwen: Yeah, we should fund...

Dan: I'm excited about that.

Gwen: Yeah, we should anywhere in the contiguous US. So, that's kind of where we are in terms of our reach. And right now, we have four people in our headquarter office. So, it's still kind of three full time, so, me, Katy, and then Sam, who had joined, as I mentioned, before.

And then we have a co-op student from Northeastern that works full-time with us. So, there's four of us in the office. Everyone wears a lot of hats, and we hire a lot of summer interns. But it's a lot of fun, and we try to get everything done.

Dan: Well, also, kudos to you for being able to do this really with a very limited staff because it, I mean, to be in so many stores nationwide, and to be producing, and not to have to have that drag of full-time employment is huge.

Gwen: Yeah. Well, I should mention, we have a lot of really great external partners that help us now. So, we've, you know, brought on different people as part of external organizations who help in sales and operations. Of course, we have our contract manufacturer for production. We're now part of a couple of distributors. So, you definitely need that external network of people you trust and who believe in the brand if you're going to kind of keep your internal team lean.

Dan: And sales that's like an independent sales rep who might represent a number of different food products. So is that what you...

Gwen: Yes, we do have that, yep.

Dan: You have that as well. So, it's smart, though, because you're trying to leverage what you can with the amount of capital that you can and getting the biggest bang for the buck as possible. Is that fair?

Gwen: Yes, definitely.

Dan: Maybe one day you'll have your own full-time sales staff and other things that you need, but right now, not necessary.

Gwen: Right now, you know, I think too, we've been lucky to have certain partners externally to that, you know, have a lot of experience that we don't have. So, we're able to also garner their experience from, you know, years of being in the food industry. And then there are people who feel like they're a part of our headquarter team, like, we've kind of grown those relationships. So, I think that there's, maybe eventually we will have, I mean, the hope is that, eventually, we'll have a bigger kind of home team. But I think that we'll always kind of look to our external partners as well, because there's a lot of benefits out of that as tip.

Dan: Well said. So, you've had all these successes. So, let me ask you about, what was your worst business moment? You know, there's got to be a time when you're like, "Oh, my God."

Gwen: I think that it might have been the just the switchover to the rebrand. The rebrand was really exciting. You know, I think that it was the right thing to do. We love how the brand came out, and how our packaging came out. And we've gotten so much great feedback from customers. But in that kind of short period of time when the changeover was happening, there were so many things that kind of needed to happen all at the same time in perfect harmony for it to go off without a major issue. And so, that was probably like Katy and I weren't sleeping. We were like holding our breath to kind of making sure it got done. Luckily, Katy is a master of, like, project management and our kind of operations in everything that had to happen, so she really kind of led that to where we got it.

Dan: And it did come through without too much disruption.

Gwen: Yes, yeah. We had to recode them. So, that was the...coding is definitely an issue in supply chain where you have to kind of be tracking all the different pieces, so it all came together.

Dan: The barcode you talking about?

Gwen: Yes.

Dan: Okay, that's a critical part because, right? They are, items are now just scanned. No longer is there a price tag on the...right? And they track that from an inventory perspective.

Gwen: Yeah. And it was just kind of all the puzzle pieces having to come together during a specific time period. So, that was probably the most stressful business moment, but it all came out well in the end.

Dan: So, let's look in the flip side of that. So, you are here today, what are you most excited about?

Gwen: You know, I think what we're most excited about right now in the office is, since we've gone, you know, grown nationally, because we grew our distribution about four X this year. So, all of a sudden, we're in front of all of these new customers and all these new regions, and we get all of, now, a lot of messages from customers. So, we'll get emails and direct messages on Instagram and different things from people who are really excited about the product, maybe people who are lactose intolerant who haven't had ice cream in a really long time or haven't been able to find something that they really felt like worked for them until they found Beckon. And so, having people reach out like that makes us really excited for kind of building a community around Beckon and really understanding our customers better.

You know, I think now where social media has gone, and now there are so many channels that brands aren't just talking out to people, it's kind of now a two-way conversation where we can learn from our customers...

Gwen: ...and get to know them. I think that's what we're most excited about, now that we kind of have this extended audience, is really getting to know them, getting to know more about them.

Dan: And do you think that this two-way conversation is going to help you grow the business? How are you gonna leverage that? Is that something, greater distribution? More flavors or what?

Gwen: Well, I think, you know, a company can't do anything without their customers because, you know, we're really creating something for them. So, the more we can learn about our customers' needs, what they're looking for...You know, we're thinking through what our next products going to be, what our next flavors going to be, and often will, you know, even ask on social media, what flavors are people looking for? So, kind of having customers play a role in where the company goes, I think that that can only be beneficial.

Dan: Great. So, let me ask you one other question before we close.

Gwen: Sure.

Dan: What are you most proud of?

Gwen: Oh, gosh. I think that I'm really proud of kind of the team that we've created, both internally and externally. We really have this great group of people around us, from our partners to our mentors to, you know, the people that we've hired, even our interns. Like, they...there's so many times when, you know, people are really excited about Beckon and where it's going, and you can see their passion. And the brand that Katy and I have kind of always felt, that makes me really, really proud.

And then when you get, you know, feedback from customers kind of validating that as well, it's just, it's great. And it makes us feel like we're kind of starting to fulfill on the mission that we set out for ourselves.

Dan: By the way, when you're saying that you light up. You've been smiling and excited throughout the entire podcast interview, and I appreciate that. But I can see that you're genuine about that, and that's wonderful. So, it's really great. Hopefully, this connection with all of your customers, and vendors, and mentors, and community that you mentioned will continue to accelerate your success. So, how do people contact you?

Gwen: I think the best way to contact us is directly...we're a small team. So, follow us at Beckon Ice Cream on Instagram or Facebook, and just direct message us because you're always going to get a member, either myself or a member of our team.

Dan: Well, with only four of you, there's a high probability you'll get someone on your team.

Gwen: Yeah. They'll just kind of lean over and say, "Hey, Gwen, I think this one's for you."

Dan: Oh, great. Well, Gwen, really thank you for sharing your story and your enthusiasm. And I wish you, Katy, and Beckon Ice Cream nothing but continued success and an upward trajectory.

Gwen: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Dan: My pleasure.

This episode was recorded by Daniel Kramer, Managing Director of the Constantine Wealth Management Group of Raymond James, 401 Hackensack Avenue, Suite 803, Hackensack, New Jersey 07601. Raymond James and Associates Incorporated, member New York Stock Exchange, SIPC. Companies mentioned are not affiliated with Raymond James. Opinions expressed are those of the speaker and not necessarily those of Raymond James, any information provided is for informational purposes only.