Shopify Happy Hour

From Family Farm to Grocery Aisles: How Lottie’s Meats Is Elevating the Pork Category

• Dan Cassidy • Season 1 • Episode 20

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Launching a CPG brand is always a grind — but reinventing pork sausage with chef-crafted recipes, premium cuts, and a sixth-generation family farm story? That’s a whole new challenge.

In this episode of Shopify Happy Hour, Dan sits down with Cassie Maschhoff, co-founder of Lottie’s Meats, the sister-run brand elevating pork with gourmet sausages and ground blends made from real ingredients, responsible sourcing, and culinary craftsmanship. Cassie shares how she and her sister Chelsea turned family heritage and Michelin-level technique into one of the most exciting new meat brands on the market.

You’ll hear how Cassie:

  • Transformed a sixth-generation Illinois family farm legacy into a modern, premium pork brand.
  • Partnered with her chef-trained sister to craft sausages using only pork loin, pork shoulder, and clean, real ingredients.
  • Navigated nine different co-packers to finally find partners who could uphold their exacting standards.
  • Built early traction through restaurant partnerships, farmers markets, pop-ups, and brewery takeovers in Denver.
  • Created cult-favorite products like The Lottie and perfected flavors through years of behind-the-scenes R&D.
  • Balanced the demands of cold-chain logistics, short shelf life, and monthly production while still growing fast.

We also get into the bigger picture:

  • Why pork has gotten a bad rap — and how Lottie’s is changing that perception.
  • The operational realities (and chaos) of scaling a perishable food brand.
  • How retail, DTC, and food service each play their own role in Lottie’s growth.
  • Why differentiation, quality, and ironclad non-negotiables matter when working with co-packers.

If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to build a modern food brand — from sourcing to storytelling to scaling in an unforgiving supply chain — this conversation is full of hard-won lessons and real-world strategies.

🍽️ Whether you’re a foodie, a founder, or someone fascinated by how craft brands break through, Cassie’s story is proof that pork can be premium, purposeful, and genuinely delicious again.

Brands & Mentions:

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Lottie's Meats
02:48 Crafting Quality Sausages
05:41 Navigating Co-Packing Challenges
08:48 The Founder's Journey
11:32 Scaling and Distribution Strategies
14:20 Innovative Marketing Approaches
17:25 Product Development and Consumer Feedback
20:07 E-commerce and Digital Marketing Strategies
23:05 Community Engagement and Partnerships
25:59 Speed Round and Personal Insights

Dan Cassidy (00:01)
Welcome to the Shopify happy hour. On the show, you'll hear from Shopify founders, operators, and experts about growth, marketing strategies, lessons learned from the trenches and other nuggets of e-commerce wisdom shared over a different drink or snack each episode. Today's guest is Cassie Maschhoff, co-founder of Lottie's Meats, a sister owned brand bringing chef crafted pork sausages and ground pork blends to the modern table. Born from a multi-generation Illinois family farm,

Lottie's is making pork fun, responsible, and delicious again. Cassie, welcome to the show.

Cassie Maschhoff (00:37)
Thank you. Thank you so much for the kind intro. Happy to be here.

Dan Cassidy (00:41)
Awesome, well first you're bringing some lovely festive energy. It's early December, we're right in that period between Thanksgiving and holiday season, Christmas time, Hanukkah, all that stuff where it's like super busy, but you're bringing the festive cheer, I'm loving it.

Cassie Maschhoff (00:54)
Yeah, I'm trying to. It's a fun time of year for us.

Dan Cassidy (00:58)
Nice, good stuff. Well, let's get started with, obviously, like key thing is we gotta try the sausages, but also, sounds like you've got a tasty beverage, I've got a tasty beverage, so in honor of the holiday season and for having you join, we gotta crack it. So why don't we talk about what you have there? What are you about to crack open?

Cassie Maschhoff (01:08)
Yeah.

Oh, well I just poured myself actually a nice glass of white wine from Scribe. Winery? Do you know it? It's in Sonoma. It's the only one I'm a member of. So, trying to flex that. Pairs really nicely with sausage, I should say. Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (01:28)
good lad.

Perfect. I love the plugs.

My wife is from Napa Valley and I guess there's like, so I'm from New York, so there's like a New York, New Jersey rivalry that people talk about, right? Then there's like Sonoma Napa, so I gotta be careful about saying anything.

Cassie Maschhoff (01:36)
Huh?

Yeah. ⁓

Well, my sister went to culinary school in Napa, the Culinary Institute of America, and we are actually, our products are in nugget market and a few others in that Napa Sonoma area. And I actually had a meeting with the nugget buyer today and he's like, you and Chelsea are doing a lot of demos at our Sonoma market because we're always fighting like, well, we'll go to this region and we'll do the demos there so that we can hang out. He's like, you're over indexing in the Napa region demos.

our strategy. ⁓ Right, yeah, it's a tough industry

Dan Cassidy (02:11)
Well, hey, you gotta mix business and pleasure. I that's a key part of it.

Cassie Maschhoff (02:17)
as you know, so we reward ourselves where we can. Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (02:21)
Fantastic. And you

said the winery is scribe. Cool. I'll check that out. So that's great that you're about to enjoy a nice tasty beverage. I've got a beer called Lunch from Maine Brewing. Maine makes delicious beer, all sorts of good stuff. They have really good stouts and their lunch is an IPA that's just like perfect all the time. It should pair perfectly with sausage. So, nice. Yeah. Are you a beer fan or mostly wine or?

Cassie Maschhoff (02:24)
Yeah, they're awesome.

Yeah, what do you... Whoa!

I'm gonna have to check that out. Lunch.

I am and I've become more of a beer fan since we launched our brand March of 2024 in Denver, Colorado. It's like part of the job description. I feel like spending a lot of time there. You have to be. Yeah. Cheers. Yeah. Excited to chat with you.

Dan Cassidy (03:03)
Nice, another perk of the job. Well, well, cheers, happy holidays, and thanks for being on.

Alright, fantastic. Well, yeah, that's a tasty beer every time I have it.

Cassie Maschhoff (03:14)
Yeah, this is the

most fun podcast I've done already. I love it. Yeah, no, it's so fun.

Dan Cassidy (03:17)
I think we just wrap it up right here and call it. Nice, nice.

full disclosure, so I typically try to reserve tasting for podcasts when it goes live, but we had reschedule a couple times and there was one time where I had everything prepped and we had to cancel last minute, so I couldn't let the sausages go to waste. And I will say that.

They're pretty dang tasty. And on top of that, some of the sausage, one of the guys on my team, I had him try it. He used to work in a restaurant and that best sausage he's ever had by far. I've got to, yeah, yeah, and he knows food pretty well. So, and he's also gonna be editing this video. So we'll speak very kindly about it. So.

Cassie Maschhoff (03:43)
Yeah, aren't they?

Mmm.

Wow, love him. ⁓

you

Ooh, yes he will.

Dan Cassidy (04:06)
I've got two links here. I've got, think, the regular and then there was more of the spicy version. Is that right? More of the...

Cassie Maschhoff (04:12)
Yeah, well

we have so our two sausage links one is a bratwurst. It's like a very traditional take on a bratwurst recipe. It is just pork shoulder, mustard seed, ginger, and nutmeg. It's much higher protein like 40 % less fat than the leading sausage brand. So we love it because the pork really shines and we often hear you can taste like every single ingredient. The other one we have is called the Ladi. That is our signature. It does have some warming spices.

It's very special because it's made with only pork loin and pork shoulder. So unlike most sausages, only the best cuts. Then it has some nutmeg, coriander, paprika. It's smoked in some peach wood chips. So we often say it's like our big kid hot dog, if you will, but much more decadent and elegant.

Dan Cassidy (05:01)
They are both fantastic and I think the adult hot dogs are a very good description because it is just so much better. And yeah, it's much more complex and you can tell it's very high quality. So well done to you and your sister. So let's talk about, before we go into the history of like how you guys started this, I mean, how often do I get to ask how the sausage is actually made with sausage? So,

Cassie Maschhoff (05:03)
Yeah, they're ⁓

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

I know. I can

tell you've been waiting for this moment to ask. We will tell you.

Dan Cassidy (05:31)
haha

So what's the, just like as a food nerd, what is, what's the process? How does sausage actually get made?

Cassie Maschhoff (05:41)
The process is so long and convoluted but because we make it hard on ourselves, it doesn't need to be like that. But we grew up on a sixth generation family pork farm as you mentioned in the introduction. So it's really important to us to source from that family farm and network of family farms that we grew up on. So we have a hundred percent traceability into every single production run. So from the top of how it gets made all way to the end, it's a long process. But we have to work with two different US

SDA Copackers, which is a whole challenge in itself. One for the ground product, one for the cooked product. We send them the cuts. Like I said, we use only pork loin and pork shoulder and then really special unique spice blends. So most sausage will use powders, artificial ingredients. We use only like grade A maple syrup, real Calabrian chilies that are imported, wet minced garlic. Then that is gone. Going through a ton of R &D packaged sent

out to you all to two different warehouses. lots of steps, lots of, we've gone through like nine different co-packers in our short like year and a half of being a little business. High quality standards I should say by the chef's sister.

Dan Cassidy (06:54)
Gosh, I'm

sure, I'm sure. So I'm pretty stoked that I just figured out how sausage is actually made. that's wonderful. So now, so let's talk about the co-packers. So what were you looking in a co-packer and how did you discover things were kind of up to par with what you were looking for? And how did you find hopefully the co-packer that you've landed on that hopefully will be the one that is kind of meets all of your needs?

Cassie Maschhoff (06:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So for us, like I said, we have to work with USDA Copacker. That limits the search in general. I think when we started searching even the USDA website, it's like all PDFs, you know, it's like hard to navigate. It's like glitching and crashing. And we were like, how are we ever even going to get this started? Sausage is so concentrated at the top with big players that kind of own all of the facilities. Or there's like really, really small mom and pop shops.

certain regions, you know, that maybe have their own line. They're starting to co-pack. So that's how we started. We started in Denver with a few local folks, but we quickly outgrew them. We go through so much back and forth because most of them are making sausage one way. Might be using a lot of like trimming knuckles, hence why you don't want to know. And so that was really challenging because we would have our special recipes. We wanted to use these certain things, certain techniques of, okay, it needs an ice bath at this time. It needs to be cooked at this time. Very like chef

crafted techniques and so that was the challenge of we were being told this is how it should be done and we wanted to say hey we want to elevate pork sausage in a different way can we try to craft it like this and so I think through that process ultimately at the end of the day if someone wouldn't meet our quality bar there wasn't any point in trying to recreate what has already been done so oftentimes it was a lot of like okay we'll never be able to follow this recipe or this

technique, so we have to go back to the drawing board and try to find another one. So yeah, I think now at this point, 18 months in, we are with partners that we think are there, but you never know. Times are changing. It's crazy out there with tariffs and everything. I don't know what will happen in the future. I think one thing we're thinking about is about are we always going to have to just have...

backups and other options. I don't know what are most brands that you talk to is everyone always in like up and down co packer highs and lows. Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (09:22)
So operations is tough for everybody, I think.

And it really just depends on the category and brand. You know, there are people we've had on the podcast and other brand owners I'm connected with who they land with a co packer or let's say factory or manufacturer if it's more of a hard good physical good. And they'll be with them for years and years and years. know people who got really lucky right out of the gate. I also know people with lots of nightmare stories and I've had to constantly. So it really just depends on the brand. So I

Cassie Maschhoff (09:48)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (09:55)
know you mentioned something that's important for anybody who's kind of starting or wants to get into direct to consumer, CPG. What seems to happen is when...

Cassie Maschhoff (09:55)
Yeah

Dan Cassidy (10:06)
brand owners are bringing their idea to a co packer manufacturer, the facility will often have their process, right? And so brand owner might go to the co packer factory with an idea, the co packer factory will have their steps that they wanna follow, cause they wanna systematize, they wanna be super efficient.

Cassie Maschhoff (10:23)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (10:25)
but that might not lead to the best quality and it certainly won't lead to differentiation because they're going to try to bucket you in with everybody else that is running on their line. So now after going through, let's say nine different, different co-packers, looking back, were there any signals or red flags you could have caught earlier? Like what tips would you give to somebody who's at the beginning stage and they're trying to find, let's say a co-packer for their new brand?

Cassie Maschhoff (10:35)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (10:51)
What would you have them watch out for when they're approaching copackers? Or what are the green lights? What are the things where you'd say, yeah, if they say this, then you know you're in good hands?

Cassie Maschhoff (11:00)
Yeah, I think going back to what I was saying of knowing what are your...

non-negotiables and knowing when you are the expert versus knowing when to defer to the co-packer as them being the expert. Oftentimes they hopefully will be the expert, but to your point of differentiation, I think there's a fine line of knowing when to trust your gut, which I kind of hate that advice, but now being in this industry for 18 months in hindsight, I'm like, there are times where we should have just trusted ourselves. But when you're new to CPG,

and you're in this antiquated system, it's so easy to just default. It's like, of course, yeah, this is the way. So I've always found, I've always tried to enter these co-packer conversations being as open to their expertise as possible, but also trying to be incredibly organized, really buttoned up and showing we are new, here are our strengths, here are our core competencies, here's what we will not sacrifice on. And if you stick with us and give us a shot, because as you know, you're

going to meet the minimums. There's so many things. But here is our potential and here's our path, you know, our projections, I think has really helped us grow quickly and play in these very concentrated markets where we're often the smallest one, but we've been able to like get on that level because we show the differentiation and what those core competencies that I was mentioning are. And I think that gets co-packers excited of like, okay, well, this will diversify my revenue stream.

and this will add value here. So trying to put on that hat has helped us survive.

Dan Cassidy (12:37)
Very, very smart

talking about what's in it for them. Very smart move. So, okay, well, let's start at the beginning. How and why did you start Lottie's Meats?

Cassie Maschhoff (12:40)
Yeah.

Yeah, well, as I mentioned, we grew up on a sixth generation family pork farm. When we were growing up, our parents said, you know, maybe

Don't be hawk farmers. Try something else. We're like, OK, thank God. Now I'm getting back. Actually, Chelsea and I were just talking about this. When we were younger, we always like, yeah, of course we'll be on the farm. But I think, candidly, we saw how hard it is to be a farmer in America throughout the 80s, 90s, 2000s. And I think our parents, for diversification purposes, were like, go out and try your hand. Who knows where this is headed? So Chelsea went into culinary, as I mentioned.

I fell into tech, but as we left the farm in the Midwest, the more we were like, whoa, pork gets a bad rap. Was no one else like force fed this their entire lives? And we noticed on menus, grocery store shelves, you know, there was no like premium, elegant pork products. People thought bacon, you think processed, you think kind of boring. There's a whole backstory there. And so we had kind of thought to ourselves, you know, if anybody is going to reintroduce a kind of packaged

processed stale category in a way that chef crafted really clean but convenient and almost like gourmet. Maybe we should give it a go. Chelsea had started using our family's pork in her restaurant in Denver and she was making sausage using only the best cuts, doing some pop-ups at breweries in Denver. I was just helping her on the side, not planning to leave my safe, secure tech job. But I don't know, there was something of like, you know what, it's now

or never and a few people had given me the advice of don't half-ass it, pardon my French, but they're like just go for it, you know, if you're going to try to do something do it. So we're like let's give ourselves a year, 2020 for the year of Lottie's and at the end of the year we can, I can always go back to corporate America, you can go back here, but I do think that there is a food service, retail, and kind of direct to consumer play that we can try and give ourselves some time to see if

it resonates. Fast forward to now, end of 2025, we're always like, wow, that went great. I guess we'll give it another year. So that was the genesis. And then it was kind of like, let's take a risk and give it a go and see if we can keep going.

Dan Cassidy (15:07)
Love it, love it. Well, you know, I think founder story makes a huge difference in so many different businesses. And I love that one, the story of the heritage of six, six generations, right? On an American family farm and then two sisters where you've got the culinary side to speak to the quality of ingredients. And that clearly shows in the taste. It's like super, like some of the best sausage, not the best sausage I've ever had. It's super tasty. And then you can come in with.

Cassie Maschhoff (15:33)
Thank you.

Dan Cassidy (15:34)
kind of tech and business side of it. And I love that story. And I love that that is how you're going to market because it's true and it should resonate with people. I love that looking looking back on 2024, let's say, what were some of the big wins that you had that made you say, okay, this is a thing, we're going to do this for let's say, at least another year going in 2025, or those signals that helped you make that decision.

Cassie Maschhoff (15:44)
Yes, thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah, so we didn't get our...

products from our first co-packer until March of 2024, which was actually pretty quick considering we both like, I quit my job January 1st of that year and was like full on Lottie's. So we had dropped off a few samples at local retailers in Denver, Colorado and like started with like 12 stores. We did a farmer's market that summer. We actually launched into quite a few restaurants selling the ground product to top bakeries, pizzerias, and kind

built like a mini market in Denver where we would find, hey I tried your sausage on the menu at Get Right's, it's my favorite bakery, now I know I can get it at these 12 places. We did a ton of pop-ups, so like at breweries, restaurants, menu takeovers, and those were always like a lot of lines. We just built like a little mini proof of concept and community and like family, if you will, of advocates that like turned into you know like lifelong

customers

and allies and I think looking at the end of the year we had just started getting outside of Colorado like bigger momentum in NorCal and even in like Chicago Milwaukee area of distributors and chains that wanted to bring us on so then we were like okay this there's a path to like 3x and 2025 let's like start on that path

Dan Cassidy (17:25)
Wonderful. So as you were talking, was eating more sausage and I got to know how the recipes were dialed in. with lots of brands early on, there's just tons of consumer testing where you're going out, you're getting feedback and you're iterating, you're dialing in recipes and you're trying to land on something that people really love.

Cassie Maschhoff (17:30)
Please.

Dan Cassidy (17:44)
I'm curious if that process even happened with your sister's history and knowledge of culinary. Did she just make these and she was like, this is it. And then people loved it or was there lots of testing going on? did that process work?

Cassie Maschhoff (17:56)
You know,

before Lottie's was a real th-

Consumer good I guess I should say there was testing like Chelsea. I have an Instagram post on our pinned on our profile. That's like the sausage bite that made me quit my Tech job you can check it out after this but she had actually when we were talking about this She's like I've been working on these recipes for years like always in the restaurant. She was perfecting and tweaking and she had done Some sausage around Thanksgiving that she like low-key called our Thanksgiving sausage that now became the

day that is the perfect balance of gray day maple syrup sage and thyme so it's kind of herbaceous in a hint of chili flake and same with the calabrian we say it's like expertly seasoned because it's like a pinch of brown sugar calabrian chili and oil garlic oregano fennel everything is just like dialed in at a michelin quality that we had kind of known when we were going to launch like we wanted two ground products to be innovative like expertly seasoned recipe in a bag

And then we kind of wanted familiar enough classics of fully cooked links because both would be convenient and both would be like familiar enough but an edge above what you're used to seeing. So I will say it was low key kind of in the background for a while. I think over the last year and a half we've been constantly collecting feedback though in stores of we'll hear a lot, can you make this ground version in like a spicy link or would you ever do ropes or would you do

So we're trying to kind of think about wrapping all of those up while staying true to our values for adding two more products to our set. So that's kind of the goal, adding two more.

Dan Cassidy (19:40)
Nice, yeah, could always do kind of short term limited release and just test that, you know, once each quarter, roll out two new flavors or guess, styles or formats and then do that for a year. You can roll out like, you know, let's say you're doing one a quarter, you can knock out eight different ones and then end of the year, be like, which ones took off? And then you can turn that into more of a.

Cassie Maschhoff (19:44)
Yeah. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (20:04)
regular occurrence, but that's what's great about D2C is you can, so D2C you can clearly see the data around who's buying based on all that stuff and what the conversion rates are looking like, but also when you're in person at breweries or talking to people who are trying stuff, you'll get direct feedback that way. awesome, okay, so it sounds like dialing in the product was not super difficult because, I'm sure it took time, but it was kind of before you launched because those recipes have been.

Cassie Maschhoff (20:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (20:31)
gone for years with Mr. Chelsea.

Cassie Maschhoff (20:32)
Yeah, scaling the

product had been the challenge and actually I think that's why we haven't expanded our product line before the beyond those four flavors since March, April of 2024 because we have gone through different coat packers and sometimes we're like, wow, if we can't even nail these to our standards every single time. I think that's what's a little bit tough about a perishable short shelf life. I should mention everything is made very fresh. Like the cuts of pork are so

fresh with the best ingredients and then it's immediately flash frozen. So we're stored and distributed frozen to extend our shelf life. But once they are thawed or in the meat industry, it's called slacked. I don't know if that's colloquial. I didn't know that until I joined the meat industry. But it's often like slacked out. Slack to sell is the program that a lot of retailers use. Then the shelf life shortens tremendously. And that is also really challenging in terms of, you know, just getting it out there.

people in a way that maintains quality. So for anybody chasing any of those issues, I'm always happy to chat, but it limits, I think, the ability to be as agile as we'd like to be and that we are in other facets of our business because we're focused on exceptional quality and taste over everything else. And then like a sound business. we're kind of, you know, we're constantly thinking about, we have so many challenges against us in a cold chain, the cold supply chain.

that if we can ever get our cogs down on volume breaks and finding those economies of scale, like let's try and do it. And so that also obviously limits some risk taking and innovation, but it's a balance.

Dan Cassidy (22:16)
Yeah, you definitely have a lot more challenges than let's say other CPG products where that are shelf stable and can be shipped and Yes, this is you know kind of stay stay fresh and ready to eat for a long time so

Cassie Maschhoff (22:23)
Yeah.

Totally. Like we're doing

production monthly and I know other brands that are like, yeah, we do it once a year and it's so easy to, you know, get those up there. So we're, it's a dance, but we're hoping to reduce that in 2026, but who knows.

Dan Cassidy (22:45)
Nice,

nice. So let's talk about distribution. how are you selling your product? What channels are you, what are you seeing across different channels that you're in?

Cassie Maschhoff (22:51)
Yeah.

yeah so in 2024 when we launched we were kind of split a third a third and a third across retail direct to consumer and

Fast forward to 2025, our distribution really started exploding, although I don't know if I can say exploding because in CPG it's all relative. But we added like six distributors in retail in 2025 in NorCal, Pacific Northwest, St. Louis Midwest region, and SoCal. And then also some larger food service distributors like US Foods to service some larger breweries and things like that.

So the dial really turned up on retail because we could start shipping pallets much more efficiently than you talk to for as imperishable brands on DTC a lot. It's really hard to get the economics right without passing on exuberant amounts to the customer. And so we've been focused there a lot when it comes to retail and trying to ride that wave. That being said, now having a year of like real, we call it like real retail experience.

It's so tush. I didn't know that the trade or retail game was so hard. Why didn't you tell me?

It's just, yeah, it's tough. think, again, making sure the product is decoded correctly, merchandise correctly. Sausage Wall is competitive with so many other brands. Luckily, we stick out a little bit on shelf because our packaging is brighter and speaks to some of those unique attributes that makes us us. But Fresh Department in retail, just as tricky as frozen D2C shipping.

Dan Cassidy (24:38)
So,

okay, so you've got DSC, frozen shipping, you've got retail. Are you doing any, we were talking before the call and you mentioned you were not always following the typical CPG playbook. So is there anything outside of that that you're doing to get product into hands of consumers?

Cassie Maschhoff (24:57)
Yeah, I think...

You know, in both 2024 and 2025, we really show up in person as much as possible, whether that's doing something fun like a lot of these employees event where people can get. Are we did like once the squats and brats gym event, but you know, we're trying to show up as much as possible. We've done farmers markets, our first two summers, which I think we'll always do, you know, just as part of like being engaged in the community. We do a lot of menu takeovers at top restaurants. You know, we're trying to park.

with restaurants and other small businesses that can contextualize our brand as much as possible. When we are in store, we really prioritize spending on demos and brand ambassadors over some things like a price reduction because with meat, this I think is one of those things where we're often told from brokers or consultants, you have to run like this kind of promotional strategy and you have to do these things. But when someone's often sees like a price 30 % off on a fresh meat product,

Are the behavioral economics the same as when they were consulting, you know, these other types of brands not in our category? I think that has been challenging for us going back to the advice I gave earlier of trusting your gut, even though I don't like that advice, but in hindsight, like, you know what? We should have known that we don't, you know, we're not like these other common CPG categories. This is its own niche thing that we're trying to do. And so showing up, I think in the ways that we want

to show up rather than spending on this retail newspaper ad, sorry, or doing these things is not necessarily something that we want to prescribe to, to a degree, you

Dan Cassidy (26:41)
there's

gotta be a big market for.

going after select restaurants that are a perfect fit because you know, farm to table obviously is a thing, but if there are restaurants where there's not good supply for your product, then having a frozen option going directly to restaurants across the US for like, know, Michelin restaurants, super high-end stuff, you've got the street cred with your sister's culinary chops, of the product, that can be a really interesting play where you're kind of blending D to C, but then also getting in restaurants that'll be high

Cassie Maschhoff (27:03)
Yeah

Totally.

Dan Cassidy (27:13)
volume. ⁓ I wonder if there's a play there. Anything in the food service category?

Cassie Maschhoff (27:14)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, so right now food service is 15 to 20 percent of our

business and for those reasons that you mentioned, think the value add for restaurants is there is a brand behind it if they want to put it on their menu. It is expertly seasoned and crafted so it saves time on labor. Plus it's something that if people are starting to familiarize themselves with their brand, they know that the quality is there and vice versa. We can reap those benefits from our amazing restaurant partners where we're getting new customers that way in a way that is so naturally contextual.

to what we want people to take away from the product, it's the best. We have done some really awesome collaborations and pop-ups that have turned into always on menu items with pizzerias, bakeries, and breakfast sandwiches, breakfast burritos, obviously breweries and things for the links. But the challenge, I think, with food service is you have to find the restaurants that have the willingness to pay for the quality. They are in just as tough, if not a tougher business.

than CPG. And so for us, we need to figure out, I think this is a learning that I just have come across. How can we price our food service products to be more competitive in that channel? I think when we started, I was like, yeah, retail, food service, like perfect. We're going to go for this margin and this and this. And there's so much I think you need to test to get it right for food service. And then the distribution system within food service is just different than retail and like learning.

that ecosystem has been interesting the last few months. I will say then though, once you can get in, it's the best. It's just hard, I think, to find the right price and the right partners. Then it's like magic.

Dan Cassidy (29:05)
So how have you landed some of the restaurants that you're in?

Cassie Maschhoff (29:09)
I think as you mentioned with Chelsea's amazing network and reputation, we're so fortunate that that's how we could start. And then, you you start small as with anything. There's, I think, a degree of FOMO of like, okay, I see this. This is where I want to stand. And, you know, some brands I think do this really well with partnering and supporting the restaurants and like being so involved in that ecosystem, like Zab's hot sauce. I had the privilege of having a call with Miles, the other

who is so helpful in terms of like this is how we approach these restaurant partnerships and this is what I enjoy. Same for Chelsea and myself but she's that's her superpower. She knows how to talk the language, she knows what the value add is and she's not selling, she's like partnering with them. So I think for any brands trying to get into food service I would say don't fall into the trap I did and try to approach it so corporate and like with a retail and like head top down you know process.

but really try to partner and empathize with what restaurants are trying to do and what they're trying to build.

Dan Cassidy (30:11)
Sounds like a very smart approach. So for your online e-commerce, obviously shipping a frozen product across the US and trying to keep costs in line with where consumers are expecting, with a product that is extremely high quality. How are you thinking about?

e-commerce and also digital, organic, social, your overall digital marketing. And how are you looking at that versus retail versus food service?

Cassie Maschhoff (30:38)
Yeah.

Great question. Because I mentioned so much of our in-person offline advertising are in certain regions, there's always going to be so much of the country that we're not able to hit. And that's, think, where digital marketing obviously comes into play and why we have D2C. As I mentioned, it's hard to stand up. We have to ship everything with dry ice via two-day air or less. And we spoke to every single third-party shipping app and like UPS and FedEx and finally got on like a UPS

the best rate we had been able to find with the right box dimensions and weights to make it work. It was a labor of love and months of testing and being insane like I am. But it paid off because we're able to offer it in a way that we still make a small margin on it. Because one thing we didn't want to do is just go through all of it for the sake of getting it out there. It's not one of those products that is easy that you can constantly send samples, but we wanted to make

sure that we could offer it. So when it comes to digital marketing, we lean heavily into social where we can. Our strongest channel is probably Instagram, but we have TikTok. We're active on LinkedIn, even Pinterest and things like that. We also have a really strong email marketing list that converts. So we setting up as much automations as we can there. In addition to using apps like reviews, know, and like upselling and things like that where we can. We haven't put any paid media or

paid social behind anything only because of what I mentioned it's not a top channel for us but we want it to be there. We also haven't, I'd be curious to your thoughts on this, we haven't invested in any like PR but I'm always like...

especially this time of year, know, you're like, hmm, that would be so nice to just get a little shout out food 52. yeah, we haven't invested a lot in any paid digital. The long, long, long answer is we want it to be there to try to reach where we're not gonna be able to physically be present.

Dan Cassidy (32:44)
Nice, nice. So, yep, so thanks for sharing all that. Makes complete sense. I think for PR, PR can be incredible. really, PR has kind of evolved over the past, let's say decade, right? Where it used to be just getting a media mention, but now media mentions can help with SEO, but now what's more important than SEO is AIO and geo. Like, can the robots understand that food and wine...

Cassie Maschhoff (33:03)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (33:08)
referenced Lottie's meats, which means that you're gonna be more likely to show up in conversational queries. Anything from media mentions, but then also platforms like Reddit can also be super helpful. So PR, think, know, PR can be incredible for any brand. The question is like, how do you get media mentions in a way that isn't stupid expensive?

Cassie Maschhoff (33:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (33:33)
and I think that's the challenge for some brands, but there are ways that you can make that more efficient. So we can talk about that afterwards. There's a couple people that I can connect you with for that. But yeah, that's a big challenge for lots of brands is how do you get these media mentions? But one idea that could work that I know brands have done and we've done for certain brands is like you can use Influencer.

Cassie Maschhoff (33:39)
Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, yeah.

Dan Cassidy (33:56)
as a first step to get the PR. So we had one of our brands on the Today Show months ago without even trying to do that. It was through seeding product to different influencers, having them talk about the product in a certain way. And then through that channel, there was somebody who was doing a...

Cassie Maschhoff (33:58)
Yeah.

Amazing. Wow.

Dan Cassidy (34:19)
outfit on today's show and she was connected with some of the influencers that we were connected to and seeding product to. if know if PR I think is like it's a part of marketing and if you're doing the right seeding you're saying the right message and also just sending product to the right people could be a good to do that. You you find the top 25 media companies that you want to be placed in and connect with either editors or people who have done reviews on products that are in the same

Cassie Maschhoff (34:26)
Wow.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (34:48)
category not necessarily the food category, but the quality and seed product to them. Something good might happen there, especially a handwritten note about founder story, maybe even video that you're sharing QA with a specific video with you and your sister talking about it. That can be kind of interesting.

Cassie Maschhoff (34:53)
Mm-hmm.

Totally. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, definitely. We have started gifting creators and influencers that we admire going back to our strategy of how can we partner with...

brands, partners, people that really can contextualize our product in a way that we aspire to and that has worked really nice only because it's already so expensive to get the product out into them that it's hard to then also budget for like, okay, and we're going to be able to hit your X hundred thousand dollar spend. But I think to your point of when you can kind of be selective and we I think are fortunate to have a really, really lovely tasting

fun to cook with product that oftentimes we have turned those creators into just like natural advocates that we will hear oftentimes. I normally when I'm gifted like don't have time or I won't post about this but like this was just so fun and so exceptional to cook with that I felt inclined. So that is something in 2026 we do want to try to budget more for because it just hits like a few buckets and maybe we'll be like your brand and show up on

the Today Show, if we do a good job.

Dan Cassidy (36:15)
There we go. ⁓ nice. Yeah, you know, I think

I think hardest challenge for most brands is if the if the product doesn't meet a need and the story isn't one that is likely to be shared where people will be, you know, Seth Godin talks about remarkable being something worthy of remark, right? And so if your product meet that, if it's not solving a true problem and it doesn't the story doesn't kind of

Cassie Maschhoff (36:34)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (36:41)
make it natural for people to be inclined to want to share that. That's when marketing is really tough, right? If it's trying to sell the same product that everybody else has, marketing is really hard, PR is really hard. But if you've got a product that cuts through the clutter, it solves a problem, it's different, and there's a really cool origination story, everything gets easier. And if you can communicate that to people who are already talking about food, it makes it lot more likely that they're gonna...

Cassie Maschhoff (36:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (37:07)
share the love about Lottie's Meats even without...

large spend behind it or anything like that. I think some of the best influencers out there and the best influencer partnerships are ones that are just completely organic and people have a product and they're like, I love this thing. How can we work together? yeah, I think there's a big opportunity for what you're doing with that. So, okay, awesome. Well, let's move on to the speed round. So each answer about a minute or less or so.

Cassie Maschhoff (37:20)
Yeah.

Totally.

Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (37:36)
Cassie, you ready? Feeling good. Good stuff, let's get to it. All right, so what is one of your most recommended books?

Cassie Maschhoff (37:39)
Yeah, feeling great.

You know, I just read, I think it's called Still Bobby. It's Bobby Brown's memoir. It just came out I think a few months ago and I really I've been like...

thinking about it often and just recommended it actually to my sister because it's her whole journey of a lot of nos, obviously building a brand while being a young woman and then a young mom. And then now, if you know her story, in her 60s she had a non-compete with Bobby Brown. She launched Jones Road. And so it's talking about launching her, this business, you know, at this stage of her life. And I loved it. I would recommend it to anybody who's

you building whether you're in a corporate track or your own track it's just like talks you learn a lot about resilience so i would say that it's now becoming my most recommended book as of right now

Dan Cassidy (38:34)
nice. What

is an under the radar product or brand you've used and like but most people don't know about?

Cassie Maschhoff (38:39)
Mmm. Well, it was just small business Saturday. So I was thinking a lot about like some of the brands that I bought and supported I bought and gifted To quite a few brands this brand called shuka sauce. Have you heard about it there? It's a new woman owned brand out of LA. I just met them at an event Maybe like a month or so ago, but I loved it It's like a shishuka starter and it has like a nice tomato base with some like garlic and cumin So it's obviously amazing in Shishuka, but you can also use it in like pastas

and it was just like lovely. gifted it to like five people this past weekend. Yeah, it's really fun. Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (39:15)
That's amazing, I didn't know what shishuka was and then some friends came to visit and they cooked

it for us and it was ridiculous and then I was like, is real and has shishuka? And I was like, how have I not known about this my whole life?

Cassie Maschhoff (39:25)
You'll

have to check them out. It's like it's so again. I think it's brilliant in that it's already expertly seasoned So you just add like an egg or you just have like a very elevated meal in Seconds and that's like one thing I love about our product I am NOT a cook I should say at all But I love the ability to like okay We could just make some Calabrian meatballs with the pasta noodle and a sauce and all of a sudden I have like a very elevated Spin on a classic dinner and so that's why I love

that product.

Dan Cassidy (39:57)
great recommendation.

What is one thing in life you do better than most people, just naturally, and how do you do it?

Cassie Maschhoff (40:01)
Hmm.

my gosh, I don't do anything better than anybody. Maybe delusion. Because like, I think I do... I don't know. I think you probably hear this a lot and you know this. You have to have a lot of stamina and grit to do...

small business, CPG life, I think. And over the last year and half when I've been doing like hundreds of grocery store demos and like a cold.

meet department on like a beautiful sunny Saturday and I'm like laughing, crying. I have kept doing it because I will often be approached by other customers, you know, that are like, I had a business for 40 years and they're like, you just need to keep going. Or like when you're about to quit, you just always hear you have somebody like coming and like cheering you on or like falling in love with the product and it helps you keep on keeping on. So I think having maybe a hopeful

borderline healthy if it's such a thing level of delusion is maybe one thing I do better.

Dan Cassidy (41:04)
Love it, I think that's a key ingredient for anybody who's gonna be successful, especially in CPG or EPUB. So tell me about your favorite shopping experience online or offline.

Cassie Maschhoff (41:09)
Yeah.

Mmm. I also just gifted and bought One Trick Pony, the peanut butter brand. Do know them?

Well Lucy the Chander and I have become friends because she has just been really helpful as we were starting our journey and they have like very nice like

build bundle super easy, like click, can tell they're using all of the Shopify apps and just like build out in a way that is really, really simple, but was like so nice and easy, like a lot of variety, but like very simple. So her like online, in fact, I would text her and I was like, how do I do this? But it was really nice.

Dan Cassidy (41:51)
Awesome. Who is a brand founder we should have on a future episode?

Cassie Maschhoff (41:54)
Well, honestly, maybe her. They have been like growing out her name's Lucy from One Trick Pony. But I also just connected and I've been chatting a lot with...

A woman named Susanna from Jenny's house, they're a focaccia bread mix. They just launched in their first retailers in SoCal and do some DTC brands. So I would say either of those like female founded brands because they're both a shelf stable brand. Jenny's house, the focaccia brand does some like mixed stuff, but also some frozen stuff. So a lot of interesting dynamics and both at different stages in their journey. One appears in one new. So I

of them.

Dan Cassidy (42:33)
So we're gonna go a little bit off the grid, because you've mentioned like seven different amazing food brands, it sounds like. So what's in your cupboards? What are you usually eating? What's a typical dinner?

Cassie Maschhoff (42:37)
You

my gosh, I am such a... I think that's one of the best things about CPG is like you find so many friends. It's the most like collaborative industry I've ever been a part of. Granted, I only grew up in agriculture, tech, and now CPG slash meat.

if you want to however you wanted to find it. But I love the community and fellow founders and CPG is one of those things I think that helps you keep going. So a few things that I have been drinking a lot besides scribe wine is I love we love Huxley the energy drink. It's like a natural energy drink. It's like 70 grams of 70 milligrams of caffeine. Also started by a former Culinary Institute of America graduate Simon. So Huxley is like loaded nonstop in our

fridge. I also love and obsessed with Real Z, the date, peanut butter filled and almond butter dates. I don't know them, but I have a crush on them and I would love to know them. No, but their dates are so nice. and then the other one that we're always buying and gifting. Also, former chef started. Maybe this is the key, Dan. C &Chilis. It's a hot sauce brand. Also, Latina and woman owned and the best hot sauces.

ever. Always talked.

Dan Cassidy (43:57)
think we found a key is that every food brand needs to be started by former chef and then ⁓ everybody's pantry.

Cassie Maschhoff (44:00)
Yeah. Maybe or

like those are ones that you know you could trust because there's something about a chef that they wouldn't let something go out, you know, if it wasn't good. So you can trust.

Dan Cassidy (44:14)
Yep.

Nice. Where can people connect with you to learn more?

Cassie Maschhoff (44:19)
well they can follow us on Instagram at LottiesMeats or on our website at LottiesMeats.com and if you reach out to info at LottiesMeats.com you'll find us.

Dan Cassidy (44:31)
Awesome. Cassie, thank you so much for bringing Lottie's Meats to Market, a brand that's redefining what pork can be through quality, flavor, and family roots, and sharing your expertise and insights with our audience on the Shopify happy hour.

Cassie Maschhoff (44:44)
Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun. We appreciate it.