Cancer Scientist to Sugar-Free Chocolate Founder | SCORE Houston Ep. 36

Dr. Beata Lerman spent nearly 20 years as a cancer research scientist with patents in cancer immunotherapy. Then a personal cancer diagnosis led her to build a sugar-free chocolate company safe for diabetics.

On this episode of the SCORE Houston Podcast, host PV Bala talks with Dr. Lerman about leaving biomedical research for small-business manufacturing, the science behind sugar-free chocolate, and how SCORE mentors Jim Davis and Jim Nordhaus helped her grow from a 200-square-foot kitchen into a full manufacturing facility and retail café. Her company, Sinless Treats (now rebranding as D'Ora Fine Chocolate), is a Houston-based maker of sugar-free, chemical-free chocolate designed to support blood sugar management and reduce inflammation, now expanding into ingredient supply for other consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands.

What we cover:

• Leaving cancer immunotherapy research to found a food manufacturing company
• The science of sugar, insulin resistance, and metabolic health
• Developing the product and scaling a chocolate manufacturing operation
• Startup capital, the breakeven timeline, and self-funded growth
• Marketing lessons for small-business owners: SEO, GEO, and avoiding costly agency mistakes
• How SCORE Houston mentorship supported her path to SBA's Houston District Small Business Manufacturer of the Year

0:00 Intro 1:01 Guest introduction 2:13 Beata's science background 3:40 Leaving research to start Sinless Treats 5:30 The sugar debate 7:41 Cancer diagnosis & the science of sugar 9:33 Learning to make healthy chocolate 11:01 Product testing & feedback 13:54 Early days in a tiny kitchen 17:07 Scaling up & compliance 19:05 Startup costs & financing 20:26 Breaking even & revenue growth 23:18 Quality control 23:38 Marketing lessons 27:19 Retail cafe launch 28:30 Vision & rebrand to D'Ora 30:08 Closing thoughts 30:27 Outro

 🔗 D'Ora Fine Chocolate: https://sinlesstreatschocolate.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoo-3Yz_BoAs-jE5PDFLiFSlERzLQB0dshlAAPeb7p7cOnaWKI6k

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, and welcome to Small Business Success Stories at ScoreHoot. This is where we bring insights, experiences, and the journey of successful small business entrepreneurs. SCORE Mentors volunteer their time to guide small businesses. SCORE is America's largest network of volunteer business mentors supported by the U.S. Small Business Administration. Here in Houston, we provide free confidential mentoring and education to help entrepreneurs start, grow, and succeed. Now let's dive into today's small business success story.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Listeners, if you're finding value in this conversation, please take a moment to subscribe on YouTube and follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It is completely free and takes just one tap. Your subscription helps us bring you new episodes every week with practical insights for Houston's small business community. Welcome to Score Houston Podcast. I'm your host, P.B. Bala. Our guest today has a remarkable story. Dr. Beata Lehmann spent nearly 20 years as a cancer scientist. She even holds patents in cancer immunotherapy. Then a personal cancer diagnosis changed everything. In 2020, she left the lab to start something new. It's sugar-free chocolate that actually tastes good and is safe for people with diabetes. She started in a tiny 200 square foot kitchen. With help from her school Houston mentors, Jim Davis and Jim Nodles, she built it in full manufacturing operation with a cafe. And this year, SBA named her Houston District Small Business Manufacturer of the Year. Beatra, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Beata, before any of these chocolates started, you are a scientist. Take us back. What were you actually doing in those days?

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Well, so life science, this is my background. So I started in gene therapy and biochemistry, and then further I did my PhD in immunology and cancer research. And after that, for a long time I worked in farmline biotech, where I was when COMID started. So we all know it was a very stressful time, and it was even more stressful for people in medical sciences at the time. And with the encouragement from my family, I decided to leave biomedical research and open my own company, which was Cindle Streets. The reason I started it is because during COVID we knew that people with chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease and Alzheimer's dementia had the worse outcome to infectious disease than people who didn't have it. And my personal and professional mission has always been to improve health. So I wanted to create something that would affect the population on a general level. And for me, creating metabolically healthy foods was something that was a logical outcome of my decades of experience in biomedical research.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Very true. There are several books written on correlation between food habits and cancer. Of course, there are some who still believe sugar is not proven to cause cancer. All the same, how come you happen to start on this product sugarless chocolate?

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Well, Sinless Treats is becoming Diora fine chocolate. So different name, same, excellent, trusted taste and health benefits. About proven or not proven, there is a lot of information out there. And you can find on the internet anything, it information to support any point of view. However, you have to ask yourself one question. If it's not proven, why have haven't people got healthier? Right? So I'm pretty sure that if we look at the pictures back from like 1970s, 1980s, like the quantity, the number of diseases that are everywhere now, and younger people are getting it, were almost not seen by physicians. Back in those times, the main killers of people were infectious diseases or you know, freak accidents. Right now, people are dying en masse after suffering for a really long time and taking tons of medication. That's not by accident. And also a little bit of my personal journey. In 2018, I was diagnosed with cutaneous T cell lymphoma, and I was treated by an immunotherapy. And as a biochemist myself and an immunologist, I knew that cancer is a disease that can only get energy by fermenting sugar. There is no other way cancer gets energy to grow and spread. So my goal was to limit sugar, but and I did that successfully. But after a couple of years of living like that, I was really missing chocolate because I love chocolate. Chocolate is a big part of my life. And the question that I asked as a scientist was like, well, why can't I take somebody else's chocolate that's unsweetened and sweeten it with something that wouldn't destroy my health? And that experiment has failed miserably. So, but it encouraged me to go and search how chocolate is really made. And we went way back, way back to the source, to how cacao is growing and what's being put on the cacao, and how does that affect everything? And as a result, we were able to create something that had no chemicals, no artificial ingredients, no sugar, something that provably, and we highly encourage anybody who eat our chocolate to check their blood sugar levels, check their inflammation levels, but provably reduce sugar in blood very gently, reduces the inflammation. And those things, you know, insulin resistance, inflammation, those are main drivers behind something that body starts compensating for, creating more symptoms and more problems. So in my observable reality, and the data shows me that no sugar, large amounts of sugar is still bad.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

Very true. But where you got the recipe for this chocolate? Your own research, or there was some research available for this?

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Yes, actually, my own. So I never went to culinary school, I never went to a chocolatier school. Still, to this day, our company is four years old now. I haven't taken a single course in chocolate making. But what I can be very proud of is I want it to be true to origin. So the way I learned to make chocolate is I traveled to the descendants of those Asian tribes like Olmex and Quechua and Aztecs. And people who live in very remote villages, they live in synchrony with nature, they farm inside of the rainforest. And I learned from them. And in places like that, there isn't much of refined sugar. They use natural plants to sweeten and add certain flavors, they just basically dry it on the sun and then they grind it on the granite little pestle and the stone. And that's how I learned. And when I brought those knowledge back and I needed to scale that, I came up with an SLP, a protocol of how we can make chocolate taste very smooth and very creamy and not be in a render stringent in order to give maximum quality of experience to people who is looking for it.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

Tell me briefly, how when you developed the first recipe, and what was the product testing like? That means you had to give it to the some customers, have their feedback, rework on the recipe. So, how that process happened for you? Because it's a product development phase.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Well, that's a great story. Actually, none of that. It kind of happened serendipitously because I never wanted to have a company before I was encouraged to start one. So I was making chocolate in my own kitchen. It was not commercial, I was not selling it, but uh mold that I had had about 24 pieces, and it was more chocolate than I could eat because I was making all of these different flavors, and I was like, I want lychee chocolate and I want cold white chocolate and I want cardamom chocolate and I don't want them to have chemicals. And so I was making more than I could eat and my family could eat. So I started gifting it to my neighbors, to my friends, bringing it to the parties. And feedback came unexpectedly. People started calling me and they said, Well, you know, that chocolate, I ate it and I'm diabetic, and usually I feel like a tingling sensation, or I feel my head speaming vertical. Um, I have brain fog, and I ate the whole box of your chocolate, and I felt none of that. And of course, I intended my chocolate to be sugar-free. I just didn't know exactly how sugar-free it was. But when I got about a dozen of those feedbacks, I decided to send it to the lab, to Oregon, uh food nutrition lab, to have it tested. And what we found was truly remarkable because a lot of my chocolates had under one gram of total net carbs per piece, which was about 14 grams. Normally, in a chocolate candy, that would be 14 grams, eight or eight to ten grams would be sugar. And so people were not getting those sugar-related symptoms. They were feeling better, but they were enjoying. So I'm I would never forget one of the very first customers I had who was diabetic, and battery chocolate was very skeptical. That is very normal for us, people being very skeptical until they try it and they look at their devices. She called me and she was crying because she was like, I haven't had chocolate in 14 years, and you gave me that opportunity to enjoy it back.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

You certainly hit on a magic formula to make a successful product. Many of the legendary founders that I read believe that once you have a great product, the rest of the business is pretty simple.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

So, my my my philosophy is if God made it, if nature made it, don't mess with it. So, what we do is we take whole plants, like if we use stevia, we use the entire plant. We have farmers that grow it for us, they cut it down at the ground level, we wash it with freeze-dry, but we use the whole plant, whether it's stevia, chicory, the root of agave. So it has a lot of fiber, but the all of the sweetness, all of the molecule comes as the whole thing. So it's better to eat the fruit than to drink a fruit juice because fruit has the fiber that doesn't let all of that sugar hit you all at once. So nature never makes poison without giving it in the context of remedy. It's only when people start doing the ultra-processing, they are after a certain thing and they isolate it or they synthesize it chemically and purify it, but it doesn't have the theme of those other things that are in the plant, then something starts being weird.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

No, let's come to the business part of it. You started in 2020 in a little kitchen. So, what were those initial months of business looking like?

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Oh wow, it's it was exhilarating. It was also very exhausting because it was literally six feet by four feet little commercial cloud kitchen space. And I was already wanting to have some machines, and I wasn't able to have anything yet, so it looked like my table, my four-foot table with the marble slum and a microwave. That's all I started with. So I would get my chocolate in the Mellinger, so stone grind it, and then I would sample it by hand and make everything on that marble slum completely by hand. So it was taking a lot of time, but also I wasn't as well known. So as we were growing customers and getting awareness, we were realizing that we can't stay there for too long because scaling is coming too fast. So we found a nice little space, 1300 square foot space in Bel Air. It was a tailor shop before, so we had to completely uproot it, put new plumbing, put new electrical to be able to support all of the equipment that has to come in. We worked very closely together with the health department. The health department always reviewed all of our plans uh before we did anything, because they would be like, no, we need an extra hand washing or we need an extra set of doors. So I could go back to the architect and be like, we have to make the most compliant facility there is, the safest facility. We're still to this day never had less than 96 out of 100 score from the health department inspections.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Very good, lovely.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

But this is what happens, I feel, when a clinical scientist is running a manufacturing company, because we want to do we self-adhere to the higher standard. Like nobody makes us, but when MDA people or you know health department people come in here, they just like so happy.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Wonderful. But nothing you are caught off guard getting into a manufacturing facility.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

So so mechanically, no. However, making a product is not the only side of the business that's important. Of course, there is other side. You have to find um, you have to do marketing, you have to have a good website, you have to do sales, you have to like things when we make a new product and having new pictures and new product categories. All of that makes any small business, us including, extremely reliant on outside help. And this is where I'm endlessly grateful to Score because Score and my mentor, actually, I have two mentors. I have Jim Davis and I have Jim Northhouse. I call them my two gyms. This is where the resources that I got from Score was really invaluable because there is a lot of companies that are just not trustworthy, they don't do a good job, but they still charge you the top money. And when you're small and we're self-funded so far, maybe eventually we won't be, but right up to this point, through the proof of concept and establishing ourselves on the market, we self-funded, we had to be very strategic with the way we use our money. And we wouldn't be able to do it as effectively without score.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

I think you went to score at the right time when you after you started manufacturing, but wouldn't know how to make it into a successful business, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:02

That is correct. Yeah, and I don't, I mean, I'm very grateful for all help I get. I still think I don't know a lot about how to make a successful business, but this is why the time and score is a journey and not a destination because in love score. I look forward to making it and then coming back as a mentor, too.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

Very good. What was the final capital cost, also the working capital cost, and how you happen to fund it ultimately? Is it everything coming from your own equity or some external financing took place?

SPEAKER_00 18:47

The the cost of starting a manufacturing business is huge, especially considering that we've built out the facility for which I hold the license. So we're not we're not dependent on anybody, you know, being compliant, not being compliant, doing something wrong. Because that's it's very important. It's important for your for the way you're perceived and for your growth. So I would say it was about $280,000 to in the initial capital investment. And yes, it all came from our personal finances for me and my husband, because I worked for biotech and pharma before that. We had some savings. Yeah, that that all went to build out this business. We have made it back in sales over the years. Of course, there is ongoing cost. We have employees, we pay salaries, we pay rent because the space where we built out is not our own. But overall, we broke even our cost invested to revenue in 2024, and then we were already in green in 2025 and 2026 so far going really well.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

At the break-even level, what was your kind of uh overall sales revenue?

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Uh was around 110,000 a year.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

Okay. In recent days, SBA conducts several workshops promoting manufacturing in USA. You may be able to get some benefits for your own expansion plans.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

We always appreciate that. We would really love to know about grants and programs that would give us additional opportunities also to train other people. Like, I think what we've done here would be very relevant to confectionery and to like probably coffee shops, bake bake shops, and other chocolate businesses. So we are very willing to educate, to help people establish SOPs, establish the working protocols, emergency protocols, what happens, how do you protect against natural disasters? We survive barrel, the loss of electricity. So, so yeah, we would love to know more about governmental programs that are aiming at helping small businesses and also enabling them to share resources and knowledge with other businesses.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

Yeah, not many are getting into manufacturing. So you got into manufacturing, which is very encouraging the way the business is being promoted now. They would like to have more and more people in the US get into manufacturing. So tell For you to when you do the scaling from a kitchen operation to a larger facility on a continuous basis, maintaining quality at the level that you wanted at all points of time would have been a challenge. How do you do that?

SPEAKER_00 22:17

We have very robust quality control. In fact, we are we were so thorough about the quality control, the way that people are trained and machines are set up that we don't have really bad chocolate, like some the product that is spoiled or damaged. In fact, it's very funny. I don't know if it's scam, but occasionally I get an email is like, let us help you move your imperfect products. And I'm like, the very tiny bit of imperfect products that we have, we eat. Thank you very much. We don't need help.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

Both the gyms have helped you in getting the business going. What exactly were the steps in your marketing? How did you market your product for you to break even by in four years' time?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

So for us, we had an issue of being completely new class of product in a very damaged paradigm. So people, the public is that does not believe that something that is healthy can taste great. So we had to break through the wall of people not even being willing to sample or give it a try. And we had to be very strategic with wording, with our search engine optimization now with search, because increasing number of people who come through the door and ask them how did you find us, and they're like, Oh, we just put healthy sweets and chat GPT and you popped up. So the FEO, the GEO, all of those things, and and I do love the digital marketing series by score. But I would say if there's other entrepreneurs hearing me right now, be prepared that you will have to do the heavy lifting because there is no matter how much money you'll be willing to pay until you pay in like tens of thousands, you will be a very small fish for marketing companies and they just simply wouldn't care. They would always serve people who pays them like from 20k a month upward. And if you are on the budget, and if your budget is only $800 or $1,000, like they will be happy to take it, but the outcome they would give back to you would be next to nothing. And that's just a road to burnout and disappointment. And eventually we know that a lot of small businesses that open up close. That's because founders think that they can trust other people in getting things done when people for offering help are is not really qualified.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

So what are you saying is that you applied the principle of digital marketing, but you didn't hire a professional to help you on that, was it?

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Oh, I I I hired, I think in in in total, over four years, I probably lost over $40,000 for zero when and and yeah, some people call it tuition. I with all of the strategic rationality that I spend money, for me it's a loss. But but I've tried I've tried it all. I've tried local marketing companies, I've tried marketing companies that solely focus on CPG, the consumer packaged goods. I've tried large national, international marketing companies. In the end, it doesn't matter. But it's like really bad outcome to give a lot of equity away very early on. You have to you have to get some new skills and put some new hats. And I think score is phenomenal at it. My dreams also got me into different opportunities: Nutcracker Market, several other very high-end holiday markets, which made us more well-known and brought more returning customers. So we have big shoes to fill. And I, with help of SCORE continuously, I am looking forward to coming through every time.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

Good. Now in 2024, you opened a cafe, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Well, a cafe was really a retail place that was where people could actually come and shop. Before that, we didn't have it, we were just manufacturing and like either drop shipping or selling through our partners.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

We do have some partners around town where that carries our product and are very successful at selling it. But we decided that we wanted our own retail spot and we do offer coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, and people can come and shop.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

That's nice. Looking ahead, so what's your vision for your seamless streets?

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Well, once again, we are finishing a rebrand, so we will probably I'm hoping this week we'll stop being seamless and we will become the aura. It's the apostrophe aura. It's like offline. And what my vision for it is if if we continue growing like we grow, maybe then in 10 years we will be a national retailer. And overall, I want to build a legacy company and be a much better version of Hershey's and protect people's health by developing different products, not just chocolate. We're actually developing an ingredient side of the business right now when we are selling the marshmallows, caramel, and chocolate as an ingredient to other CPG, bigger CPGs.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

Distribution of the chocolates is also happening in other details?

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Like if you think about protein bars and those healthier, better for you snacks. Like if they do chocolate chip or they do a uh a caramel layer. So we would want them to have really great, awesome caramel that also helps lower blood sugar.

SPEAKER_02 29:23

Thank you, Bietta. I think that was a wonderful conversation. I think listeners would certainly benefit by your journey that you explained so well. Good luck to you, Maria Fashion.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

Before we wrap up, a quick favor. If you find this podcast valuable, please hit subscribe on YouTube and follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It is free, takes just a second, and helps us continue bringing you weekly episodes designed to support your business journey.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Thank you for listening to Small Business Success Stories at Score Houston. If you are an entrepreneur or small business owner, we'd love to support your journey. You can reach us at 713-487-6565 or visit us at 8701-South Kestner, 31200 Houston, Texas, 770. Our office is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., except for federal holidays. And walk-ins are always welcome. To learn more, request free mentoring, or register for our workshop, visit us online at www.score.org slash. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and remember, at Score, we're here to help you thrive.