From Start-Up to the Fastest Growing Cookie Brand (How They Did It) | With Toto Cookies Ep. 23 скачать в хорошем качестве

From Start-Up to the Fastest Growing Cookie Brand (How They Did It) | With Toto Cookies Ep. 23

You Don’t Build the Fastest-Growing Cookie Brand by Accident What if the thing you’re building didn’t start as a business idea, but as a fight for your own health? In this episode of The Anatomy of a Brand Show, we sit down with the founders of Toto Cookies, the fastest-growing cookie brand in the natural foods market, to unpack what it actually takes to build a modern CPG brand that scales without selling its soul. From Crohn’s disease and years of failed recipes…to baking 400,000 cookies a month and turning down Walmart —this is a masterclass in product obsession, disciplined growth, and founder alignment. This isn’t a hype story. It’s a long one. And that’s exactly why it worked. 00:00 – The origin story: why Toto Cookies exists 01:04 – Health struggles, food restrictions, and the need for comfort 02:09 – One year of failed recipes (and why most founders quit here) 03:04 – The first cookie that changed everything 04:47 – From 12 cookies at a time to 400,000 per month 05:19 – Why they pivoted from cookie dough to packaged cookies 06:44 – The danger of romanticizing your first idea 07:47 – How Toto grew without traditional marketing 09:31 – Why great marketing can hide a bad product 11:08 – Product, aesthetics, ads 12:14 – The non-glamorous operational systems that make scale possible 13:18 – The $800,000 investor that disappeared overnight 15:26 – Why optimism and operational realism must coexist 17:01 – The hidden dangers of “big-name” retailers 18:05 – When a $200K check turns into $26K 19:49 – Why fewer retail doors can mean more growth 21:58 – Brand vs. numbers: navigating meaning and metrics 23:57 – Why founders need a counterbalance, not a clone 25:41 – How building Toto changed them as people 28:11 – From scarcity mindset to confident leadership 30:47 – Advice for founders just getting started 34:40 – The real timeline and cost of building a brand 37:02 – The long-term vision for Toto Cookies 38:12 – Nostalgia, indulgence, and the future of “better-for-you” snacks #AnatomyOfABrand #FounderStory #CPGBrands #StartupPodcast #BrandBuilding #ProductFirst #ConsumerBrands #RetailStrategy #BetterForYou #FoodStartups #Entrepreneurship