We registered the company in 2026. The week after, someone asked us what our launch date was. We didn't have one.
This is the part of a startup that no one really talks about — the stretch between 'we're doing this' and 'we're doing this with an actual product that people can buy.' It's mostly not glamorous. It's sourcing conversations, sample batches, product failures, and whiteboard sessions that end with more questions than you started with.
Here's what month one actually looked like for us.
The good parts
We narrowed the product focus earlier than expected. The temptation in consumer food is to imagine a full portfolio — six SKUs, three form factors, seasonal specials. We resisted that and got to a clear conviction about what the first product needs to feel like before we started building it. That took longer than we thought, and it was worth every hour.
We also found a manufacturing partner worth getting excited about. Finding someone who matches your quality obsession when you have no volume guarantees and no brand history is harder than it sounds. We got lucky, and then we worked hard to keep that luck.
The harder parts
Flavour development is humbling. You come in thinking you know what you want — you've eaten enough of the thing to have strong opinions — and the first few batches teach you that wanting a flavour and being able to specify it precisely are completely different skills. We are learning the vocabulary. It is a slow and delicious process.
Lead times are longer than you remember from every other industry you've worked in. Everything takes a Wednesday longer than the estimate. We've added a standing Wednesday buffer to every timeline. It has already been used.
The most useful thing we did
We talked to people who love snacks. A lot of them. Not focus groups — just actual conversations with people about what they buy, what they wish existed, and what disappoints them about what's currently on the shelf. The signal from those conversations has been more valuable than any market research report we could have commissioned.
The things people are disappointed by are consistent and specific. The things they love are specific too, often in ways that don't survive the packaging process. That gap is where we're building.
That's month one. We're further along than we look, and we still have a long way to go. If you want to follow the journey, the waitlist is at the bottom of this page. We'll actually email you when something interesting happens.