Jimmy Feeman
Appearances
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
In our factory in Chattanooga, we produce anywhere from like 20 to 40,000 pounds of cookie dough a month. Which is pretty insane.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
But, um, yeah, we moved onto that bus in March of 2021 and, Um, or March, April, 2021. And then we lived on it for about six months. Um, right around that time, my daughter was one year old, so we only have one kid. Um, it was, it was a challenge, but it was also this thing where we had like read the four hour work week, like really bought into the D to C thing.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
And we were like, we can work from anywhere. I'm going to be able to show up in my office can be in like Yellowstone national park. I have news for you. It can't, that's a terrible idea. And it's why we actually stopped, but it was a fun six months. It was a brand experiment and like, can you be fully remote? Do you actually have to have any pieces of the pie?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Ironically today, we like moved all the way back toward like in the third pivot of the company, we moved all the way back toward like owning everything. We do our own 3PL work. We manufacture our own product. We have a lot of hands-on stuff going on. And I'm there for a lot of it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
that dad pack i uh but hey look everything in moderation jimmy i love some cookie dough man why is it so damn good i i don't know man like it there's there's a few things that they're like from your childhood there's stuff that you just do uh and one of those things for me and my wife megan was just eating cookie dough um i don't know what it is my grandma always bakes cookies i usually eat the dough before they became cookies that's how you end up where i am today
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
There's a lot now where I'm not because I've learned to train people to do the things that I should be training them to do. But yeah, it was a good, solid year of us really deep believing the V2C dream, which is like, I can run my $10 million a year business from Fiji and I'll be fine.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Um, and you're in the like brand space, so, you know, like, I mean, there are people that can achieve something like that, but you really gotta be in the business, me doing your thing. Yeah. And it's a full time, it's more than a full time job. So, I mean, it was fun. It's fun break if you're being, if we're being honest. Um, but yeah, I recommend something like that to everyone.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I also recommend building something that you live in, even if it's like a shed in your backyard. Like to every guy, it's like, it's a transformational experience. You're like, I built this thing with my bare hands and now I'm like living in it. It's satisfying. I don't know why. I have no idea why it's satisfying. It just feels right.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
It's evolved over time and it's been really informed by the customer. Because I think when you start out, you don't necessarily know the customer. You sort of do. And Megan would claim that she does. Her thought was always that she is the customer. I will market to myself. I totally get that.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
The way that it's evolved is kind of like moving away from that and then moving into like, what have we learned? And that that's hard to do. And I think a lot of brands have to evolve that way because you're going to like build a product, right? You're going to do your thing. Like you said, you're like, Hey, cookie dough, you eat it. Let's go like buy it, try it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
And then what happens is you sell that to one, two, 3 million people. And those people help inform you like, well, what flavors should we make? What challenges are there like around like the product itself, that type of stuff. And then on the brand side, they start to inform you of like, well, what should I be marketing to?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
So like originally Novak was very like, uh, I wouldn't call it like neutral, but we were very like neutral. We didn't want to offend anybody. Like this brand is just like, we're making cookie dough. It's our thing.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
And then slowly over time, we started to realize, especially once we got into CPG and into DTC, into having a packaged product, then it became obvious that there are a bunch of people out there that are like, I'm plant-based, I'm vegan, I'm a carnivore, I only eat meat, I only do this, I only eat organic food, better for you, worse for you, premium food, whatever.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
That's when we started to really craft the brand around what our mission is today, which is to be chef-driven, not lab-driven. So like we made the product in the soup shop, right? Like we made it for customers fresh. We had nine of them. That was our core business. That's what we did. We try to stay true to that even today because it helps us stay like really centered, right?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Like people will come to me and be like, are you going to make a sugar-free cookie dough? Are you going to make like this cookie dough, that cookie dough, like this certification, this BS. And it's like, no, I'm not. What I'm going to do is I'm going to stick to the thing that we do best, which is you make a really, really tasty treat. Like we call it like a premium indulgence.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
And we're going to stick to the chef's thing, which is that Megan's going to craft these flavors as if she's serving it to you, like in your kitchen. That just made sense for us. And like, when you stick to your guns like that, and then you craft the brand around it, you start to realize that you're going to piss off some people. And that's okay.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
But, yeah, everything in moderation, right? Like, it just gives me more fuel to go, like, work out or do whatever it's going to do, I guess.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Because those people aren't supposed to be eating your stuff anyways. Like you said, you're like, dude, I love cookie dough. That's great. Those are the people I'm marketing to. Like someone likes cookie dough. Great. And then there'll be someone that would like walk into the scoop shop or something like that. I interacted with one of these people recently.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
We're in a food hall downtown in Nashville. We have a shop on Broadway. So it sees a lot of traffic. There's probably like 15 million people that walk across that corner a year. Not all of them are coming in my shop. And in fact, some do come in the shop and they're like, hey, do you know where I can get some ice cream? And I've told our employees straight up.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I'm like, tell them where the ice cream shop is. It's right over there. They should go to the ice cream shop. Why would you want to serve them cookies? And they don't understand the concept that like you have to turn down people that aren't your customer. You have to send them to wherever they're supposed to be. And that way you can actually get customers that want to eat your stuff.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Um, which that's a whole nother thing. And that's something that we, to this day of like, I think grown slowly and I wouldn't say struggled to do, but like is really, really hard to blow up a consumer brand for that reason. You do have to like get in front of everyone. That's hard. But at the same time, like you do want to make sure you're getting in front of the right people.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
And you're not trying to market to everyone. You can't be everything all the time for everybody. It's not possible. So that's kind of how it's evolved. I mean, we started with like exactly what you said. And then we moved into like, we have to take a stance on like what we are or people try to shove random stuff down your throat all the time. Um, every business owner gets that though.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Yeah. I mean, you hear like every business owner is always suggested like, Hey, you thought about this? You thought about that? I have people ask me if I've ever thought about like food truck. So the other day I posted a video of our food truck on LinkedIn. I was like, Hey guys, look, there's a food truck. It was there in 2019. I already did it. Don't want to do it again. thanks for suggesting.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I'll put it in my, like, I'm never going to do that box. Um, people really want to suggest stuff to you or they want to suggest stuff around your brand or your product. And it's like your job as I think a founder is to say no most of the time and like stick to your brand, your thing, like, and really go deep on whatever that thing is that you're doing.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Um, and you guys probably see that in the brand space all the time. It's like some people are really distracted. Other people go really deep. You go deep, stay true to yourself. Usually it works out. It's just kind of hard.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I did not have a lot of time out of college to figure out, or it didn't take a lot of time, I guess, to figure out that I was not supposed to work for someone else. And it took Megan even less time to figure out she wasn't supposed to work for someone else. So, yeah, it's just it's one of those things I tell people now. And I've seen people post about this recently. People will talk about it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
That's actually my favorite number to focus on. I made this original pitch deck a long time ago for this tangent where I was like, hey, I had one guy tell me it was stupid. I was like, it's not stupid. It's cool. I was like, we have made seven elephants worth of cookie dough. He was just like, what the fuck is he doing to me? Seven elephants, dude. That's what it is. 10,000 pounds.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Yeah, it's like a 10,000 pound elephant. Let's go. No, right now, today in our factory in Chattanooga, we produce anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 pounds of cookie dough a month. Um, which is pretty insane.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Yeah.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
It's wild to see. Um, it's been growing really fast.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Yeah. This year we'll probably break like one, 2 million pounds, which is insane. It's just wild to see. It also smells really good.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
It's actually kind of funny if you go into our bakery. I mean, we do our best to keep it clean. The one thing that you have a really hard time actually keeping, I mean, we do it by room by room. So it's really just a room where we're mixing, but there's flour everywhere.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
The light coating of flour, you clean all the surfaces, clean everything like, you know, once a day and then deep clean it once a week. But like it gets in the craziest places because every time you turn the mixer on, it's flour going in there. Slopping everywhere. Basically every time. Yeah. You're like, ah, we're going to lose a tiny bit. And it's not a lot. So you wouldn't see it or notice it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
But it's over time because you're mixing over and over and over and over again. There's just a light coating of dust.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I'm wondering if you could fit inside of it. That's a good question. You might be able to.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
You'd have to crouch down.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
But you could fit in there.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Yeah, man. And I think that stuff's going to become a lot, that's going to be a lot more important over the next like 10 years. People would, I'll pitch investors now and they actually asked me about GLP one agonists like immediately. That's like a big question, big question for the food industry in general.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
But if you're going to treat yourself and you're not eating a ton of stuff, like random stuff all the time, don't you want to eat like better food, like better tasting food? It's like, that's where I'm at. I'm like, if I'm going to like go out to eat, I want to go to like a nice restaurant. I don't want to go to like random restaurant. So like that's, that's the thing. Like you want it to be good.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
But if you're going to go for it, the best time to go for it is when you're like sub 25. Like, what do you have to lose? You don't have a car. You don't have a house. You've nothing. So just go for it. Worst thing that can happen, you file bankruptcy, you're back in like five years. It's fine.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Like you want it to be that indulgence. Like you said, where it's like, I'm going to eat this when I want to. And like, this is the thing I want to eat.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
No, it doesn't have to be all the way. Like, that's just the way it is, man. Like, it's like that for me with like every food. I'm like, if I'm going to eat it, I want it to be good. Like worth the calories actually matters. Like if you,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
There, there've been two. Um, the first one, the first one was more fun. Uh, so like surprise in the good direction is we started the thing in March of 2017, right. Out of our apartment, which is you're at that point, you're just like, I'm in an apartment selling cookie dough. How good could it possibly get? You fast forward all the way to March of 2018.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
that month we made like 130 grand in profit, which was like, what is happening? Whoa. And really when it happened, it's also a lot of money for like a small, for like a kid, basically for someone that's like not all figured it out at all. Like we were doing everything wrong. We just nailed the product and nailed the brand. Um,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
It was basically like the thing that surprised me was like, Oh wait, you can make a lot happen when you have no clue what's going on, which is really great. If you just show up every day and like do the thing, you know, works. Don't complicate it. Keep it really simple. Just do your thing. And for us, that was like build scoop shop, do pop-up events, build brand.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Like at the time it was like gather Facebook and Instagram followers and then drive them to Facebook events is ironically the thing that we were doing. That's how we were making so much money. It's how we were doing the whole thing. And then you would do like press and you would do brand stuff and you would do Instagram ads and it would all build and build into this thing where it was like,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
You're driving people to a Facebook event. This is all you're doing. It was a solid strategy for 2017, 18, 19. It worked really well. I blew my mind. This is so easy. Why do not more people do this? Then I found out why more people don't do it. The thing that happens is you're going to get surprised like that, and then you're going to get surprised in the complete opposite direction, which is that
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I was surprised it was really easy to make a million dollars. I was really, really surprised that it's incredibly hard to make $10 million. Like if you're going to go from running like a small business, which is highly profitable and like you have no overhead, like you've just blown this thing up and like it's working and you say to yourself, I'm going to scale. Cause this is the surprise, right?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Like I was so locked in on the small thing that I was like, we can kick it. And like me and Megan, I mean, we went to the moon quickly, like with a retail business, it's hard, but it was like all these different pieces coming together. And then we went with this scale, even though it was through like franchising and then it was DTC and then it was grocery, whatever it's become.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Every time we've gone to scale, it has blown my mind how hard it is to go from like, Hey, we were like clicking, we have like an MVP. We have a thing that's working to like, let's sell $10 million of that thing. And consumer, that seems to be the number.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
It seems to be the thing where it's like, if you could like fast 10 million sales on like a small item that costs less than $20, like you could break that down to like customers, but like. it's a lot of customers that shit done. If it's $10, it's like you have to sell it to a million people a year. That's incredibly hard to do. Um, in our, in our punch are in retails around 10, $10 on shelf.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
We make like five bucks on it. I'd have to sell 2 million pounds to 2 million pint jars of our cookie dough, uh, a year to break the $10 million market. It's very hard, but you realize that like there are all these things in between like the product and then getting to that point is in there. The pieces get complicated. Everything gets complicated. Your life gets complicated.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
You overcomplicate it. You get debt that you shouldn't have gotten. You raise money from people that suck. The whole thing blows up in your face. And that has been the most surprising thing. Cause I had this plan that I wrote down on a napkin.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
going to open a store and then we're going to franchise it and sell like we're going to exit to P whatever the whole like between build store and like exit and sell. It's like, that was my, it was step B to C. That's step like B to Z dude.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I left out all the other steps. I was like, Oh, once the first door works, we're clicking and then we just have to scale. And I always find it fascinating that I'm like, everyone talks about like, I'm going to scale this scale that no one is scaling jack shit. And it seems to me that it's just really hard. That's just how it is.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
And I mean, I find it fun because it's like a game and I've tried to like equate this to like a game that we're playing. Why would you try to make it complicated or boring when it should be like interesting? So yeah, that's surprising. It's weird. I wish it wasn't like that.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Yeah. Yeah. So we're, we're in capital raise right now. We, we have a reg CF round on start engine going, which is great. That means that, Anyone out there, 250 bucks, you can buy shares with Novix. Super cool opportunity. I'll tell you why. So plans for the company actually right now are over the last three years, we had to grow slow. We had to get profitable.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
We had to build something that actually worked. And that meant that we now have a 3PL, a manufacturing facility, a cookie dough line where we make millions of pounds of cookie dough. all this stuff that's like been built as infrastructure for the brand. And so we're actually raising money so we can go out and acquire other brands real pumped about this.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Um, I think that it's going to allow us to go out there and right now, like help a lot of people who have been in my shoes or are in our shoes, you know, a few years ago, currently figure out how to get themselves profitable inside of like the umbrella that we're creating. So like the goal is to go out, find a brand, um, Maybe they're doing really well. They have a great product, a great brand.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
They know what they're doing. But they just cannot make money, which seems to be the curse in consumer. And our goal is to fix that, the same way we fixed it for Novix. I busted my ass for the last three years figuring out how do we get profitable and how do we make sure that we're doing the right things, spending money in the right places, and then growing it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Cause that's still incredibly key to being able to actually like survive. We were able to do that. And now I'm like, okay, the first time that we've had the opportunity to raise, like this is the way to go. And so we're raising that money, trying to go out there and make some acquisitions.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
We have a really exciting one that's coming up that I wish had already happened so I can announce it, but I'll announce it soon. And, uh, that's going to be the first of many. Um, super, super excited.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
It's going to be slightly broader. So the first acquisition is actually another cookie dough brand. Um, okay. That probably not a lot of people have heard of. They're actually much older than us and, uh, been around a long time. It was a really, it's a very synergistic acquisition because we already make cookie dough. They sell cookie dough. Um,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
But then in the future, the hope is like cookies, brownies, bars, all the things that we have the ability to make in our facility. We're going to go after those. Um, and like I said, like the thing that I'm telling investors, the thing that I'm telling our team, the thing that we're talking about every day, just like between me and Megan is like, we have to identify good brands, good products.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Like I said earlier, like on this podcast, that's everything. And it's going to become so much more important, especially flavor, taste, Like, do you actually like eating this stuff? Because there's no reason to, like, go buy, like, a $10 plant-based, better-for-you snack if you don't even like eating it and you're on trizepatide and you don't even want to eat anyways. Like, what are you doing?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Go eat whatever the heck it is you want to eat. Because you're not going to eat a lot anyways. I think there's a huge opening for brands like that and a huge opening for people to aggregate power like we're going to and then be able to build something that's profitable. hopefully help a lot of other brand owners figure out how to thrive, which is our hope.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
So you actually can buy it nationwide, just in a few different places. So we ironically have kept their distribution. Our distribution is pretty big, but it's also small compared to other brands. Go DoorDash, GoPuff are both really great, like instant delivery options. You guys order stuff on DoorDash or GoPuff, look up our brand. It's probably in your area.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
And then, um, and you'd find that through Dashmart on DoorDash and then the fresh market down in your neck of the woods, my neck of the woods, really anyone on the East coast, you can find us at the fresh market. And then we're sold at a bunch of independent and natural grocery stores. all over the East coast. Some of the West coast, uh, you can go on the website and look it up.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
We have a really great store finder and it's very up to date. Um, but my favorite stores to buy it in are, are honestly my favorite place to buy it in general is the fresh market. Cause I just liked that store. Um, they'd be the first grocery store to ever take a chance on us. Um, and I love that place.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
They, they have like, if you're like the type of person like me that likes to go grocery shopping and find new stuff, They do a really good job of that. So I'm, I'm a real big fan of that store. Real big fan of sprouts too. Hopefully they hear this and, um, you know, it works out this year, but, uh, yeah, we're, we're trying to like keep our distribution very, it's similar to our whole strategy.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Very, very deep and very like definitely nationwide, but like very deep on like channels we know work. So it's like that, that door dash location, that gopuff location, like that's where everyone's ordering. And, and I love that. And I love that they're having a good experience.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I mean, there's one big retailer that we might launch in this year that I, I like a lot, but we're trying to keep it to places where we think the brand belongs.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Yeah. I mean, that's everything, dude. Like you, your time slowly compresses until one day you wake up, you're 40, you got three, four kids, you have a mortgage, you have a bunch of responsibilities, got to coach the kids basketball team. And then you're like, dude, I got a lot of stuff on my plate.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Yeah, so you can find the Capital Raise, StartEngine. Go on StartEngine's website and just type in NoBaked. You'll find it. If you want to keep up with the brands, you can find us at NoBaked on basically every social media. That's our handle. So Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, all the places you see stuff.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
And then if you want to follow me, follow me on X or LinkedIn, and you can see and hear all of the ridiculous stuff I say. And you might like that. So I hope you come and follow me because Megan and I are both very transparent and partially insane. So I hope people like it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Yeah, there's a small bit of crazy, small bit of it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
For sure, man. I'm pumped. I let me on the show and I really enjoyed it. So let's do it again, man.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
If you start, you start the entrepreneurial journey then, by the way, I have more respect for you because you're crazy. And I like that. Yeah.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
It's a wild it's I guess it's not really a wild story. Like the beginning of the company. is really us just like really hating our jobs. So Megan came home one day, we were living together at the time. She was my girlfriend. She was like, dude, I just can't do this anymore. Can't go to the office. Can't do the thing. I'm going to sell my cookie dough at the farmer's market and like sell it online.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I think I can probably make enough money to replace my income. I was like, great, do it. Who cares? At this point in time, we were both just like, Real sick of what we were doing. And I'd watched her job hop three times and we graduated like 14 months before that. So we're talking like 14 month period. You job hop three times. You probably need a different job.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I have a hard time reflecting on myself. So I didn't notice that I also had job hops three times and I also hated my job. But we had built by the middle of the summer after I like spent all my time helping Megan basically make cookie dough at night. I go to my job during the day. Eventually, I was like, this job is stupid. I'm just going to sell cookie dough. And I quit my job in July, July 2017.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
And it was great. Everyone thought I was insane, insane and also stupid. Uh, my dad called me, he was like, what are you doing, man? And I was like, honestly, I would rather sit on the side of the road, sell cookie dough to people from like a back of a truck or like a cooler, then go back to that office ever again. So, I mean, it was obvious for us. And like I alluded to, it was easy.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
If I look back on all the decisions I've had to make across the last eight years, the easiest one was just being like, screw it. I don't want to work for anyone else. And that like that took us down that path. The other thing is Megan already had that recipe. She'd been making edible cookie dough since she was like 14, same recipe. She tweaked it a little bit and then we were off to the races.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
And it's one of those things where, man, looking back on it, things happened real fast. We executed real fast. We did nothing right. But the execution is really what matters. Like if you get up, wake up, do the thing, even if you have no clue what you're doing, because we did everything wrong. like everything we put it in the wrong packaging.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Didn't know what a health permit was like, didn't know shit about running a restaurant, but like all you have to do is be willing to learn and be willing to actually wake up and execute. So, I mean, that's kind of what made us go down that road is like Megan had a good product. We were both real sick of what we were doing. I guess that's how you build a cookie dough company.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I, I don't, um, I'm not the guy that like sits down and eats it. I'm the guy that like snacks on it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Yeah, I eat it throughout the day, and also my kids love it. So it just kind of stays in the house, but I try to limit it because I'm like, guys, we can't eat cookie dough every day. My daughter woke up the other morning, and she was like, Dad, where's the cookie dough? And I was like, it's not. We don't have any right now.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
And I was like, there's just none in there. You ate all of it. I don't know what you want from me.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
After that, Megan made confetti and brownie, and then we just took those three and ran with it. We have a bunch of other flavors today. We've done a bunch of crazy stuff, but those three are still top sellers. That's where all the stuff comes from. People like chocolate chip. That's like 70% of our sales, 70% of our effort.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Which is funny because it's like you take all this time to do all this other stuff when really there's this one thing, this one recipe. You made it a long time ago when you were a kid. And that's the thing that keeps going and keeps on paying. That's funny. But such is the way of life, man. I mean, that's the recipe.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I also think it says something. You don't necessarily have to go start a business with your spouse to make this happen, but you could try it to make sure. But if you start a business or something or with someone, and you've probably seen this, Ryan, you'll go out, you find a partner, that person's your partner. Sometimes you know that person better than you know your spouse.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Sometimes you spend more time with that person than you spend with your kids. So when it was me, Megan, we started a business together, what it did and what it forced us to do is be super transparent. Like you gotta be up in each other's head all the time. Like you can't lie about stuff. You can't hide things from each other. You can't just be like, I'll leave that at work.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Everything follows you everywhere. And so you have to be super aligned and super transparent. That does cause you to argue and fight more. But I would say that that stuff is healthy and As long as you're not letting it like, you know, blow up your relationship, make you hate each other. You can argue about stuff. Like we'll argue about like how to allocate like a hundred grand.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Like, oh, should we spend it on these ads? Should we do it on this thing? But like, we're not arguing about stupid stuff that I see my other friends argue about with their wives, which is like, I bought like skis and I didn't tell you about it. I'm sorry. Like, what are you talking? Why are you, why did you not tell her?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
First of all, or like people wouldn't go like fool, like I've got separate bank accounts. We do our separate things.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
why are you even married because like at a certain point you have to be like all in transparent like here we are because that's how I run it with like a business partner and so like that's how you run it with like your spouse I guess if they are your business partner but I mean I trust Megan like fully my life so like you have situations where it's like I'll sign on something.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
We'll use my credit. My credit gets jacked up. I know that Megan's not going to leave me and leave me screwed. Instead, it's like, next time we're going to use yours. We're going to rotate it back and forth. We're going to use this to our advantage. Because honestly, you're more powerful as a team than you are as an individual. But... People don't see it that way usually.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
And I think it took like the pressure cooker and then like the shared experience of our twenties, like doing this to like make all that happen. Like that doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen like normally. Also to your point could like completely destroy your relationship. But Hey, I mean, it works really well for us.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Hey, I mean, if you get to eat some good stuff while you're doing the show, that's just a plus.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I don't think it works for everybody, but it's, it's been fun and bad and everything in between.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
Yeah. Yes. The bus kind of came into the picture because of the way we ran the business. Yeah. The first three years we ran Novick, we built a dessert shop chain, basically. So we built a franchise system, opened a bunch of shops. So from October 2017, when the first shop opened, so October 2019, we opened nine stores. And then October 2019, you know, leads right into March of 2020.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
which is the first time we had to like switch up what the business did. And prior to that, you know, like I had actually gotten really burnt out. I hated going to those shops. I hated managing all the managers. I had a manager call me from jail that was managing our Cincinnati store and be like, yeah, man, my wife called the cops on me. I have to spend the next two days in jail. And I'm just like,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
What am I supposed to do? He might not have been no-baked.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
So these situations, right, that makes – that fucks up your life. You're like, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to do this thing. So then March comes along. Retail is hard. Yeah. Ironically, I started to like the fact that we had to pivot to DTC. And then it was like, all the shops are closed. Yeah. We're under a lot of pressure, but like, this is working scaled up the DTC business.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
And then we went to raise money in the beginning of 2021. And right before that, during 2020, my pet project during the pandemic is I bought a school bus and I was going to turn it into an RV. Cause you know, everyone's sitting on like Tik TOK in like March of 2020, April, 2020. I see the people who are living in the van and I'm like, I'm not one to, to let you live in the van.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman
I don't get to live in the van. It was cool. I want to do it. So you go from there to, I guess I'm going to buy one. So we sold our food truck ironically. And then I took the cash from that and went and bought this old bus from this church, spent the whole year remodeling the bus. That was just like my, it was my side project and I'm not that handy, but I guess now I am because it didn't work out.