Sourcing, Supply Chains, and Scaling from Scratch
Sourcing, Supply Chains, and Scaling from Scratch
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In this week's discussion, Emily chats with Lucy Dana, CEO & Co-Founder of One Trick Pony, a delicious peanut butter brand made from Argentinian peanuts and Patagonian sea salt. Lucy walks us through the intricacies of sourcing peanuts, standing up an ecommerce arm and securing retailers across the country. She also highlights the importance of building and maintaining strong relationships with both buyers and customers. Don't miss her updates on upcoming product launches and more!
TUNE IN FOR TOPICS LIKE:
0:29 Lucy’s background and One Trick Pony’s origin story
4:01 Getting a peanut butter company off the ground
5:53 First steps into ecommerce & selecting flavor SKU’s
11:09 Building strong local buzz
14:11 Retailer expansion strategies for One Trick Pony
19:16 A fun milestone in the brand building journey so far
21:22 Tools Lucy would recommend to emerging brands
23:03 Leaning in to unscalable but meaningful tactics
25:25 Upcoming launches and changes in store for One Trick Pony
Listen to this week’s Local Marketing School conversation!
Other episodes you'll enjoy if you enjoyed Lucy’s episode:
#5: Staying Authentic while Scaling a CPG Brand | Nola Morris, Thelma’s Treats
#7: From Local Markets to a National Spotlight | Steven Vigilante, OLIPOP
Don't hesitate to reach out! We'd love to hear from you on Instagram and find out which episodes you're enjoying the most. Your feedback is so important to us! Please take a moment to rate the show and leave a review - it supports our ongoing Local Marketing School journey and helps us develop more content that addresses what you’re hoping to learn more about!
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Emily Steele (00:11)
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Local Marketing School podcast. I'm Emily Steele, your host, and I'm bringing an exciting guest to the podcast today. Lucy Dana is with us, and Lucy, why don't you kick us off? Kick it off by telling us who you are and about your company.
Lucy Dana (00:28)
Of course, thanks so much for having me. I get to use my fancy podcast mic at home for the first time, so thrilled to be using that. So yeah, my name is Lucy. I started One Trick Pony, which is a peanut butter company. About a year and a half ago, my brother and my sister-in-law, so three of us are co -founders together. I came to found One Trick Pony from like a very not linear path at all. So I've always had a love for food. When I was in middle school, I would come home and watch back -to -back episodes of Rachel Ray's 30 -minute meals after school. So I probably knew more about, you know, cooking an efficient meal for my family more so than any like adult in the world.
Lucy Dana (01:14)
And then in college, I started a food magazine and I moved to San Francisco after school and I temped at Williams -Sonoma's corporate offices. So I knew I like always wanted to do something in food, but I was living in San Francisco and kind of got swept up in the tech like tide of things. So I worked at Uber actually for five years in different operations roles.
Lucy Dana (01:36)
And when I was ready to leave Uber, I went to Blue Bottle Coffee, which is headquartered in Oakland as a way to kind of get back in the food world. So I ran our e -commerce website there a little bit, and then I was chief of staff to the CEO there for my last two years. And when I was getting ready to leave, I was interviewing at all these companies for like kind of new venture type roles. So like starting a company within a company, but nothing was like that exciting. I was kind of like having dread about working at any of these companies.
Lucy Dana (02:05)
So I decided to take a few months off and my brother was getting married in Argentina. So his wife is Argentinian, so their wedding was in Patagonia, which was amazing. But we went down there for a couple of weeks before the wedding and we were doing what we do best, which is eating peanut butter. And we were just like blown away by the taste and the texture of the peanut butter that we were eating. So we were like, wait, why is this so good? Like what's going on? Did some research and realized that peanuts are actually indigenous to South America. So it's like the original climate where they're supposed to be grown and therefore makes them a little bit naturally sweeter. So my brother kind of looked at me and was like, why don't we start a peanut butter company? Like you want to start something, you're not liking any of these companies. We have this Argentinian connection. And my brother and sister-in-law run a bagel deli in DC called Call Your Mother. So they were like, we already know how to make do business together, we have this following, come, kind of plug in. So we started it very naively, like on the spot. And here we are a year and a half later and lots of lessons learned.
Emily Steele (03:17)
my gosh, a year and a half later. So how did you come up with the name? It's such a fun creative name.
Lucy Dana (03:23)
I know, I need like a better story. Basically my brother is like the big ideas, like kind of like crazy thinker. And we were all just kind of like sitting around one day and we were thinking about kind of like retro sayings. And he was like, what about one trick pony? So we need like a better story about it. Our tagline sometimes is like really, really good peanut butter. That's the trick. But we just wanted something like playful, a little bit retro and then now very cute like little pony that we get to play with so you know win win win.
Emily Steele (03:56)
Yeah, yeah, you have your little mascot. That's so fun. So what did it take to get started? I mean, like you're getting peanuts from Argentina. Like is that is that common? Is that what most people are doing? Or is it just a whole new thing to navigate?
Lucy Dana (04:13)
Yeah, so we had to like stand up in a supply an entire like supply chain from scratch, which you know, none of us had done like at one point I was literally on the phone with like a US customs agent being like, hey, like, how does one do this asking for a friend. So definitely like, you know, tapped into all of our networks, like anyone who had done this before to try to get like, you know, one on one on one, how do you import anything?
Emily Steele (04:27)
Yeah.
Lucy Dana (04:40)
So we, because Dani is from Argentina, her sister still lives there and she has kind of like a factory background. So she helped us a ton being kind of like boots on the ground, helping us look for manufacturers and suppliers. So we had to find like a peanut supplier, we had to find a manufacturer. So we actually make our peanut butter in Argentina. We had to figure out how to bring it to the US. So.
Emily Steele (05:01)
Okay.
Lucy Dana (05:05)
Obviously I was like, you know, we'll launch this company and two months later we'll be in Whole Foods. And like, that'll be bad. But it took us, you know, obviously like eight months to stand up this supply chain and even like get, you know, samples back and forth and all that. So going the Argentinian peanut route definitely like took a little bit longer, but I think it's worth it. They are a huge peanut exporter. And so a lot of, you know, peanut butter companies usually use like a mix of peanuts. So You don't necessarily know where the peanuts are from. It could be Brazil, Argentina, US, wherever. But coming from my coffee background, I really wanted it to be single origin. So you know where the peanuts are from. They're from this one place in Argentina called Cordoba. So that was really important to us as we built this brand.
Emily Steele (05:39)
Cool, and so you start off, you're making peanut butter. How do you decide what flavor is like? How do you experiment and land where you landed?
Lucy Dana (06:03)
Yeah, so I think like in the food world today, there's like all these crazy flavors and I go on TikTok and you know, there's like marshmallows falling from the sky into like jars of peanut butter and like it's super fun and playful and delicious. But for us, when we thought of like, when do you actually eat peanut butter? It's like in a peanut butter and jelly or when you're cooking and in a stir fry and you actually like just want the basics. So while there's like a place for all the crazy flavors, we just wanted like back to basics plain peanut butter. So we have three SKU's right now. We have silky smooth, which is just peanuts and salt, and it's the smoothest peanut butter ever. And then we have kinda crunchy, which is also just peanuts and salt. And that we made a little bit different than most peanut butters. So we use a ton of little crunchies, we call it, instead of like a fewer bigger pieces.
Lucy Dana (07:01)
So we call it kinda crunchy, but it's actually very crunchy. The texture is just amazing. And then we have a third one that's unsalted, so it's just roasted peanuts. And we actually made that one for our dogs. So our dogs love peanut butter, but they're not supposed to have a lot of extra salt. So we're like, what if we make them their own jar? So it's, you know, human -grade peanuts, the same peanuts we used for the other ones. We just call it one -trick puppy. Yeah.
Emily Steele (07:06)
it's so great. I love that. So you got your flavors. You're figuring out how to get the product into the US and not now, but at some point you have to figure out how are you gonna distribute these to your customers? How'd you go about that? What was the first crack at getting product to customers?
Lucy Dana (07:48)
Yeah, so it's funny, like the jobs you have and in the moment you're like, why am I doing this job? Like, this is not where I want my career to go. And then like five years later, you're like, my gosh, thank God I did that job because now I have all of this information that I am now needing. So when I was at Blue Bottle, the person who was running the e-commerce business quit like right before COVID started and they hadn't hired her replacement yet. And so COVID hit everyone wanted to order everything online and there was no one running the e -commerce business. So they basically like threw me in. They're like, you're now running the e-commerce business. So I learned so much there about like, you know, fulfillment centers and you know, all the backend of like an e-commerce website, which in the moment I was like, I hate this. Like I will never need this information. Why am I doing this?
Lucy Dana (08:40)
And then fast forward to this and like, you know, thank goodness I did that because our first step was standing up an e-commerce website. So that was kind of like our first foray into getting it into customers' hands. I think we learned like, you know, retail is a very slow sales cycle. And so, you know, we're not going to be everywhere all at once, like to start on retail shelves. So like, let's stand up an e -commerce website was like the obvious first decision.
Emily Steele (08:47)
Yeah. Mm -hmm.
Lucy Dana (09:08)
So we turned that on like day one, just so that like anywhere in the US could get our product day one. And then we just like slowly started attacking the retail route after that. But it's slow and steady and we'll always have e-commerce to kind of like ground us.
Emily Steele (09:11)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, when you say e -commerce, are you just focused on your own website or do you use other channels like the Amazons of the world too?
Lucy Dana (09:34)
So right now we're only our own website. Some of that is like, some of that's on purpose and some of it's not. So we had a lot of like packaging issues, I will say, over the first year. We're like, you know, our lids didn't fit as well as I wanted them to. And, you know, stuff was like leaking. We're in glass jars. So, you know, there was a lot of breakage. So I feel like we finally just got our packaging into a good place.
Lucy Dana (10:02)
But part of that was like, I didn't want to ship a pallet to Amazon and have them, you know, ship it however, and it show up super broken. So just to control the experience as much as we could, like we wanted to own it at first. I think like all those channels, eventually we will want to be in, but you know, it takes money to advertise and energy to like focus on it. So not yet.
Emily Steele (10:08)
Yeah. Totally, totally. And like, thanks for sharing that transparency. So like so helpful to be like, yeah, like, hey, we didn't totally deal with that. And I'm sure everyone's been there, right? How do you truly know what's even available for you to do packaging in until you're like deep into your space and like, yeah, you'll look back like three, five years from now and be like, Whoa, can you believe we did that?
Lucy Dana (10:28)
Yeah. I know, I always hear like in the moment I'm like how could we have a peanut butter jar that doesn't close? Like that's crazy. And it is crazy, but I feel like I always hear the piece of advice of like if you don't look back on like your first iteration and are embarrassed then like you waited too long. So we're definitely embarrassed of the early days so I can say we didn't wait too long.
Emily Steele (10:50)
that's so good. So, okay, you get it listed like online. Do you do any like local activations at all? Or are you focused like purely on like probably like the social amplification organic, like drive people to the website, boots on the ground, like share that mix in kind of early days. I know not that you're that far away from early days or probably still feel like you're in early days, but I would love to hear how that was.
Lucy Dana (11:31)
Yeah, so we got the advice early on, what was it? It was like make thunder, make thunder, my God, I'm gonna botch this. Okay, you'd rather make a thunderstorm in one place than light rain everywhere. So we really wanted to focus on the local stores at first. And I feel like everyone gives you that advice in CPG, but then when you really dig in, I'm in Washington, DC there's like 10, you know, like independent grocery, shoppy shop stores like in DC. So I'm like, okay, like we hit those 10 and like now what? So I do think like part of that thunder is kind of like collabing with other local brands, doing kind of events where people can come and even just like almost like tailoring your Instagram to talk about local stuff. So it's not just like focus on these 10 stores and that's kind of it, but it's like, how can you make noise where you are, like locally or even regionally. So my brother having the bagel deli helps because we like got on their menu and any press they get, you know, we're kind of like, you know, a sentence in the third paragraph about like the bagel that we're on. And like we're trying to collab with some local brands to make like a peanut butter ice cream and some cookies and some other fun products are coming. We also try to like get involved with local influencers a lot. So there's a ton of like micro influencers in DC who focus on food or lifestyle or whatever it is. So just like consistently, you know, sending them product or inviting them. We had like a first birthday party that was outside in DC and invited a bunch of them to that. So, yeah, so thinking like beyond just like, okay, let me get on these shelves locally. It's like, how do you make buzz locally beyond that? So That's kind of how we thought about the early days and we're definitely still in the early days. So now just trying to take that strategy a little bit more regionally and kind of focus on other cities.
Emily Steele (13:33)
Mm -hmm, that's definitely like the theme of what I've kind of heard from other guests on the pod is just like those local collaborations to get started like borrowing other people's audiences and kind of like finding unique ways for you know both ships to rise if you will by collaborating and It seems so fruitful especially like with peanut butter like how many fun things can you do? I mean especially even like when you get pets involved. Do you have any fun pet collaborations down the road?
Lucy Dana (14:01)
Totally. Nothing coming up on the pet side, but we should, so this will be my kick in the butt for that. Exactly. My dogs will be thinking later.
Emily Steele (14:11)
There we go. See, I'm just here to like keep moving you forward, just encouraging you along the way. Yes. So as you get into kind of these retailers, how do you how do you navigate those conversations you show up and you're like, Hey, I have a product like you really you need this on your shelves? Or is it about your emailing? Is it everything? You're just like, Hi, I need you to pay attention to me because we are great. Yeah.
Lucy Dana (14:38)
Kind of I mean I feel like this was like kind of in the beginning we were just like throwing everything at the wall and seeing what Stuck so it's funny like you would think kind of like Instinctively showing up would be amazing because they can meet the founder and like you can drop off the product So I remember like one day I was visiting my fiance's parents They live in Westchester and I planned like this entire day of like stopping by all these little stores And like I was in the car for like eight hours dropping off samples and literally like not one of the stores bought anything. I was like, okay, this may not be the best strategy. So like just showing up actually doesn't work as well as you would think because oftentimes it's not the decision maker who's actually manning the shop. And like the sample can kind of get lost and like you don't know who to follow up with. So I found that actually like emailing or honestly DMing on Instagram has been like the most fruitful.
Lucy Dana (15:33)
But what's fun about those early day sales is you can DM someone and then they can buy something tomorrow. So the sales cycle there is super quick and there's not as much risk for them. We have a small case pack, so it's literally $25 for them to get involved. And if it doesn't sell, it's not the end of the world. I also like to send them samples first. So like...In my kind of like sales funnel, I'll reach out, tell them a little bit about us. I also try to send like a video that we made early on that kind of like shows our story. And then instead of like the first question being like, hey, do you want to buy this? My first question is like, hey, do you want to try this? So I always send them jars for free and like kind of get that to be the first step. And then once they try it, they realize it's great. It's great packaging, et cetera. Then you can like move into like, and here's the sell sheet and all of that. Yeah.
Emily Steele (16:06)
Yeah. Yeah. So it takes a little bit longer, but almost feels more kind of relationship building versus like, hey, let's jump to marriage. Like really quickly, you want this, right? Yeah. Yeah. And do you find that mostly kind of at that local retailer level or is that like when you jump up, like, for example, Whole Foods is like a behemoth, right? But like every local Whole Foods probably has its own person you can collaborate with. Is it just a different process based on like the type of grocery or retailer? Yeah.
Lucy Dana (16:53)
Yeah, exactly. It's like a totally different ballgame, like kind of the bigger you get. So when I, when we started expanding into retail, I thought of it as kind of like three phases. So the first phase were these independent, local, you know, one door shops where if you DM them, it's usually like the owner answering you. The next phase I think of as like regional grocery stores. So a place that could have like, you know, five to 20 locations, but it's usually in like one to two cities. And like, it's easier to get in touch with the buyer. Like if you email off their website or whatever it is, you can usually get in touch with the right person. And then there's like the third phase, which I would say we're like just now starting to enter, which is the national chain. So like the Whole Foods and the Sprouts of the world, where like if you DM Whole Foods on Instagram, it's obviously not going to the owner or the buyer or anyone who can help you. So That is a little trickier because these buyers are just inundated with brands reaching out. So we actually just hired our first sales brokerage to help us. So the thought is so much of this is relationship based. So these people have worked at these companies before and now they're doing sales for young brands. So hoping we can kind of call in the experts for help getting onto these bigger, bigger shelves.
Emily Steele (17:54)
Yeah, yeah, and so many, so much of that is like, who can open this door, right? Who has, who's got the key? And like, it's fascinating just the world of like connections and what networks can do. So that's so exciting.
Lucy Dana (18:22)
Yep. Yeah. And a lot of it I also say is like, hopefully if in your phase one, you can get on like the right shelves of these local independent stores. Like a lot of the times the buyers at these bigger, you know, chain retailers are shopping there. So like, you know, the whole foods nut butter buyer is based in New Jersey.
Emily Steele (18:38)
Mm -hmm. Mm.
Lucy Dana (18:52)
So one of our strategies was like contact every like independent store that's like within a 50 mile radius of the Whole Foods office there and hopes that, you know, next time she's at the shoppy shop, like around the corner, she's like, what is this? And we'll like see us on the right shelves. So in the beginning, like I think you're almost going for influence, not like how much cash can you get from all these POs, but it's like, how can you build the brand slowly? And hopefully you'll be in like the right trendy places where like these bigger buyers will see you.
Emily Steele (19:23)
Mm -hmm. That's so interesting that you thought that strategy is what I like wouldn't think of right away So I like that. Let's settle maybe she'll hear this episode, too Okay, I love it I'd love for you to reflect on like any specific achievement or milestone so far that maybe it's like the birthday or something that like You would want to share with listeners?
Lucy Dana (19:32)
Yeah, I was trying to think of one cool thing to share. I feel like getting in some of our bigger retailers is obviously probably from the business standpoint a bigger achievement, but I'll just tell you a fun one instead. So we do try to hyper segment whenever we do invites for our birthday party or whatever. So that if you're in Boston, you're not getting an invite to a birthday party in DC. So I was going through our Klaviyo list and trying to segment everyone who lives in the DC area to invite them to our birthday party. And I saw on our customers list, one of the email addresses was at Supreme Court. I don't remember what it actually was, but it was like at supremecourt.org or whatever. And so I'm like, is this a Supreme Court Justice who has bought our peanut butter? And so I'm like Googling, like, what is the email address for Supreme Court Justices? Because there's no way it's just like at supremecourt.org or whatever and it was so we have a Supreme Court justice I won't tell you which one but they buy our peanut butter they did not come to the birthday party that's the perks of being in DC you got friends in high places.
Emily Steele (20:49)
That is so funny and that it came from that email instead of like their personal maybe like is that best practice? Is that like now I have so many other questions.
Lucy Dana (21:05)
I know, I was like, even I'm not using, right, even I'm not using my work email for like when I'm buying stuff online, but who knows, I guess it all streamlined in one place.
Emily Steele (21:19)
That is so funny to just go through. Would you recommend like Klaviyo is something like if you're going to start a brand and like really dig into like email marketing segmenting, etc. Has that been a helpful tool for you?
Lucy Dana (21:30)
Yeah, I feel like Klaviyo is kind of like the startup, like it's on the starter path kind of. It's like Shopify and Klaviyo, I recommend to anyone. A, it's pretty cheap for like how much you can do with it. It's very intuitive. Like I set up all of our flows and it's like, you just say like what action you want someone to have taken and what email you want them to get and I'm not like a marketing email person at all. So like if I can do it, anyone can do it. But they have really cool segmentations. You can literally put in like a zip code and say, I want anyone within 25 miles of the zip code to get this. So that has been super cool for us when we are launching in these regional grocery stores. And I'm crazy, like I will send an email to four people. So we just launched in this like retailer in Maine.
Lucy Dana (22:22)
Which is like a fairly small state and like we don't have a huge following there. So I pulled the list I was like, you know anyone who lives within 50 miles of Portland Maine and it was four people So I fired it off and then I was like I was tracking No, no one like emailed but it was funny like looking at the open rates because it was like, you know 50 % and I'm like, okay So two people and then it was like 75 % I'm like, we got a third
Yeah, two. That is so funny. It's just so like you'll look back and like maybe this interview someday and be like, well, that's crazy. When we segmented, it was like four people, right? And to be like, how it's possible. I think that's like such a fun phase to be in the company. Hopefully you're enjoying some of those like, I don't know, early startup phases, you know.
Lucy Dana (22:50)
Totally. I think sometimes it can be demoralizing because you're like, why am I spending two hours making this email that maybe four people are going to open and then maybe one of them will go to the store? But I do think a big thing about this stage is you just have to lean into the unscalable things. That is what's going to make your brand feel special to people. So for a while, we were recording welcome videos for everyone who bought something on our website.
Lucy Dana (23:38)
And I'm like, what am I doing? Like I'm sitting on my couch in my pajamas, like recording these videos, but it's like, that is what makes someone feel like emotionally connected to a brand, like not a generic email. Or, you know, if you live in Maine and you like felt shout out by my email, like that's going to make you go to the store. So those like unscalable things, I'm telling myself, like you only get this shot to do this once. So like enjoy it and do it.
Emily Steele (23:46)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're like someone orders and you're sending like a selfie video to be like, thank you, Emily, for your order, like, da-da-da. That's so cool. Yeah, and it does, it does take time. And I think like in those early days, it's like it is that connection. People are gonna be like excited about you and your vision for something brand new. Like they've had like Jiffy or whatever for their whole lives. And they're like, my gosh, something new, better, different, et cetera. And you're a person behind it. Like how fun.
Lucy Dana (24:07)
I think people just appreciate that the founders are the ones doing the work. Anytime someone emails us, it comes straight to my inbox and I'll respond. And I think people are like, whoa, you're literally the one responding to this. Or I try to do all the grocery store demos I do myself. And people will try it and they'll be like, yeah, it's good, whatever. And then I'm like, yeah, and it's my company. And then they're like, of course, I'm buying it. So I think knowing that the founder is there and they're bought in and they're you know, the one doing the heavy lifting day to day, like really makes people respect it and want to be a part of it.
Emily Steele (24:57)
Yeah, yeah, I think people do like lean into that more now more than ever too, just because you can also demonstrate kind of that founder journey and the story on socials, like through podcasts, et cetera, where people feel like they get to know you for better or worse, right? You're like, here's, this is me, this is it.
Lucy Dana (25:17)
Yeah, people buy from people, that's what they say. Exactly.
Emily Steele (25:23)
Yeah, that's what the word on the story does. Okay, well to wrap us up, you want to share like what's next for One Trick Pony? Anything coming down the pipeline you can share?
Lucy Dana (25:34)
Yeah, we have a lot of exciting stuff coming. So I don't want to share too much, but we have a seasonal flavor, I'll call it, coming soon. So think of like the Goober jars from your childhood that had like the striped jelly and peanut butter. So it won't be jelly, but it's going to be something else very delicious. So we have that. And then our big kind of like bet and big thing coming up is we are focusing on redesigning our jar.
Lucy Dana (26:03)
So I feel like the number one thing I hear is people want to eat natural peanut butter. They don't want the palm oil in it. But that means that there's going to be that oil separation that happens with natural peanut butter. And people hate stirring that. It can be like a messy experience. So we are designing a jar from scratch that basically focuses on the stirring experience and how can you reduce the oil separation. So I won't say too much, but a new jar is coming and it's going to look very different.
Emily Steele (26:13)
Interesting. Okay, we're all like so eager. Yeah, where do we find things out? I mean we got to get on your email list so you can send us emails that we will open. But should people head to your, yeah.
Lucy Dana (26:34)
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, if you're in, if you're in Maine, sign up. Yeah, we are at onetrickponynuts.com. So we will ship you peanut butter to your house there no matter where you live in the US. And then our Instagram is at @@onetrickponynuts. And we do a lot of fun like recipe videos, behind the scenes, kind of like family stuff, making fun of each other and showing how working with your brother can be fun and crazy. So follow us there.
Emily Steele (27:14)
Amazing. Well, thanks for being on the podcast today. It was so fun to learn more about you.
Lucy Dana (27:16)
Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you.
