25. Margaret Coons: On Scaling Nuts for Cheese
EPISODE 25
Margaret Coons, the innovative mind behind Nuts For Cheese, takes us through her inspiring entrepreneurial journey, from selling her artisanal vegan cheeses at a local farmer's market to conquering the grocery aisles across Canada and the U.S. Margaret shares her grassroots approach to retail, revealing the trials of negotiating listing fees and shelf space, and the valuable role supportive partners like Farm Boy have played in her success. You’ll gain insights into the grocery industry's complexities and learn how persistence and strategic partnerships can pave the way for business growth.
Catch the Conversation
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Margaret Coons is the Founder & CEO of Nuts For Cheese, the market leader in artisan, organic, plant-based dairy manufacturing. Vegan from an early age, Margaret developed a passion for plant-based cuisine becoming a vegan chef and experimenting with nuts and seeds to create deliciously creamy plant-based cheeses. Since launching at a farmer’s market in 2015, Nuts For Cheese has enjoyed explosive growth across Canada and the United States with its award-winning artisanal and versatile dairy-free products available at national retailers, including Loblaws, Sobeys, Whole Foods Market, Sprouts Farmers Market, and more. Today, Nuts For Cheese is the #2 plant-based cheese brand in the Natural channel in the U.S. and is the #1 brand driving growth. Margaret sits on the board of CGLCC (Canada’s 2SLGBTQI+ Chamber of Commerce) and LEDC (London Economic Development Corporation). She was awarded the Top 25 Women of Influence Award in 2023 and was an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award Finalist.
Check out Nuts For Cheese on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
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Julie and Margaret discuss...
(00:00:04) Women Entrepreneurs Growing Successful Businesses(00:08:58) Building Team Cohesion in Growing Business
(00:16:42) From Chef to Leader
(00:25:00) Entrepreneurial Growth and Professionalization
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Julie: 0:04
Welcome to Figure Eight, where we feature inspiring stories of women entrepreneurs who have grown their businesses to seven and eight figures revenue. If you're in the mix of growing a bigger business, these stories are for you. Join us as we explore where the tough spots are, how to overcome them and how to prepare yourself for the next portion of the climb. I'm your host, ulie Ellis. I'm an author, entrepreneur and a growth and leadership coach who co-founded, grew and exited an eight-figure business. This led me to exploring why some women achieve great things, and that led to my book Big, gorgeous Goals. Let's explore the systems, processes and people that help us grow our businesses to new heights. If you're interested in growing your business, this podcast will help. Now let's get going. Hello and welcome to this episode of Figure 8.
Julie: 1:07
Today I am in conversation with Margaret Coons. She is the founder of Nuts for Cheese and she started in 2015 making vegan cheese and going to her local farmer's market to sell it. She had a vision of using the highest quality ingredients, having it be certified organic and having no fillers, starches or gums. It was a simple goal to bring the highest quality ingredients to create the world's best tasting gourmet vegan cheese. And all of that was nine years ago, and I met Margaret in 2016 when she appeared at Lion's Lair a pitch competition, and I have eagerly followed her journey to being the number two cheese brand vegan cheese brand in North America and I'm very excited to have a conversation with you today. Welcome, Margaret.
Margaret: 1:59
Thanks so much for having me Happy to be here.
Julie: 2:01
I'm so glad to catch up with you and talk because I've really loved following your journey and seeing how your product offering has grown and your business has grown, and so, although I'm sure it's a lot of fun and excitement, I know how much hard work goes into that.
Margaret: 2:18
Yeah, absolutely, and a lot has changed since 2016,. That's for sure.
Julie: 2:23
Right, well, and you know. So, yes, I start thinking about people and production and countries and all of the things that you know are happening as you're selling your product in retail stores. Tell me a little bit about that journey.
Margaret: 2:41
For sure. So we started back in 2015, as you mentioned, at the farmer's market and really it was quite a grassroots entry into retail in those early days where I set up my farmer's market booth, I set up a social media page and a website and started getting some requests from local retailers and restaurants that were keen to support and carry the product. And those early years was a lot of me reaching out to individual health food stores or independent retailers and loading up my Toyota Corolla with coolers and driving product all around southwestern Ontario and into Toronto once or twice a week and really kind of distributing on my own by hand to these retailers that had taken an initial chance on us and over time we were able to grow that list of retailers and grow our manufacturing capabilities, which I'm sure we'll dig into in a little bit. But it eventually went from that kind of personal touch delivery to a distribution model with some internal team support, some distributor support and growing most of retailers in Canada and then the US.
Julie: 3:48
Yeah, and it is so interesting because I mean, when I hear about the grocery industry sort of in general, they talk about large listing fees and that the path to market into those big, big kind of retailers can be an expensive one.
Margaret: 4:08
You know, Absolutely. Yeah, it for sure can be, and I think that's why it is really important to evaluate the cost of every retail venture that you're embarking on, kind of retailer by retailer. Every different store is going to have a different set of requirements or expectations. Every different store is going to have a different set of requirements or expectations and you know, the way that we've looked at it is to try to build our list of retailers for what we're ready for.
Margaret: 4:33
So our first large customer, for example, is Farm Boy in Ontario and that was our first time ever having to fill out a proper listing form, the first time I ever had to put product on a pallet and wrap it up, and the first time we ever had to use a freight truck. And you know, all of these things were brand new to me and I think they were a very friendly partner to start out with because you know they are really supportive of small business. They want to have the best, you know, local and store brand products to offer their customers and they were very collaborative from the beginning and that was a very kind of good way to get my training wheels off with some of those bigger customers. And then by the time we started to get into more listing forms and things like listing fees and negotiating shelf space, I was a little bit more prepared for it.
Julie: 5:16
Yeah, and I think that's a really good point about when you want to enter into sort of that, like getting into chain type retail that finding a partner who will really work with you, believes in your product and wants to support you, um is a really important part, because it's hard, like there's all kinds of lingo and back. You know the back. Did your product get out of the back room? Did it get on the shelves? How are you supposed to know? Did you even know you had to know that? Like there are just so many things in that learning curve of what it's like to deal with big retailers.
Margaret: 5:53
For sure. I remember, like looking up under the table, what is an SRP, what is an MCB, all these different acronyms. The natural products industry and the kind of grocery industry at large has so many different acronyms that you know when you're first starting out. You kind of just fake it until you make it. But yeah, absolutely.
Julie: 6:11
Yeah. So if we kind of rewind back to 2016, when we first met, you were really, at that point, doing everything. I mean, you may have had a couple of people working for you, but you know, you were making cheese, you were selling cheese, you were doing social media. You were like all of all of the pieces of that business were revolving around you being involved. And obviously things have changed a lot, and fairly quickly, in terms of you know how you've had to think about pulling out, hiring people, putting experts in place. What has that journey been like?
Margaret: 6:51
You know I used to say it felt like my role had changed entirely, like every six months, and I wouldn't say that that's untrue today, like I'm still definitely growing and learning. My position you know every day and it does change constantly. But those early years, for sure you know every day and it does change constantly. But those early years, for sure, you know, you went from chief bottle washer and you know, in house accountant who you know, I'm an English major. I didn't have, you know, a ton of business experience. My first business plan that I ever wrote was for the lion's lair pitch competition. So I didn't, you know, have a formal business plan.
Margaret: 7:19
When I, when I started the company, didn't know things like how to incorporate, I used some of my Alliance Lair winnings actually to incorporate the business and set up my kind of first legal structure, get our trademarks going.
Margaret: 7:31
All of that was really kind of brand new to me and I had a lot to figure out.
Margaret: 7:35
But what I did know how to do was to do everything to kind of run the business operationally and had a lot of grit and a lot of drive and was really willing to be that person who was going to stay, you know, late in the kitchen wrapping cheese and saran wrap and putting stickers on it and taking it to the farmer's market or loading up my car the next morning and, you know, driving in and out of the city to drop off product and then coming back to do the dishes.
Margaret: 7:57
And, you know, started to assemble a small team around me in the early days who also kind of had that same mentality of we'll do kind of what needs to be done. So I had folks who were helping actually make the product, as well as coming with me to trade shows and coming to markets to sell it. I had, you know, people that were starting to be my kind of first formation of a sales team who would help, you know, manage different independent retail accounts and also had a little bit of, you know, background in bookkeeping so it could help me figure out payroll and just things like that, you know, kind of starting to build a team that was willing to jump in where it was needed.
Julie: 8:32
Yeah, and that sounds a lot like a great startup team in terms of people who don't need you telling them what needs to be done. They look around and see what needs to be done and they're willing to just dive in and do it.
Margaret: 8:46
Yeah, definitely kind of an entrepreneurial spirit I think you have to look for we still look for that with team members that are joining us today, because there's still very much of that mentality that everyone chips in where it's needed.
Julie: 8:58
Yeah, which is a great way like to build that culture of the organization right, because that's so important and it can be hard as it grows to having so many people right. Like you just never necessarily imagine having that many people reporting to you when you start a business.
Margaret: 9:16
Yeah, absolutely, and it's so important to keep everyone connected not only to each other but to the kind of greater vision and to the consumer feedback and to what's happening out in market. I think it's really key to make sure everyone is feeling really kind of tapped into the bigger picture.
Julie: 9:33
Yeah, and so now your team is sort of distributed, so you have your own manufacturing and we'll get to talking about that because I'm curious about the scale up on that but you've got a big amount of team who's sort of in your premises doing work, and then you've got a team who's, I'm sure, scattered sort of across Canada and the US working to market, sell, do all of the other pieces that don't require you know, you being in the building necessarily. What's it been like bringing that team together in terms of having them, you know, feel cohesive and feel like they are pulling in that same direction, together towards the vision?
Margaret: 10:16
For sure. I mean, I think for us, because we're a manufacturer, it did start very centrally located. Everyone on the team was based in London,O ntario, and was able to travel to the plant, and a lot of our team, even if they could work remote, if they live locally, they still like to come in and, you know, be a part of what's going on and kind of have their finger on the pulse and they connect with everyone else in the facility. But when we started to sell into the US and really kind of grow larger in Canada, it was actually also kind of right at the beginning of COVID. So it was an interesting time because I had gone down to the States for a trade show, expo West, which is the largest natural products expo in North America, and it was the show that was canceled because of COVID. But we were already in LA and so we had been down there and had the opportunity to kind of scout some initial retail partners and have a few meetings in lieu of the show taking place.
Margaret: 11:05
And when we got back, that was when we really started to kind of hit the ground running in terms of expanding across the border and that was when we first started to really understand that, okay, we're going to need some folks who are actually based in the US and with everyone working remotely, it also kind of made sense that we could grow the team across Canada as well.
Margaret: 11:22
So we started with just like a fractional sales support person who was based in California. That helped us kind of get our feet wet there, and today we have our head of marketing is based in Southern California, we have another marketing person in New Jersey, one in Vancouver, our CFOs in Vancouver, our Canadian sales leaders in Toronto. So we are pretty spread out today and we spend, you know, a lot of time on teams. Of course, but try to intersperse some connects with the team that are not solely focused on like what's everyone been working on and what do you need help with, more of like a kind of happy hour virtually with the team if we can't get together in person as much as we'd like.
Julie: 12:00
Yeah, which makes sense, right, and you do have to make an effort, you have to think about it. It's not as it's not as organic as having everybody physically together, where it doesn't require as much thought you do need to be and time zones also, like having this breadth of time zones?
Margaret: 12:20
Absolutely, and I mean, I travel so much for work as well that I'm getting more familiar with the variety of manufacturing and in one country but selling in more than one.
Julie: 12:50
And just what that has looked like from you know you doing the dishes in the kitchen after making the deliveries to where you're at today, which is, you know, national retailers, larger volumes, all of those pieces, and what it's been like scaling that up.
Margaret: 13:08
I think it's been really supportive overall to the the overall business. To be vertically integrated that way, to have the manufacturing arm, you know, especially as you're trying to scale up and launch new products has given us a lot of control over the quality and the innovation and the kind of speed with which we can bring something to market. But that said, it is like a whole separate business, it's like kind of two businesses running at once sometimes and they both, you know, obviously work very closely together and support each other. But the manufacturing side of things, you know, is complex. It requires a lot of people. It requires a lot of equipment and physical space and warehousing and ingredients and shipping and all of that.
Margaret: 13:46
And you know, for me it was really all I knew starting out. I was working as a chef at a vegan restaurant prior to starting the business and started by renting the restaurant kitchen in the middle of the night and eventually kind of getting a little certified kitchen space at the farmer's market. That was a eight by 10 booth. That was, you know, mine, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So that became my first manufacturing space and when I was starting out I didn't know that there was things like Coke manufacturers that you could outsource manufacturing.
Margaret: 14:14
I was 24 when I started the company also, so there was quite a lot of things that are almost like assumed in folks starting food businesses nowadays that I just didn't have access to that kind of experience or knowledge, and so for me there was never any other option than to be a manufacturer. But honestly, I do think it's like one of the biggest strengths about our business is that we've, you know, really kind of scaled our manufacturing. We really focus on manufacturing excellence. We've received very stringent food safety certification that we've been working on for the last number of years. So just recently we're BRC certified as a manufacturer, which you know allows us to really support that retail expansion as well.
Julie: 14:56
Right, and it is interesting because sometimes I think it's those things you do because you just don't know that turn out to be like part of the sauce of the business. That makes it so interesting.
Margaret: 15:10
Yeah, there's so many things that I'm actually quite happy I didn't know, because I think sometimes if you know too much, then it's scarier to take the leap and to jump into something that's going to be really hard. But if you're already doing it, you just keep going, right.
Julie: 15:24
Yeah, now you've always been the product kind of mastermind and you know, going from being the chef in the vegan restaurant to starting this, you had a really good sense of what you want, what you saw the need in the world to be and what people would want, based on what you wanted. How has that continued as the business has grown?
Margaret: 15:46
So when I started, you know, there really wasn't a lot of quality vegan products available in general in the grocery stores and in the wider marketplace, particularly not in Canada, but especially when it came to vegan cheeses, there was, you know, a number of kind of shreds and slices and things that I have eaten a ton of in my life and they absolutely serve their their purpose. But I wanted something that was a little bit more advanced from a culinary standpoint, something that I could cook with, something that was fermented so it had great gut health benefits, something that could be certified organic and and was made from all recognizable ingredients and real food, as I call it. And so I think that for me it was initially really filling a need of something that I wanted to be able to purchase, and it was something that I was making for the restaurant. So I was making different cheeses and sauces and dressings and things like that, using nuts and seeds to make them creamy. And when I started fermenting the cheeses that I was making, that was kind of when there's a little bit of a light bulb of how cheesy they could taste, how you could preserve products like you would a dairy cheese using fermentation, so that you don't have to use any different, you know, artificial ingredients or gums or fillers or preservatives, things like that. It really is kind of a very natural, clean product, which is how I like to eat, and so that's led into the way that we innovate and I still do lead all of our innovation and product development. So for me, you know, launching new cheese flavors over the years has been really fun, because I love looking at different food trends and seeing what you know different flavors might be missing in the market and different styles of dairy cheese that we could emulate and then thinking about like product line extensions.
Margaret: 17:26
You know we launched a butter in 2019. And that became, you know, a great product for us to kind of flank our product as looking for something that really did behave like a dairy butter that was able to, you know, melt and be used in pastries, and a one-to-one swap for dairy butter, which then led to cream cheese, which we launched about a year and a half ago. So that's a newer product line for us that's now available nationally in Canada and the US, but that became more of your kind of everyday yeast education product. We wanted it to have a slightly lower price point because a lot of folks buy our cheese wedges and kind of save them for a special charcuterie board, or sometimes they cook with them. We wanted something where people could, you know, grab it and and use it every day.
Margaret: 18:08
And then next up we'll be launching a line of creamy cashew dips that, um are delicious. We've been kind of advertising them on our website and selling a little bit d2c over the summer, but they'll be launching retail this fall and really our food philosophy has stayed consistent over the years. We're super committed to organic, to fermented, to foods that have high probiotic content. You know all recognizable, simple ingredients.
Julie: 18:33
Yeah, I think well, and I mean the product quality is evident. I think that's an interesting point, though, about like the original sort of cheese line that has expanded with flavors and things, but it being that thing you would put on onto a charcuterie board or something a little bit more special, versus things people might want to use on an everyday basis, and what that means for you in terms of how you want your price point to be as you come into market.
Margaret: 19:00
Yeah, absolutely, and I know I eat, you know, a wedge of our cheese almost every day. But for other people they may not necessarily, and they do really see the product as being very special, which is such an honor. But I want to continue to innovate products that people have for all different you know occasions in their life yeah, no, it's interesting.
Julie: 19:19
And so now you were the primary taste that you know all of the early products were built on. How does that look today? What's different about your product development cycle and how you're doing things?
Margaret: 19:35
so I still lead, lead a lot of the kind of general innovation, but we have an awesome operations team that supports me very closely. So, you know, I'll kind of have an idea and I might do the first couple of trials on my own and then I'll bring in the operations team and our quality team who really help me kind of run a number of iterations and tweak and perfect things until we get to a formula that we're happy with. And I think what's been interesting over the years is, having been a chef in a previous life, I think of everything as a recipe, and so I'll go into the facility and say okay, you know, I made this new product. I want us to try it. It's got, you know, a teaspoon of salt and it's got a dash of this and it's got a handful of this, and they're like, oh my god, what?
Julie: 20:20
is the number of grams, and and I made two small pieces of it and now I need you to make a million exactly.
Margaret: 20:29
So I really go in with the recipe and they're very patient with me and help me turn it into a formula, but that's that's, I think, been one thing that's been, uh know, a big learning curve and a challenge for me over the years was turning something from benchtop or from restaurant size scale into something that you could make you know thousands and thousands of and send it on a pallet to a retailer.
Julie: 20:49
And have it consistently turning out to taste and behave. Taste just as good. Behave in the same way it did when you made it in the kitchen and ate it yourself, right?
Margaret: 21:01
Absolutely, because we also I think you know it's such an X factor for us as the fermentation and fermenting things is different on different scales, and so you do really have to be mindful of that and you know ensure that you can achieve a consistent result every time.
Julie: 21:16
So interesting things that you like and probably never imagined when you had your first your own first kitchen at the farmer's market that you would be looking at the kind of scope you're looking at now.
Margaret: 21:29
No, absolutely not. And then kind of you know, back to the what you don't know is sometimes sometimes better. You know, I think it's. It's turned out to be such a beautiful journey and I feel so fortunate for all the stages of it, but I absolutely had had no idea that this is where I would be kind of, nine years later yeah, yeah, uh, it is well and arguably, if you knew you would have been too scared to do anything about it.
Julie: 21:53
So because it sounds thrilling, but I mean the number of sort of iterations and think how you've prioritized to continue, sort of going here and then here, and just you know as you grow the business and you pick those spots that you're going to move to next. You know it takes time to kind of discern that and figure out how you're going to do it, to kind of discern that and figure out how you're going to do it. And so what has it been like for you on the leadership side, like your own growth as a leader, from you know the time when you were by yourself or with a couple of people, to you know now where you have this larger team.
Margaret: 22:32
Yeah, I think it's been honestly, probably the biggest personal development opportunity for me that I could have had. I have always found that the way that my personal growth has happened over the years has been very closely tied to the way the business has grown, and those two have always been very intertwined and a lot of alignment. And so it's been a huge opportunity for me to grow as a person but also as a leader, and I think I've learned a lot. You know you make a ton of mistakes. As you go. You learn how to work with a team. You learn how to lead a team.
Margaret: 23:05
Over the last number of years our team dynamic has shifted a lot because we were bootstrapped for the first seven years and you know, really I was growing a manufacturing company on a shoestring and couldn't afford to grow the way that a venture-backed company may have in the early years and we were growing really quickly.
Margaret: 23:24
So it was a lot of thinking on our feet, a lot of what can we fix this piece of equipment with on a kind of Band-Aid type basis. And that shifted for us a couple of years ago when we raised our first round of venture capital. That shifted for us a couple of years ago when we raised our first round of venture capital and that allowed me to really put together a really strong leadership team to support me through our next kind of basis of growth. We also put together a board of directors, which I did not have before. I've always had amazing mentors, but formalizing that board of directors, having investors and then having a senior leadership team and many of those folks who have a lot more life experience and career experience than than I do, I've learned so much from you know, working with and and leading that kind of team and reporting to a board regularly and and all of that yeah, yeah, it's sort of like the built-in accountability that a board brings for sure.
Julie: 24:14
What did you find as you moved from having mentors or advisors who may have been very active in their work with you, shifting from that kind of a model over to a formal board? What's it been like for you and what would you tell other entrepreneurs who are thinking about going on that journey?
Margaret: 24:34
You know, I do feel very fortunate because one of my longtime mentors, who actually was my mentor at the time that I was participating in the Lion's Lair pitch competition and helped me practice my pitch, he's actually one of our board members today.
Margaret: 24:47
So he's been, you know, along for the journey since the very early days in that transition has been, you know, really amazing and he's an investor as well as he's been my business partner and that's been really lovely journey.
Margaret: 25:00
But I will say, you know, it's a big change from having a kind of more informal someone you can just hop on the phone with and call all the time to.
Margaret: 25:09
You know, okay, now I have to prepare a deck and report, you know, our financials and really act a lot more like a CEO, and I think that that kind of CEO title is something that I'd had for a long time. But there was some of those responsibilities that you know weren't as big of a focus of mine because I was so focused on running the business and being in the day to day. You have to be able to kind of step back a little bit and think more strategically and you know, I had never seen a board deck before making my first one, and so I think our decks have come a long way and I think you know I'm a person who does everything you know, 150% so I think I've done a lot of overkill on those early board decks and I've had some very gracious board members who've, you know, coached me and kind of given me some feedback along the way to continue to refine that.
Julie: 25:56
Yeah, have you found at all that you need to professionalize a little bit? As you went, like you, you did just talk about that in terms of the deck and that sort of thing, but the um, I think of the like messy hash it out. What do you think about this? What do you think about? Think about that, like how do those people change? Because sometimes you have mentors who live in that messy zone but it feels like board of directors. You want to present maybe a little bit more of a polished Margaret CEO to them, as opposed to them mucking it out with you. Have you found that?
Margaret: 26:32
for sure and I think even throughout the years, like that kind of same experience of every six months. My role changes every six months. I've, like, had to kind of refine myself a little bit more and, you know, learn more about boundaries and what do you share with certain team members and how do you structure an organization. And all of that Because I think you know when you're starting out and it's farmer's market and it's trade shows and you're all sitting around. You know my mom's old kitchen table that was the first desk that we had at our facility. It's a lot more camaraderie and friendship and it's amazing to start a business that way. But as you grow things do change and I think that that can be a really challenging thing for founders as you're starting to professionalize an organization with you know, sometimes people that have been there since the very early days, sometimes new people that are coming onto the team and really kind of strategically set those expectations and relationship dynamics.
Julie: 27:24
Yeah, I can remember very clearly in my journey a point where, instead of sitting around a table with the team, kind of ponging things around and figuring out what to do, that like all of a sudden that feeling of like oh no, they're actually looking for me to come and figuring out what to do. That like all of a sudden that feeling of like oh no, they're actually looking for me to come and either send them to investigate some things or come with a direction that we should go, like I actually need to be deciding. It's not the same kind of that hash it out, let's decide together kind of feeling. And I can very clearly remember that shift and how uncomfortable it felt. For sure, and I can very clearly remember that shift and how uncomfortable it felt.
Margaret: 27:59
For sure, and I think it's a continual journey too because, like, that opportunity to really hash things out as a team is so important, and then you know kind of finding, you know where you take your space and where you're looking for feedback and where you're not, as something that you're always kind of learning.
Julie: 28:17
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's a constant journey of learning. I feel like that is the one thing with entrepreneurship is nothing ever stays the same. Definitely. There's new problems to solve, new triumphs to claim, new, all the things, the highs, the lows, all of it together. It's a constant evolution.
Margaret: 28:37
It is a roller coaster, you know you hear that a lot, but it does like your, your highest high, your lowest low all happen within the same hour sometimes.
Julie: 28:48
Sometimes that's exhausting.
Margaret: 28:50
Everything's amazing and the sky is falling.
Julie: 28:55
All in one half hour period. It's so true. It's so true. Um so, what's next for you?
Margaret: 29:02
that's a good question yeah, dips are. Dips have been a big focus for us. So you know, innovation is really central to everything that we do and has been since since the early days. So dips launching have been very exciting for us. You know, we showed them to a couple retail partners earlier this year and got a lot of excitement and a lot of great feedback. So very quickly had to hustle as a team and all put our heads together of how fast can we get this to market. And you know it kind of started as a product concept earlier this year.
Margaret: 29:29
That is now a final product that's going to be hitting shelves in Canada by Canadian Thanksgiving-ish and a little bit later in time for American Thanksgiving in the in the US. So we've got three, three new flavors coming the creamy cashew dips they're all contain billions of probiotics per serving and we have a dill pickle, a roasted red pepper and an artichoke jalapeno that are coming to market. So super excited about those and you know, you know just continuing to grow and expand our availability as well. So in the States we've got a number of new partners launching products in the next number of months and same with Canada. You know Canada we've been very fortunate to have a great distribution footprint for some time, but getting new product lines into those retailers and then continuing to grow our retailer network has been a big focus as well. So we have our big Canadian trade show coming up in a couple of weeks, which is always my one of my favorite trade shows of the year the Canadian Health Food Association.
Julie: 30:29
That's awesome and, yes, it gets you out there actually hearing what people are saying about the product, what they might be longing for, what you can think about next and and all of the things that actually standing and talking with people who who love your product, you know tell you right.
Margaret: 30:46
Yeah, I always say I want to wear a GoPro when we're at a trade show, because people's reactions to we get so many people that are like, oh my God, it's non-dairy, I don't even want to go near it. I'm like, please just try it. And then they're like, oh okay, that was actually good. So I just want to capture, capture.
Julie: 31:02
Some of that, and so you, and then, so you made another step to world domination. Right there, right exactly exactly.
Margaret: 31:09
They just have to try it. I think it's uh, flavor is the most important thing, and I think it's easy for people to have hangups about products that are healthier, better for you, or dairy free or plant based or whatever, but I think that that's where it's like super important for us to put forward products that have great quality and taste good to keep people coming back.
Julie: 31:29
Yeah, and I think it's really great to see you on that leading edge of that, where it doesn't have to be like cardboard or taste bad or anything. You can make choices for your health that taste good and are good for you Absolutely so important. Well, I can't wait to see where the journey takes you next.
Margaret: 31:47
Thank you.
Julie: 31:47
Yeah, thanks for joining me today.
Margaret: 31:50
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. This was so much fun. Take care.
Julie: 31:54
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