My family thought that I was cuckoo to do this.
I remember having lunch with my sister once in Boulder and she said well, what you're gonna do this?
You're gonna delve into this and actually make it work?
And I said, yeah, what do you think?
And she said, well, how many of those can a person eat?
And I thought to myself, how crazy of a question is that?
You know, she doesn't really get it.
And I said, how many people are in the country?
Welcome to How I Built This a show about innovators entrepreneurs, idealists and the stories behind the movements they built.
I'm Guy Raz and on the show today how a single mom restarted her life with a four-ingredient recipe and built it into a 100 million brand Bobo's.
And I'll see you next time.
That's what happened to Beryl Stafford.
In her early 40s, her marriage collapsed and she had to figure out how to earn a living.
For more than a decade she'd been out of the workforce, focused mainly on raising her two daughters.
So when her marriage ended, Beryl felt like any skills she had as a mom weren't translating to the job market.
So out of desperation, she started a small business.
She did what she was good at.
And in Beryl's case, that was baking.
She baked homemade oat bars made with fruit and coconut and sometimes a bit of chocolate.
She'd wrap them in cellophane and try to get local coffee shops to sell them.
This was back in 2003 and I should mention Beryl's great good fortune was that she lived and still lives in Boulder, Colorado.
And if you know anything about Boulder's economy, you'll know that it's kind of like the Silicon Valley of natural foods.
Celestial seasonings, White Wave, which makes silk, soy milk, Izzy's sparkling water and Justin's nut butters All started in Boulder.
And Beryl Stafford, who knew nothing about the food business or business at all, was able to tap into her community to figure out how to grow her little snack bar brand, which she called Bobo's Oat Bars.
At one point, to save cash, she shared a kitchen and employees with Justin from Justin's Nut Butters.
Bobo's grew slowly for its first decade, but eventually was able to scale.
Today, the brand is estimated to do around $100 million in annual sales.
And Boulder, by the way, is where Beryl ended up almost by chance.
She actually grew up in a small town in Louisiana, a few hours drive from Baton Rouge.
Yeah, it was kind of considered in the woods.
There's a lot of lumber business there.
And it was a very...
Kind of beautiful, small southern town with big oak trees.
Not a lot of crime.
We never locked our door.
And then I graduated from high school and decided I didn't want to follow the path of my brothers and sisters and my uncles and aunts and parents and go to Tulane or LSU.
I wanted to go somewhere else outside of Louisiana.
And my... aunt lived here in Boulder.
And I came out here when I was in high school with a girlfriend and thought I had died and gone to heaven.
I want to come back here.
And I applied and my parents said, great, you know, one less person to worry about in Louisiana.
So you decided to go to Colorado.
When you got to the University of Colorado in 1977, did you have like a thick Louisiana accent.
Yes.
And I was in the dorms and my friends would say, come over here, listen to the way this girl talks.
I bet.
You were like a curiosity.
I was a hick from Louisiana.
And we had this thing on campus called, it was a pizza place called My Pie, but I called it My Pie.
And my friends would say, say it, say it.
This is hysterical.
And so when you're 18, you quickly change because you want to fit in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's why I changed my accent so fast.
I kind of sound like a Yankee now.
But when I go back home, it kind of comes back, you know, the little Southern drawl.
But I know everybody says that to me.
You don't sound like a Southerner.
Yeah.
All right.
So when you graduated, right, I guess you did a few different jobs.
Like I think for a few years you were a paralegal.
And also you met a guy in Boulder, I think when you were in your late 20s maybe.
Yeah.
And you got married.
Right.
And I think, you know, within a couple of years, you guys had started a family of two girls.
Yeah.
And from what I understand, you decide you really want to be full time at home with the girls.
Yeah.
It was a lot of that.
Driving them around. being involved in their activities.
And then, you know, my friends became the parents of their friends.
That was okay for me because I didn't know what I was going to do.
And then when I wasn't married, when I became unmarried, I still didn't know what I was going to do.
I don't want to revisit this time in your life because I'm sure it was really hard, but I know that At some point the marriage breaks down and it starts to unravel.
And I think you were, what, early 40s maybe?
I was just turning 40.
I can't imagine what that period in your life was like, because there's lawyers and court and depositions, right.
And that's sort of what began to happen to you.
It was probably the worst time in my life.
And like you said, it went on for so long.
And I don't remember, I probably blocked it out, but maybe two years, but maybe just a year.
But it was an awful period in my life.
It's the kind of feeling where your heart physically hurts.
Yeah.
I remember feeling that.
And did you have the girls with you most of the time?
We split 50-50.
He insisted on that.
You know, I knew that my life was going to be a lot harder.
But when you're all of a sudden a single divorced mom, you have to figure out how you're going to support yourself.
And I didn't want to go back to a law firm and put on a pair of pantyhose and and go work for someone else.
But I didn't know what to do.
I did get a job making 745 an hour at this kind of gourmet cooking store called Peppercorn here in Boulder.
And it was just kind of biding my time because my lawyer said you have got to get a job while you're going through this divorce.
And so it just took me a while to figure out what I was going to be.
And I was getting advice from people going to tech, You know, learn how to write software and yuck.
I had no interest in that.
And also I mean, I look at somebody who's 40 now as somebody into my 50s and I think oh, they're young.
But when you're 40 and you hadn't worked, for you know, at that point, in an office for 10 years, you were probably thinking how am I going to do that?
How am I going to start a career again?
Yeah.
Who's going to hire me, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the gourmet store, you worked there, I'm assuming, because you liked.
Had you gotten into cooking?
So I had been a cook all my life.
And, as a matter of fact, I did a little catering on the side just for some extra income out of my kitchen for friends.
And I always loved to cook.
So I thought, well, this will be perfect for me.
Just self-taught, like using cookbooks?
Yeah, just self-taught.
Who were your go-to cookbook writers?
Paul Prudhomme was big.
Yeah.
Marcella Hazan is one of my favorites.
Oh, she's amazing.
The tomato, the canned tomato and butter and onion.
Oh, I've made that many, many times.
Isn't that incredible?
You take a canned tomatoes, butter and an onion.
Yep.
I have some in my freezer right now.
And were you known like in your friend circles is like oh, we should go to Beryl's house because she's cooking tonight.
Yeah, she loves to cook.
She's a great cook.
And we entertained a lot.
And, as a matter of fact, I worked for a caterer a little bit to see what that was like and learn the ropes.
It was very hard.
It didn't really work with raising kids, I thought.
And I quickly decided that wasn't for me.
It's too hard.
And I know that there's a and I say this not to minimize the accuracy of it, but there's a basic story which is one day, a rainy afternoon, Beryl and her daughter bake some oat bars, and the rest is history.
But I think you probably agree it's not exactly how it happened.
It wasn't that easy.
You were probably baking together for a long time.
Yeah.
And she did open up the cookbook and say, I want to make these.
Just one afternoon.
Yeah, just one afternoon.
And she was 12 or 14.
Yeah.
Somewhere around there.
Yeah.
By the way, her name is Alex, right?
Alex.
But when she was born, Alexandra seemed like too big of a name for a baby.
Yeah.
And so just as a little nickname, we called her Bobo for no reason.
Just cute name.
So the recipe she found had four ingredients and I happened to have them all in my cupboard and I said great, you know, do it.
And they were delicious.
These bars?
Yes, they were dripping in butter and corn syrup.
And it was just, it was like probably corn syrup, oats, corn syrup.
Oats, corn syrup, brown sugar, and butter.
Then you cook them on low temperature for like, 15 minutes.
And they were really good.
And she was taking them to school and sharing them with her friends.
And then she said, mom, I got to make some more.
People love these.
And I said, okay, let's keep making them.
And I had some friends in the natural food industry that were saying you got to make these healthier and sell them.
Because they're made with corn syrup at the time.
Corn syrup and butter and Although now butter is not bad.
Butter is fine.
Butter is great.
And corn syrup is a weird one because, you know, it's just another form of sugar.
I guess companies tend to use more of it.
Well, it is genetically modified.
So that's the problem.
And it's got a great shelf life and it gives you a great mouthfeel.
But it's, you know, bad for you.
Say the experts.
But people are saying use like a different kind of sugar, a cane sugar or what?
Yeah.
Well, what I picked was sucanat.
It's a less processed sugar. brown sugar, then brown sugar.
And so I picked that.
Now we use coconut oil, but coconut oil was one of the first oils that I used.
And instead of corn syrup, I used brown rice syrup.
And it wasn't so easy that I just, aha, this is what we'll do and bought those ingredients.
We tried different ingredients for many months.
I mean, you're making these bars.
Your daughter is saying people want them.
Can you make more for school?
Then you have friends who are like, you should change the ingredients up.
But I'm thinking the subtext there was like, hey, Beryl, like maybe there's something here.
Here is that was that there?
Yes.
Like how fast did that start?
I would say after a few weeks, because she this was a thing that she was doing, making these.
I mean, that didn't last that long, you know how kids are.
She just yeah, that that phase was gonna peter out quickly and so so that's when larabar had just come around and cliff bar was here.
But we're all kind of new, you know, and vegan was new.
And they said, you know, go to whole foods and see how what the bars are like there's, it's growing, it's becoming a bigger category.
And also, with the backdrop of me not knowing what the hell i was going to do with my life, maybe you should make these and sell them, is what i was hearing.
What was it about the like this recipe that was like You know, versus I don't know some chocolate blondie or some cookie recipe that you'd made or something else that you'd made.
They were unusual because they were fresh baked.
And for a bar that you might sell in a retail store.
There aren't that many fresh baked, but a lot of them were guillotine pressed.
And like, like a guillotine, like it just cuts it, cuts it, cuts it in four corners, four straight corners.
And they were great.
And I didn't have any other options.
You know, I didn't have anything else to do, really.
And so it just kind of became this idea.
And her nickname was Bobo.
That's so catchy.
And and so I thought Bobo's oat bar.
Well, that's kind of cute.
And I didn't think anything of it more than it'll be some kind of hobby or this will be fun.
Farmers markets maybe or something.
Yeah, farmers market.
You know, I didn't spend a lot of money on it or a lot of time.
And also my kids thought I was insane.
They were becoming teenagers and they were like weirded out by it that I would do that.
But I didn't care.
And so I wrapped them in saran wrap without a label for a few days and brought them around to my neighbors and changed flavors.
And I kept working on the ingredients.
And then my girlfriend came over one day in my round kitchen table and we sat down and she said you know what?
Let's draw you a label and we'll call it Bobo's Oat Bars.
I think that's a great idea.
Go to your kitchen drawer and get me a Sharpie.
And she, right there, drew on a piece of paper.
The girl that's on the bar to this day, I mean in five minutes.
And she was trained in graphic design, but she was also a stay-at-home mom, and she wasn't working.
And she said, no, this will be cute.
We'll draw a little girl and make the writing kind of fun, homemade-looking.
And we'll go to the brewing market, which is right down the street, coffee shop.
And I'm very shy and I'm like, I don't know how to do that.
And I don't have experience in sales or the food business.
And she said, so what?
You know, let's just try it.
It'll be fun.
And so I wrap them in saran wrap and I go to the printer.
I get labels printed with her artwork.
With no nutritionals, and I put the word organic on it, not knowing that I couldn't.
Right.
You can't get certified organic yet.
But I did anyway, because all my ingredients were organic.
And I soon changed that.
But in that context of just like selling it in a little store, you get away with it.
And so I wrap up a few.
I had four flavors, original chocolate, cranberry, and coconut.
And she said, okay, I'm going to take you to the coffee shop, and I'm going to make the block.
You get out, and you go to the barista and ask who wants to sell them.
And I said, no, I'm scared.
What do I say?
And she said, get out of the car.
I'll see you in a little bit.
And so I walk in there.
And this was 20 years ago.
There was a long line.
The barista standing there hardly can keep up with making lattes.
And I'm standing there looking at him.
And I don't want to stand in that line.
And so I just walk over and put it down on his little shelf.
And he's looking at me like I'm insane.
And he goes, what is this?
I go, I just want to see if you'll sell these.
They're vegan.
And I had a little sell sheet.
And I dropped them off.
And I ran out.
And he said, well, wait, hold on.
What do I sell these for?
And of course, I hadn't thought about that.
I thought he would know.
And I just made something up, $2.50 or $2.
And he was irritated and ran out.
And then I had the courage to go back in in two weeks.
And he said, I need some more of those.
They sold out.
And then he reordered in about a month, maybe.
And I was shocked.
And I just went back and made more.
And that was 12 bars.
And he said, we do get a lot of vegans in here now.
So great.
I don't have any vegan options.
And so I brought in more.
And gradually, I made $14 one month.
I'll never forget.
And I thought, OK, this might work.
$14 could be $14,000.
When we come back in just a moment.
Beryl saves money by sharing a commercial kitchen, but burns through it by buying her ingredients at the wrong place.
Stay with us.
I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.
Hey, welcome back to How I Built This.
I'm Guy Raz.
So it's around 2004, and after getting her homemade oat bars into one coffee shop, Beryl starts baking more of them and shopping them around town.
I had gotten into a little co-op in Boulder that opened and wasn't around for very long, but they were the perfect store for me.
Very granola-ish, and they didn't mind that I was wrapped in saran wrap with a three-day shelf life.
And they sold very well there.
And then I had a call from some random coffee shop and I got in there.
And then there was another little local grocery store called Lucky's.
That actually is now owned by Kroger and has grown.
But same thing.
I just went in the back door with a couple and ran out as fast as I could.
So it was mostly or all local co-ops and little shops and grocers and coffee stores in Boulder.
Yeah.
And they had a three-day shelf life?
They did with the saran wrap in the very beginning.
Here's a question for you.
Boulder.
I mean, it's not a tiny town, but compared to Los Angeles or New York it's a small town and probably –.
It's not uncommon to run into people you know a few times a week, right, randomly in Boulder.
Totally.
And you knew people.
You'd been there since you went to college.
Was any part of you like nervous or worried that like somebody would see you and they'd be like Beryl?
Oh, my God.
What are you doing?
What are you selling?
Yes.
I can't believe you said that because, yes.
And it was such a stupid fear, but I was afraid of people seeing me because it was a new me.
I was a stay-at-home mom tennis player who had a social life, and now this was the new me.
I mean, I was put in such a tough situation that it was sink or swim.
I mean, I was trying to survive.
And in the beginning, that's not what I was thinking.
I didn't think it was going to make a living for me.
But I thought maybe what if it did?
And what if I just made a little bit of money and lived on that?
I would be okay with that, you know, because I thought it was so fun and so unusual to be able to bake something.
And people are going to buy these, you know wow.
That was just so remarkable to me.
It was a miracle that somebody would actually buy, take them home and eat them, feed them to their family.
It was like playing store.
Do you remember, in those early days, when you were selling at the coffee shops, ever running into somebody who said something like oh hey Beryl, I hear you're doing this like granola bar thing?
Yeah.
Do you ever?
Oh, yeah.
How's the cookie business?
Yeah.
Kind of in a condescending way.
Yeah.
Those things hurt.
At the same time, you're going through some self-doubt.
And apparently your own children were doubtful about this.
Oh, yeah.
And of course, my ex-husband.
He was like, what?
I mean.
Oh, what are these stupid bars doing in my country club?
That came back to me and I thought, well, success is a good pushback.
So at what point do you remember?
Because this is You know.
I can imagine you were baking them yourself for the coffee shops, because you're dropping off what a few dozen, or a dozen at a time.
A dozen, yeah.
All right, a dozen at a time, so you can manage that.
But I guess at a certain point, you had to move out of your kitchen, right?
You had to do this in a bigger space.
Yes, and I knew that from the beginning the health department wouldn't like that.
So I found a shared kitchen.
They were looking for more cooks or people starting a business.
To rent space, right?
To rent space.
And they were a sandwich delivery company and they wanted somebody to come in a couple of days a week and use their ovens.
And pay them a rental fee or whatever.
Yeah, and like hourly or daily.
And so I came in one day a week and used their oven and I hired some of their people that worked for them two girls to help me.
And so I did that for probably a year.
And did you – I mean, at what point did you move from Saran Wrap to like a more – kind of professional packaging?
So then I knew I had to extend my shelf life.
This was crazy.
And I finally ended up with my first packaging machine, the biggest piece of equipment that I bought, for 25000.
How did you, how were you able to do that?
I went to the bank back then.
It was easier.
And they gave me a loan for $100,000.
But first, up until then, I took a second mortgage on my home and I used credit cards.
And I just was very frugal.
And I mean, this was all just very scrappy.
I didn't know anything about payroll and And I didn't care.
I had no idea if I was making any money or what things cost.
I just knew at some point I'd figure all that out.
So then I outgrew finally this commercial kitchen.
But a next door space became available in another commercial kitchen.
And so I went over there, loved it.
And when I went back the next day to sign, another food entrepreneur had gone in.
And I said, I got it first, though.
I was there first.
And he said, let's work a deal.
Let's share it.
And it's Justin's nut butter.
Oh.
And so he and I ended up, and he started, just like me, knowing nothing, making this peanut butter in his kitchen.
And so he and I jointly took this new space, bigger, and it was just the two of us.
And we formed a little LLC.
It was crazy.
And we shared employees and we shared the space.
Wow.
Wow.
So you basically pooled your resources, but you had your separate businesses.
But that LLC that you formed covered employees who did work for both of you and the space.
Right.
And the employees would one day make nut butter and one day make oat bars.
What an interesting idea.
So that LLC, it was the employer.
Yes.
And our only expenses were rent and payroll expenses.
Otherwise, we had our own bank accounts.
And you guys got along great and that worked okay?
Yeah.
What if he needed more help?
Oh, we argued about it all the time.
Yeah.
And I had a bookkeeper that I had just found.
And so I turned her on to Justin.
And he was like me.
He said, well, I don't understand what she would do.
He'll never forget he said that.
And I said, trust me, she's going to help you.
So we ended up sharing her, but we'd argue about it.
So when she was working for me, of course he couldn't help himself to come in and say hey, I've got a quick question for you.
You know, did I screw up on this check?
And it was always like, no, no, get out.
You can't talk to her now.
You have to wait till tomorrow.
I imagine that your costs, I mean, you said you borrowed $100,000 from the bank.
Which is a lot.
But also, I mean, your costs were what?
Buying oats and sugar and coconut oil.
And were you buying it?
Like, I don't know, at Costco?
Like, where were you buying this stuff?
Believe it or not, I was buying it at Whole Foods full retail in the beginning.
Wow.
That's really expensive.
Crazy.
And then I started buying it in bigger bulk, but at Whole Foods, until I figured out the food distribution network.
But crazy expensive.
But I did that for almost a year, just figuring out the ingredients.
I mean, it sounds like – and I mean this with the utmost respect because I –
I think that it's not uncommon, but also it takes a lot of courage.
It sounds like you didn't really know much at all.
You didn't know about the industry.
You didn't know about how to run a business.
You didn't know how to buy your products.
I'll write a bill on a piece of paper and I just got to keep moving.
Yes, exactly.
And sell, sell, sell.
That was the first and foremost on my mind every day once I started taking it seriously.
But Then, you know, I joined the Naturally Bolder Network, which is a nonprofit organization to help food entrepreneurs that were just starting and didn't know anything, and surrounded myself with people that were doing this or had done this.
Most of them advised me to stop baking.
Have somebody else bake this and you focus on sales and marketing.
And I said, no, I want to control this.
And I don't want them to look like they're guillotine cut with four square corners.
They're imperfect each bar.
And I wanted them to look like that.
Right.
And you were selling the bars.
Do you remember at that point how much you were selling the bars for?
This is in like 2006 ish.
I think, uh, I think I was selling them for $1.17.
Wow.
And then they would sell them for $2 or $2.50 or whatever.
Or $1.17 to distributors.
Right.
Okay.
But you probably weren't profitable yet.
I mean, you were probably spending more than you were bringing in still.
So I became profitable probably six years after I started, six or seven years.
Okay.
Okay.
I think it was maybe around 2007 that you managed to get into the Whole Foods in Boulder.
Is that right?
Does that sound right?
Yeah, that sounds right.
And I think back then you could walk into a Whole Foods.
The company had a lot more autonomy, gave the store autonomy and you could meet with a buyer there and say hey, I'm making these and local.
And often they'd say, great, this sounds cool.
Tell me how you got into that Whole Foods.
Yes, so they were very into the local entrepreneur, the local farmers.
That was their thing, and it worked like that.
You could get into one store.
They might then spread you into other stores in that region.
But after I kind of got my courage up and I felt a little more confident in this Bobo Bar I had sold at the co-op for a while.
I walked into the bakery, and I asked for the manager, and she said...
Oh, well, we've been buying these and eating them from the co-op down the street.
We've been wondering when you're going to walk in.
And I said, duh, you know, what took me so long?
But I said, great, you know, and she said, yeah, let's let's talk about this.
Let's bring these in.
And we're just having a conversation right there and on top of the bread you know, just standing there.
No office visit.
She said, yes, I want these.
Tell me everything.
But you're going to have to get your packaging together.
In other words, I need a freezer safe packaging.
And I said, you got it.
And she goes, I'm going to get you in 12 of the Colorado stores.
She said that even before you were in just that one?
Yes.
And she said, I need you to demo in all of these stores.
And I said okay, you got it, not even knowing what she meant, not knowing about freezer, safe packaging.
But I just said, oh, yeah.
And I walked out of the store pinching myself but freaked out because I had no idea what she really wanted me to do.
So I called my packaging guy.
And by that time, I had my packaging machine.
So I went to him and said, I need to be freezer safe.
I need...
Six months shelf life.
Six months shelf life.
Yeah.
And did that scare you?
It scared me that I didn't know what to do.
I didn't know how to do it.
But no, I knew I'd figure it out.
I mean, I'm like, are you kidding me?
This is my big break.
Yeah.
And asked around, what's the best way to do the demo?
I called the stores in Denver.
I'm coming in this weekend.
Can you tell me the best time to come?
Of course, most of them hang up on you because they don't want to teach you.
Yeah.
You should know what you're doing.
And doing a demo is not really that hard.
Yeah.
So that's what I did every weekend for a long time.
And the whole time I'm figuring it out, I'm showing up at these Whole Foods and they're telling me you've got to get the word organic off your label.
Right, because you were using organic this and organic that, and you're like, it's organic.
Yeah, and they're saying, no, you've got to go through the certification process.
You have to get that organic certification is cost money.
Yes, and time.
And so I stopped using an ingredient that I was using organic.
I started using conventional.
Stayed with conventional oats, which was 80% of the product.
And so then I said, made with organic ingredients.
And then I came to find out later, you really can't say that.
There's all these limitations on what you can say.
But I pushed it as long as I could.
So all right.
So you are in Whole Foods and you start to demo this, because that's how you get people to buy it.
And you were the demo person or did you bring anyone else on to help you?
I was in the beginning because it was expensive to have somebody stand there for four hours.
Yeah.
And I enjoyed it.
I mean, it took up my whole weekend.
How did you – yeah, tell me a little bit about the experience of putting yourself out there, because you're not a performer anymore.
You're not like I don't think you were you like a drama kid in high school.
Did you do the play, the theater?
No, no, no.
I'm not that kid.
Right.
You were the one who was like in the back of the choir, like, oh, God, well, they made you all sing.
Right.
You're like, I really don't want to do this.
So now you are on stage.
You're a demo person.
You're on stage.
You are embodying a character because you sell stuff.
Right.
You're acting.
Yeah.
Hey, come come try this.
You're the busker.
But these are all strangers coming to me.
They don't know anything about me.
They don't know that I'm just trying to figure this out.
So it became a lot easier fast.
I always tell people when you're standing behind that table.
You know you're kind of in charge and they don't know anything about you and they're happy to eat free food.
And I got good at it.
And I got good at the trade shows for that reason.
I felt like once I'm behind that table, I'm safe.
And so you're in Whole Foods and you start to go to trade shows and presumably the big ones, right?
The Anaheim one, the Baltimore one.
But you're still small.
Were you the only full-time employee even once you were in Whole Foods?
Yes, for a few years.
And then I hired a marketing assistant slash sales assistant.
And she did the trade shows with me.
And then I had my bookkeeper who was a contract laborer.
Well, they're all part-time though.
Yeah, I didn't want to manage people.
I didn't know how.
I didn't have experience in that.
And I knew I needed help.
And I did that for many, many years and basically burned myself out after 10 years.
I mean, at a certain point, you've got to start working with a food distributor.
Like that becomes required in order to hit more stores, a lot of stores.
Yes.
So I had a small distributor here DPI it's called and they started taking my bars to Whole Foods in Denver.
And it was the first pallet I had ever used.
And I didn't even know what a pallet was when I started the business.
And I have a picture of me in this truck.
But that was my first foray into distribution.
And then I'm at Expo West one year.
This is in Anaheim, the biggest trade show.
And a woman walks up to me quickly with a clipboard and says, here, please fill out this paperwork.
And this is for UNFI East.
And UNFI is our biggest company. natural food distributor in the country.
They have an East Coast distribution network.
She said, please fill this out.
I'm running the Whole Foods in the whole East Coast, and I want to get your bars in there.
Please fill out this paperwork to get into distribution.
Thank you.
And she walked away.
And I thought, what just happened?
So this means now I'm in national distribution, and that just kind of fell in my lap.
And I didn't know how to fill out distribution paperwork.
So I did, and I figured it out, and now I'm in the whole country of Whole Foods.
Wow.
And I was really taking it seriously then, and I was excited about it.
And I was working very, very hard and traveling a lot to –
Seattle, Austin, Southern Cal, where I thought was the best market for a vegan oat bar.
Yeah.
How are you positioning them?
You described them as a vegan oat bar, but of course this is really like the sort of prime time era of gluten-free is really starting to take off.
And organic, obviously, but gluten-free is a big one, right?
Vegan, gluten-free.
So did you jump on that at all?
Because oats are normally gluten-free.
Oh, yeah.
That was a big thing for me.
And, as a matter of fact, in the beginning I had a gluten-free line that was made with certified gluten-free oats and then the regular oats.
Even though oats are gluten-free, they've got to be certified gluten-free.
Cross-contamination sometimes, yeah.
Out in the field.
And so I had those two lines going.
It was too confusing for the consumer because I had the word gluten-free written under there.
So I ended up just making them all gluten-free.
And yes, that was a big selling point.
It was a big feature for us then and is now.
And by this point I mean by, I don't know six years in.
I guess both your daughters are probably in college, out of the house, right?
So you had time.
So really.
Dig in.
Dig in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I did.
And I worked all weekend at night.
I was obsessed with making this work, but I was having fun.
I would say I was kind of in a vacuum because I'm still doing everything myself.
Yeah.
And that part was hard, but I didn't want to partner.
Because I couldn't figure out who that would be or what they would do.
And by the way, when you're in every Whole Foods, it's great, but it's not atypical to do around, I don't know, anywhere from $5 to $10 million in sales.
Even if you're in every Whole Foods by and large, many of the brands in Whole Foods are still very small businesses.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I was probably bringing in, I don't know, maybe $5 million at that time.
Which still, I mean, you probably were.
That was great.
$4 million.
Given that you had started at, you know.
At zero.
At zero, right.
And I was very profitable.
And lean.
You did have a whole bunch of people.
Right.
Right.
What do you remember?
I mean even six years in right 2010, when you're profitable.
Finally, what were things that you that were just so hard for you to figure out that you probably could have figured out earlier had you done things a little differently?
I probably could have hired a more elevated salesperson in the beginning.
I was doing it all myself and I didn't have relationships with the buyers.
So a more seasoned sales expert, if you will, probably would have been a good hire.
You know, I learned everything about the business though.
So I do think it's important to try to do everything yourself in the beginning, as long as you can.
Yeah.
I mean, how did you, for example, figure out how to price it?
You know what I did in the beginning?
I just went to Whole Foods and I saw what everybody else was charging for their bars.
And my bar was bigger than most.
It's a three ounce and most bars are an ounce and a half, two ounces.
So I kind of bumped it up a little.
Yeah.
You know, I feel like I went on my instinct a lot and I had a lot of naysayers around me.
Who?
Why would somebody be a naysayer?
Don't do this.
Don't do this.
You're crazy.
You're going to have to sell too many to make a living at this and you need to make a living.
And family.
I always say family is the worst person to get advice from in the beginning, because they don't want you to fail.
And my family thought that I was cuckoo to do this.
But I remember having lunch with my sister once in Boulder.
And she said, well, what?
You're going to do this?
You're going to delve into this and actually make it work?
And I said, yeah.
What do you think?
And she said, well, how many of those can a person eat?
And I thought to myself, how crazy of a question is that?
You know, she doesn't really get it.
And I said, how many people are in the country?
When we come back in just a moment, Bobo's raises some outside money and all of a sudden the pressure starts to ramp up.
Stay with us.
I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.
Hey, welcome back to How I Built This.
I'm Guy Raz.
So it's around 2014 and Bobo's is profitable, but Beryl is still doing a lot of the work herself.
And there's another thing to worry about competition, as the snack bar market is starting to explode.
Yeah, I did get a little nervous when I would see new brands come after me.
I thought maybe they had more money behind them.
They knew what they were doing.
But I just was a firm believer in the flavor of my bar and the taste.
And it was a little different because they're imperfect.
They're a little bigger.
And I got positive feedback constantly.
I just I knew it was going to work.
I had to make it work.
And what about marketing?
I mean, even, you know.
Bringing in 5 million in sales is great, but it doesn't leave you with a lot to spend on advertising, right?
So how are you, what were you doing to get people to become aware of the product?
You know, it was mostly in-person demos.
And then I did hire demo teams, a lot of them.
And they were very expensive and they could only be there at the store for two to four hours.
And that's your audience.
And then after that, you missed a lot of people.
And you've spent 200 bucks, which to me was a lot then.
And I wasn't doing a lot of marketing.
There was no social media then, I don't think.
Not to the same extent, no.
I shipped samples.
I gave away a lot of free product.
I did a lot of events, races and athletic events.
Mom groups all over the country.
But that was it.
I came across a budget I did in 2014, 2013, handwritten in pencil.
And I think my marketing budget was 10%.
You know, that's what an advisor told me.
Yeah, it's 10%.
Yeah.
And meantime there's all these different and food trends.
There's paleo and keto, and and you know this and that.
And and and I wonder whether you would get people from time to time saying, look what they're doing, look what those guys are doing.
Oh, this, you know, this is this brand is really attracting a lot of interest.
And look what they're doing.
Like, were you ever?
Did you ever feel under pressure to try and do any of those things?
Yeah, and the protein push was brought to us many years ago and we are sticking with what the bar was in the beginning, which is just an old-fashioned cookie that your grandmother could bake in her oven, and will be a hundred-year-old brand.
We're not trendy, and we're not adding any superfoods to it.
So okay, so you've you have, you've got this business.
And I think, you know, as you expand, this is now 11 years after you launch this.
And I want to.
I want to get into this period because you had been spending day and night, weekend after weekend, on this thing and you get to 2015 and you are doing 8 million in sales that year.
Did you start to, around that time, think, I'm getting tired.
I need to figure something out here.
Yeah.
I was burning out.
And probably in 2014, I was traveling.
I was doing trade shows myself.
And I felt like I had gotten it to a certain level.
And I was tired.
And I thought, what if I sell this?
And make a little money and be done with this.
And I started asking around the community in this industry.
And then I meet this guy, TJ McIntyre.
And I had known him for many years in the natural food business.
He was with other companies.
And he had never been a CEO before.
I had never... thought of hiring a CEO.
And he came in, and we talked for a while.
And he said, you know, I want to run this company, don't sell it.
You're too little, you're too young, you're too small, you need to grow.
And you know, what's wrong with you?
Are you tired?
And I said, as a matter of fact, yes.
And he said, No, don't let's let's do this.
Let's run it together.
And I thought about it for a while and I think it was around a holiday and I was in New Orleans with my daughter and he called me and he said you know, I need an answer.
And just pressured me, which was good because I couldn't decide what to do.
And I said, okay, let's do it.
I'll hire you and let's see how it goes.
And why was TJ – why do you remember he was so – enthusiastic about wanting to do this.
I liked him, but I didn't know him well.
But we hit it off, very smart.
I thought he'd be a great leader.
And I thought, okay, big step, but I'm going to do this.
So we became a real company then.
I had to hire lawyers and we had to, you know, get all the legal documents together and we created shares.
That's how we became a company.
And he got some shares and I've got the rest and it was a risk and I was scared but I believed in him and he's still here.
Wow.
And so now you guys are creating a new partnership.
You are going to step down as CEO.
What was your new role going to be?
What were you going to focus on?
My new role was going to be founder, president, face of the company.
We hadn't yet formed a plan.
I was still unclear about raising capital.
I had never done that before, but he convinced me that we couldn't do it without growth, and he's right.
Yeah.
He had a playbook and I think he wanted to double the sales within a year or so.
How did it work in terms of like decision making?
I mean, did you essentially say I'm going to trust your playbook and I'm not going to second guess you and you've got the reins here?
Pretty much.
There were times that were a little challenging and we butted heads, but all in all yeah, I just kind of worked alongside of him and then gradually stepped back and let him take over.
Okay.
Part of this plan was to raise outside money.
And the first round was about $8 million.
Again, not, we're not, I mean, by tech terms is nothing, right?
They're raising a hundred million per round or whatever.
But still, it's now there's money from outsiders coming into the business.
How did you feel about that whole process, about going out and raising money and having to justify, you know, or answer questions that might have felt, I don't know, insulting or invasive?
Like, why do you think you're going to be able to do X, Y, and Z kind of questions?
Yeah.
All of a sudden, there were some big boys at the table, and it was intimidating for me.
They're now in my business making decisions.
I took some money off the table when the investor came in.
That was the first time you came into probably real money.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Not enough really to retire on.
Yeah, but still, I mean.
But it was a good little chunk.
Yeah, given that you started selling it at your coffee shops, right?
I mean, to have a few hundred thousand or maybe a million or so more, I mean, that's pretty great.
Yeah.
I think by the end of 2017, or maybe even earlier, you guys had doubled, you hit 16 million revenue.
So now really, you're starting to see momentum, right?
And did you find that your investors were coming in and saying, you guys really should do this?
Or I noticed that this brand is has this product line and you guys should really explore that.
Or I see this product at Costco and maybe you guys should try that.
Were you getting that from them?
Or were they mainly hands off?
In the beginning, the first investor was because it was just the three or four of us at the table.
And I trusted and believed in their advice.
It's been a long time now.
It's been 10 years since I've had investors.
So there have definitely been times where I didn't agree.
Was it over products like, hey, you guys should do more chocolate?
Or was it more about strategy?
Or was it marketing?
What were some of the conflicts over it?
Well, I would say mostly the economic terms of their investment.
Right.
That has been a struggle each time we ran out of money.
Right.
Because, as an investor who's listening knows, when the company asks you for more money, the playbook is to ask for more ownership.
They're trying to de-risk.
I'm trying to de-risk money.
So everybody's trying to protect their investment.
So here's what's interesting is that every year you grew.
You continued to grow, right?
But every year the bar market became more and more competitive.
And you had, you know, we talked about this a little bit earlier, but trends, protein, keto.
I mean RX Bar.
We've done that on the show, and Cliff Bar and Lar Bar and others have.
Even though you guys were growing in sales, did it become harder?
Did you start to see that it was really hard to compete against all these different brands as this category got so big?
Yes.
It's very competitive.
And you might have a great promotional period.
It might not last.
You're constantly trying to innovate and figure out what the consumer wants.
People get sick of products.
People get sick of eating the same thing.
A lot of companies aren't around anymore because consumers get you just get tired of something, I guess.
And that is our worry.
There's so many bars out there and retailers will trade you out Very quickly.
Yeah.
Well, I see you at Costco, for example, and Costco is tricky because it's great.
It's visible.
You're Costco, but also Costco is ruthless.
They need you to give them the lowest lowest, lowest price so they can sell it for slightly, slightly higher price, but that's still really low.
Yes.
Costco likes to find the newest, best thing and be the first to market with it.
They will bring you in and then want the customer to miss you and then be excited when you're back.
Right.
It's always this kind of nightmare scenario.
One day they're like, hey, we're going to take a break.
And they do that.
But that wrecks havoc on our manufacturing industry.
Right, because you're making all these products for Costco.
And the orders come in big.
And so we have bought equipment just for Costco and spent a lot of money on them.
And we forecast that Costco will remain our partner.
And they don't always do what we want.
They do what they want.
Of course, yeah.
Right?
Right.
And it's hard running a manufacturing plant as we do.
We've got 500 employees and 125,000 square feet, which sounds enormous to me.
Yeah.
Still a small business.
And you are vertically integrated.
You make your own, you own your own production lines?
Yes.
We have a little bit of co-packing, but mostly we do all of our own baking.
And when things get very busy, when we're heavy with Costco, we use our co-packer.
And I mean with you know, with the money that you guys have raised over time, I think it's maybe total is 15 million.
Is that about right?
A little bit more.
17.
17 million.
Yeah.
At some point, right, investors want to return.
And so usually it's like you know, in a case like this, you sell to a bigger beast.
You know a General Mills or one of these.
You know food brands PepsiCo or something.
There was a time where they were just snapping these Lara Bar and RX Bar and they were snapping them up right.
And Kind Bars and Cliff Bar sold to Mondelez.
And some of that has slowed down in the last two or three years, some of those acquisitions.
But I mean, it has to be on the radar for a brand like yours at some point.
Yeah, and I'm sure we are.
It has gotten a lot harder to sell and sell for a figure that you're happy with.
Like you said, it used to be profitable.
Who cares?
As long as you're showing fast growth.
And now it's different.
It's a lot harder to sell your company now.
But yeah, so yes, we will be selling at some point.
It's a matter of becoming kind of perfect with your numbers to be as desirable as we want to be.
So, I mean, here we are now, right?
It's estimated that again you're a private company, but it's estimated that sales are anywhere between you know, over 100 million now at Bobo's.
And there's a lot in line.
There's a crowded energy bar or snack bar market.
But This brand is an established, known brand.
And it is kind of amazing that you were a divorced mom kind of struggling to figure out what you're going to do with your life.
Didn't have a lot of options.
And you had no idea where the path was going to go.
No.
And I feel like, obviously, luck came in play a lot.
I was at the right place at the right time.
But I attribute this successful brand to my grit and love what you do.
It wasn't really work for me.
It was fun.
I was just shocked.
Any time I would see somebody that I didn't know eating a Bobo bar.
Billy bob thornton, my favorite actor, just said in an interview that that's what he eats for breakfast every day is a bobo's oat bar anyway.
That, just that just touches my heart.
Yeah well, you answer my my luck and skill question already, so i don't need to answer ask it, but so thank you for doing that on my behalf.
I mean, it's almost like you just kind of followed what you were interested in it it it, it was interesting to you and that's why it happened.
Yeah, and I think my toughness came out.
I had to be tough and figure it out.
There are a lot of situations where I would not have done that.
If I had stayed married, I would never have done it.
And one thing I learned with doing this business a light bulb went off once midway through my career here that you
And I and everybody can figure anything out, anything.
You can learn how to fly an airplane.
You can learn how to build an air conditioner.
You can figure anything out.
It's not about being the smartest person in the room.
It's about desire, focus, and time.
And that's what I learned.
That's Beryl Stafford, founder of Bobo's.
By the way, over the years the packaging has gone through some changes, but it still has that same drawing of a smiling blonde haired girl.
The one that Beryl's friends sketched out in five minutes in her kitchen using a Sharpie.
Thanks so much for listening to the show.
This episode was produced by Nora Gill with music composed by Ramtina Rablui.
It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Alex Chung.
Our engineers were Patrick Murray and Kweisi Lee.
Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Catherine Seifer, Chris Massini, John Isabella, Sam Paulson, Ramel Wood, Carrie Thompson and Elaine Coates.
I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.
