Food Entrepreneur KANSAS CITY  — During Food Business News’ Food Entrepreneur Experience webinar in April, four of the participating founders discussed how they went from previous conventional careers to becoming entrepreneurs.

The founders came from different backgrounds before launching their startups.  

Food Entrepreneur: What was your background prior to launching your startup? 

Joseph Osborne: Joseph Osborne, founder of Mojoz GummiCone, Linden, NJ, was in corporate sales since graduating from West Chester University of Pennsylvania, Westchester, in 2007 where he studied marketing and finance.

Following graduation, Osborne began his sales tenure with his first job at Chrysler. Almost two years into his job at Chrysler, Osborne faced the 2008 recession.

“I got a retirement package, which worked out well for me,” he said.

Following Chrysler, Osborne worked as a salesman for Comcast Business, Prime Wellness of Pennsylvania and IBM.

“I didn’t really like corporate,” he said. “I’ve been in corporate America for most of my whole career.”

Stephanie Berwick: Stephanie Berwick, founder and chief executive officer of Pastazerts, New York, progressed from a financial analyst to an accounting role and later a position in the technology sector.  

Having started out in finance, Berwick “fought tooth and nail not to be an accountant.”

“I moved to upstate New York and there weren’t a lot of large corporations,” she said. “I ended up falling into accounting.”

Having spent most of her career in technology, Berwick said she felt like it wasn’t where she wanted to be.

“I was a little itchy, you know, kind of seeing (if) I can either spend my whole career here, but I felt maybe it’s time to take a little leap of faith,” she said. “I didn’t know if I really wanted to take that leap and learn a whole new piece to the industry while I’m feeling itchy to be in a different sector like food. After a couple of years they were letting some of my team go and I felt maybe it was time for me to go as well.”

Following her corporate tenure, Berwick then worked for a technology startup for a few years before launching Pastazerts.

Sherif Badawy: During the day Sherif Badawy, MD, is a pediatrician and on the side he manages his food startup that produces snackable baklava pieces called Dar Baklava, Chicago.

Badawy cares for children with cancer and works within his local community. Badawy said by engaging with his local community often, he noticed consumers were looking for guilt-free indulgences.

“When I started to think about the idea (Dar Baklava) (that) maybe I could make it healthier, make it better, you know, really try to improve it in having a modern twist (to the product,)” he said. “They’re (the community) looking for a clean product, for a good product that they would not feel bad about afterwards.”

Cassie Maschhoff: Cassie Maschhoff, co-founder of a startup called Lottie’s Meats that produces pork sausages and ground pork blends, Denver, had a 10-year stint with Google, where she held many roles ranging from sales and support to strategy and operations.

“That was my first job out of college after Mizzou (University of Missouri),” Maschhoff said. “I kind of stumbled into it. I kind of got to do it all.”

FE: What did you learn from your previous career to help you launch your food startup? 

Osborne: Being a salesman for other companies, Osborne often found that “if there’s a will, there’s a way” to get the job done, — something he reminds himself while managing his startup as well.

“I was pretty successful in my corporate sales roles,” Osborne said. “You have to be very active and you have to be persistent. I’ve always been successful at selling other people’s products that I may or may not have all the way believed in.”

Osborne’s time at Prime Wellness helped him learn what it takes to build a startup.

“I wore many hats in that role, like marketing and doing a lot more things that helped me to get my own business started,” he said.”

Berwick: Having worked in a startup setting prior to launching Pastazerts, Berwick said she took the brand going global as her foundation on how to scale a business.

“It gave me a lot of those skill sets to understand the sales channels and exactly what it takes,” she said. “Then you can take that and make that a little smaller and apply it to your emerging brand.”

Badawy: Working with children as a pediatrician has taught Badawy empathy, a core pillar he is using to build Dar Baklava as well.

“If I have anyone who’s not happy with the product, I definitely have to make sure I reverse this,” he said. “I really aspire for that all the time and I feel like that’s something I learned from being a pediatrician.”

Maschhoff: While at Google, Maschhoff also worked for Waze, a traffic app acquired by Google. There, she worked in strategy and operations and helped build the application’s global advertising operations.

During her last two years at Google, Maschhoff also was participating in a Master of Business Administration program, which she also attributed to helping build her startup.

“Whenever I was in tech, I really enjoyed building and in retrospect, was very entrepreneurial in nature and the roles I had enabled me to wear all the different hats and get exposure to different sides of the business,” she said. “On top of the scope, Google provided a level of professionalism and practical experience that translates to our business now — like putting together a formal go-to-market plan for a retailer and engaging stakeholders.

“Business school taught me fundamentals that I definitely use now — like basic accounting principles and valuation. I also was able to take some consulting and strategy classes where I was able to work with real CPG (consumer packaged goods) companies and help them bring products to market."  

FE: Is the food industry challenging compared to your previous career?

Osborne: “There’s definitely things that are challenging,” he said. “Like going from prototype to product has been a lot harder than I thought. I thought, ‘how hard can it be to make a gummy in a shape of a cone?’ — it turned out to be pretty hard.

“I’ve learned over the years the formulation is a huge challenge (and) finding the right ingredients. For my specific product, I had a lot of bullet points I needed to hit. It couldn’t be sticky, it had to have a clean bite, (and) it can’t melt. So, coming up with a formulation and a brand new form and a brand new use case. But also brand new equipment that’s never been done.”

Osborne mentioned that having others see his “vision” was another struggle he faced as a founder.

“I’m dealing with people who are for the most part older than me,” he said. “It’s just a niche product, it’s new. People are going to have to adjust to that, but they will.”

Berwick: “I think this (the food industry) goes to the highest level of reinventing yourself and taking that leap into something brand new (and is) almost pretty much a second act,” she said. “As a consumer, I don’t think I knew as a shopper in a grocery store what slotting fees were. I took a retail ready course and that helped greatly. I just immersed myself into those new ways of speaking and the industry verbiage.”

Badawy: “I remember the number of things I had to Google when people talked to me, assuming I understood what they were saying,” he said. “All the way from bar codes to delivered cost, what goes in the label that has to be FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) compliant, the font (and) the size.

“Part of it is product specific and packaging specific. But then also, I think one huge challenge is navigating the industry. Who do you talk to and how do you get your product on the shelf?”

Maschhoff: Being a food startup owner, Maschhoff said she often wonders if some days or weeks will be the company’s last in an ever-changing industry.

“I think what is so challenging is to remain and grow,” she said. “Because you’re like ‘whoa, how will I ever survive and thrive here when I’ve already had to go through all these huge hurdles and I’m giving it everything I’ve got.’”

FE: Is the food industry what you thought it would be? 

Having no expectation of the food industry prior to launching their startups echoed throughout the founders’ answers.

Osborne: “Coming from a long career from corporate B2B sales, I really didn't know what to expect from the food industry,” Osborne said. “I will say that people in the candy world were and continue to be very gracious and helpful in opening up their Rolodexes to me, which came as pleasant surprise.” 

Berwick: “Maybe I even thought of it as you walk into your local grocery store and you bring your samples (in),” Berwick said. “I was very naive and thought ‘oh, they’ll take me in right?’ I didn’t know the corporate requirements that we’re responsible for as entrepreneurs and brand owners. So, the corporate piece was a little surprising to me.”

Badawy: “One surprise I didn’t actually realize until I started getting into it was as much as you are trying to sell people there will be as many people trying to sell you stuff like services,” he said.

Maschhoff: “We were raising a commodity product, you know, a spec to sell within these markets (and) then it’s done,” she said. “Chelsey, my sister and co-founder, was very much in the food industry when it comes to culinary. One thing I’m really grateful for (is) she has a sense of what we’re selling. A lot of our customers are in foodservice so we’re selling to other restaurants, bars and breweries. She had a sense of how that side of the value chain worked.

“But when it came to working with co-packers, sourcing the ingredients like building the brand all the different revenue channels, I feel like we’re still tuning in and had no idea.”


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