Gym Bod’s target market for their high protein, low sugar, ice cream is anyone in activewear who has a sweet tooth!
I spoke to Cian Dawson, one half of Gym Bod, who co-founded the brand with partner, Courtney Brown, about selling through a major supermarket chain and gaining market share in a competitive category.
Gym Bod has been developed for the mass market, but it wasn’t initially conceived that way. When playing in the highly competitive frozen dessert category, and striving to be profitable, some days (okay… many) can be painstakingly difficult.
Listen to my chat with Cian and hear her spill the beans of what it’s really like behind the scenes keeping one’s head above water playing the long game.
You’ll learn:
LINKS & RESOURCES
If you haven’t listened to episode 26 (46.33 mins), Straight talk from a speciality retail buyer. What to say in your pitch., listen here.
And, I invite you to come and join my community of female foodpreneurs, and catch up on the conversations, in Kiosk. For Women in Food and Drink, my free Facebook group.
This episode is brought to you by Foodpreneurs Festival, bringing packaged food & drink brand owners, retail buyers, media & industry experts together under one roof.
Foodpreneurs Festival on May 17 in Sydney, includes a packed schedule of events, including:
Whether you’re new to the food and drink industry, or a seasoned Foodpreneur, get ready for an epic celebration of all things food and drink at the 2024 Festival!
But that’s not all! In an opportunity that’s 64 times bigger than last year, Foodpreneurs Festival is hosting a thrilling event for packaged food & drink brand owners to take their shot* at coming face-to-face with retail buyers and getting their products listed on retail shelves.
Tickets are now on sale via Eventbrite until sold out.
* Terms & conditions apply. See website for the details.
Gym Bod’s target market for their high protein, low sugar, ice cream is anyone in activewear who has a sweet tooth!
I spoke to Cian Dawson, one half of Gym Bod, who co-founded the brand with partner, Courtney Brown, about selling through a major supermarket chain and gaining market share in a competitive category.
Gym Bod has been developed for the mass market, but it wasn’t initially conceived that way. When playing in the highly competitive frozen dessert category, and striving to be profitable, some days (okay… many) can be painstakingly difficult.
Listen to my chat with Cian and hear her spill the beans of what it’s really like behind the scenes keeping one’s head above water playing the long game.
You’ll learn:
LINKS & RESOURCES
If you haven’t listened to episode 26 (46.33 mins), Straight talk from a speciality retail buyer. What to say in your pitch., listen here.
And, I invite you to come and join my community of female foodpreneurs, and catch up on the conversations, in Kiosk. For Women in Food and Drink, my free Facebook group.
This episode is brought to you by Foodpreneurs Festival, bringing packaged food & drink brand owners, retail buyers, media & industry experts together under one roof.
Foodpreneurs Festival on May 17 in Sydney, includes a packed schedule of events, including:
Whether you’re new to the food and drink industry, or a seasoned Foodpreneur, get ready for an epic celebration of all things food and drink at the 2024 Festival!
But that’s not all! In an opportunity that’s 64 times bigger than last year, Foodpreneurs Festival is hosting a thrilling event for packaged food & drink brand owners to take their shot* at coming face-to-face with retail buyers and getting their products listed on retail shelves.
Tickets are now on sale via Eventbrite until sold out.
* Terms & conditions apply. See website for the details.
This is The Foodpreneur with Chelsea Ford podcast. Welcome foodpreneurs to episode number 27. Today, I'm talking with Cian Dawson co-founder of GYM BOD, high protein, low sugar ice cream. I talked to Cian about how her and co-founder Courtney brown have grown and funded their business through rigorous market testing, learning from resource heavy failures, and by surrounding themselves with the right support in order to get into a major retailer and stay on shelf. This episode of Foodpreneur with Chelsea Ford is brought to you by Foodpreneurs Formula® my business acceleration program for package food and drink brand owners ready to scale and my free on demand masterclass that gives you the framework to help you navigate your scaling journey and put more money in your pocket for every product you sell.
Hi, I'm Chelsea Ford, award-winning food and drink business expert, head coach of the acclaimed program for women Foodpreneurs Formula®, and your host for this, The Foodpreneur Podcast. If you're a packaged food and drink business owner tune in with me each week, because I'm going to help you land more accounts, get in more consumer baskets and help you put more money in your pocket for every product you sell. In each episode, I'm going to tap into my 30 years of experience, leading sales, marketing, and finance teams for big and small food and drink brands to give you coaching tips that will help you take your packaged food or drink business to new Heights. I know what works and I know what doesn't. So I'm going to share with you industry tools and insider knowledge that are next to impossible for small businesses to access.
And from time to time, I'll dive into my little black book to bring you into interviews with hard to reach specialists who will help solve those pesky industry specific problems like distribution that I know you've been losing way too much sleepover. So roll up your sleeves, foodpreneurs, because you are about to enter a no fluff zone. I'm bringing my a game so you can reach yours no matter where you are, whether it's in your kitchen, coordinating your deliveries or on your way to a buyer meeting, listen up because we're about to set the path for you to secure your next best stock, increase your sales and put more money in your pocket. This is The Foodpreneur with Chelsea Ford podcast.
Cian, I am so excited to have you here on the podcast. Welcome. Thank you for having me, Chelsea. Um, I'm so excited. I wanna know. I want my audience to know more about GYM BOD, your incredible brand. What is GYM BOD?
So GYM BOD, we stand for better option desserts. And our whole objective is to recreate your childhood favorite sweet treats and nutritionally optimize them. So you can enjoy them every day, essentially. Um, Courtney, my business partner and partner in life. We wanted to eat ice cream every day and not feel guilty about it. We were sick of buying low calorie options at the supermarket and then being a little bit watery and just a bit disappointing. So we thought, how hard can this be? We're gonna create our own ice cream turns out it's very hard to do. And three years later we're here. Um, so yeah, we're all about helping people realize balance from a nutritional perspective, cuz it's not about restricting yourself and binging. It's about, you know, eat the ice cream. It's gonna make you feel happy. That's the GYM BOD objective.
And it so did that when I tried your ice cream, when we met up once in, uh, a grocery store, when you were sampling, you know that I was like, no, that chocolate pudding is not gonna be good enough for me because I'm a chocolate pudding, but I'm a chocolate holy and I freaking loved it. And am now a consumer on a regular basis. <laugh> thank you. So you and Courtney, you started out in Toowoomba in Queensland, regional Australia with a soft serve business, delivering DTC via a food truck. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, that's a long way from where you are now. Albeit was only three years ago. And according to you, it was a massive failure. But what I love is that you listen to your customers and you pivoted onto the next chapter, which of course is the GYM BOD ice cream in tubs. Mm-hmm <affirmative> but what's really interesting for foodpreneurs, listening to this in terms of wanting to be you because you guys are just nailing it. And I'm just so excited to have you here. You did two years worth of market testing. You can't miss the market testing phase. Can you, I I'd love your perspective on that.
Yeah, so of course, so I'll just go into a little bit of detail about our time in Toowoomba. So Courtney and I moved to Toowoomba for our jobs. Actually we were graduates working for an infrastructure company and there wasn't a whole lot to do in Toowoomba. So I was doing my business degree after work and Courtney was making me these like healthy protein slushies to kind of get through the long nights of study. And they were really delicious and I'd never had like a weight based protein before. So I couldn't believe it was healthy. He's like, no, no, no. Trust me, babe. They're good. Um, he was, you know, looking for some sort of creative outlet. So he bought a $99 soft serve machine from eBay. He put this protein slashy mix through the soft serve machine and it kind of came out like a lumpy soft serve situation.
It was delicious. And we were like, holy Ole, we've got something going on here. <laugh> we? Next thing we did is we bought a commercial grade soft serve machine from China. It got, it landed in the port at Brisbane. Courtney drove our Corolla from Toowoomba to Brisbane to pick up mesh machine, not knowing that it was 136 kilos, smashed it into the back of the Corolla, drove it back to Toowoomba and put it in our garage. And then every weekend and after work, we would spend time working on this soft serve mix, trying to like formulate it, to get something that had amazing macros and actually tasted good. At that point in time, we finished our St our time into Womba and we moved to Sydney. We bought a food truck. We then spent the winter period customizing this food truck because we bought it second hand and we were like, you know, painting it, putting signage up, ripping out the tables to put the, to put the actual soft-serve machine in and all that stuff.
I was doing all the council application paperwork. Cause it's really hard to have a food truck in Sydney. You've gotta jump through all these hoops. Um, and then what we did is we started testing our product in the market. Our first day of trade, we went and set up in curability, just under the bridge in Sydney. And we were giving out these healthy ice creams. We were like protein soft serve, like have a try <laugh> we weren't asking anyone to buy it. They were just like trying it, of course. And we just got the biggest mixed bag of feedback. Like I had one guy come up to me and was like, oh, people are only talking to you because you are good in leggings. Oh like this ice cream tastes terrible. And like, we were obviously really upset about it. But the people who were like looked fit and healthy, they were like, oh, this is really good.
Like where can I get this? And we were like, oh, we are just a food truck. Then the penny dropped. And we realized that we had a product that was for a niche market. So I started targeting F 40 fives in Sydney. And then every Saturday morning we'd be at a different F 45 giving out our soft serve ice cream to gym goers. So rather than school for free, rather than expecting the end consumer to pay, I would get the Stu the F 45 studio to pay for us to come out. I we'd create content for two hours, which is what all 40 fives F 40 fives are after just content to keep their socials fresh and an offering for their members who are obviously paying premium membership fees. So that worked really well as then more people would try the product without the barrier of someone having to pay, you know, five or $6 for in a larger ice cream.
And then we were getting feedback every week. The people were like, yeah, this is great. I love it. Um, where can we get this during the week now trying to run a food truck after your full day, full time jobs, like at 6:00 AM on a Saturday morning, we were often driving like, you know, 45 minutes to an hour plus all the setup time, the Friday night before, like it was just chaos. At the end of the day, it worked out, we were working for like $5 an hour each. And it was just really, really hard work. We got mixed feedback as well. Some people were like, oh, but it's not vegan. So then we developed a vegan soft serve mm-hmm <affirmative> um, which was, yeah, it was fine. Like it was good for a vegan product, but then like, we kind of realized that you can never please every single consumer.
Yes. But cause we weren't from this industry, we didn't know that you don't need to listen to absolutely everybody. So I say, I look upon our time as this soft serve business as a failure because you know, financially terrible, emotionally draining, like we were, weren't really getting that much traction until someone was like, this is really good. Where can I get this during the week? And we were like, sorry, we have our full time jobs. This is just a weekend thing. And someone was said, you should put it in a tub and then you can buy it from the shops. And that's the penny drop moment. And we started working with a food scientist to develop our product, to make it perfect for being in an ice cream tub, because it's a very different formulation from putting through a soft serve machine. And that was like a really pivotal point for us.
But it was really just like the start of that journey of product testing. So with each batch we made tweaks, like we originally wanted a product that was like the perfect macro profile. So super high in protein, super low in fat and sugar, like totally sweet, like only sweetened with natural sources and all these elements. And our criteria came back with a really hard ice cream, which essentially only 1% of the population were going to enjoy and also make the sacrifices in how to consume that product. Cause when you think about normal ice cream, you wanna pull it out of the freezer. You wanna scoop it straight away and enjoy a sweet, creamy, refreshing dessert, right? Yes. Where our ice cream originally was hard out of the freezer. It took like 30 minutes to defrost cuz there was so much protein in it. Um, and it didn't have that same sweetness that our consumer was after.
So we kept doing again every single weekend, we were at a different gym doing testing and selling our ice cream and doing taste testers, getting people's feedback. And people kept telling us, they were like, oh the macros are amazing. This is so healthy. Well done. And we're like, great. And they're like, but it just doesn't taste like Ben and Jerry's, it's like, yeah, it doesn't taste like Ben. And Jerry's because it's not Ben. And Jerry's like Ben and Jerry's is 1200 calories. This is 400 calories Ben and Jerry's has a hundred grams of sugar in it. This has one gram of sugar. So again, it was another penny drop moment that people were saying they wanted this ultra healthy, perfect macro profile, but their consumer behavior, what they were actually purchasing was Ben and Jerry's every single week, right? Yes. So we needed to find the happy medium.
We wanted to stay true to our van, our brand value proposition, which is high in protein, low in sugar, like macro friendly, low calorie option, but it needed to taste more like what Ben and Jerry's does in that thing that just makes your brain go crazy. Being like, ah, I want more. So again, we went back to the drawing board with our food developer and, and we changed the parameters of the actual formulation. And we played around with heaps of different versions, like tweaking fat content, changing around with the sugar alcohols that we were using, um, in order to get a product, which is where it is today. So those two years were extremely painful, but we had to go through that process. So I can stand by our product today and know why we made every single choice that we made.
And I absolutely love that you thought beyond the nine dots and went to F 40 fives and looked at, okay, well, how can we get that consumer feedback? That's right for our niche. And you did talk about nicheing and I love that because trying to be sort of stand for everything you kind of ultimately stand for nothing I think. And that, that really micro niche and identifying it's the gym crowd. But I, I, you know, in, in your bio, you, you said something like, um, our customer is anyone in active way who has a sweet tooth. So for me, I think about people who wear Lulu lemon, which I am one of them, but you know, F don't actually go to the gym a lot of the time, but look fantastic in the best, the best Lyra. Yeah. They're your people, right. It's niche, but it's not so tiny. So what does that mean in terms of, um, you know, your pricing sh does that mean when you looked at your pricing, you had a different competitive set than perhaps you originally thought you would.
Yeah. So with our pricing, like given the way that our product is formulated, we use really premium ingredients like proteins expensive using natural sugar, alcohol and Stevia, sweeteners are expensive. Our ice cream is formulated in a style similar to like a traditional gelato. So we use really high quality Cocos and like our caramel sources and not like cheap it's actually made with like really good quality ingredients. So with that in mind, plus the fact that we were targeting like your upwardly mobile person with disposable income, essentially. So that's why we were focusing on these F 45 people as if you go to F 45, you are spending 50 to $60 a week on a gym membership, which you might use say four to five times a week. Um, you've obviously got cash to spend on dispo on random things. Right. I call it like, <laugh> I don't, I call it like dumb, like buying like really bougie ice cream is it's a luxury.
Right? So we, we knew that kind of price point we wanted to hit. We also looked at what was already on the market. So at the time halo top, um, was in the Australian market already. And it was currently at the time sitting around, like, I think it might have been $11. Um, that's obviously since come down and now with rising cost of goods, it's gone up again. Um, pro pro was also in the market. And when that launched on the shelves at Willie's, that was $14 for a 500 mil tub. So the consumer in this protein ice cream segment was, they were willing to pay a premium in order to get the perceived health benefits for the product. We had a penetration strategy, so we wanted to be price competitively. So we could actually like cannibalize sales from other, other brands. Now it was kind of like, it's been an effective technique. Um, but the other side of that is that we had to sacrifice margins earlier on in order to get that price point. Um, yeah. And I think we'll probably talk about pricing a little bit, like how we built our price a little bit later because that's something that we learnt later down the track and I wish we had have learned it a little bit earlier.
Mm mm-hmm <affirmative> I love the fact that you talk about a penetration strategy. Can, can I just ask you about, are you in all, um, were you originally designing your ice cream, uh, for you and Courtney? Uh, well, I guess you said you were so, so would you say today that, um, where I'm going with this is people make the mistake with avatar development and ideal consumer models in that they actually are describing themselves. I feel like a therapist a lot of time when I'm with my clients and I'm hearing them and I ask them about their consumer avatar and actually they don't realize it in the first session, but normally in our subsequent sessions, they come back to me and they go, when I'm pushing them on their avatar, it's like, I'll, um, I realize that I wasn't thinking broad enough and it was actually just me.
And it's like, yeah. And you might be the purchaser of your product. I'm sure you love your product. Hence that's probably why you developed it in the first place. Normally it is. Um, but what I find is that take, for instance, um, you know, one of my ready to weed vegan meal businesses, she was telling me about her hipster set from bond iron, Byron that were allegedly buying her product. But then when I got her to do market testing, she realized it was actually upwardly Mo Mo mobile finance suit wearing young men who had heaps of money, but no time. Yeah. And it was, he, he, that avatar was so far from who she actually thought was buying her product. Yeah. So it was just such an interesting, um, I guess, de development in her own thinking around, well, how am I gonna market this product? So it gets off the shelf and we will talk about that later. So I don't know. Have you got any comment about that in terms of this whole awareness that you went through and with your avatar?
Yeah, no, a hundred percent. We, like, we kind of created the product for what we were exactly after like, ah, super home protein, low in sugar. And Courtney was like, if it doesn't have 40 grams of protein in the tub, I'm not interested. Yes. And, um, no one else really felt that way, but we thought there were all these people out there like that. So, so a hundred percent with what you're saying through going and doing the sampling every single weekend, we were taking note of who was actually making the purchases from us at that day, or then in the week afterwards through our, on online store. And we found that it was like women between the ages of 30 to 50, who were trying to lose weight. They were actually our biggest consumer. Our previous brand name actually used to be Jim boy. And the boy boy stood for better option. Yes. So people would think that males were our main consumer, these like massive gym guys, but really it was 70% women purchasing our product. So a hundred percent aligned with what you've just shared about that other meal delivery business.
Isn't that goal, just having that insight. And that's why often starting. And, and if I go back to my first comment about, you know, the failure inverted coms of the soft serve it's so if you look at longitudinally, you know, over the last three years it's anything was anything but failure because it was a testing ground, right?
Yeah. A hundred percent. And Courtney and I, like, we never thought of it as a failure at the time, because we were so focused on what's the next step. Like we had other aspects as well, where we tried this like offshoot of our business, where we had soft serve machines. And we were trying to put them in cafes, selling through our vegan soft serve mix. Cause we thought that would be an additional revenue stream, not being aware of like the cafes, not wanting to commit to an ongoing monthly subscription fee for product and machinery hire again, we had no idea. We looked at it. We didn't even think of it as a massive failure at the time, but it actually was, but we took learnings from it to put into the next step of our business. So nothing's gonna go as you ever want them to, but it's like, you, you can't sit in, oh, it didn't go right. You just need to keep charging forward.
Yes you do. Yes you do. And I think it would be remissive, man. I know my audience would be disappointed if we just didn't quickly go back to that penetration strategy because what you said that is totally fascinating and remembering, um, you are, you, you've kind of you're in the majors and we're gonna talk a bit more about that. So, you know, your big think is big grocery, big plans, uh, big impacts so far. So I think it's fascinating that you looked at the competitive set. Once you were clear on the ice cream, in the tubs and the branding and the avatar, you are like, okay, this is the competitive set. This is what their recommended retail price is. We need to win, share. So we are actually going to compromise or, um, minimize our margin. So we can have an R R P of less than theirs and effectively inverted commas again by consumers. Have I got that right?
A hundred percent. And we thought about ourselves, like we were on graduate wages at the time, living in Sydney, which is incredibly expensive, but we like doing bohi things as well. But when it came to ice, we weren't buying ice cream. That was $12 on the shelf shelf. Right. So if we weren't doing that, how could we expect someone else to buy our ice cream for $12 on the shelf? We just, we just didn't see it being a viable growth strategy.
Yeah. Got it. Right. Okay. So for your ice cream product, you and Courtney sang 120,000 into product development, tweaking using different manufacturers are making changes with each batch.
Yep.
Have you ha did you do that without a major paying, uh, sorry. I should say you did that without having a major paying customer to range the product. That was a big commitment. It was a big risk. If you don't mind me asking where'd the money come from.
<laugh> great question. Yeah. So for about, I wanna say 18 months over 18 months, we would've sunk 120 K into our product development. Um, and this was really us flying a bit blind. So this was us. We had a manufacturer, we were kind of getting let down by them because like the quality was really inconsistent. We found another manufacturer, the requirement to get into with them. We had to commit to like 10 times the volume we'd previously been doing and, you know, which was a great level up for us in moving manufacturers in the fact that, you know, it had better compliance requirements for meeting like Coles and Wooly's standards. So we knew we needed that for our growth strategy. We just didn't at the time kind of have the capital to pull together for it. We were kind of always, we still are looking far ahead so we can get to the next step and kind of just hoping we can get through the, the, the little steps in between to get to that next hurdle.
So the 120 K like Courtney and I put all of our paychecks goes straight into the business. We started on graduate jobs. I was earning like 55 K a year when we first started this business. Um, we just put everything in it. Now we're lucky that we have good corporate jobs. We both have our full-time jobs still in order to like keep putting money into the business, to support marketing and growth. Um, we went to the bank actually to try and ask for a business loan, just got told an amazingly strong, no, um, they just they're like, why aren't you making profit? And we are like, we're a startup. We've got, we're doing all these things. And they're like, we don't care. You're not making a profit. Um, luckily my, um, my mom has a business, a small business, and she had a line of credit, which she wasn't utilizing.
So my dad was allowing me to draw upon their line of credit that was up to $70,000. And we maxed that out and we paid that off every month with our paychecks. So if we hadn't have had that like life saving line, I don't think we would've been able to stay afloat with all the extra, like all the kind of like leveling up costs. And with our development, each time we were going really blind, like Courtney and I aren't from FMCG backgrounds. And I think if we had, have had someone as that strategic guide, like Al being on a part of a program, like your foodpreneur, um, program, just giving that like kind of framework around growth that would've been so beneficial. And I reckon we could have done our growth at a quarter of the price in what we, what we did of that 120 K we chucked out thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stock because we'd do a production and then be, we'd be like, oh wait, we don't like this batch let's make this tweak.
So there was just, and we didn't, we never had large customers. We were selling direct to consumer at this point in time, we were doing home deliveries after work around Sydney. Um, so yeah, we were doing a ton of deliveries, but you're hardly moving the 20,000 units. You need to move in order to sell through your production. You've just paid for. So having that kind of like framework for growth and that plan that's laid out in foodpreneurs probably would've been an absolute godsend. So if I could go back 18 months, that's the advice that I would be giving to anyone who would be, who would be in that stage of their business growth.
Yeah. Thanks for that. It's always amazing, you know, and I understand the reticence, particularly for a lot of people, if they have children, uh, you know, there's, they've gotta make a decision between investing in support, you know, a couple of grand say for instance, with a program like mine compared to maybe buying school shoes or investing in, um, education, et cetera. But I think, you know, it in the long run, it always just seems so small. I know for me, when I've invested in education, I'm, I'm big on getting education. Um, it it's a drop in the ocean compared to the ultimate return on investment. You get, I, I mean, I, I'm not here just to sell my program. I'm really not, but I, I honestly wholeheartedly do feel people who hang out, just looking for freebies and stuff. It's just, they don't value their, their time because even you, when you said earlier, you, I can tell how smart you are about and business woman, because you said, oh, I was, you know, my time was about, I was getting about $5 an hour. Like, just even the fact that you thought through that when you were looking at delivering a soft serve and working with, uh, with the, with the F 45 project that you developed and stuff like that, you were thinking about the cost of your resources and the return on the investment. And it was all, you know, so you, you had the step, you had the thinking there, which I, I find really impressive.
Yeah. And I mean, another thing that we've done in which some other businesses who, you know, we're good friends with, haven't made the choice to, so in January of 2021, we started working with a consultancy business called thrive collective, and they act as our like strategic business development partners. Um, and they have helped us build the, like the, the complex commercial models that Cole's and bullies kind of expect and all those elements. So it wasn't until 2021 that we started paying for like professional, um, consulting services. And I think if we had have done that earlier, whether it was through like a program, like your own Chelsea or, you know, thrive earlier in the piece, um, we would've seen that growth a lot earlier rather than only kind of just starting mid through last year. Mm.
And when you did engage them, did you see that? Did you see, did, did it pay dividends early on? Even if it wasn't necessarily in sales revenue, it was in peace of mind.
It was really challenging first six months when we did that, because essentially my whole paycheck was going to pay for like those services, which was really tough, like financially for us. But they were asking us all the really tough questions as a product and brand owner where you, where you just assume, yeah, you're doing the right thing. But having that really critical eye being like, why are you doing this? How is this a mass market product? So really they were coming in with that, is this really ready for mass market? And initially our product wasn't. So even still at that point, we had to make further tweaks to our branding and our product to ensure that when we went to pitch into the majors, that our product was mass market ready. So it was, it, it paid dividends by the time we got to August. So, you know, in the short it, at the time, it felt really painful. But now looking back on it, I'm like, this has been the best investment that we could have done.
Margins, pitching systems, selling more products and putting more money in your pocket. Accelerates when you start investing in these three things, getting your product into more consumer's hands isn't as easy as clicking your fingers, but it is as easy as following a formula that's purpose built for you. You can cobble together elements of these independently of one another by grabbing free stuff. But Foodpreneurs Formula® is carefully crafted by me a food and drink business expert for you. It's suite of sales, marketing, and money resources all work together seamlessly. So you, your advisors, partners or collaborators can focus on what really matters your customers with features like a margin calculator. You can turn uncertainty about your margins into assurances that you and your intermediaries will all make money from the get go. You can even take your pitching skills next level by following my tried and tested script, that will help you know what to say, and coaching sessions to test your impact, make more sales by having a food and drink scaling support crew at your fingertips with Foodpreneurs Formula®. If you wanna land more accounts, get your product in more consumer's hands and put more money in your pocket. I'd love to coach you go to females in food.com and get on the wait list for Foodpreneurs Formula®. Our next enrollment opening is approaching really quickly. Spots are going to fill up. So put your name on the wait list@femalesinfood.com.
Cian, right now you're going to market with your new icy pole range available in one of the majors. Congratulations for the range extension. It's absolutely brilliant. Thanks. But for you and I, right now, it's winter. That's so often planning time for frozen sweet treats brand owners. It's not necessarily the money making time, you know, right. Size that thinking for me, you know, what's your revenue and sales expectations to, um, for you and Courtney to make sure that you continue to get fed and have a roof over your head until the weather warms up.
Yeah. Great, great point, Chelsea. So, um, first thing I wanted to say about this was that we didn't have a whole lot of say in when our IC poll range launched. So when you're pitching into the majors, you've got your major range review times. So you pitch a particular point and then implementation. So when it actually lands on the shelf is a set date, there's no ifs or buts it's make that, or don't even bother showing up. So, um, implementation of our IC poll range. So we've got a high protein icy pole, and we've got a collagen icy pole to support hair, skin and nail health they're available in the protein, um, bar section at Kohl's, um, and implementation was early June. So we are trying to sell icy poles in June, um, we're aware that that's a challenging task, right? Because we are a startup brand.
We need to market a new product in the middle of winter to try and get people to try a product. Um, we're aware that our sales are lower than they than they would be in summer. Um, and we know this from our ice cream range, which we are currently on trial with Kohls. We're in 70 stores at the moment. And the seasonality is a real factor for our product range. Yes. Um, so we have seen about a 25% drop in units per skew, per store, per week, based upon this, just the seasonality, but people still eat ice cream during winter. People are still working out during winter and still get hot and wanna refreshing snack. And that's how we are pitching it. That's how we're trying to market our icy pole range. Um, in regards to kind of like keeping the lights on in that aspect.
We've got some months like that our cash flow is really temperamental and that kind of comes when you've using a contract manufacturer. So we'll do a large production run. We've got enough stock to see us through a couple of months. We're really lucky in the fact that for our icy polls, our customer is Kohls and Coles. We get to see a 30 day forecast of what's gonna be ordered through so we can make sure all our stocks in place and our supply chain is like, and our logistics are ready to go, essentially. So, um, it's tough, but we have the kind of systems and plans in place to make it work, to get to spring when then we see the growth come up again.
Yeah. Thank you so much for that. And I do think that idea of the demand planning is something that eludes a lot of foodpreneur. So I'm really grateful that you've mentioned it and you are in this amazing, um, place that you guys have worked incredibly hard to get to whereby you are with a major who does give you a demand forecast, which is really interesting. Cause I think for foodpreneurs particularly, um, who are doing their own manufacturing, it's that balance of trying to ascertain, uh, production, um, quantities and frequency or velocity with the demand planning. You know, it's just so hard to do that by yourself. So
Yeah, and I mean, there's pros and cons of both. Like, I wish I could self perform my production. So then I would have full control over what quantities I actually wanna do and what frequency I actually wanna do. But when you're using a contract manufacturer, it's great. Cause it's all outsourced, but you have to meet their minimum order quantities. So that's why you've kind of like got a stockpile a little bit. So, and then, you know, you've gotta make sure you've got enough packaging and make sure that it's actually in the country and that you ingredients actually arrive in time and that all those stars align. Um, so yeah, it is, it is a huge like challenge for our business, making sure that we have sufficient plans in place to make production go as smoothly as possible.
What sort of MOQs are we talking about for your co-man manufacturing with any of your products? So would you be happy to share that?
Yeah, so for our ice cream, it's currently getting made at minimum order. Quantity is two thou 2000 kilos per flavor. Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, so that's about minimum would be about, you know, six and a half thousand tubs of ice cream per flavor at a time. Um, and we were really excited actually last month, cause our production run, we leveled up in min in our order quantity. So we produced three tons per flavor, which was, you know, small business wins.
<laugh> it's massive. It's so exciting. So via new product, you did something that I, I really love and I counsel council foodpreneurs to do. And I actually do it often in my business and that is sell it before it exists. So you talked about, you know, the, the Kohl's requirement or expectation in terms of their range, reviews and implementation, et cetera, what I'm talking about now, and I'd love to talk to you about is selling something before it exists. As I said, in, in my business, a digital business, it's relatively easy, but it doesn't appear. So for many foodpreneurs with packaged products, but it actually can be. Can you tell us how you pitched your icy poles into a major and got them to say yes before you actually had too much stock on the shelf, you, before you had stock on the shelf and before you had to really do the big investments that you did with your ice cream?
Yeah. So this kind of connects back to our earlier conversation where we talked about investing $120,000 into like product and product development before we had a major buying customer. So from that experience and all the stress that, that caused, we were like, we are never doing this again. We're gonna pitch products like concepts, essentially. So I had my graphic designer make renders. We'd done like market analysis being like, okay, well this is a gap in the market. We think there's an opportunity here. Okay. This product fits within our brand in regards to, it matches our value proposition. So being high end protein, low end sugar, low end calories, it's a fun, playful reinvention of a traditional like sweet treat. Um, and then we found out when the range review times were, we reached out to our category manager booked in for a presentation. We did our pitch.
We had a small batch of samples made, which I posted down to Kohl's. Um, and then Kohl's reviewed them. And then there was a bit of back and forth, but essentially we hadn't produced this product at a scale before we actually had a buying customer. Um, one challenging part of this was that we were waiting for the range review outcome and we had to push go on packaging, um, because of the lead times of packaging coming from overseas. So we had to take that risk, which was really stressful at the time when you buying like a hundred thousand boxes and you don't know if they're actually gonna get filled, um, but a hundred percent, that is how we are operating from this point over like, of course you have to test your product before it goes on the shelves, but you don't have to have pallets and pallets of stock waiting before you can actually submit that pitch,
The risk pro profile of you. And Courtney's pretty interesting, I think, and, and unique. Do you both have an equal amount of, uh, high risk behavior?
<laugh>, I'd say Courtney's definitely way riskier than me, but fundamentally it comes down to, we have a lot of belief in ourselves and the team of people that we've built. So we are lucky to work with really fabulous people who are so passionate about what they do and they believe in our brand and us as well. So we just think we can do it like again, we know nothing's actually gonna go to plan, but with every hurdle that comes its way, we've always jump managed to find a way to jump out of it, jump over it. So, yeah, like for example, like I just ordered 150,000, um, ice cream tubs the other day and you know, like I'm just forecasting things. I haven't necessarily got like a paying customer yet, so it's just like, that's stressful. But if I don't make that decision, now I'm gonna be punished for it in three months time, if that would be required. So I'm taking that choice. And if that doesn't, you know, the thing that I think could happen doesn't happen. I'm just gonna find another way to sell this product through. So yeah.
Yeah.
Unreal. But yeah, so we're, we're huge risk takers. <laugh>
You need to be be, I think you need to be. And I love the fact that you're long term thinking, but it's base, it's grounded in analysis as well. Right. You're looking at some, you know, past behavior is obviously not a determinant of future behavior, particularly if a product's never been to market before, but you are you're, you're doing assessing every single moment of the day. And then I think balancing that by looking under rocks and seeing opportunities that don't yet exist. I mean, true entrepreneurs, the two of you, so I'm interested, um, then you talked about the team around you. I mean, you also talked about mindset, which is just gold, but specifically the team, I wanna jump to that. If I may, what would be the next, uh, team member, albeit they may be a contractor. They may not be an FTE because you don't really have any FTE in your business. Full-time employee equivalence, but with where you are at now and at this scale stage and national rollouts that's happening, isn't it? The national rollout. Yeah. Yeah. So what role would you recruit next?
Oh, I think about this all the time and it would a hundred percent be someone to look after our like actual content creation side for our business. So being a startup and marketing, being so important, but then not having the budget to put behind it. Social media is the way to go. So Chelsea, you found me through LinkedIn, I'm posting on LinkedIn every single week because I think it's a fantastic platform to share stories. Um, you know, every single day I'm posting on, uh, Instagram, but it's often like me at six, o'clock being like, ah, I need to post, like, I've just finished my day job. Now I need to think about what I'm gonna do. So I try and like stockpile content over the weekend, but having this like constant flow of needing to be creative when I've been dealing with all the logistics of the business and just keeping things rolling is really exhausting. So I would love to have someone who is just like a social media guru. Um, who's just really passionate about creating like fresh creative solutions to things. So that would be my first role to hire.
I love that. I'm actually just about in the stage of recruiting a new person with that for my business too. I've had it in the past and I do find the key to that is to have the pillars, you know, the thematics so that you can just systemize it. But that said, there's still a lot of head space required. I know for myself in the creativity. And so that help, you know, like there's only, there's only so much space for creativity. I think if you're doing so much else in your business, right. That that's what, that's what tanks, when you're really busy is the creativity I
Find. Yeah. And the way Courtney and I have our business structured. So I'm very much in the operations. Like I oversee the day to day operations of our business. Courtney is more of the strateg lead. So because he's not in the fine detail of our cash flow and all those elements, he is able to think clearly and think about like, you know, what's the next trend. We kind of need to jump onto, like, what's an opportunity. What's a strategic partnership that would be really powerful. Like how are we gonna play these things out? So having him, his creative juices freed up to think about that stuff is absolutely invaluable. But if you were a single person leading a business, I would a hundred percent recommend setting away time in your week to have, okay, I'm spending five hours every Friday morning looking at my strategic plan for the next six to 12 months, where do I wanna be in 12 months?
What tools do I need to be investing in now to get to that position? Um, it's a goal for us that I wanna be working in our business full time. And when I'm in that position to do that, that is a hundred percent something that I'm going to be doing in order to make sure that like creative part of my brain is activated. So I feel, feel fulfilled in what we're doing on a day to day business, because running a business isn't necessarily a very sexy thing to do. Like it's really tough and you're in the trenches every day, dealing with. Um, so having, and it's repetitive creative outlet. Yeah, of course, of course,
Far more repetitive than anybody realizes. And, and at the risk of sounding extremely trite, I think you plan to fail. You fail to plan you plan to fail basically. Yeah. And so it's absolute gold to me again, it's tied back into that, investing in your business, whatever that looks like for somebody yeah. For a foodpreneur, but that hour of planning, I think reduces all operational headaches. Do you reckon?
Yeah. A hundred percent.
So there's, there's some inspiration that's come your way. And particularly, I think if we're talking about content and social that who in the marketplace do you think, does it really well? And, and why do you think that they're so great.
My absolute favorite food business is an Australian business called D so you've probably seen their ice cream on the shelf. Mm-hmm <affirmative> they have a keto friendly, low sugar ice cream. It tastes amazing. Um, they're, it's run by three girls from
Perth.
Yeah. They're just branding is on point. Their product's fantastic. And the content they put out on social media is just like 10 outta 10. They work with my dream creative agency. So I look at their business and I'm like, wow, I wanna be like that. So DDA a hundred percent. And then the other business I really look up to is, and Courtney as well, of course is muscle nation. So that's run by, um, Nathaniel and Denny from Queensland. And they started as like an active wear company. They then grew into supplements and now they're in major grocery. So I think they've got something ridiculous, like 14 skews ranged at Kohl's in the sports and diet section. They won Kohl's supplier of the year. Last year, they are just absolutely killing it. Like the volume of content they put out and their new product development. It's just like, they're an absolute powerhouse and they're like 30 or something. So major props to them.
I'll put both D who I know and muscle nation in the show notes for people to check out your crushes. So as we start to wrap up sh anything that you'd suggest to, um, foodpreneurs who perhaps have some Gras on their knees, because they've been doing it tough, tough for a couple of years, maybe, you know, four or five years, and now need to really upscale and they have aspirations to go bigger, double their business in the next 12 months. What, what sort of stuff would you say that perhaps we haven't talked about that they should prioritize? Is there one thing
I would say definitely getting some outsider advice. Mm-hmm <affirmative> just like someone who's unbiased and who can look at things objectively because as your own business owner, you're either looking at things with a rose colored glasses or colored glasses from all like the, the stuff you've been dealing with. So having someone objectively come in and give you advice, um, that's really a top tip, but really it'd be, if you wanna make it work, you have to knuckle down and make it work. And that takes investment. And that takes sacrifice.
Yeah. Bravo, couldn't nothing more to add to that. So where can people find out more about you and your business?
You can follow us on Instagram at GYM BOD underscore official, um, or you can head to our website, www.gymbod.com.au, Or you can search us GYM BOD, um, at Kohl's online and find our products.
Amazing. Cian, thank you for your time. I wish you and Courtney and GYM BOD all the best in the whole wide world and of course will stay connected. I love what you're doing.
Thank you so much, Chelsea. Thank you for having me.
Okay. That's it for today. Thanks for listening. I hope you found today's insights valuable and learn something that you will implement in your food and drink business right away. I'd like to ask you now to help me help more female foodpreneurs put more money in their pocket by giving me an honest rating. Five stars would be lovely, but that's up to you. Write a review and subscribe to this podcast on your platform of choice. The more you tell me, what you like and the more momentum builds for Foodpreneur with Chelsea Ford, the easier it will be for me to help women with packaged food and drink brands have more choice on how they can invest in their business. Freedom to spend more time with their loved ones and joy as they help even more people on their food journey. So thank you for taking a moment to do that and see you next week. For another episode of food with Chelsea Ford.