In this episode, we’re joined by Margaret Wishingrad, Co-founder of Three Wishes Cereal.
Margaret tells us how she was inspired to start her own company after looking for healthy products to feed her child and develop his pincer skills. Having no options, she decided to create her own product.
She also details how developing the brand took a lot of operational processing, advertising, and brand conceptualization. The end goal was to create a product that children like, and parents would feel safe giving it to their children.
Margaret tells us that, in terms of retail, companies need to focus on creating an outstanding product that the consumer will be tempted into buying. Margaret also details some of the flavors they launched with, such as honey, cinnamon, and an unsweetened variety before she eventually added cocoa, and fruit flavors.
Margaret also walks us through every marketing tool she used to spread the word about the product and turn it into a success.
Listen on Apple Podcasts here or Spotify here.
Transcript
Ken: Welcome to the Physical Product Movement, a podcast by Fiddle, we share stories of the world’s most ambitious and exciting physical product brands to help you capitalize on the monumental change in how, why and where consumers buy. I’m your host, Ken Ojuka.
Ken: In this episode, I speak with Margaret Wishingrad, Co-founder of Three Wishes Cereal. In this interview, we talk about the opportunity that she saw in the crowded and competitive breakfast cereal market, while feeding her young and very picky son. Using her experience in marketing and advertising, she began to do product and consumer research.
Ken: This wasn’t her first rodeo, Margaret outlines the principles that she refused to compromise on and the trends that she aligned her brand with. Which helped Three Wishes find great product positioning. Three Wishes was able to find success in retail, getting into Sprouts, Whole Foods and Wegmans pretty early out the gate.
Ken: She explains why she felt her brand resonated with these buyers and the hole these buyers were trying to fill on their shelves. Margaret was an open book with a great story for food and beverage entrepreneurs. Enjoy!
Ken: All right, Margaret. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining me. How are you doing?
Margaret: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me, Ken!
Ken: Yeah. Hey, where are you calling from?
Margaret: I’m calling from Westchester County in New York.
Ken: Okay. And, I’ve seen pictures of your family here on your website. You told me that you have another kid and he’s not featured here on the website. Not yet plans on putting them on there or no
Margaret: I don’t know, maybe he’ll make it to the website. The secret, private and secretive with Ellis, who’s now super public. But yeah, I liked to keep my kids hidden sometimes, but maybe one day.
Ken: Well, you know, we’ll talk about the, you know, your company and the. The name where, where that came from everything.
Ken: And so I think maybe that will make it a little bit more sense. So we want to drill into your story and kind of hear everything about how you started your brand, but first, let’s kick it off with a quote. Is there a quote that comes to mind that you could share with us?
Margaret: Yeah. I mean, I love the Walt Disney quote that all of our dreams can come true.
Margaret: If we have the courage to pursue them. I think courage and pursuit are two massive parts of the entrepreneurial journey and really, you know, a lot of what, what I do every day. It’s a good reminder to be like, you got it, pursue it, you got the courage just to run with it. So, it’s important to have those.
Ken: No, I love it. And, I actually love Walt Disney as an entrepreneur. I think he was a fascinating entrepreneur. I read a book on him about a year ago. Actually recommended by one of the Airbnb founders. But, anyway, it was incredible. So yeah, I liked the quote. Yeah. So, you know, for those that don’t know you, why don’t you tell us just a little bit about your background and then we can dig into your company and the origin story.
Margaret: Cool. Yeah. So I am Margaret WISHIN grad, one of now for wishing grads, but when we started the brands, there were three of us. My husband is my co-founder, human life partner and business partner. All, you know, insert a partner that is Ian together. We have an ad agency here in New York called Big Guide wish.
Margaret: And so that was our past life slash still something we Dublin, but, advertising and marketing. Are like passion and love. And we really enjoyed building brands for small clients that would come to us with a vision and innovation. And then we also really loved working with the fortune tens and fortune hundreds of the world.
Margaret: And you learn a little bit from everything. And I think naturally we’ve always wanted to be on the other side where agencies service. It was really exciting for us to be on the other side, which is like physical, tangible products and goods. And so for us, the real story started when I was a mom for the first time and looking for products to feed my child, to develop his pincer skills, which is like, when you put your pin, your pointer, finger, and your thumb together to pick something up.
Margaret: The pinching and Cheerios and cereal in general was a recommendation. And it was one of those like, whoa, I haven’t had cereal in the longest time. Am I the only one that feels this way? Is this a CA? Is there a problem in that category? And I turned to Ian after really taking a deeper dive. I realized, you know, even at the whole foods of the world, there’s really not all that, there aren’t that many healthy options there and the regular conventional.
Margaret: Super-duper unhealthy, still all the same classics from when I was a kid. And so I kind of spoke to a ton of moms, parents, grandparents, and just like single adults and really asked them, Hey, have you been consuming cereal? And if not, why, what was the driver that really caused you to stop eating it? And so I realized there were really no options in the market, for either myself, my family or friends and family.
Margaret: And so we thought, okay, great. We could do this week. The same way people have revolutionized pasta and protea chips and all these other things that used to be a little bit more taboo. Or now there’s a healthier alternative. And so. We decided, all right, let’s do it. Let’s create a product that promises the taste and experience and a stall jab cereal while delivering the healthy macros that we know the consumers are really starting to look for.
Margaret: And that was kind of the beginning of three wishes and what inspired us to start it. And here we are.
Ken: Oh, that’s pretty awesome. What kind of timeline? Like when, when did you do this and how long have you?
Margaret: Yeah, so we, so when Ellis is now four and a half, when he was six months old is when I came up with the idea, it took us two years to do the product innovation.
Margaret: Because apparently it is very difficult to create cereal and not only create. Healthy cereal. So, that took two years. So we launched October 20, 19 within two weeks of launch. We had authorization from Wegmans sprouts, whole foods. And so we became a national brand pretty quickly and it was really, it was also a super interesting time because it was kind of right before the pandemic.
Margaret: So we’ve, we’ve had. Shift for a little bit, then shift back. It’s been really fascinating, but, yeah, we launched now. We’ve been in the market for 2 years.
Ken: Yeah. So the pincer stills, pincer skills example that you mentioned is something that we’re thinking about. We’ve got a little seven month old.
Ken: Who’s just beginning to eat solids? And so we’re trying to give him stuff with some texture and you know, all of that, teaching him how to use this phone. And so the materials will be coming soon. And maybe, maybe what we need to do is three wishes instead.
Ken: Okay. So it’s, I love the story. I love that you’re solving a problem that you ran into, you know? And so it’s something that you identify with. I’m very interested in maybe digging into a little bit of how you approach this, especially with your advertising and branding. And then, you know, maybe, maybe we can talk about COVID and, you know, how, you know, maybe it affected your business and what you guys did.
Ken: So, yeah. Let’s, let’s go back to, you came up with the idea. You thought that this was good. It sounds like you did some customer research by talking to friends and people that you knew. Did you formalize that in any way or did you, do you know, were able to draw on your, you know, sort of advertising background in order to conduct.
Margaret: Yeah, I think it was really just like doing the same thing we’ve done for clients, which is you identify the issue. You create the strategy, you create the briefs. And we really identified, and that helps us, you know, both in an R and D perspective. And every other sense, the brand is really dialing it down to what are you hoping to accomplish here?
Margaret: One, what’s the problem you’re solving? Is this a true problem? Pulling panels, doing the research, looking for sizes, the entire market industry, seeing if there were disruptors, what happened, and really doing a full, deep dive on that side. And then on the product side, I think about really laying over a ton of trends that are both applicable to myself and my family.
Margaret: Like, you know, cleaner, better ingredients, higher protein for me, like breakfast, really taking down the sugar. Another big thing is. And just inflammation overall from gluten, from grains. So it was really important for us to include all of those things. So it was a lot that we were trying to nail in one product, but it really helped us to kind of lay all of those things over each other.
Margaret: And okay. I think eight grams of protein feels like a really good space in a range for where we want to net out on the protein. Three grams of sugar definitely feels like a really nice safe space sugar, and those little things helped us then dictate. Formulation would look like. And then on the formulation side it was, you know, we are not.
Margaret: Food scientist by any stretch. And so for us, it was finding the right person that could create and craft the perfect product for us. And so that took a ton of networking to get to, but what was really interesting is even my function agency side, as I always got involved in creative, but. Something I always did really well was the operational portion.
Margaret: So where my husband and I divide a little bit is he’s definitely all marketing and I’m really into the creative part of the business and not reflecting reality as well. And then I am way more operational. So as much as building a beautiful brand and knowing how to capture the consumer. Is important for me, the most important thing and why we deleted it took two years to make sure my product landed.
Margaret: I was creating a product for my child who is super picky and no amount of marketing or fancy banner ads or any, or influencers, whatever matters. My child and probably any other child’s for that matter. And so for me, it was the food product that I was most focused on. And once I had signed off from my then two year old when we went to market, for him, cereal became indistinguishable.
Margaret: He, it was really, he enjoyed eating our cereal and I was so happy as a parent to be able to feed him chick, pea, pea, protein, tapioca, versus nutrient deficient grains. And that’s kind of appropriate.
Ken: Was there anything surprising that you uncovered?
Margaret: It’s so hard? It’s so highly technical.
Margaret: It’s not, it wasn’t like, Hey, we tried, you know, 20 different recipes for a pizza crust. It requires insane machinery. Same minimums. It’s just a much bigger scale thing. And then when you think about cereal, it’s one of the largest aisles in a store with the most colors, the most excused characters.
Margaret: It’s a really huge category and it’s really dominated by three big players. And there are reasons for that, right? It’s a very difficult thing to break through, into. And additionally retail, which is something we were really focused on. We want it to be a product that, you know, as an, as a parent or even at like, when I was single, I thought about my consumer behavior and do I order stuff online all the time.
Margaret: Absolutely. But when I think about, you know, oh, I’m hungry, I’m craving something or want to go buy something it’s oh, you hop in the car or you walk to the store and you pick up your box of cereal from the show. And I wanted to have a product. Way more attainable than like, Hey, order it, you wait two weeks and you get it.
Margaret: And so retail is interesting because the only way that you’re able to be on that shelf is if you kick someone else off, right. They’re not adding additional square footage to a store. And so you really have to come with. Interesting proposition for the consumer and for the bio fluff retailer. And that’s what that was.
Margaret: You know, something that we really have to consider is why would they remove a skew that’s already generating revenue and why am I so special? So we’ve really worked on creating that special product.
Ken: And so, you know, if you had to distill it, I know it’s, you know, it’s a lot of concepts and, you know, I could just only imagine the challenge of trying to fit all.
Ken: Into one product, but you know, what do you think it is that that allowed you guys to get that retail distribution pretty quickly?
Margaret: This was an aisle with no real innovation. I think we gave the consumer permission to consume something they knew and loved so much. I think you think about cereal and it instantly takes, or at least me instantly takes you back to childhood and like, There was like something naughty about it and delicious.
Margaret: And they just fill that same. I think it almost feels that same void, that pizza fills in a way where like, it gives you some sense of comfort. And so I think consumers were really excited by that. Hey, I can eat this. It has protein, it has fiber. It has a lot less sugar. These are great cleaner ingredients.
Margaret: There’s no artificial fortifying it with anything else. I think that was the thing that really excited everyone. And so buyers were, we’re excited to bring something new in and have something exciting for everyone else to try. So I think it was really having the solution for the real problem and identifying that it was actually before.
Ken: Is this a problem that you had to convince the buyers or do you think that they already had identified it?
Margaret: Yeah, I mean, surreal overall, prior to last year really, it was like pasta for a while. It was this declining category as people started to steer away from it and understand how it affects overall health.
Margaret: And I think we’re just in a different generation. My parents, I’m an immigrant, but when my parents immigrated here, I had all these sugary cereals in my house. My parents took me to McDonald’s and now I think it’s a completely different thing where like, you know, myself and my peers, that was something that was allowed.
Margaret: Then I think we just know better as a generation of what we can and can’t feed our children. What we shouldn’t do with our bodies. So I think all of these buyers knew and they saw that they weren’t growing that cereal set as a category. And this new, exciting product gave them the opportunity to create.
Margaret: Additional revenue stream for their stores.
Margaret: I was born in Israel and my parents are from the former Soviet union. And so we came here and I grew up in Brooklyn and it was really serial, so American, and I think that’s what was always so fun about it as well as a kid. Like it gave me a sense of America.
Ken: Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting that you say that.
Ken: So I’m from Uganda as well. So I’m well, I guess I’m an immigrant as well. But one of the things that I remember when we moved to the states, you know, at seven years old, we were staying with a family friend, and came down for breakfast and they had cereal on the table. And it was probably the worst cereal to choose in terms of sweetness and sugar, you know, and just completely overwhelmed these, you know, these people from Uganda.
Ken: We had frosted flakes and I remember just, almost being appalled at how sweet it was and the idea that you’re supposed to. No milk over it. It was all so foreign to us, you know.
Margaret: It’s so true. And we see that even with Europeans, you know, their muesli is such a popular thing in Europe and there are cereals that are a lot less sweet than American cereals.
Margaret: And so it’s interesting because we have an unsweetened skew as well that we launched with Matt, zero cigarettes, literally foreign ingredients. And I remember pre COVID when we would see people there, try it. A lot of European people would be like, oh my God, this is so great because it’s not sweet.
Margaret: It’s just like cereal crunch and experience, but it’s not how all these American cereals experience. So it’s a really interesting category.
Ken: Yeah. Yeah, it is. And, you know, amongst my friends, you know, I remember in college, I had a roommate who, I mean, all the aid was cereal is what it seemed like.
Ken: Right. He was just, people are big fans of cereal, you know? And, and I think , you’re right. It kind of hits a certain nostalgia and, you know, a little comfort, you know? Let’s talk about, so you have three skews, is that right?
Ken: What did you launch with?
Margaret: We launched. And so this is like, overall, the way we look at this is we’re not trying to reinvent. We’ve reinvented enough by really breaking down with zero used to be made out of and creating something entirely different. So let’s give people the experience they want, right? So we launched with a honey cinnamon and the unsweetened.
Margaret: And those are reminiscent of your having a Cheerio’s, your cinnamon toast crunch, your yellow box Cheerios on your aunt’s feet. And, and then the cereal flavors we added on. We added a Coco, we added a fruity, we added a frosted. We just did a limited edition pumpkin spice that was exclusive to sprouts as a retailer.
Margaret: And so it’s been great because people are getting the classics they really missed and are now consuming them feeling great about that decision. And it’s been really wonderful to see the consumer reception every time we launch a new flavor. There’s just such excitement.
Ken: Have you released any information about, you know, which are your best sellers or, you know, are you liberties?
Margaret: Yeah, I mean, so I think naturally the ones that have been in the market the longest are going to have way more data on them. Right. So we know our sin, our cinnamon is so good, but all of the flavors have really picked up traction as we observed them over the weeks in terms of sales. They all do really well.
Margaret: They’re super specific, right? When you think about how people feel about cereal, I don’t really know many people that are like, I love all cereal flavors. Like everyone’s like I got a top three. And so it’s really particular. There are people that like to live and die for cinnamon, live and die for fruity, or like Coco becomes that evening, like bowl after dinner where you.
Margaret: Crunchy chocolate feels like all of these little nuances. So I think it’s so specific. And that’s why we love having this wider array of flavors where you feel like you’re going back to this hero. You really loved growing up.
Ken: Yeah. And I think that’s important, I think also what you guys did, which is launched with the limited number of skews, right.
Ken: You didn’t go out and go out the door with 700 skews, just because of the difficulty in the cost and, So, it’s interesting what you said earlier about, you know, when you looked at this, when you started looking at your baby, you know, eating cereal and realize that you hadn’t had cereal for a long time, is that pretty common, like in your research, have you found that’s common amongst adults where, you know, they may have had a lot of cereal as a kid, but they stopped consuming it as an adult.
Margaret: Yeah. I mean, I think even beyond, you know, my generation, I look at my in-laws or my parents, my grandparents, and just seeing, you know, it’s frequent doctor visits, doctors are saying, Hey, you need to cut out gluten, you need to cut out sugar. You need to cut out all of these things that were so fine. And like we’re in these commercials of, you know, essential parts of a healthy breakfast in the 1950s was basically a bowl of sugar.
Margaret: And so I think overall, everything. We had to cut these things out, whether it was by choice or not. It’s a common problem. It really is like everyone knows it’s not good to fuel your body with sugar, right there, all these campaigns about how you should be starting your day or what you should be consuming.
Margaret: So I identified it via my child because I haven’t had it and that brought me to it again. But there are people that have been eating cereal forever and have had to stop. So this has been even more exciting for them versus me who kind of forgot about it, but it’s so exciting to get reintroduced.
Ken: Right, well, let’s, let’s switch gears a little bit. So it sounds like you put a lot of research, a lot of energy into, you know, first and foremost, creating a great product. Right. And, you know, you had pretty discerning tastes with your kid being picky. You want to make sure he enjoyed it. Right. And so you’ve got this great product now.
Ken: Switch to, okay. You want to get the word out? What did you guys do? What was the kind of the playbook that you were in order to start marketing this?
Margaret: Yeah, so, we launched, so we launched online and brick and mortar kind of simultaneously, but what’s interesting about brick and mortar and online.
Margaret: They drive each other. So instead of focusing on one channel, it was, you see it in store, but you don’t know if you’re going to buy it. So maybe you look it up on Instagram and then you’re like, oh, people are enjoying it. Or you see it online in an ad, and then you see it in the store. So you get up in the store.
Margaret: And so it’s interesting to see how those compliment each other. But we’ve really, it just started. It’s 10 people that know 10 people that know 10 people. So one part of it was we would see it and send it out to some influencers. We didn’t pay people. It was like, Hey, if you love this product, please feel free to share it.
Margaret: And that organically did its own thing. And then additionally, what we did for the first couple of weeks, when we launched, we had a retailer here, local, where we are that decided to take the product. And on Saturday and Sunday, he and I would go into stores and we would assemble it for two to three hours.
Margaret: And within two to three hours, we would sell two, 300 boxes of cereal. And that for us was the biggest Testament that someone would love when they try it. Because I think the skepticism is definitely there. When you see healthy, any. I think you assume it’s going to taste a little off. And so here, the best proof was children and parents walking the store.
Margaret: I’ll pick it up and. Well, not with it, buy it and continue to buy it. And so that for us was one amazing proof of concept, but to also started to get that drum beat in retail, going and growing and allowed us to get a little bit of a case study to then bring to additional retailers. So it was really important for us to do both at the same time.
Margaret: But something that you mentioned earlier was how did COVID affected and what it was. There was a shift where people were nervous to go to stores, nervous to now walk the aisles and discover it the way that they did before. I think about something. Retail shopping is therapeutic. You walk the aisles and pick up many things.
Margaret: You put some things back. And so there’s an experience and I think it took a little bit of that away. So we had to quickly shift our focus to how we educate and attract the consumer online. And so whether they’re buying it through a delivery service at their local grocery store, or if they’re buying it from our website, we relaunched our website to make it really nice.
Margaret: A simple path to purchase for the consumer. That was within six weeks of probably COVID. So in April we had a new website up, and that really, that did a wonderful job and helped a lot. And it was just overall thinking of what are the other things that you could do to get earned media. And so we had a moment like peak COVID where I have a U shaped driveway in front of my house.
Margaret: And we’re like, okay, we used to do these. Samplings every weekend, we can’t do them anymore. How are people going to try it? They love it. And so we set up with masks and tongs. We did these little cups and in front of our driveway, like painted a sign in front of our driveway, just like we decided to set up a shop and let people try it.
Margaret: And whether they went home and bought it was totally up to them. But I think what was interesting was a few things about it. One, we were able to really talk to our local community. We were able to create. Good sentiment during a really weird time in a new cycle. And I think in turn, what it did for us was get us a lot of press and pickup.
Margaret: And so we had like nearly, probably a three minute segment on national TV, in like during the day. And that was our biggest sales day in company history, probably even to date. It was great. And so doing
Ken: And tell us a little bit about that, like, anyway, finish your story but i wanna dig into that.
Margaret: Yeah, but overall I think just being nimble and having like interesting fun guerrilla tactics, there’s a, we did a ton more, really fun, like stunt things afterward, some land, some don’t and you just learn about it as you continue to go, but it’s really for us. It’s how we continue telling people, Hey, we’re new, we’re delicious.
Margaret: Our macros are great. You should try. But also leave them feeling some type of way. I think people, especially with brands, want someone to love your brand because whether I release a different skew in six months a year, whatever it is, I want them to have some feeling about it and really become someone that evangelizes.
Ken: Right. Understood. Yeah. And it looks like you guys, you know, done some pretty good PR you’ve, you know, you’re on business insider and pop sugar, you know, and people are writing, you know, pretty amazing things about you guys. You know, and I know that this stuff doesn’t just happen, right? You can’t just wait for them to find you, you know?
Ken: And so maybe what we can do is dig into that example, of the national broadcast. That, national exposure. That was your biggest day. What do you think led up to that? Why do you think that you were able to be featured by?
Margaret: Yeah, so we told a story here locally. So we’re here in Westchester.
Margaret: We had someone cover it locally. It was then syndicated through USA today, USA today that owns the smaller local pub. Then a producer at Fox saw. The U S USA today featured and just gave us a call. There was, it was really just like, Hey, let’s throw things against the wall. And if they stick, they stick.
Margaret: But for us, it was let’s create a moment. And this was like, whether it goes anywhere or not, we wanted to do something that would also be great for our community and like everyone to feel a certain way about being out and about and seeing cases and not being terrified. I think a lot of the news cycle is so scary and.
Margaret: We are to be a part of. So I think that just having smiles and seeing people smile behind the mask was a nice thing. But beyond that, it was really created, an interesting moment to be talked about during. A time that really needed it. And so we got lucky in a way, but we also created a moment for the news to talk about.
Margaret: So I think everyone won and everyone was happy from it.
Ken: So what was the story like? What was, you know,
Margaret: local startup?
Margaret: It was a startup. I don’t remember the headline, but it was like a serial startup. Like hosted drive through serial sampling. Was that the headline, but it was more about what we’re doing as small businesses to thrive, to be a part of the community, to just continue figuring out a way to survive in a really weird time.
Margaret: And for us, it was, how do we get sampling? We couldn’t sample here. We found a way to creatively sample. And so they were so excited to just talk about what you can do or what, like examples of. Being nimble and smart we’re. And so I’m glad we got to be a part of this.
Ken: So were you and your husband interviewed and were you nervous? How did you feel about it?
Margaret: Yeah, so Ian has done quite a bit of time on TV prior, on the advertising side. So he would be on morning shows and CNBC every now and then. So he was fine when we launched. So when we launched, we had a. This was another interesting way. We’re retail FedEx. So when we were sampling one of the producers for a good day, New York tried our product and reached out to us about it. I think it was also like small family businesses or something.
Margaret: And we basically launched our product on Friday on a good day, the New York segment. Sweating bullets before there’s an interview and then I’ll go on. And I was like, ah, this is great. And everyone’s like, you’re so natural. And if you crashed it, then we had another segment a couple weeks later, so I got very somehow comfortable with doing TV and I honestly love it and I wish I had more opportunities to do it.
Margaret: So who knows what the future holds, but it, you’re obviously not. It’s live. You don’t know what they’re going to ask you? There’s no going back, turning someone’s TV off, scrubbing it and doin it again. I’m like, why did they put me on the spot? What am I going to say? And so if the other thing is, oh, you know, Ian and I are both on, how do we know that one of us is going to pick up the key to start talking and the other one should stop.
Margaret: It was just really funny, but you figure it out and get really good at it. And.
Ken: What do you think, kind of surprised you about it? Like what do you think you like about it? You know, and I asked, because I think that there are other, you know, food entrepreneurs out there who have the same sort of nervousness, you know, the same concerns.
Margaret: I’m really just passionate and happy to be able to do what I do and the same way it’s like, oh, how do you go talk to buyers? We’re all humans. We are all. Doing something to better ourselves. For me, it’s creating a cereal that I could share with the world and allow people to consume better, healthier food, and they are trying to curate better products for their store.
Margaret: And so the same way I pitch and sell to them is the same way I speak in pitch to a human. It happens to be a TV anchor. And it’s funny, one of the interviews I did, you could tell, I was a little nervous before the camera turned on and the anchor turned to me and he goes, pretending we’re in a bar, grabbing a drink and we’re just talking.
Margaret: And I’m like, honestly, yes. And that was great, really great advice. We’re all. We’re just humans hanging out. Talking there just happens to be a camera rolling. And there happens to be the fact that you’re probably on a million TV screens throughout the country. But besides that it’s really it’s.
Ken: Yeah, that’s great advice. That’s definitely something that we need to keep in mind. Well, let’s, let’s just turn to the future a little bit. What’s what’s next for you guys? You know, what do you have planned?
Margaret: We definitely want to just continue spreading word, creating great cereal.
Margaret: I think. As long as we’re getting into people’s cupboards and they’re trying us, we know, we know that we have something really special and that’s really exciting. And so it just continued to become America’s top selling healthy cereal. That’s what we’re really excited about and to become that trusted household name.
Margaret: I think one, something that’s special about three wishes as a brand name, aside from the fact that it was about the three wishing grads. It was the three benefits we had that we’re bringing to the category. More importantly, we didn’t set out to do happy owes or delicious owes. It was not so product specific.
Margaret: It was definitely more about how do we create a beautiful platform brand where people feel comfortable, excited, and really anything that we create feels like, okay, I know they care about ingredients. I know they care about taste and they’re gonna make sure it tastes great. And this is a brand I love and I want to keep my cupboards.
Margaret: And so that’s really the goal. Continue to do exactly that.
Ken: And so it sounds like you’re alluding that you guys may even step out of the cereal category to other products. Is that something that you’re planning on doing and how are you thinking about that?
Margaret: Yeah, so I think, innovation has a really hard thing, and so we’re always working on things behind the scenes, but I wouldn’t launch anything unless I think.
Margaret: A thousand percent confident, excited about what that is. Like I did with cereal. So for now it’s yes. Are we always working on things in the kitchen? Absolutely. Is there anything coming to market next week? Probably not. But there’s always, oh,
Ken: Okay. Got it. Well, let’s, let’s switch over to the quickfire round.
Ken: I’ve got four questions for you. And then we can wrap things up. What is one tool or resource that has helped you in your life?
Margaret: Writing things down. I was the biggest believer in remembering it. And then you have multiple children, multiple businesses writing it down, even if it is in your iPhone notes, section has, or calendar has changed my life.
Ken: So I’m always curious. Do you use the iPhone notes? Is that the. I’ve tried ever. No, I’ve tried to, you know, I can’t consolidate everything into one, so my notes are everywhere. What is a book that you can recommend to the audience?
Margaret: Ooh, that’s a good one. I haven’t read a good book in a long time and that could probably be because, children and a pandemic and businesses, I don’t even have one line.
Margaret: I’m trying to think of what I read.
Ken: Do you have a, you know, a website or something that you go to learn or, you know, some sort of resource that you use to further your understanding and. I really
Margaret: enjoy all of the email industry roundups. So whether we’re just like news round, that’s Axios, a morning brew, retail brew, all of the industry news that can learn Lux is very anything that can summarize what’s going on in the world or in business in one email is, I love some digestible content, always.
Ken: What about one piece of advice that you’d give to your 21 year old self?
Margaret: Doing what you’re doing, girl. I think it’s really just continuing to follow your gut. You’ve gotten this far, don’t allow it, you’re always going to have negativity and people saying now and continuing to just pursue and have that courage back to the Walt Disney point is it just do what you do?
Margaret: Keep going, keep trucking.
Ken: Awesome. And then what about one person in your industry or your field of work that you know, maybe, maybe somebody that you’re watching or a brand that you’re watching that, where there’s somebody that you’d love to take the lunch, anybody that comes to mind?
Margaret: Hmm. Yeah. I mean, I love Gail Becker of color power.
Margaret: She’s done an incredible job building a massive brand that has such brand love. And she is truly a wonderful, wonderful, actual human as well. So love you Gilda.
Ken: Awesome. All right, well, let’s, let’s wrap this up. How, or I guess what’s the best way for people to reach out to you or to, you know, to contact you if they want to do,
Margaret: You can find us on social media with three wishes.
Margaret: You can find me on social media at M B wish. And you can always shoot us a note and hi at, three wishes, cereal dot com
Ken: And the website is three wishes, serial.com. And, I have cereal right here at the checkout. I have a daughter that’s gluten intolerant. So, this will be great. And I definitely want her to try it.
Ken: Any parting advice for, you know, fellow food entrepreneurs out there that are, you know, kind of in the grind right now, maybe they’ve got an idea they want to launch, or they’re already 30 launched. What would you say?
Margaret: Don’t take no for an answer, whether it’s a co-packer or retailer, your spouse, anybody really, you could, if you really know that you’ve figured out a brilliant solution for an annoying problem, keep going sky’s the limit.
Ken: Awesome. I love to end it on that, so, Hey, thanks a lot, Margaret. We appreciate you taking the time. This has been fantastic.
Margaret: Awesome. Thanks so much.
Ken: Okay. We’ll see ya. Physical Product Movement Podcast is brought to you by Fiddle to find out more about Fiddle and how our industry leading inventory ops platform is giving modern brands and manufacturers full visibility into their inventory and operations.
Ken: Visit fiddle.io, and then make sure to search for Physical Product Movement in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else, podcasts are found. Make sure to click Subscribe. So you don’t miss any future episodes on behalf of the team here at Fiddle. Thanks for listening.
