Mid-Day Squares rain maker Jake Karls

https://www.middaysquares.com/

Interviewing Jake Karls from Mid-Day squares was an inspiration and an insightful experience.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-karls-653106ba/
If you are an entrepreneur and need some inspiration this episode is for you! 

How to take on the chocolate industry and make a big splash? 
Why not make a rap video? 
Looking for a healthy snack that will get you through the day? 

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/

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Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:15

Welcome to sustainable packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is Mr. Jake Karls , the co founder and Rainmaker at Midday Squares. How are you, sir?

Jake Karls: 0:26

Corey, what's up, brother? I'm super fired up. I know we talked a little bit before this, but, yeah, no, we just had a really big win today in our company. So, you know, when you get that like momentum, you just feel the EBGBs. That's what I'm kind of feeling right now. And I'm grateful to be here and thank you for giving us a voice.

Cory Connors: 0:41

Oh, thank you. I've been following your progress for a while. Like we talked about. Can you tell us about this big wind or is it is a secret?

Jake Karls: 0:49

It's not supposed to be secretive, but like, just needs to develop fully. it was just we were dealing with something and we solved the problem. And that's why it was when the team came together. And there's nothing better than watching a synchronized team like execute a very difficult problem, but a problem that had the odds stacked against us and beat those odds out. So I'm grateful for the team. and I'm also, I'm also grateful for the people that we had to work with throughout this. So it was really good. And one day I'll let it out. Hopefully in like a month or two.

Cory Connors: 1:18

Well, we'll stand by and be excited about that. what you've done and what you've accomplished with your team is incredible. you've taken on some giants and, succeeded in a huge way. things like, your Forbes 30 under 30. your mom is writing letters, handwritten letters, 750, 000 to your, customers, which is amazing. Kim Kardashian's one of your customers I saw on social media, but let's talk about your background. How did you get to where you are today?

Jake Karls: 1:52

Great. I love that. So yeah, we've had a lot of fun over the last five years of building this business. And my business is my partners are my sister, my brother in law. So we're a family business. and before even midday squares, I was always the class clown. I was the guy that was always having fun with people, in school. And I was always pranking people, you know, being the spotlight, let's call it. And I was actually authentic when I was doing that. It was who I was, but I was failing miserably in academia. And, I decided to get my, you know, I like to get my shit together, because I felt that I was falling behind in society. And what I mean by that was I felt this pressure as soon as I started having really bad grades and the potential of not graduating, I felt that I needed to mold to the herd and kind of be somebody else just to make sure that I pass society's standards and quotations. And, I ended up being miserable doing that. I got my grades and, you know, I had, I did the whole 9 yards the typical way and I didn't enjoy it. I wasn't being me. I wasn't the spotlight anymore. I wasn't the guy that, you know, everyone fell in love with, or the person I loved and, finally 3rd year of university. I decided to. To apply to all the investment banks again, trying to follow the herd and I got rejected by each one. And in that moment, I was sad, depressed, lonely, doubting me, like my skills and who I am. And I was sitting on my parents couch, on their house, watching TV and Shark Tank came on and I saw this entrepreneur on the screen and he was pitching his dream about his business. I don't remember the business, but he had like a family and he had 2 mortgages on his house to pay his business. And he looked so happy, free and inspired. So I felt this like, Oh my God, I'm complaining. I live in my parents house. I'm totally good. I have food on the table. I don't have really responsibilities, but I want what that guy has. And in that moment, I decided that entrepreneurship was the route I'm going to go forward with. And that's when I unlocked a freedom that I've never felt. And it felt authentic to who I was, even if the first business I did. Decent. My second business ended up closing because I failed on the second business. And then in the third business is now midday squares, which is the company that we're going to be talking about today on the podcast, that's slowly having some good success in both Canada and the United States. And I've learned a lot. So I've been an entrepreneur for almost a decade now. and I learned that the most important thing about life is to find out who you are and continue to be unapologetically who you are every day, the moment you are not, and the moment you are being somebody else. Is the moment that you don't have freedom and you don't have the ability to reach your greatest potential. So I realized that early on, which was, which is something I'm really grateful for to have gone through. And my whole mission in life now is to build this business to be hopefully a unicorn, a billion dollar business, a next generation of a Hershey's or a Mars or a Mondelez, but doing it by being us. Being ourselves and not following the typical playbook. So that's who we are. That's my little journey. I hope I didn't

Cory Connors: 4:39

I love it. It's inspirational. your company is inspirational. I think it's amazing what you've done and, I think. You know, one of my inspirations for being here was, is Gary Vaynerchuk. And he said the same thing. School wasn't for him. And, most, many, I would say, most successful entrepreneurs are C students. And it's, it's because that's not how their mind works. That's not how. They succeed in life and I wasn't the best student in school, but I love doing this stuff. And, like you, I want to be with people. I want to talk to people. I want to learn from them. I want to hear their stories. So, well done. Nice job.

Jake Karls: 5:19

Let's try. I live every day. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 5:22

what, what led you to the, snack food business or the midday square as a business to start?

Jake Karls: 5:29

So my partners are diehard foodies. They're chocolate lovers. My sister, my brother in law are really like they're, they love everything about food. I'm actually allergic to my own product. I'm allergic to nuts and peanuts. I can't eat. But I love food as well. But long story short, my sister. Was actually making this midday square snack, for a long 2 and a half years before midday squares even came to existence. And what she was doing, she was making this as an alternative snack for my brother in law, her husband to eat a chocolate snack in the afternoon that would keep him full. Give him energy and not make him crash and feel bloated. And a lot of the chocolate bars out there, unfortunately, are full of artificial ingredients, additives, refined sugars. And she's like, I can make you some cleaner, something tasty. That's still really good. Has some sort of protein, fiber, good fats, et cetera. And she made him the snack. Two and a half years later, they wanted to actually work together on a project and become entrepreneurs together because they were already entrepreneurs in other fields. And they decided to do a food business. And the first thing that came to mind was my brother in law read a report that Chocolate was growing year over year, and that vegan proteins plant proteins at the time was also growing year over year very fast. And he realized that my sister was just making a baby of these 2 massive growth categories. And that's when they decided to commercialize this product. And they came to me in July of 2018 after 8 months of commercialization and said, Hey, we need you to be our 3rd partner and 3rd founder to help us blow this brand up because you are an awesome storyteller. We need you to bring storytelling. To the food and beverage world, because the food and beverage world is missing that emotional connection or missing what the cosmetic world has or what the fashion entertainment world has. And I said to them, I said, Hey, there's 40, 000 products on a grocery store shelf at a Walmart or target. Let's call it. We need to make noise. If we're going to win at the market without paying for the slotting fees and all that jazz, it's just millions of dollars. We need to make. Consumers fans of our business. And in order to make them fans, we need to tell them a great story that will resonate, relate, create trust and build fandom. And that's what I came on board to do. And five years later, as of our five year anniversary is coming up, we will have. Done a completely different strategy than most food and beverage companies ever even thought of doing

Cory Connors: 7:37

well. I agree. And, I'm a big fan of your product here. I'm, for those listening, I'm holding up a peanut butter, midday square, which is my favorite 1 that I've tried so far. there's a 12 pack. This is what it looks like if you're searching for it on the shelves. but I highly recommend the product and I'm not being paid to say this. it's a delicious snack and it really does help get you through the day. I know you've had some pushback from some of the large brands out there and your response to that is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in advertising and marketing. Can you talk about your rap video that you made?

Jake Karls: 8:14

Yes. So long story short, first of all, I'm a big fan of, of, I like to say I'm a big fan of all the chocolate companies out there. I think they've done a legacy, you know, they've built legacy brands and you got to. Pay them respect for that. It's very hard to build a large business. So Hershey's Mars model is big fans. But in 2021, we had some talks with Hershey's about M and a and didn't we didn't want to sell the company. So we moved on from those talks. And after those talks happened, two and a half months late, two months later, sorry, we received the season assist letter to you. We can only use the color orange or we'd have to go to court. for our peanut butter, which is our best selling flavor at the time. And they were totally fine with it before, right? So, so it was kind of ironic. And for us, because we document and share everything, that's our whole strategy is we film everything and share it because we want to show the consumer. This is how we're building the business from A to Z. You can see the good, the bad, the ugly. So when we shared it, why we were changing our package, because we're not going to go fight a giant in court, just way too expensive and waste of time, money. so we decided to do is just tell the story. Share the authentic story of what happened and now went really that kind of went mini viral and people were loving it. They're like, oh, my God, big chocolate versus small chocolate. Dave versus Goliath. This is wild. And then once we went one step further, and we were like, why don't we show off our creative juices and our ability to storytell? With our consumers, our fans to show them that, you know, we are so different than these companies. We are not the same as Hershey's Mars and Mon, please. We are such a new generation, something more fun, something more creative, a different way of communicating. So we launched a music video, a diss track. We took the song. My name is what by Eminem. We like that song. And we're like, let's make a parody version of it where you wouldn't get in trouble legally, but we can make a parody version of basically saying we're Midday squares. We're not trying to be you Hershey's. So stop trying to think we are look what we can do. You might have all the money in the world, but we have all the creative juices in the world. And this is what relates to people. And it blew up, it went viral, got picked up in the media, earned press all over the United States. Canada was hilarious. And, it just goes to show you don't always have to answer the typical way, right? You know, the way would have been to either just move on and not say anything or to go to court and fight. And both of those options weren't what we wanted to do. So we made our own. And I think that you have to be able to accept risk. There's risk associated with it. But at the end of the day, that's what entrepreneurs do. So it's fun and it blew up. So that was a good time.

Cory Connors: 10:38

I've heard you use the word authentic several times, and that's exactly how I would describe you and your company. I think it's so rare these days that we get to see behind the scenes and get to feel what it's like to have, you know. The wrong packaging delivered or things like this that you've got used, you've dealt with. Can you speak to a little bit of your packaging woes and maybe, you know, inspire some other companies that have, dealt with some of these issues too?

Jake Karls: 11:10

So I think that packaging is a very hard thing. So you know, Midday Squares is still in its early stages of its companies. So Midday Squares, you know, is growing very fast. We're an emerging brand that's getting trendy in the U. S. and Canada. Growing, building. We own our manufacturing, which is itself is different than a lot of food companies. And, you know, for us, our whole vision is to keep real foods into the chocolate bar and give you an indulgence, but function as well, while keeping it very clean in terms of the ingredient deck. So in that sense, sustainable, fair trade as well. But from a packaging standpoint. Unfortunately, we as a world need to get better at the supply chain side of it in the sense of it's still very costly to make fully sustainable packaging. And I always tell people, we as founders, and we as a company really believe in sustainability. We really do. And, you know, by, you know, the way we live our lives, we want to 100%. But the thing about having a business is you got to be very careful with how you play the sustainability at what point in your company. And at what point do you raise the prices to offset the losses in terms of closing your business potentially. And that's what we were faced with early on was, if we go full sustainable packaging right now at the current moment of the business. We would have to charge like five bucks a chocolate bar just to be able to stay in business and to keep delivering this delicious snack. Or we would have to change the ingredient deck to offer like palm oil in our product, which we do not believe in. so what we did was we said, okay, we're going to work towards it. We're going to work with companies to figure out how we get there. But in the meantime, we're just not there yet. And I always. Sell people were 5 years into our company. We've had so much problems to deal with in our company, and we just put fires up by fires. And this is a fire that we want to work on and try to figure out because it's a priority to us. And it's important for the world. And I think that just having that transparent communication is extremely important, but again. If we were to change it today, and I could switch it today to a brand new packaging, we would probably be out of business in the next three months. And that means you'd have to go back to eating typical chocolate bars that are not typically good for your health. So that's where it becomes a very difficult game. It's a balancing and an art. And as long as a company is willing to work towards it, I think it's, that's the most important and do it within the space of. Making sure that the company can sustain and last for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years. We employ a lot of people. We have great paying jobs here. There's a lot of other sustainability associated with the business that I think is important to always be discussing. That being said, some companies have figured it out earlier than others and I give them kudos and I would love to learn from them, to be honest with you and get there, but that's where we're at. And I think it's difficult. I think you've got to deal with the pressure, but work. As you go, you need to work with it, but it's, you cannot compensate your whole business and close your business for the sake of one, one fire in your company. You need to be able to make sure that they're all solved over time, but you need to do a triage system. That's extremely important for the health of your company. Yeah,

Cory Connors: 14:09

absolutely. Well said we, there's nothing sustainable about going out of business. We've talked about, we talk about this a lot and, we, sustainability is a journey. It's not like you all of a sudden you're sustainable and that's you check that box. Right. But what I'm seeing is a sustainable box. And this is, I know you ship in the corrugated. I got, when I ordered from you, Really great packaging. And this, this, you know, horizontal form, pill and seal, you know, this is all, it's all appropriate and it's all the right things, to make this last on the shelf and, or in your home, for a long time. So right now you're, what I think you're doing is great.

Jake Karls: 14:48

And dude, at the end of the day, look, you know, we ship with a reusable, you know, recycled and denim, like, you know, like in terms of the, the insulation and reusable ice pack, if you want to use it again. So, like, we make an effort and I think it's important to not be like, you know. You know, dumbfounded or just completely out to lunch with it. I think it's important that there's a world move forward over time, but we have to also have patience for, you know, development, you know, innovation that will come because look. Innovation is also very expensive to create and scale is very expensive. But if we as a world work together, I think we get there. but with time and I think we got to respect patients, nothing in life, nothing great in life comes quick. you know, patience and slow and steady while we're working very hard, we'll get us all there.

Cory Connors: 15:34

Yes, exactly. Right. Takes time, takes, patience, takes innovation, takes, being open to new concepts. I love the personalization that you're offering with, these notes that your mom is writing. Can you talk about that? that's a really, that's a really cool way to connect with your audience. And I don't know, how long she's been doing that, but it sounds incredible.

Jake Karls: 15:58

Yes, great. My mother. she's awesome. She loves us. My sister. She loves all my sister, my brother in law and I, and she always wanted to help. And early on, we used to send, we'd say these Polaroid pictures, a selfie of the 3 of us. And we wanted to send that with each to each customer is their first time purchase. So they can get to know the company, see the people behind that. It's a human. Behind the company, it's not just a corporation and we would handwrite messages saying, Hey, and we'd go into like social media, find out who they are, LinkedIn, whatever, and write a little personalized note about them. And eventually, as we start growing, it was very hard to scale this, right? Because, you know, you're going to get a lot of people working. it's not sustainable in terms of, you know, the. The amount to do how to get it done. So my mom offered to do this as like a nightly activities. You want it to help out. And she, at first it was for free. And she's just like, she's like, Hey, let me help out. And it was like 50 Polaroids a night. Then it became 200 Polaroids a night. Then it became a thousand and she. Don't do from the bottom of their heart. We offered her money. Now, at this point, we offered her, you know, shares. She took finally took the shares in the company because she's that important, but she felt like it was super important. And we did as well. She felt it was super important that the customer gets to experience the humanization with this brand, even as we scale and become a larger company. And she's written now 750, 000 Polaroid pictures with custom messages with the name of the customer. So that they experience something that we did early on and you can experience it five years later as the company scales. And I think that's super important and it's a core value of ours is to make sure that we humanize the process as much as possible, because eventually if you just don't, if you start taking all the humanization, you become a transaction and transaction is not fun. It's not relatable. It's not. It's not human. So that's something that my mom has done. And we're super grateful for her. She's literally the Polaroid queen. We call her and we love her to death. without her, we, what we likely wouldn't be here. So, yeah, shout out to Felicia. Wow.

Cory Connors: 17:46

Well, that's, it's not something I've ever seen before. And I think it's a, incredible way to personalize your delivery, and to make your consumer feel like part of the family. So well done. Thank you so

Jake Karls: 18:00

much. I appreciate it.

Cory Connors: 18:01

Let's talk a little bit about how people buy midday squares. what's, where's the, is there retailers that you'd recommend or online as I bought mine through Amazon?

Jake Karls: 18:12

Yeah, so I think, you can get them through our own website, www. middaysquares. com, or Amazon, or you can go to Target, Whole Foods, Sprouts, Fresh Time, Fresh Market, Walmart Canada, all over Canada, we're all over Canada with all this stuff, but if you're in the U. S., all those other stores, it's always located in the refrigerated section, which is very unique, because we use fresh product, so No preservatives, and that is sustainable. no additives. So yeah, it's always located in the refrigerated section, usually next to a perfect bar, if you know that company. And, yeah, we're just going to keep expanding through retail over time. So, you know, if you watch us over the next three to five years, we'll hopefully be in about 50, 000 stores right now. We're in about seven to 8, 000 across Canada, United States. So over time, you'll see us in about 50, 000. We want to be within, you know, three miles of every American, actually three to five miles. Wow, that's

Cory Connors: 18:59

a lofty goal, but I think you'll get there. I really do. I think what you're doing is impressive. so what's next? any new flavors, anything exciting that you can tell us about, or is this a stay tuned

Jake Karls: 19:11

situation? We're definitely working on some new flavors, very nostalgic flavors. So our last one was a cookie dough and it's really good. it's really a nostalgic flavor, but we're working on some other cool products coming out within the next year or so. I think what's most important is we're becoming operationally excellent this year, which is not so much relevant to the consumer, but from a standpoint of business, this makes us be able to sustain longer as a company.. And when we get our margin to the right place point, we could actually invest in different things. So, you know, packaging we can invest in new marketing initiatives, new retail outlets that we wanna put it in, you know, so that's gonna be a huge win for us this year. And the most importantly, you're gonna start to see us expand a lot more into the United States and make a pre bigger presence there this year. And if we just do that, Midday Squares will hopefully become a legacy brand over the next 20, 30 years. you know, similar to how legacy brands like Hershey's has was made over 100 years or 70 years or Mars. but being a new generation of that.

Cory Connors: 20:00

Well, I think that's exactly what's going to happen. I feel very excited for you and your family. So well done, sir. thank you, Jake, for taking some time. I know you're a very busy man and we appreciate it. So anything else that you wanted to tell us before we

Jake Karls: 20:14

Call good Cory. I appreciate you. Thanks for having me on the podcast. if you want to follow, if anyone wants to connect with me on, on social media, add me on LinkedIn, Jake Carl's or follow our social media channels, midday squares on LinkedIn, tick tock Instagram, you can watch the reality show and entrepreneurship there. And, yeah, appreciate you so much.

Cory Connors: 20:31

Great. Thank you so much, Jake. Thank you.