Cassie Maschoff - She Quit Google to Sell Pork Sausages With Her Sister

On this episode, we're joined by Cassie Maschhoff, Co-Founder of Lottie's Meats - the sister-owned, chef-crafted premium pork sausage brand. 

Cassie left a career in tech (including time at Google) to team up with her sister Chelsea, a CIA-trained chef, to reintroduce pork the way it should be.

We dive into what it takes to build a premium meat brand from scratch, from three years of recipe experimentation to working with eleven different co-packers. Cassie walks through USDA facility requirements, the "messy middle" of co-packer hunting, and how most co-manufacturers in meat still operate on handshake deals.

Cassie breaks down why food service has been a brand-building flywheel, how customers discovered Lottie's at Denver restaurants before finding them on shelf, and the pricing mistakes she made early on.

We also get into their retail expansion playbook, from flying to NorCal to drop off samples and locking in Berkeley Bowl as an anchor account, to convincing regional distributors to come on board.

We talk about why demos have been their most effective velocity tool for a premium-priced product, the unique dynamics of marketing in the meat department, and why building relationships with the people behind the meat counter matters more than most CPG tactics.

---------------

Episode Highlights:

🐷 Sixth-generation pork farm origins and the sister co-founder dynamic
🏭 Working with eleven co-packers to find the right fit
🧪 Why clean-label sausage is an art and a science (no preservatives, no shortcuts)
🎨 Building a brand identity that breaks from typical meat aisle packaging
🍕 Food service as a brand-building flywheel (bakeries, pizzerias, breweries)
💸 The pricing mistake in food service and how they fixed it
🛒 The retail expansion playbook (Denver to NorCal to SoCal to Midwest)
📈 Berkeley Bowl as the anchor account that opened NorCal
🎯 Why demos are their most effective velocity tool
🤝 Building relationships with the people behind the meat counter
👀 Brands to watch: One Trick Pony, Painterland Sisters, Huxley, C&Chilies

---------------

Table of Contents:

00:00 – Intro
00:32 – Origin story and the Lottie's lineup
02:26 – Building a business with your sister
06:10 – R&D, formulation, and iterating on recipes
08:13 – The messy middle of co-packer hunting
11:00 – Maintaining quality across multiple co-packers
14:00 – Handshake deals and the co-packer relationship
16:18 – Brand identity and packaging design philosophy
19:02 – Tips for building a brand that resonates in meat
20:30 – Simplifying labels vs. claim overload
22:30 – Food service as a channel and brand-building tool
24:26 – Stumbling blocks in food service (pricing mistakes)
26:42 – Retail expansion from Denver to NorCal and beyond
30:10 – Velocity tactics: demos, promos, and shelf marketing
33:00 – Building relationships with meat counter staff

---------------

Links:

Lottie's Meats – https://www.lottiesmeats.com/
Follow Cassie on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassie-maschhoff-8055b058/
Follow Lottie's Meats on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/lottie-s-meats/
Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out https://www.kitprint.co/

Shout out to my friends over at Glimpse, the go-to partner for automating retail-related back-office operations and unlocking margin trapped in invalid fees and manual processes.

Are you in the market for a new flexible packaging partner? Check out HD Packaging. Third-generation, family-owned and built for the needs of category leaders like Newman’s Own and A Dozen Cousins. Faster launches, lower costs, and no artwork fees. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Shelf Help. Today we're speaking with Cassie Maschoff, co-founder and CEO of Lottie's Meats, sister-owned sausage brand that's making a lot of waves these days. Cassie and her sister Chelsea, they grew up on a, I think it was a sixth-generation family pork farm in southern Illinois. After a decade or so in the tech world, mostly at Google, Cassie teamed up with her with Chelsea, who's a, I think, a classy, classically trained chef at from the Culinary Institute of America. And they kind of wanted to go back to their roots. So yeah, really excited to get into it. Cassie, just maybe first off, just for the listeners that aren't that familiar with Lottie's, love to just get a quick lay of the land, just in terms of origin story, why behind the brand, kind of the core products in the lineup, and then maybe just a few places that people can get their hands in them. And then we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. As you said, Chelsea and I grew up on a family pork farm. We're actually sixth generation. But when we were growing up, our parents encouraged us to try our hands at other things outside of hog farming. Chelsea went into culinary. I fell into tech, but we the farther away we got, we were always like, no one else has force-fed pork their whole life. Or why are we not seeing premium pork on menus? And where is it in the grocery store? Chelsea actually started in her restaurant using pork from the family farm and network of family farms we grew up on. And she was experimenting making sausage using only the best cuts of pork. So only pork loin and pork shoulder, which is like really nice, beautiful cut, and like nice spices, you know, like real Calabrian chilies and grade A maple syrup. And the bites were just insatiable. She was doing a few pop-ups and it was getting a lot of success. And so I bullied my way in. We talked about doing something, and you know what? We're like, if anyone is going to reintroduce pork sausage or just pork in this way that people can really trust and have a clean label that I'm sure you know, Adam, is kind of having a renaissance right now. There's like this return to all natural. We were like, maybe, you know, it should be us. It's kind of a now or never. So Lottie's was created both to honor like that family legacy, but just reintroduce pork in like a chef-crafted fun way. So we have four products. Two of them are fully cooked sausage links, two of them are expertly seasoned ground pork blends. And you can find us now in about 300 accounts, mainly in Colorado. Then we have some pockets on in the Midwest in NorCal and SoCal on the West Coast.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Awesome. Nice. That's a great overview. Well, yeah, maybe just a first off, uh, there's, you know, it seemed like funny, seems to be a fair amount of polarizing views on on really both sides about building a business with families. So yeah, for from from someone that's actually done the thing, doing the thing, built a successful business with your sister, what's what's that experience been like?

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yeah. Um, it's funny thinking back to it because we'd always, when we were growing up, we had a lot of fake businesses. I'm sure as a lot of siblings do, where like, you know, you try to move into each other's rooms only to move out like two days ago. We had lemonade stands. We even had on the on the farm a bakery where Chelsea was the chef. I was like drawing our menus and things at like eight years old. And I think as real adult people talking about it, Chelsea and I were just talking about this the other day because I was like, wow, it's so tough to do business even with a sibling. I can't imagine doing it with like a marital, you know, like a spouse. And she was like, Cassie, mom and dad did that. And I was like, oh yeah, you're right. And I was like, why would anyone ever do this? Because it is the best and the worst. There are pros and cons. Obviously, every relationship is different. And we are actually one of four. So we have two other siblings that even that dynamic would be different. I think it is mostly the best, and we have gotten to the point where it's the best. It was challenging in the beginning because, as you mentioned at the top of this call, we are coming from such different industries, tech and culinary, where Chelsea is like in such a different everyday environment. You know, she's not used to like I am, like moving online digitally. But I think we both move with like the right amount of velocity and we complement each other in a way that I think this is really important, that like forms a whole. I think a lot of times people are like, you're so opposite. We're not necessarily opposite in that we're so different, but I think like our complementary strengths obviously are there where it matters. And over time, we really had to just like find out what those things are. And I think then it comes down to just like respect and communication style. Early on, we had someone give us really good advice about how do you not keep score? Like there's is no scorekeeping. And we really always try to practice and remember that. It's more about like how can we acknowledge this is what you're doing without, you know, ever keeping score. So that's been really helpful. Yeah. I'll also say it's just like, I don't know, do you have siblings?

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Older brother, yeah, four years older.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Would you ever start a business with him?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

It's a funny you say that talking about the opposite. I've never really thought about it, but we are very opposite. He's a PhD econ professor, and that is about the I think from a complimentary skill set, I think that could work.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yeah, yeah. It's it's fun though, because you have, yeah, these different strengths and different styles, but at the end of the day, you're such good friends. And so, like, who do you want to do business with when like the lows are low because it's really gonna be low, but then the highs are so fun, you know, together because you're doing it with somebody that like you've just been through it all with and like get to understand and respect. I would say the other thing with siblings or just a close friend or a partner. If you see so much of this in CPG, is you just can't take things personally. And yeah, even this week, now that we're almost two years into this little baby business, we're still finding ourselves being like, okay, sorry, I just need to say this direct. Like this is like this is just what it is. But that's like a weird communication style because on the opposite side, it's really nice that you can be direct because you can just get things done faster than you know, like a more corporate setting where it's like, yeah. Hi, how are you? How am I this find you? Blah, blah, blah. So it's you can't take it personally. It took a long time to get here. You have to put in the work. And I think then it is like the best thing ever.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

We're winding back to kind of some of those early days of RD formulation, granted. I think this is probably more Chelsea's like realm, but so we can touch on it at a high level. But from what I know in red, and you mentioned you like focus on really kind of this perfect blend of premium cuts of pork loin and pork shoulder. I think kind of a network of farms that I'm sure you guys vet pretty rigorously. I imagine it just took a while to dial things in, just exactly the right blend between the pork loin and the shoulder, exactly the kind of right spices before you felt like you had the versions that actually were made the cut and you were like, Yeah, we love these. We feel like we can we want to bring these to market. Without getting into like too much detail or whatnot, I'm just kind of curious anything that comes top of mind or like key variables that you guys were playing around with between, yeah, that first version, the one you knew you felt like this was right, and how many batches it took to get there, how long it took.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Yeah. From concept, Chelsea had been experimenting with these recipes for like three years and doing it on the on the side. Like I had no idea that she was even doing that. So whenever I had first tasted it, I think maybe in 2023, maybe the summer of 2023, like a whole year before we started and decided to do something crazy and do this together. She had already been working on the recipes for a while. Fast forward to I think January 2024 was when I quit my job and we were just starting to look for Kopackers. That was like a whole other iteration, and I will say still is. So almost two years in. We launched in March of 2024. Like that's when we picked up our product from the Kopker. We are still like iterating. Such an art and a science, especially with the meat product, when you're not using preservatives and you're not using like sodium, vinegar, chlorophyll, like everything else you see on the back of the meat label. It's a lot of like iteration, I think. So we're still doing, we're still going through that.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yeah. I think that's what I hear from most CPG founders I talk to is you know, that makes me feel better. Yeah. It's like the product is never done, you know, so you're always gonna continue to iterate on it forever.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

I think I've also heard, I think maybe in another podcast or interview you had where uh you kind of talked about how you felt like you're kind of in this like awkward, messy middle to a certain extent, where like too big for the small guys, too small for the big guys, which means that that sounds like you guys are currently, at least last time I checked, working with a variety of co-packers to meet the demand. And it sounds like took quite a while to find the right partners. You felt like were a good fit. Maybe just at a high level, love to kind of get a bit of a sense of what that journey was like and what you were specifically looking for and key criteria that were on your checklist.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Yeah. Yeah. It has been a journey. We have to work with USDA inspected facilities. So that really, really narrows the list for better or for worse. You know, I know a lot of other brands. I just spoke with an emerging brand yesterday that was asking how they go about finding a copacker and like, what is the what are the key criteria? What is a negotiation process? For us, it's like a very traditional industry where we were like looking at PDFs on like a USDA gov website, but we wanted to start at least somewhere local. So that was Denver at the time because that's where Chelsea was, and we wanted to be in the facility and we wanted to make sure that we could honor some of these chef-crafted techniques that I just mentioned. Chelsea had been like practicing on a small scale on herself. And so it needed to be someone local where we could be there and that they could hopefully meet our quality bar. So many co-mans, no matter industry agnostic, are going for scale, you know, and quantity over quality. So that was really tough. The other thing I think that was really tough for us in sausage making is like most sausage is made the same way. Hence, you don't want to know how the sausage is made. It's like trimmings, knuckle, cartilage, sorry to gross anybody out, and just, you know, like mass-produced whatever's left over, maybe older cuts. And we didn't want to use like artificial maple powder, for example. So that was an argument we had. I think we've worked with maybe like 11 different copackers often was like being told you have to use artificial maple powder when we're like, we want to use grade A maple syrup, but maybe a co-man doesn't want to like use wet ingredients in their lines. Like there was so much ingredient, I think, friction. But then that helped with the criteria of like, okay, they have to be committed to these ingredient quality standards, these techniques and local. But again, we didn't really have a big list. So then I also was telling this brand this yesterday. It does come down to some convincing in Razzle Dazzle because when you are in the messy middle, nobody wants to work with you. There's no incentive, but they have to really love the product and see the potential, and you have to sell that as you know you always do when you're a founder. So I think that's really important to remember. It's the business models just don't necessarily align and you have to try to give something and get them on board.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

You guys have such a high bar from a quality standpoint. And assuming I understand correctly that you, because of the state that's in your working with uh more than one co-packer, how do you I guess help ensure that they're really maintaining quality across like quality and consistency across those co-packers, regardless of where the sausage is coming from, regardless of the facility it's coming from when they hit the shelf, it's always going to be that consistent experience for consumers.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, it's really difficult. And I think one thing we're learning even recently in the last few months, because I feel like it wasn't until end of maybe the back half of 2025 that we really started growing in real retail. I say real in that, like multi-door chain, you know, 20-door chains that even on shelf with merchandising and eat counting on each associate to like date stamp effectively and thaw effectively is like a whole other game. But even out the gate, we really try to build those relationships with each command, try to be on site as much as possible. Chelsea has some travel this month going to them, you know, doing QA checklists, trying to even put like instructions in the box and just iterating. But it's it's difficult. We have to we'll always have to work with multiple because we have to work with one for cooked products and one for raw. So there's like some nuances there. But yeah, we try to control what we can control and remind ourselves of that. It's tricky. I don't know. What do you hear from other brands that they do?

SPEAKER_00 12:27

I'm also like I feel like well, I guess everything is is hard. I feel like, you know, when it's more, I guess more manufactured-ish type products, like it's a a snap product or something. Yeah, that's a bit more manufactured. I feel like it's there's a bit more of like a formulaic recipe where I feel like it's probably somewhat easier to make consistency versus a product where you're actually using. I I know it feels like making sausages. There's just a lot more variability that can happen. And so I feel like it's probably harder for you guys than than most.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

It is. And there have been times, like the first time I first and only time, knock on wood. I've cried from some batches we got back after like working for nine months to get our first big retail order, and the product was like not there. This is when complimentary comes back, and this is why it would be good if you and your PhD brothers start a business together because Chelsea is always, I always say, and it's so true, and such a compliment to her. She's like the angel on my shoulder, and I'm like the devil, you know, because I'm like, oh, it's fine. We can still sell it. And she's like, this isn't it. And I'm like, what? But it would be like really oversalted, or like the oven, you know, is baking like 10,000 pounds, and maybe there was like a few pieces that didn't get fully cooked on our two fully cooked products. And there's, yeah, there's just so much, like dozens and dozens of things that could happen. And that really sucks because you lose like the cost of raw materials. And I don't know if you hear this with a lot of brands you talk to. In our industry, a lot of co-manufacturers don't want to sign contracts. It's kind of like it's legacy, it's kind of like handshake, it's we're small enough, it's in and out. And so sometimes I'm like, we're doing everything we can and almost like micromanaging to like check all these things here. Like, we just don't, we cannot afford to mess up this batch. But sometimes they're like, Yeah, yeah, we got this. We know how to do our jobs. So I don't know how brands handle that. I'm like, don't have the personality type to be chill about it.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Assuming the the goal is to eventually get eventually move to one larger co-pack or partner that you can work with and hopefully eliminate some of those potential consistency challenges or whatnot, assuming that is the goal, like at what stage of the business or volume or or whatnot, do you feel like you're you're gonna be able to make that transition if that is the goal?

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Yeah, I think we're getting there with one of our partners, I would say, and doing we're about to do like our largest production run ever, which is great. And so that's hard because it's hard to, it's hard to manage multiple partners and it's hard to gain efficiencies. But for again, for our product, we're not a beverage brand where we can just like produce so much and let it sit in a warehouse for year. Like we want it to be fresh and we want to like consistently been iterating. So I would say it is a goal to an extent, but we'll probably always have two because most of them that we found, yeah, don't like to do cooked and raw. It's like so separate. Maybe I guess food safety reasons. I don't know. That's another Chelsea thing that I've just like out of my brain, out of sight. I can't put anything else in there.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

And just to clarify, caste sausages, those are the ones that are cooked, and then you got round sausages and those are raw.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

So that's like, yeah, so for the raw production, we are sourcing from our network of family farms, like the one we grew up on. We only work with a handful that meet certain criteria. And um we will then it will go to a processor. We will buy a hundred percent pork shoulder for the ground raw product. Then that is sent to a command with our proprietary like spices, recipes, then they will take finely ground, add that in, but it's all raw based. So like they won't, you know, they kind of keep it like that versus the links will get cuts, but then they have like smokers and ways to sous-vide, and there's all this other intricate equipment. So yeah, different capabilities and processes.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

From a brand identity and packaging design standpoint, you guys definitely have a pretty distinct look compared to other other brands in the market, which I think is great. You really stand out. I think I've seen you describe it as like an old school diner and gas station vibe with a bit more of a modern spin, if I got that right. Um, some of the key things that were top of mind for you guys when you were kind of building up the brand identity, positioning, and voice.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Yeah. It's fun to I love this question because it is fun to think back on it. Cause this is one of the first things we did when I was still working in my corporate job, not having any intention to leave it and start a sausage brand. I'm not crazy, but I guess I am. I, you know, Chelsea was thinking about she really wanted to take a break from executive chef life, also talk about a grind, no pun intended. Those are chefs are like incredible humans that you just have to have the stamina for, I don't even know. And so she, you know, as she were making these sausages, it was going to maybe be a pop-up concept, or we didn't know. So I was just helping her on the side, like build out the brand, because I was working in tech and marketing. And so we didn't work with any formal CPG designers. We were kind of just really trying to do what we knew about brand identity and positioning, but also just like what was so true to us, or like even Chelsea not being incorporated, having no idea how some of these things work and go. And so the brand is really rooted in the name Lottie, which is a family name. We wanted it to be nostalgic, but like not too overly heritage or masculine, like I think a lot of meat brands are. Like it should be familiar and accessible. So kind of have that vintage-y feel, but it is more, I think, modern and a little bit feminine. We also like, I don't know if you can tell by the way, I'm just rambling in this interview. We don't take ourselves too seriously. So, and we want the experience with Lottie's to be really playful. Like a lot of sausage, in my opinion, or before I start before we started Lottie's, or I even had it, like I think I thought of sausage as like a chicken sausage or something that's like very functional. But Lottie's is so fun because it's become like such a community experience. Like people are cooking it for an event, or you're making like a gorgeous pasta that was so easy with like our Calabrian sausage, or it's an elevated, you know, breakfast burrito that like is so memorable and not just like food for function, like a lot of sausage is. And so so much of that I think is is transparent or is translated, I should say, into the brand that it's like kind of simple but accessible and familiar and just like a fun spin-on classics, which is like what our products are too.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

They're just like elevated spin on a lot of like old school classics. I love that. If I came to you next week and said, hey, I was inspired by you, I'm gonna launch up some sort of premium mead brand. What are two or three things that would come top of mind, like tips you'd give me in terms of how to go about kind of building a brand that resonates?

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Oh my gosh. I would say don't start a meat brand. It's really hard. Choose any other category. I don't know. You know, I you're I feel like we're not that good a brand and probably could be, but it's just like everything in CPG. I don't know if you feel like this. There's just so much noise, and you're just always comparing yourself to everybody and you see what everyone is doing. You're like, wow, should I be doing all of these things and working with this agency? And am I talking about the right things? And is this message getting translated? It's just like so ecosystem overload that I'm always like, shoot, we're doing a bad job. But then sometimes I'm like, you know what? You just kind of have to like inch by inch and try to focus on like the attributes that matter and focus. So for us, like it's it's hard to market and brand meat. Like, be honest, raw meat, it like looks like cat food, you know? So maybe we should just put, I would recommend having a brand that says not cat food. Put that on your on your packaging. But you know, it it's it's one thing to stand out on shelf. And I think over time, we've slightly iterated and tried to optimize after like hearing from customers standing in hundreds of grocery stores of what is really, really important. We we added like a hundred percent pork shoulder and we added like pork loining and pork shoulder on our label on the front and the back. And we're even optimizing it again now of like more ways to use it or like sister-owned, traceable from family farms. So, like we're always trying to iterate that. So, I guess tips would be just get it out there and start. It's never going to be perfect. But then you can always finesse and focus in on those main attributes. I think, like in the meat category, especially when we were looking at doing a competitive analysis of everything, and I'm sure you'll start to see this and it will haunt you. Like it haunts me, and I'm sorry about that. But like when you look at a lot of meat labels, it's just like stamp, sign, overload, like so many things, like every single claim that you could ever imagine, all these things. And so we also really just tried to like take a different approach of like what is what is this full of, not like not all these anti-no no no no no things and just make it simple. This is what it is, this much protein. These are the top three flavors, which are also the only ingredients. Like, hopefully that is enough.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

No, that's helpful. I feel I feel like you exactly what you're talking about. I feel like one of the hardest things about like building a brand, designing a brand is like uh key is like what what is the most important information that you want to convey to your point. You can't just show up and throw up and just like just kind of throw every claim out there in the world because then it's just they're all gonna get buried and nothing is gonna be important. Um I feel like that's one of the hardest things is really like honing in from a hierarchy standpoint. What are the most important things you want to we want to share? What do we want to focus on most?

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Yeah, in the hierarchy is so key. Like I think the very first time going back to coming from tech and us just doing this, we designed our labels on a Desktop and it was like so text heavy, we were not thinking about Shelch at all. And then when we actually saw our product on Shelf, because we didn't really have a super, we thought we would start with food service and direct consumer and then go retail. But once we started getting on shelf, like retail just started spinning and because we were local, people knew us, they started taking, and then we're like, wow, we actually need to really focus on hierarchy and like pull out these top attributes because that's what matters.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Totally. Totally.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

On the topic of uh food service, what have you found are the pros and cons of the food service channel compared to traditional retail? And why do you why did you guys kind of decide to really focus here for quite a while?

SPEAKER_01 23:08

We love the food service channel and the pros, especially if I think you are a brand like we are trying to be that's really rooted in culinary chef crafted, ideally for consumers that are aspiring chefs or really care about quality and love to cook and enjoy. It gives just natural brand contextualization at no extra cost, you know. Like we, when I mentioned earlier when we started, we were in a few local independent retailers in Denver, Colorado, and we did one farmer's market that summer of 2024. And we heard countless times, oh, we found you at Get Right's Bakery, or like we saw you on Outside Pizza Menu. We love that place. Now we've been able to pick it up at the store. So it's amazing in that regard. I think the cons are it's tough to manage in scale because as I mentioned earlier, chefs are incredibly busy. They're getting hit up with reps, food service reps all the time. They need to focus on their margin compressed, you know. It's so much easier to order from this catalog than it is to work with this small brand, you know, at a premium. So it's just there's that inevitable friction. And so I think it's it's really hard to get in and scale. Yeah. But if you can, and if your product works, we love it. It's it's just so fun. And you don't have to do all the retail stuff, which we don't love. We don't love that for anyone listening. We obviously love our retail partners.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

I know what you're talking about. It's I've definitely heard that from multiple people that food service can kind of be a kind of like a brand building flywheel, exactly what you said. That's awesome. And then they'll see on the retail and they'll really recognize it, or the other way around too. So it feels like it they can be pretty complimentary.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

How can brands get tripped up in the food service channel? Like what kind of stumbling blocks have you guys come across along the way?

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Yeah. You know, one mistake I made is when we launched, we didn't price like effectively for volume in food service. I was like kind of thinking about pricing everything the same per pound across retail and food service. And we have since changed our pricing and optimized, and we've seen a lot of growth from that. But I don't know, I just had no idea. You know, you're thinking about like your gross margin and cogs and like what makes the most sense. And it's hard to know how much you actually scale with volume and what is palatable food service, the food service channel, because in that channel, it's not like retail in that this it goes on shelf, you work with a distributor, this is it, this is like your promo plan, blah, blah, blah. We have customers that are delis and bakeries and pizzerias and huge breweries, and they all have different volumes and different needs and schedules and work with different distributors. So it's really tough, I think, to figure out like the pricing in the delivery channel. So that can definitely be one thing. But brands could focus on, you know, depending on your brand. Like, oh, I'm only gonna start with these coffee shops or I'm only gonna start with gyms and like be a little bit more focused than we were. Um, and I think like just making sure that they have like the right packaging and sizing. Like for us, you need to go in with like what is your value add? As I mentioned, you have everything working against you because GMs, decision makers are busy. Do you have this in the right size? Is it saving time? Is this elevating your menu and your offering? You know, I think our food system, especially with restaurants, like if what are customers' willingness to pay when they're going in here and why is it worth not using like a Cisco commodity or what everybody else is using? It's you just have to like really prove out that value. So I again, I think the sale is harder than retail.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

That makes sense. On the topic of of retail, see Mike, you've once you started putting a focus on retailing, you you mentioned you're in NORCAL, I think you're in the Midwest and Chicago, SoCal. Tell me just a bit about a bit about that journey of getting those first few buyer meetings, getting those commitments and kind of leading up to those first launches.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Yeah. We started, like I said, in Denver, Colorado, and it was kind of the classic story of dropping off samples, figuring out what a sell sheet is, you know, trying to get into those first few doors and be focused. I remember our first store and one of our best stores still is called Leaver's Look Award. Did you ever go there when you lived in Denver? It's kind of like you mentioned, like a it's kind of like a Marzix that you described earlier.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

But it's a little bigger though, right? And it's like um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Like I would move in there if they would let me and like live there. Maybe that's where y'all live. But it's really nice. But we, I think we're like trying to demo there like every week when we first started. But we got like really nice velocity numbers. We learned so much. Like we, it was just like our place in our home. They also had $2 beer happy hour on Thursday. So we always demo during that time. But it really, you know, it's that story of try to be disciplined and focused and get some of these initial really, really strong accounts so that you can have this data story. And we spent most of 2024. So we launched, like I said, in March of 2024 doing hyperlocal retail, convincing our first distributor. I think that was in May or June of 2024. So it was pretty quick and we were scared to do it. We were going direct at first, but we tried to model out, do the math to do it because it would open us from 12 doors to now we were in like 50 or 60 throughout Colorado, including this distributor did both food service and retail. So that come 2025, we felt good enough to we like knew enough about distribution, like what it was like to work with one mini regional distributor, and enough about retail jargon to go to our next region. Because also, as we were discussing or mentioned briefly earlier, there's not a ton of independent retail chains in Colorado. We wanted, we always want to stick kind of premium independent regional just because of like the nature of our product and our supply chain. In 2024, it was not, we were still on that Copacker hunt. We were still like doing runs, like we just weren't ready to go into like a 200-door store, let's say. But um, we just we did want to keep, we know we needed to keep growing. And so we chose NorCal as our second region because Chelsea went to culinary school in NorCal. That customer really aligned with who we were targeting, like a modern eater who really cares about the story, the quality chefs. And there's a lot of really nice accounts out there. And so we had, I think, met, we did our first trade show also in our first year of business, and we met the buyer of Berkeley Bowl there, and they were willing to go direct with us to their two stores. That account really, really took off. And what I did that was kind of crazy in hindsight, but it worked is I was flying out there a few times to just drop off samples, get a few other accounts like interested, or giving us a verbal, and then harassing a distributor and forcing them and asking them to work with us, which now they do. We work with the regional distributor, actually too in NORCAL. But um, I was also telling this emerging brand this the other day. It's like it's kind of chicken in the egg, and you just have to have the grit and bring the value again to that distributor. So then we're like, hey, look, we have these 20 accounts. Can we start shipping pallets to you? And now that is like one of our best regions. We're in like maybe 130 doors there. That's great. So then, yeah, kind of rinse and repeat for SoCal in our like St. Louis Midwest region, but we're trying to like continue in that model.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Makes sense. Anything that jumps out in terms of tools and tactics that you've had found that have had the biggest impact from a velocity standpoint, those could be yeah, like, you know, demos or like well-structured promos or like, you know, shelf talkers, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Anything that yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

And I'd be so curious what you hear, because I feel like we're still testing and learning. We haven't even that all happened. I think we started launching with that distributor in like March, April of 2025. So almost a year, but you know, like picking up those accounts along the way. So what we found that really, really works for us is demos. I know that's so polarizing for a lot of brands, but also our brand, our product is a higher price point and it's tastes so different than most sausage. So driving that trial is really important. And most of the time when people try it, they convert. Knock on wood. It's a really effective tool for us. Whereas I've talked to a lot of brands who are like, oh, I hate demos. I would never do demos, it's not worth it, blah, blah, blah. So, of course, everything is different, but that's been effective for us. We are still very much trying to learn like the best promo strategy because we often get a lot of advice like you need to do this or you need to do these coupons, or you need to put something on meat in your products. But I think meat is also, again, its own thing. Where, like, personally, as a consumer, if I see a meat, a protein on clearance, I'm like, oh, what does that mean? Does it mean it's not good? Should I take it?

SPEAKER_00 31:56

I usually think that it's getting close to expiration.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Yeah, yeah, totally. And so that's something we're still trying to learn of like, okay, how do we, what kind of sales do we do? And should we test like buy one, get one versus this amount off for like still trying to measure and figure that out? We also like there's limitations in what you can do for like shelf talkers and actual like marketing in the meat department. We do have some like shelf strips and we try to send out and like we've tried some coupons, but not a lot of um, there's not as much opportunity, I think, in that regard.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

I think that's a great point.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

I mean, I definitely feel like demos are you know, you said they're kind of polarizing and they're they're obviously they're hard to scale, they're they're not cheap, especially as you grow and can't continue to just do them yourself. But I I don't know, I feel like they're some of the most impact you can do, especially for the year type of category where the product is so good. And once someone tries it once, that's like something that they're gonna remember. Um those are the most impactful.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

I know it's something we really need to dive in.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Sorry to interrupt, but I feel like especially the more smaller local stores like the Marzix as an example. I feel like the people that are shopping at those stores, the odds that they're gonna ask an employee at the store, what do you recommend? I feel like is much higher than at a big safe place. Like the smaller ones is even more impactful.

SPEAKER_01 33:11

Yeah, and that's actually such a good point, and something that we try to do really authentically and genuinely is Chelsea and I have most of these stores like we have been to ourselves. And again, it's not scalable, but we have such a unique product and story, and we just really care about the end user experience. So that's another thing I hear from a lot of founders. Like, why are you still doing demos? And why are you going to all these places? But it's so important for us to build that relationship with the guys behind the meat counter because they are in the stores. People are coming up to them saying, Hey, I need a pound of ground pork or I want to make this. Like, what is this? Like more than any other place in the store, they're interfacing with customers. And so a promotional tactic we do that again, I think is in trueness like authentic, is we tried to give them, we sent like a lot of calendars, like Lottie's calendars. Don't worry, they were they were wholesome, they had recipes on them. But um just like to remind them of us, and we send them coupons, we send them like beanies with like Lottie's hot dogs. And every time we're there, we try to give them products and just learn from them because we truly have no idea what we're doing. We're like, how should we be updating our cases with Slack out and date coding instructions? Or what are customers asking you? And it matters, I think just it just goes so much farther, maybe, and it's a benefit, I think, honestly, for us, than center store or different buyer because it's a it's not as transactional purchase as most CPG brands.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

Yeah. Last question for you. You might be so heads down, you know, pay attention to much, but in case you do any particular brands that teach your interest lately or kind of trends you're generally following in the space that have kind of got you excited these days, could be in or in or outside of the meat space.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Yeah, I think in CPG, I I really have loved this return to all natural, clean label, like nourishing what your body needs. And I think there's so many great brands that are doing that now. It's you know, it's just like simpler foods. Like we love One Trick Pony, they're like crushing it this year. They're like a two-ingredient peanut butter, or we often are always compared or asked, like, do we know the Painterland sisters? Because they have like a beautiful, really clean label yogurt that we're obsessed with. We love um Huxley, it's like a natural energy drink. Oh, they're based out of Minnesota. Like you still have to check them out. But yeah, I think like there's so many cool new brands. Huxley's also like chef driven and CN Chili's. They all they both Simon, the founder of Huxley and Maria, the founder of C and Chili's, which is a really nice hot sauce brand. I had some this morning. They're both graduates of Culinary Institute of America. So anytime there's like a chef behind a CPG brand, you just say it's good. So yeah, I think just like clean, simple, perfected recipes has been something we're so excited about. And even as a consumer, I'm like, we'll always put my dollars there.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

Totally. I respect that.

unknown 36:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

Well, yeah, Cassie, this has been awesome. Um, what's the best place for people to follow along with you and Chelsea these days? And then what's the best place for people to follow along with the brand as well?

SPEAKER_01 36:12

Yeah. Um, the best place to follow all of us is probably on our Instagram at Lottie's Meets. We try to do a lot of embarrassing founder content that always seems to do better than when we're like, hey, here's our product, or if we're like, hey, here's some mistakes. Everyone's like, like, like, like, like they like when we fall. Yeah, Lottie's Meets is our Instagram or subscribe to our newsletter. We also try to send out monthly, like, this is everything we've learned and done like a lot of behind-the-scenes monthly happenings called new news. So you can subscribe on our website. It's Lottie'sMeats.com.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

Thanks, Cassie's and great. I think that's the pod.