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Episode 174
September 4, 2020

"Low-Cost Indulgence"

Indulging in candy should be fun, not a total guilt trip. Mayssa Chehata, founder and CEO at BEHAVE joins the show to talk about building BEHAVE and being flexible in founding a business. How does she bring the childhood magic of candy to adults? Listen now to find out!

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this episode sponsored by

What is BEHAVE?

  • BEHAVE makes candy that is better for you: low sugar, natural ingredients, no artificial ingredients, and good taste.
  • Currently, BEHAVE offers two options of gummies, sweet and sour. 
  • BEHAVE started from a lack of alternative options in the candy department, which typically had people giving up candy altogether. 
  • Originally, BEHAVE planned to be a mix of DTC and retail. Due to COVID, they’re now only doing DTC. 
  • BEHAVE thrived throughout COVID by surrounding themselves with the right investors, partners, vendors, and employees. 

Where is BEHAVE headed?

  • Self-awareness is a cornerstone of how we should operate, both as individuals and businesses. BEHAVE is engaging in their own self-awareness by seeing the current market and making decisions accordingly.
  • BEHAVE is recognizing the shift in the market towards comfort items and online shopping
  • Eventually, BEHAVE plans to get into retail. 
  • BEHAVE is doing things differently - marketing towards adults instead of children. This effectively is bringing consumers back to the category of candy who have previously abandoned it.
  • When there is a product category that customers have abandoned, it is an opportunity to recapture customers. 

LINKS


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Brian: [00:02:04] Hello and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast about next generation commerce. I'm Brian, and today I have a really interesting guest who just launched a new brand that sounds so delicious. I can't wait to talk about it. Welcome, Mayssa Chehata, founder and CEO at BEHAVE.

Mayssa: [00:02:22] Hi, Brian. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Brian: [00:02:25] So great to have you. So tell us a little bit about BEHAVE and what your company is.

Mayssa: [00:02:33] Yeah. So BEHAVE is better for you candy company. We launched just last week, and what we're really trying to do is introduce products into the candy category that are better for you. And what that means for us is low sugar, made from all natural ingredients, no artificial ingredients, but also products that taste really good. So we really invested a lot of time into developing recipes that are going to hit those better-for-you qualities from sort of a nutrition perspective. But we still wanted to introduce really fun, unique flavors that you don't typically see in candy. And we partnered with a celebrity chef. Her name is Elizabeth Falkner. She's incredible, James Beard Award nominated, really well respected in her field, and specifically in the pastry world. So she brought a ton of expertise and a ton of know-how into that R&D process. So what we feel like we ended up with is a candy that is really much better for you than probably what's already out there with 3 grams of sugar per bag, 90 calories, and 6 grams net carb.

Brian: [00:03:48] Wow.

Mayssa: [00:03:48] So definitely the idea is eat the whole bag. None of the sort of guilt and baggage that I think comes with eating candy as you get older, but not compromising at all on the taste and the flavor and still being able to give people that really fun indulgence that they're typically looking for when they kind of reach for candy.

Brian: [00:04:09] My gosh, eating a whole bag of candy guilt-free sounds amazing. {laughter} And so I definitely see the appeal. You launched with gummies, right?

Mayssa: [00:04:23] Yeah.

Brian: [00:04:23] Two flavors. So tell me. Tell me honestly. Sweet or sour?

Mayssa: [00:04:31] Oh, man. I feel like you're asking me to pick my favorite child, which, as we all know, is frowned upon. But off the record maybe, I got to go sour. I'm such a sour candy person.

Brian: [00:04:44] Yes.

Mayssa: [00:04:44] And we went really sour. We're not like Warheads sour, by any means, but we went sour, so that the sour lovers are really going to love this candy.

Brian: [00:05:00] Yes. I love how that's the standard. Warhead sour. It's like the Warhead scale. {laughter}

Mayssa: [00:05:08] Exactly.

Brian: [00:05:08] I think I ruined my enamel on Warheads. So it's probably good that you didn't go quite that sour.

Mayssa: [00:05:14] Yeah, like, how is that legal? I remember just struggling through Warheads as a kid and putting like ten in your mouth at a time.

Brian: [00:05:25] Yes.

Mayssa: [00:05:25] Still a fun experience and probably some kind of childhood psychological development in there somewhere.

Brian: [00:05:35] I would say so. Well, glad that it's not quite that sour such that it's actually enjoyable and not just like a tooth destroying machine, like Warheads were.

Mayssa: [00:05:48] Yeah. Yeah.

Brian: [00:05:50] That's phenomenal. Well, tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you even get into this? Why a candy company? What led you to found BEHAVE, and how did it come about?

Mayssa: [00:06:02] Why a candy company for me is kind of simply that I just love candy. I'm such a candy fiend. I've always had such a sweet tooth. And I think this probably came from as a kid, I definitely had those parents that were like, no candy on Halloween. You just got like a couple pieces. And then I feel like that restriction is what led me to be like an animal around candy in every other context. Like if I was at a friend's house or if there was candy at school because it was Valentine's Day, I would just go ham. And it was like, no parents around. I'm going in. I'm just going to like devour whatever is in front of me. It doesn't matter what it is. So I as you can kind of probably hear from me talking like not a very healthy relationship with candy. Obsessed with it nonetheless. And have always loved candy as a kid and as an adult. But as I got older, the experience of eating candy really went from this fun I'm going to just go in on this bag of gummies or this bag of chocolates to kind of this convoluted experience where I sort of feel sick after, I have maybe a headache or a sugar rush and a crash. I feel guilty. I feel like, ugh, why did I do this? I'm trying to eat less sugar. I'm trying to eat better. I'm cleaner ingredients in the foods that I'm eating. And this is all artificial. And so the experience just shifted so much. And it was probably a couple of years ago where I sort of started thinking, OK, every time I kind of let myself have a candy binge, I always feel pretty crappy afterwards. So what else is out there? Let me look into this. Let me look in the candy aisle. Look a little deeper. Do some online research. And frankly, just kind of came up empty. And that was the initial stages of thinking, OK, like what could be done in this category? Is there an opportunity to do something better for you? And at the time I was working at Daily Harvest, so I was a pretty early employee there. And that really opened my eyes to sort of better-for-you food space, cleaner eating, really... Daily Harvest was really at the precipice of this clean eating movement, I would say, one of the early brands in that space. And so really kind of had a front row seat to watching that consumer behavior shifting and just seeing how many customers and how many people were really getting on board with this idea of eating clean doesn't have to mean inconvenient. Eating clean doesn't have to mean giving up the things that you love. It really can just mean having better options. It doesn't mean restrictive diets. It doesn't mean having to cut things out completely. And I love that that was the message that we really were promoting at Daily Harvest. And that was something I really tried to bring in to BEHAVE. While we are better-for-you product, we are keto friendly, we are low sugar, but we're definitely not promoting any diets. We're not telling people to eat a certain way. We just want to present something that, hey, if you love candy and maybe you haven't had in a while, that sucks. Eat candy again. Eat it and feel good about it. And that's what we wanted to bring to customers.

Brian: [00:09:31] I love that and feel good about eating candy again is, I think, a really great message. I totally agree. Like I also loved candy as a kid. It was so frustrating over to friends houses that seemed to have unlimited candy.

Mayssa: [00:09:45] Yeah.

Brian: [00:09:45] You're like, "How is this happening?" Just candy coming out of everywhere?

Mayssa: [00:09:50] Yeah. I know. Like "Is your mom Willy Wonka? Like what is going on here?"

Brian: [00:09:57] Exactly. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And then you realize, like, that was probably really, really bad for them. And like, you're really lucky that your parents didn't do that for you.

Mayssa: [00:10:05] Right. Right.

Brian: [00:10:06] But, yeah, I know it's true. Like, I think that candy is such a huge part of our childhood. It's interesting. It has such a huge effect on our psyche. And even now having kids of my own looking out. It's crazy. People push candy on your children all the time. It's just constant candy pushing. You go to the bank, they get candy. You go to a parade, they get candy. You go to every single holiday. It's candy. Candy is everywhere. It's like the abundance, child... I don't know. I don't even know. It's got to be affecting their psyche in ways that I can't even explain.

Mayssa: [00:10:49] Yeah. Totally.

Brian: [00:10:50] And so having something like this where it's like all of a sudden it's rethinking what candy means. And it's really hard because you do want to have things that are indulgent in your life that you can just sit down and and eat the whole bag, eat the whole serving. Right? Like eat more than one serving. {laughter} It just feels so like freeing. And I don't know if that's because we've... I don't know. I don't know. There's a lot that goes into that I think. But it's such a cool story. So how did you make the move from Daily Harvest to launching your own brand? What did that look like?

Mayssa: [00:11:39] Yeah. So like I said, sort of had the initial idea or like thought around what's going on in the candy industry? Are there better-for-you options?What do they look like? While I was at Daily Harvest... Actually after Daily Harvest, I went to SoulCycle, which is a cycling studio that has over one hundred studios across the country, and was leading business development and partnerships there for a couple of years. And I think while I was there, I still had had this thought around candy while I was at Daily Harvest. So really as a consumer, I would say, if I was at a movie theater, if I was at the airport, if I was in a bodega here in New York City, I would check the candy aisle. And I think I really as a consumer was just like, I hope someone comes out with something better. I hope that I just walk in one day and I see either a new start up or even one of the big candy companies has come out with a great new product. And I can just indulge and enjoy it and kind of rid myself almost of this idea and move on. [00:12:52] But kind of over a year went by and keeping my eye on the space and really still not seeing anything. And I think that was sort of a catalyst for me to say, OK, what would it look like to actually try to create a product like this from product development, to building the business, and started to just kind of dig into that a little bit more and try to understand how do we bring something like this to life? And [00:13:19] then I left SoulCycle in September of last year, 2019. And then really committed full time to trying to get BEHAVE off the ground.

Brian: [00:13:31] Nice. Did you go through a funding round?

Mayssa: [00:13:34] Yeah. So we raised a pre-seed round right after I sort of left SoulCycle. We raised some capital from really primarily angel investors. And that's really what we kind of have used to get to launch, that sort of initial kind of development and pre launch period.

Brian: [00:13:58] Nice. That's great. It's such a challenging time, as you know, to be launching a brand. We're in the middle of probably the biggest crisis of how many ever years it's been.

Mayssa: [00:14:17] Yeah.

Brian: [00:14:17] And so talk to me a little bit about what your experience has been like, and is currently, launching a brand during COVID and any lessons you've learned. You're kind of jumping off with a round of funding. How do you expect to sort of sustain yourself in years ahead, especially given the period that we're in?

Mayssa: [00:14:46] Yeah, it's such a great question, and it is a question that definitely my team and I are navigating on a really a day by day basis. But I think COVID has impacted everybody.  [00:15:02]We were probably lucky to still be in a pre launch phase. So when the sort of the height of COVID and the quarantine really kicked off back in March, we were really nimble and were kind of able to take a step back and adapt while still being behind the scenes. We didn't have a product in market yet. We didn't have a big team that we had to make sure we could pay and keep on. And of course wouldn't want to let anyone go. So we were really lucky in that sense. [00:15:41] But COVID is definitely something that is... And the situation is evolving so much on a day by day basis, so I would say some of our strategies shifted. Right? I think we had initially had plans to launch with more of a DTC and retail mix. I think we still would have been really heavily focused on DTC and eCom. But we did have some plans to be in some retail specifically focused on New York, some of the sort of boutique retail around the city that you see these kind of corner stores and some of these cool maybe like wellness focused spaces. But the reality is that you don't really see people doing that boutique shopping, that sort of window shopping that maybe they used to. I feel like the shopping behavior now is I want to go to the grocery store once a week. I have my shopping list. I'm in and out. So that kind of impacted our strategy from a launch perspective and really shifting our focus to be one hundred percent on the DTC channel at launch. In terms of like how we sort of have managed, [00:16:48] I would say the most important thing that I really realized going through COVID and being prelaunch and trying to get the product to market through all of the kind of challenges that came with COVID is having the right people, being surrounded by the right people, is so important. [00:17:06] I know other founders who they've had investors or advisors kind of breathing down their necks asking "Why is this delayed?" "When are you going to market?" We had delays. We had planned to launch a couple of months sooner than we did. We had production delays with our manufacturer. We had some delays with some of our suppliers. And we had things get stuck in customs, stuff like that. [00:17:31] So, yeah, things were delayed. And I just felt so lucky to have to be surrounded by investors and partners that were really understanding, really that I could connect with on a human level and just say, "Look, we're doing the best we can. Everyone is kind of navigating this crisis as best as possible. And there's a lot of things right now that are out of our hands and out of our control." And that really was such a validation for getting the right people on board just when it comes to any part of the business, whether it's your investors, your advisors, the vendors that you work with, just really working with people that are not just going to be so mechanical about things, but kind of have that human empathy and that understanding that we are in a pandemic, and that's impacting everybody. [00:18:23]

Brian: [00:18:24] Yeah, I like that a lot. I think what I'm hearing you say is that having people around you that know how to be reasonable, roll with the punches, understand what's happening, don't think that they're sort of the center of the universe and understand the situation from like a very self-aware perspective, having those people around you, advising you, understanding how things go and giving you that sort of the space to be able to do what you need to do right now is so important.

Mayssa: [00:19:05] Yeah.

Brian: [00:19:05] It sounds to me like you've got quite the background in partnerships. And that to me sounds like a very partner minded response, which I love.

Mayssa: [00:19:18] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like you hit the nail on the head when you said self awareness. I think we all have to be operating from a place of self awareness. We all need to be operating, especially right now, from a place of understanding our privilege wherever that lies. I have a business that we are still in business. We have not been shut down. Myself and everyone close to me is still healthy. Still able to pay my rent. Like those are privileges that a lot of the country do not have right now. So I think it's really important to have the self awareness on that personal level. And then you also have to have self awareness as a brand, right? You don't want to come out in the midst of COVID and just be pushing messages that don't make sense to people and that don't take into account what people are kind of going through or how different people and different industries have been impacted by everything going on. So  [00:20:20]I think that self awareness has to be at the center of how we operate as individuals and as citizens of the business communities that we're a part of and also how we operate as brands in relation to our customers and in relation to the communities that we're building around our brands and our products. [00:20:38] And I think coming from a partnerships background, I do think you do kind of flex that. You have to flex that muscle a lot. Right? Because when you're building partnerships in the business development world that I spent a lot of time in across the different roles that I've had in different companies I've worked at, you will never get a deal done if you can't put yourself in the shoes of the person sitting across the table from you. I shouldn't say you'll never, actually you can get a deal done if you just yell and scream at each other. It might get done at the end of the day. It's not going to be fun for anyone. It's not going to be mutually beneficial. [00:21:15] I think the best deals really get done when you can really empathize with the person sitting across from you, when you can really gain a deep understanding of what motivates them, what kind of gets them out of bed. Whether it's my counterpart at this company, their bonus is tied to these metrics. So let's make sure this partnership is going to hit those metrics, so that they get their bonus, and we're all motivated and working towards the same thing. So kind of being able to put yourself in other people's shoes. And I hope that we as a brand can kind of do that in relation to our community and to our customer. [00:21:52]

Brian: [00:24:17] Yeah, sort of having that self-awareness as a brand... Actually sort of speaking of that, you talked a little bit about your mix of how you were going to go to market and you were initially thinking there would be a more of a blend of retail and DTC. And I totally understand the strategy. I think being prior to COVID it would have been a very, very solid and thoughtful strategy. But now you sort of fall into like the new DTC hotness sort of, if you will. Like you're a modern DTC brand in terms of your go to market, at least as far as I can tell. How do you feel about being classified that way? Like, as I say that does that strike a chord with you, like a digitally native vertical brand (DNVB)? Is that how you would classify yourself? And do you see the scope of your channels changing as we kind of, well in years ahead?

Mayssa: [00:25:17] Yeah, yeah. I think DTC has been such a, it's been such a buzz word for I don't know how long now, maybe a decade. And so I think it's nice to be able to use that kind of word and quickly explain to people you can find us online, which isn't true of a lot of candy and actually most candy. Right? You find it in retail.

Brian: [00:25:46] Right.

Mayssa: [00:25:46] You find it on at the corner store, the convenience store. So we definitely want to communicate to people that, hey, we are doing things a little differently. You can find us online. We very intentionally wanted to have that eCom channel alive and well because we want to build community. We want to build direct relationships with our customers. We want to have direct communication with our customers. We want to have that direct feedback loop. And that is something that definitely gets watered down when you are in retail. You're not talking to your customer when they pick you up off of the shelf. But at the same time, I think the DTC only strategy is not... It is where we're at right now at launch date. But I definitely would say that we are going to be omnichannel as time goes on. And the strategy is absolutely omnichannel. And I like to think omnichannel is the new DTC. And I kind of saw that when I was talking to investors fundraising, when I was just kind of having conversations with other founders. The truth is the DTC model gets very expensive, and you can become very reliant on Facebook and other digital advertising channels, and that can become a sort of a race to the bottom.

Brian: [00:27:11] Right.

Mayssa: [00:27:11] And we've seen that happen with a lot of brands. So I think let's make omnichannel like the hot thing. And that's really where we see ourselves going, is we want to have a robust DTC business where we have that relationship with the customer. But ultimately, especially for a product like ours, we want to be at the checkout aisle. We want to be meeting customers where they are. Candy is an impulse purchase at the end of the day. You want to be catching people when that impulse strikes. And so retail is going to be really important for us as things kind of play out there.

Brian: [00:27:49] Omnichannel is the new hotness. Show title right there. It's interesting because you look at you're stepping into a very established industry, and again, talking about having to be self-aware. You're stepping into an industry that has spent years figuring out their impulse purchases and building brand loyalty and cultivating their customers taste buds. And it's quite the world you're entering. Talk to me a little bit about your strategy for how you're going to sort of address like these much, much larger players that really have not introduced anything at the level that you've introduced. How do you expect to go take this industry on?

Mayssa: [00:28:43] Yeah, I mean, what you're saying is so real, right? And that idea of the legacy brands are so ingrained into us as a society. I mean, to what you were saying earlier with your kids. It's like you can't go anywhere with kids and not find candy, so that loyalty is being cultivated from such a young age. [00:29:04] But actually, one of the big things that we really spent a lot of time on when developing our branding was something that's going to differentiate us from kind of the legacy and the tradition and what most of the candy aisle looks like, is that we are branded towards sort of the adult consumer. So we really are talking to millennials, maybe older Gen Z, maybe younger Gen Y. And that's, I think, going to be a big differentiator for us. Our branding is not sort of cartoon forward. It's not kid forward. And the reality is that a lot of consumption in the candy category is coming from adults. But do grown ups still relate to these brands that maybe they loved as kids?  [00:29:53]But now you're 30 and is a cartoon character on the package something that is going to draw you in, or are you looking for something a little bit more elevated that has maybe evolved with you as as you've grown? So that is kind of part of our thesis and part of what we want to bring into the aisle that is going to be different. And so I think the consumer that we're targeting, one is brand, and we're trying to convey a message, and we're trying to tell a story that is going to resonate with that consumer. I think the other thing is that a lot of grown ups have left the category. So it's not just about converting adults who love candy and miss it and maybe they are indulging, but then they kind of feel bad after or it's not that fun, joyful experience that it used to be. But they are still indulging. That's obviously going to be a big consumer set for us. But it's also people that have just completely left the category who have said, you know what, I'll just have frozen blueberries instead, or I'll just have a smoothie when I get that sweet tooth and you have that instead. So we want to bring those people back into the category. We want to say, hey, we've created something that we think is going to be a really great fit for you and still tastes delicious, so give candy a try again, basically. So I think introducing something new so that people can come back into the category is hopefully going to help give us an edge in a category where there is so much legacy and there is so much conventional product and again, kind of taking that different branding approach where we wanted to create something that we think is going to resonate with a subset of consumers that we don't feel is really being spoken to in the category right now.

Brian: [00:31:52] That is so genius. Effectively, what you've done is you've identified people that have fully abandoned your category, and you're saying this is a way to get those people back. We don't have to compete. This is not a competition. Those people will never come back to legacy brands. Right?

Mayssa: [00:32:11] Right.

Mayssa: [00:32:11] But they will come to something new. There is an opportunity to bring them back to something new. [00:32:18] I think this is a lesson that can be learned in a lot of categories, actually, where you have customers that have just, for whatever reason it is, in this case for health reasons typically, but for whatever reason it is like there's a broader lesson about those customers that have abandoned a category because it's too time consuming or it's too expensive or whatever that thing is, the reason why they've abandoned, there's an opportunity to capture customers that used to exist in a category and have in their mind permanently abandoned it. That is so cool. [00:32:58] And I think that is just a super smart strategy for breaking in. Well, I think with that then looking out ahead, we talked a little bit about COVID and the challenges ahead in the next 12 to 18 months, maybe hopefully a little less than that, hopefully not more than that. But looking ahead to the next couple, two to four years, where do you expect BEHAVE to go? What do you expect BEHAVE to become? And what would you want it to be? And how do you expect the market to sort of evolve and BEHAVE to evolve with it?

Mayssa: [00:33:37] Oh, man. That's a huge...

Brian: [00:33:39] That's a lot. {laughter}

Mayssa: [00:33:39] Yeah. I'm like, how did the last seven days go? But no, of course, we're thinking far out. Of course, we have really big goals for the brand. Like I said, one of the big ones is definitely this omnichannel approach. I think building a robust online business, but really complementing that with a really strong retail presence. And again, in CPG, and in food CPG, retail becomes such a great discovery platform as well. Again, do want to play the race to the bottom of the pit Facebook advertising game? Or do you want to be on a shelf where hundreds, if not thousands, of people a day are going to walk by your product and they're just going to discover you that way? So I think definitely really nailing that mix of eCom and retail and figuring out what channels work well for us, what are those impulse purchase spaces that we can be showing up in? Of course, there's sort of grocery and big box and convenience, the kind of the retail spaces that I think all food brands are looking at, but what are some of those places that candy can really show up in a great way? Whether it's airports, obviously potentially disrupted, but movie theaters... So even as I'm speaking, I'm like the COVID disruption is real, right?

Brian: [00:35:04] Yes.

Mayssa: [00:35:04] We had strategies built around getting into things like sporting events, movie theaters, airports, travel. A lot of these spaces are disrupted right now. Offices as well. We had a lot of interest from corporate spaces that wanted to have our products for their employees that are now closed until 2021 or beyond. So we are definitely going to just continue to evolve month over month. And I think that's one of the advantages of being a startup, is we are nimble enough where we can make adjustments. I don't want to say on the fly because we do have plans in place, and we do kind of work around a plan and a strategy. But we can change course much more quickly than a bigger operation is going to be able to. And I think the other thing, just thinking about COVID's impact on the space, one of the good things about candy is that candy is generally kind of countercyclical to the market. As markets go down, candy sales actually go up. It is sort of a very low cost indulgence that people can kind of reach for when maybe other things are not going as well or life gets really stressful. And we definitely want to be there for the consumer in those times. If it's just, "Hey, this week, kind of sucked. I want to reach for something fun. I want to just Netflix and chill on a Friday night and then have my candy. But maybe there's a better option." And we want to show up for those consumers as well. [00:36:45] And I think the other thing, too, with COVID has been watching that shift in consumer behavior towards more comfort around buying food and beverage online. And so again, we kind of did put more eggs into the DTC basket than maybe originally planned. But I think luckily the consumer behavior is kind of supporting that. And we are seeing that people are more comfortable buying things online. I think quarantine kind of forced a lot of consumers into giving online purchasing a shot. [00:37:19] And so hopefully I think we are seeing the tailwinds of that, even just with our launch, just seeing how many people really are comfortable just coming to a new brand's website and placing an order for essentially what is like a snack food. So I think that that answer was a little bit all over the place. But yeah, I think monitoring where things are going... The next 12 to 18 months, we are really, really optimistic. Like I said, I think candy is a category that kind of perseveres through things like this. We want to show up for our community. We want to be there for that fun indulgence, despite what else is going on in the world. And I think candy has really been a very little disrupted category when it comes to better-for-you products. And we're just seeing that and the response that we've had to our launch and to how excited people are to see something better for you in this category. So we're hoping that that's just going to continue, and we'll just keep building from here.

Brian: [00:38:28] It's amazing. It's amazing. One last sort of follow up question to that, what about assortment? Do you see assortment being a strategy as a part of this? Candy is such an expansive category. And gummy bears are amazing and sweet and sour both are amazing. But what do you see using assortment as a part of your sort of next steps or maybe future steps?

Mayssa: [00:38:53] Yeah, absolutely. We were already thinking about sort of our product pipeline and what future products are going to look like. The good thing is we have a really great gummy recipe that we love and that we can definitely introduce new flavors kind of on the back of that core recipe. So we're looking into new flavors. We're looking into new kind of shapes that we can introduce. But outside of the kind of gummy itself, we are looking into a plant based gummy as well.

Brian: [00:39:28] Wow.

Mayssa: [00:39:28] Our current gummies are gelatin based. We use like a one hundred percent kosher grass fed gelatin, but it is not plant based. So we definitely want to introduce something plant based as soon as possible. And like I said, we work with this incredible chef named Elizabeth, who her title is Head of Candy. We kind of think of her as our new age Willy Wonka, and she's always in the kitchen kind of working on new stuff. So I would say expanding within new gummy assortments in sort of the near to medium term, and definitely in the kind of longer term, definitely looking into other types of products that we can introduce.

Brian: [00:40:12] Wow. Sounds like omnichannel really is the new hotness. You are effectively going enterprise. Like as fast as possible. Like introducing new products, introducing new flavors, introducing new channels. This is your goal. This is the goal of the modern startup... To actually expand more quickly, I think, than perhaps like startups of the DTC of the past 10 years did. I think this is... It makes sense, too. The opportunity to be in those channels and like traction in those channels, I think, at least having your toe in the water of each of those channels gives you a chance to expand and grow in them. So such a great strategy. Mayssa, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was such a pleasure to hear about your brand and what you've built and your launch story and just everything. And we're looking forward to hearing more from you and keeping track of you as you step into the future of your business. Where can people find you? Tell us a little bit about where people can follow you and find you.

Mayssa: [00:41:29] Yeah. I thank you so much for having me, Brian. Love for conversation. People can find us on our website, eatbehave.com. Same handle on Instagram @eatbehave. So definitely check us out. And yeah, we can't wait for people to kind of give us a try and hopefully love us.

Brian: [00:41:52] Awesome. And thank you for listening to this show. We appreciate your ears and we would love you, our audience, to lend your voice to the conversation that we've had today. Where do you see opportunities to acquire customers that left categories and launch new brands? And this whole process... Omnichannel is the new hotness. We want to hear your feedback. So give us the ring. Or I guess drop us a line. You can email me Brian@FutureCommerce.fm. Or Phillip at Phillip@FutureCommerce.fm. Or reach out to us on LinkedIn or whatever channels we're on. And so we'd love to have your voice join in on this conversation and help us shape the future together. So thank you so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week.

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