232. Founder Stories: PSquared - Morgan Rucker and Olivia Stevermer

Launching a CPG brand is never easy—but talking with Morgan Rucker and Olivia Stevermer of PSquared Foods reminded me just how rewarding the journey can be. In this episode, I sat down with them to hear the full story behind their shelf-stable, banana-flavored protein pudding in a spouted pouch—from awkward picnic samplings and 80+ product iterations to the uphill battle of finding a manufacturer and scaling a format that’s often dismissed as “just for kids.”

We talked about how they went from solo kitchen experiments in college to co-founders building a brand rooted in purpose, flavor, and community. You’ll hear insights on formulation, shelf-stability, and how they’re building customer excitement from the ground up.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Transcript

Jordan Buckner (00:00)
One of my favorite things to do is to talk to new business founders, as I remember when I was starting my brand T Squares and I had a lot of excitement, but there are a lot of things I didn't know as well. And it's always great kind of hearing about what the journey looks like in those early days. So that's why today I'm excited to talk to Morgan and Olivia, who are the co-founders of PSquared their first products, the Banana Flavor Protein Putty in a Squeezeable Pouch.

Morgan and Olivia, welcome.

Olivia Stevermer (00:29)
Thank you.

Morgan Rucker (00:30)
Well, thank you so much for

having us, Jordan. I feel like this is such a full circle moment because actually a few years ago, before we had the brand, your podcast really inspired me to create my own brand and learn more about the CPG space. And so this is just absolutely crazy. So thank you so much for having us.

Jordan Buckner (00:47)
Of course, my gosh, that means so much.

Olivia Stevermer (00:47)
Also.

Morgan Rucker (00:48)
Yeah.

Olivia Stevermer (00:49)
I feel like maybe subconsciously we named our business PSquared because yours was TeaSquares

Morgan Rucker (00:54)
That could

Jordan Buckner (00:54)
square.

Morgan Rucker (00:56)
have been it, yeah.

Jordan Buckner (00:57)
Totally okay. I love that. And I mean, it's so exciting because you just launched in June 2025. So this is recording this about a couple of weeks, almost a month after the products went live. How are things going starting out?

Morgan Rucker (01:11)
going really well, better than we could have expected. yeah, the feedback has been really great. And especially for a first round, it's been pretty difficult these past few years being able to work out all the intricacies of the brand and the actual production of it. So for this first round to get such great feedback, it's been really nice.

Olivia Stevermer (01:31)
Yeah, to provide some context. So our product is a protein pudding and it's shelf stable and it's in a spout pouch. So we've been working on this for years just because it's taken so long to get the development and everything right. So that's essentially why we're so excited that the first round, we were able to get it out, it went well and why it took so long.

Jordan Buckner (01:53)
It takes so much to get a product out into the world and it's both like really exciting and nerve-racking I know from personal experience and you've been working on this for years so tell me what it looked like back at the beginning how did you two come together and decide you wanted to start a product company?

Morgan Rucker (02:08)
gosh, so many details there.

Okay, so originally, I was trying to create a protein bar back in college because I just noticed that so many in the market were not meeting my standards. They weren't clean. They weren't plant based, yada, yada, yada. And so I basically went home and started in the kitchen, bought a bunch of different ingredients and was trying to create a protein bar. And then I got like this weird idea to just blend all the ingredients together and it became a pudding.

And so I noted that idea down, like interesting. Protein pudding doesn't exist really. I'll come back this. So a few years later I graduate and then me and Olivia were in the same entrepreneurial program called Venture for America. And in a like chance meeting, we were roommates in Tulsa, Oklahoma for one weekend. And we bonded over basically our like wanting to fix the food industry.

And we were talking about this protein pudding idea and other food ideas. And we came together to create this company and we asynchronously worked. was working in Arizona on the recipe and she was working in Minnesota and in St. Louis. And yeah, and then we both moved to San Antonio, part of the entrepreneurial program, and reiterated the recipe a ton. So it's been a wild journey.

Olivia Stevermer (03:23)
Yeah, like we were just texting each other like random stuff we were blending up and then recreating. And it's just a mess. Just like texting photos of here's what iteration 37 of chocolate sweet potato looked like. It was.

Morgan Rucker (03:27)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly,

the sweet potato one was not bad, but it seemed weird.

Olivia Stevermer (03:40)
It did not cut, but, yeah.

Jordan Buckner (03:42)
That just

brings back memories that I had, I think with t-squares we went through, oh gosh, I think at the end there's probably like 85 different iterations. I don't know, somewhere between 60 and 100, I lost count after that point. But it was both really exciting and exhilarating, but then also that feeling of like, okay, is this good? Should we keep trying? Well, if we tried this, there's this idea that you could go on forever, and you have to decide at some point that like, okay, this is it. And so as you were going through that journey, what was the moment where you realized, all right, we have something that's...

we're really confident at least to launch to like hit the go decision.

Olivia Stevermer (04:16)
I can take this. well, okay, so Morgan and I both just really like healthy stuff. So I think our palette was kind of messed up because the first iteration, we were like, this is so good. And then we started sampling and everyone's like, nah, this tastes like bad overnight oats. And we're like, okay.

Morgan Rucker (04:17)
Okay, yeah.

Yeah.

Olivia Stevermer (04:34)
We got more confident as we really just began doing more sampling, asking more people what they thought. And then this took us about a year to realize, but we really knew nothing about shelf stability. We kind of had hypotheses. doing a bunch of research online, but we did not know what we were talking about at all. And so finally, after about...

Morgan Rucker (04:47)
You

Olivia Stevermer (04:52)
A year we talked to food scientist that was like, yeah, you got to get the pH down if you want this to be shelf-stable. So then we reworked all the recipes to add like a fruity twist so that an acid profile would make sense. And we were kind of like nervous, but people really liked the sour candy kind of taste. So just a lot of feedback is what made us feel confident with it.

Morgan Rucker (05:14)
I think what made me feel confident with this was when we were in San Antonio, we would drive up to Austin every weekend and we would make our pudding samples and hand it out of an ice chest and people actually would take it. We were probably what an 85 % win rate on that. And then also they liked it.

Olivia Stevermer (05:33)
Yeah, it was really awkward when they said no, because we'd basically crash people's pricknicks because we'd have to grab their ice chest. It was a full commit. Set it down in the middle of their pricknick.

Morgan Rucker (05:39)
Yeah. Yeah. Where are the pudding girls? You don't know?

Jordan Buckner (05:39)
They're like, who are you?

Oh my gosh, that's hilarious.

know sampling is always like the weirdest thing. I just remember it's you squirre's at one point, right? Cause like, think we probably stopped selling by the time I started doing this podcast, but they were made with puffed millet as one of the main ingredients, like almonds and a bunch of other stuff. And someone came up to like a demo table one time. They're like, this just looks like bird food. And I was like, well, puffed millet or like millet's actually like the number one ingredient in bird food. So you're not wrong.

Morgan Rucker (06:07)
No.

Yeah!

Jordan Buckner (06:14)
But people can eat it too. I like, don't

Olivia Stevermer (06:16)
Yeah.

Jordan Buckner (06:16)
even know how to

respond to them. I'm okay, it's not for you. Like definitely understand, but that was hilarious. So putting products in a Spout It pouch, I know is very challenging. And so why did you decide to go with that packaging format and what did it take to get a viable product in it?

Olivia Stevermer (06:20)
You

Morgan Rucker (06:28)
Mm-hmm.

Olivia Stevermer (06:35)
Yeah, so I did track in college and I just noticed that

The pouch is really popular, it was mainly like go go squeeze is like the main thing, but people just loved the pouch packaging and there's so many trends towards the pouch packaging, especially like it's really taken off in Asia. It just really adds that like convenient element. You know, you don't need a spoon just makes it way easier for on the go. But yes, it is not easy. Like we like would reach out to manufacturers and a lot of them have minimum ordering quantities of 500,000.

Morgan got one for literally a million for one skewer.

Morgan Rucker (07:07)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm sorry, no.

Olivia Stevermer (07:12)
Yeah, just a lot, like lots of rejection, lots of outreach, lots of trying to get the science down, working with like a spout pouch expert who's been really great. Anything to add, Morgan?

Morgan Rucker (07:24)
Yeah, think it was definitely like we realized it was going to be a little bit more difficult creating a non-dried good in a spout pouch in the initial beginning part. But as we scale, think that it's just gotten easier and easier. so that initial like two plus years of development basically, I think has really been worth it to get it exactly the way that we wanted it. And we've received feedback that, hey, like I had a really long day.

Like, for example, we had feedback from a yoga instructor and she's like, no, it's been great. I just pop it in my bag and I had a really long day and I just, it helped me sustain like all throughout my shift. And I think that convenience aspect has really paid dividends.

Jordan Buckner (08:05)
I love it. What did it take to actually find a manufacturer that was really to produce them?

Morgan Rucker (08:11)
Lots of word of mouth, actually, and I feel like that's what we've learned in this space is that it's not on the internet. You just have to continue to mass ask people. And luckily, the CPG space has been really great and everyone's so kind and will refer us to people that they know. But yeah, the online investigative route is a little bit difficult.

Jordan Buckner (08:32)
So I mean, like you find a manufacturer where they like, yes, immediately, or that takes some convincing.

Morgan Rucker (08:37)
Depends. Yeah. Because a lot of. You're good.

Olivia Stevermer (08:37)
take quite a few calls. Yeah. And it's kind of, gets to me to... sorry.

I feel like it got to be kind of discouraging. A lot of manufacturers would have calls back and forth and then they would just kind of ghost us after the fourth call. But persistence.

Morgan Rucker (08:51)
Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

think some manufacturers were more receptive to us because they probably saw two young entrepreneurs and wanted to help out, whereas some people, I don't think really took us seriously. yeah. ⁓ But I think also it's just because this product isn't really a staple in the US and it's a little bit harder to get more manufacturers on board if they're not really familiar with it.

Jordan Buckner (09:07)
Yeah, it happens.

Morgan Rucker (09:19)
That was the biggest challenge, but luckily we were able to find one that took a chance, so it worked well.

Jordan Buckner (09:25)
Nice, you know, it's always interesting. So I remember finding, trying to find the manufacturer for T squares. We actually started off self manufacturing, went to a first co packer. They didn't have the right equipment, but we kind of like force fit the product in. And they were saying being like, we'll even take a chance on us. But then they got like a million bar order from another company and basically like dropped us.

Morgan Rucker (09:48)
Mm.

Jordan Buckner (09:49)
without even really telling us they were like, sorry, we can't schedule line time for you. And we're like, Hey, we're running out of product. we're like, whole foods wants our product. Like we're already on the shelf, but we're running out. And they just like ghosted us basically even after they like did three manufacturing runs for us. And then we went back to self manufacturing, tried another co packer that didn't work, wasted like $15,000 in ingredients and time and all this other stuff. And then just went back to self manufacturing and

Morgan Rucker (09:56)
Hmm.

Jordan Buckner (10:16)
Yeah, I kind of like lived through just like the difficulties of finding someone to work with you. And I think it wasn't until I talked to someone that works as like a food scientist or someone who works with a lot of manufacturers and they're like, it actually turns out that like most manufacturers lose money on the first couple of production runs because of all the setup. And so they actually don't like bring on new products that don't have like a long-term viability from the beginning because it costs them. And so it really is a big hurdle to, to overcome.

And so I'm glad you were able to navigate through that process.

Morgan Rucker (10:49)
Yeah, like Olivia said.

Olivia Stevermer (10:50)
Yeah, is.

It's like, oh, sorry. But it's like a weird challenge you don't necessarily anticipate before because you think like, oh, logically, we give them money, they produce the product, but you don't necessarily think that we're competing with like the opportunity cost of them working with another like bigger product. So it's, yeah, another challenge to learn and overcome.

Morgan Rucker (10:52)
No worries.

Yeah

Yeah.

Jordan Buckner (11:12)
What's been

the most fun part of this process of you two working together and bringing this product to market?

Morgan Rucker (11:17)
so many parts. would say like, honestly, one of the top things was talking to more people and seeing the joy on people's face when they get to try the product and them seeing that they really like it and they resonate with it. But then also, I think it's been really nice getting to know Olivia and honestly, she's my best friend and like...

We started out as business partners really dedicated to this mission, but it's just been really rewarding to be able to grow this with her.

Olivia Stevermer (11:44)
Yeah, like what? It's just really good to have like someone in it with you and Morgan and I, like we just, I don't know, we get along so well and you couldn't even have like predicted it necessarily. We just moved to Texas on a whim. We barely knew each other, but it's worked out super well. And that's been a fun part of it.

Morgan Rucker (11:58)
Yeah.

Jordan Buckner (12:01)
That's really exciting. now that you've launched, you're a couple of weeks in, what are you thinking about in terms of analyzing what's been working so far and any next steps on your plans? it like, right, let's sell through all the initial production run. How are you thinking about growth from here?

Morgan Rucker (12:19)
Yeah, so this initial run is basically for us to be able to gather a bunch of different data and see feedback from all of our customers. Also, think it's more so it's interesting because it's the first product, but it's a little bit different than we're thinking about in the future. So we like taking all of this feedback. For example, our product is a little bit more sour than usual just for the safety aspect.

It's interesting that some people actually really like that. Like Olivia mentioned earlier, they kind of relate it to sour candy. I've gotten a couple people actually relate it to fruit riot and the people that really like sour love it, but then people that don't, you know, it's not really for them. And so from taking all of this feedback, it's kind of interesting to see what should we tweak in the future. So, yeah, definitely more of a data round.

Olivia Stevermer (13:09)
Yeah, just testing. We're selling ecom and then also like we're testing out cafes, gyms, really just trying to see. It's kind of hard to identify who the sauerkraut is. So I guess that's kind of interesting thing to find out. we are hoping. So this first round, we just produced a few thousand. We're hoping to go to a larger.

Morgan Rucker (13:19)
Yeah

Olivia Stevermer (13:30)
manufacturer the next round or potentially do like one additional round of a few thousand before the larger manufacturer and hopefully get some type of investment for the larger round.

Jordan Buckner (13:40)
Yeah,

I think that's definitely a challenge that happens in this space. And I went through it myself where you have a vision of like the original product that you want to make. And then you end up making changes and tweaks, both from manufacturing realities, but then also customer feedback over time and figuring out how to navigate that. You know, it's interesting. You mentioned and pouches, right? The natural way of reducing or making it shelf stable is usually adding lemon juice or like, you know, citric acid in there. It's interesting because I have

two young kids and they eat applesauce, but they always say it's a lemon applesauce as the flavor because of the lemon citric acid that keep it in there. And so I wonder how you might continue to lean into that as you do flavor variations, right? So you have the banana, maybe there's more like citrus flavors that are just the base as you do it that lean into that having the citric acid or lemon juice, whatever that is in there to make it last.

where you actually incorporate the limitations of the product or the things that you need into the flavor profile so you're constantly learning everything from it.

Morgan Rucker (14:43)
100

% we are it was actually Olivia's idea to make it more of a fruit flavored twist with every bit of the flavors because originally we had chocolate vanilla blueberry matcha and strawberry blueberry matcha and strawberry stayed the same because they're both fruit but then we changed chocolate to be chocolate cherry and then vanilla just became banana but then we did think about you know a lemon flavor in the future I feel like that'd be pretty easy to do.

But yeah, we just have banana at this moment and are definitely looking to expand the flavors.

Olivia Stevermer (15:14)
We've also thought about a mango sticky rice, so sounds appealing.

Morgan Rucker (15:16)
Yeah. That's

on my notes still. I think that would be a solid contender.

Jordan Buckner (15:21)
I love that. How are you getting the word out about the products? What's your main kind of growth avenue?

Morgan Rucker (15:27)
A lot of it's word of mouth in addition to organic traffic. Me and Olivia have been posting on social media for, God, I think it's been over a year and a half now every single day. So we put out a video of the day. We switch off for Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

Olivia Stevermer (15:44)
We also, so when we were in Texas, we're in Los Angeles now. I don't know if we mentioned that, but we did like a startup program and every sort of sampling event we did, we were always collecting emails, even when we went into the parks in Austin, just collecting emails in person. So yeah, mix them in person and then yeah, we post our daily videos plus word of mouth.

Morgan Rucker (15:55)
Mm-hmm.

And

and pop ups. We're doing one tonight, actually. ⁓ Do you run clubs? Yeah. Yeah.

Olivia Stevermer (16:08)
yeah, we'll be at, I guess it's not gonna air in time for people to get. Go back in time

to Thursday, July 10th, 7 p.m. West Hollywood Run Club. Be

Morgan Rucker (16:17)
Yep.

Jordan Buckner (16:17)
I love it. I think those in-person events are always where you can learn like the most you're talking to like customers, people who using and sampling the product and gaining their feedback. And so I think it's really interesting how learning that sour angle. I'm curious too, have you learned anything about like people's perception of pouches or how they've been like really encouraged and like enthusiastic about it or how they've been like asking questions and then like like it, what's their feedback been?

Morgan Rucker (16:42)
Yeah,

I'll answer my side of it and Olivia, you probably have additional insight. whenever I bring up, I can't just say spout pouch, I've learned I have to go, spout pouch, think of like a go-go squeeze. So it's always an attached thing in addition to some people just think they're like, oh, for like kids, right? I'm like, well, yeah, I mean, there is that but I spout pouches are for everyone. And I hope that we bring some more awareness and that spout pouches become

and name kind of packaging in the US, just like Olivia mentioned earlier, it's much more popular in Asia and other, I guess, parts of the world. And I know that it will be more popular in the US, so it's exciting.

Olivia Stevermer (17:22)
Yeah, people like Morgan said, when you say it's about pouch, people don't know what that is. But once we say the go go squeeze, they get pretty excited because we've thought about like previously, you know, doing a spoon refrigeration kind of mimicking like a snack pack type packaging. But people just didn't have that same excitement as they did for like the on the go pouch. I'd say the overall reaction is positive.

Morgan Rucker (17:29)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I was just like, why, why do you toddler? ⁓ I'm sorry. I'm just thinking one last thing. It's like, why do toddlers and babies get to have all the fun packaging, you know?

Jordan Buckner (17:44)
What do you think is a bit more?

Yep, definitely hear you on that. I I ended up eating my kids' pouches, squeezable pouches all the time. I'm kind of curious as you are growing, like what resources do you need next? What help do you need to kind of take the business to the next level?

Morgan Rucker (18:07)
Well, we're always looking to expand our network and meet other people in the CPG space. So that first and foremost, and then also just any kind of, I guess, talks about investment for the next couple of rounds, perhaps. Livia, you probably had something add.

Olivia Stevermer (18:24)
You covered it.

Morgan Rucker (18:24)
⁓ yeah,

basically we love meeting people and some help to be able to expand this.

Jordan Buckner (18:30)
One thing that I always love hearing about too, kind of like the starting journey of why you're built a company and what you're doing, is there kind of a core aspect of the product that you think is like the most important part of what you're doing? Is it the protein? Is it the pudding? Is it the squeezable pouch? I know they all kind of come together, but is there one that you think is really like leading the messaging?

Olivia Stevermer (18:52)
It's okay, it's tough because I mean, the whole point we started this brand was because we're frustrated by, you know, the options. We want to create a healthier food brand, but there's so much controversy in the food space for if you lead with taste and kind of promote that and then the like the health is kind of an afterthought. So like. I don't know, like the main point of us starting it health, you know, better option, but I don't know how to like what the best thing to lead with is, you know.

Morgan Rucker (19:18)
My take is maybe kind of like building off of that. It's the ability to make something healthy, but then also make it taste good. That's the ultimate part of it. But I think from our brand, like the most important selling point, that's really difficult because I don't think it's necessarily the protein portion of it because you can have, you know, the David Barr or any of these other products that have a ton of protein, right?

I would say top A allergen free is what I'm pretty proud about in addition to like all of the other sub-factors of it also having protein, of it having convenience. I would say an alternative protein is what I'm really proud about.

Jordan Buckner (19:54)
Yeah, and I asked because I think it's something that I dealt with when I launched T-squares, frankly, putting the product out there. Essentially, they were like bite-sized energy bars, but we were actually so different in the market that there was a huge educational hurdle to cross. So we were bite-sized squares when the category norm were like bars. We had a multi-serve pouch when the norm was like a single flow wrapped item.

We had unique flavors like citrus green tea matcha, which no one ever like heard of. And we include like tea as a hero ingredient, but as an edible. And then the texture is like really light and crunchy, almost like a rice cake texture. And when I launched, one of the biggest things was like, was like, I'm creating a moat around our competitors because we're so different, but also create a moat around our.

Morgan Rucker (20:24)
You

Jordan Buckner (20:45)
customers because they couldn't quite understand like what the product was and why they would buy it and I remember like one thing I always stuck with me is when I did like a sampling table once at Whole Foods someone walked up and they're like hey I actually saw this on the shelf I thought it was interesting but I didn't buy it because they couldn't quite figure out like what it was or why or how to build it in their day and they ended up sampling and like loving it and buying

But I realized like, if I wasn't there to like give them that additional education and experience, then they probably wouldn't have bought it. And so one thing that I always encourage to do is think about, you know, what are those category norms that customers are looking for? What are those products that they are switching from to try your products so that they have like a clear understanding of like the what and the why. And that always helps to drive those customer loyalties when they're like,

yeah, I'm having P squared because of this as like a consistent message. And I think it's something that most brands are like, are trying to figure out in those early days. And so I'm excited to see how that continues to develop and evolve as the product does too.

Morgan Rucker (21:49)
Yeah,

that's great insight. Thank you, Jordan.

Jordan Buckner (21:51)
Yeah, so I'm excited to see everything that what's next. I'm excited to continue your following your journey. And so thanks so much for being on the show today. And we'll check in in a couple months to see how things are going. Thanks, Morgan. Thanks, Olivia.

Morgan Rucker (22:03)
Sounds great, thank you so much.