From Labor & Delivery Nurse to H-E-B and 1,500+ Doors | Ashley Cameron, Love&Cookies

On this episode, we're joined by Ashley Cameron, Founder & CEO of Love&Cookies - the clean-label frozen gourmet cookie dough brand you bake straight from the freezer in  ess than 15 minutes. Ashley was a labor and delivery nurse with no CPG background before her cookies landed on H-E-B shelves. Baking with her son Charlie during his recovery turned into a clean-label product built on a simple insight: freeze the dough and you no longer need preservatives or shelf stabilizers. Ashley shares how a customer pushed her to enter H-E-B's Quest for Texas Best, which she won six months after opening her Lakeway store, catapulting her into 250+ H-E-B locations.We get into hard pivots, co-packers' resistance to run her stand-up pouch which led Ashley build her own manufacturing facility and the tough call to eventually move to a co-packer.Ashley walks through resizing each cookie by half an ounce to make pricing work, and closing three brick-and-mortar stores to put capital behind retail.Ashley also breaks down the packaging decisions that set the brand apart, from color-coding every flavor (because most stockers were merchandising by color) to dropping her kids' names off the cookies to lift velocity. ---------------Episode Highlights:🍪 Baking with her son after a Kawasaki diagnosis becomes a brand❄️ Why freezing the dough replaces preservatives and shelf stabilizers🏆 Winning H-E-B's Quest for Texas Best six months after opening🏭 Building an in-house facility when no co-packer would take her🔄 The hard pivot from own factory to co-manufacturer for margin🎨 Color-coding every flavor so stockers and shoppers find it💸 Resizing the cookie half an ounce to fix distribution pricing🏷️ Dropping the kids'-names branding to lift velocity🛒 Live demos and the BOGO that cleared the shelf in three days🔪 Closing three brick-and-mortar stores to fund retail growth🤝 The key hires that put the business on solid footing💰 Scaling on under $500K, then a seed round toward profitability👀 The clean-label white space she's watching next---------------Table of Contents:00:00 – Intro00:56 – Origin story and Charlie's diagnosis02:26 – Designing a clean-label frozen cookie dough03:46 – Opening the store and finding Quest for Texas Best04:32 – Scaling the recipe and sourcing at volume05:57 – Nailing the 13 to 15 minute bake07:24 – Building an in-house manufacturing facility10:03 – Outgrowing it and pivoting to a co-manufacturer12:04 – Packaging design and color differentiation15:53 – Removing barriers at the freezer door16:29 – Pricing strategy and resizing the cookie18:57 – Inside the Quest for Texas Best pitch22:11 – Dropping the cookie names for velocity24:24 – Driving trial with demos and BOGOs26:09 – Closing the brick-and-mortar stores28:22 – Key hires that steadied the business30:45 – Financing growth and the seed round33:47 – Why the whole store is your competition---------------Links:Love&Cookies – https://cookiesilove.com/Follow Ashley on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-cameron-534b00238/Love&Cookies on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/getloveandcookies/Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out KitPrint.Shout out to my friends over at Glimpse, the go-to partner for automating retail-related back-office operations and unlocking margin trapped in invalid fees and manual processes.Are you in the market for a new flexible packaging partner? Check out HD Packaging. Third-generation, family-owned and built for the needs of category leaders like Newman’s Own and A Dozen Cousins. Faster launches, lower costs, and no artwork fees.