Jordan Buckner (00:00)
The life of an entrepreneur is one of the most exciting things. And the only thing that's probably wilder is being a parent. I know when I had my first kid, it was in the middle of running my company TeaSquares and it totally transformed how I thought about entrepreneurship and provided a lot of focus. And then talking with a lot of founders who are moms, it's a whole another angle as well.

and just the reality of being a founder and a mom and a parent. you know, a lot of times a spouse like it, there's a lot that's going on. And so I really wanted to take a moment to talk through the realities and the joys and the complications of being a parent entrepreneur. And with that, I want to invite on Angie Kaminky, who is the founder of Minky Muffins and to really talk through her journey through this process. Angie, welcome.

Angie Kaminky (00:53)
Hi Jordan, thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm an avid listener, so it's fun to be on this side.

Jordan Buckner (00:58)
I love it. So tell me about Minky Muffins and the product for those who haven't seen it and when you started the company.

Angie Kaminky (01:05)
Yeah, absolutely. So Minky Muffins is a better for you, ready to eat, high protein mini muffin snack. It's sweetened with dates and honey and made with real and natural ingredients. It plays a little bit on the nostalgia train. If you grew up eating mini muffins, maybe in your pantry or at a friend's house after a soccer game. So we're trying to revitalize the mini muffin and make it better for you.

Jordan Buckner (01:23)
They were so bad for us.

Angie Kaminky (01:29)
It's also great for busy parents or families who are on the go and can't really compromise on convenience but still want to give their families a nutritional snack. So it's something you can easily pop into a lunch box or you can throw in your bag and eat on your own. There's 10 grams of protein per bag of mini muffins and it's a good source of fiber as well. I got the idea because I was previously commuting into the city. I'm from the Chicago land area, had moved out to the Burbs.

I had to go to breakfast bar that I was eating all the time and it just wasn't doing it for me and When I started to look at the market, I was still a little bit disappointed. I love baking so especially better for you I'm always in the kitchen just whipping a little something up and I made a bunch of bars and bites and all these things and then finally came to this mini muffin recipe that I Loved and it hit every box that I wanted to check when it came to nutrition And with that I just started passing them out to

and family and that's what got me on this journey into creating a CPG product.

Jordan Buckner (02:31)
my goodness, what a wild journey that it is. And I love that it came from search, solving a personal problem that you had of looking for like a better snack that you could feel health, you know, that would make you feel healthier and better in the mornings. I'm actually from Chicago and, you grew up in the city, but I've driven all over everywhere at all times of the day and know that commute can be pretty harsh to do so. So, I mean, what's also interesting, how long ago did you start the company?

Angie Kaminky (02:53)
Yes, yes it is.

So we just launched our first product, which we have two flavors out right now, blueberry and chocolate chip. launched the blueberry in September, 2024, and we just launched the chocolate chip flavor a couple of weeks back. The product development has been...

I mean it took like over a year to get to our first base formula and we still had a few iterations since then. As you can imagine creating a food product there's just a lot that goes into it and especially something that you're putting out into the market and shipping to customers as well.

Jordan Buckner (03:27)
Totally understand, I mean with TeaSquares think by the end after five years, we went through like 64 recipe iterations and like constantly improving and changing, updating so that the product could continuously get better and it's a wild journey to do so. I mean, one big piece of your journey as well is that three months after launching Mickey Snacks, you had a baby. Tell me about how that played into the journey.

Angie Kaminky (03:53)
Yeah, it was a big factor. So when I started it, it was, this was a side hustle. I had my full-time consulting gig and was doing this for fun on the side.

And then as we progressed in making the muffins and you know, I recently found out that I was expecting I Became even more enthralled with the idea of working on something full-time that was near and dear to my heart and that I really cared about and that could affect my future child's life as well and so I end up making the jump and took this on full-time and In the process I was working with a recipe developer and a small mom-and-pop menu

Let's call it and when we went through our trial run it did not go smoothly There was just some quality assurance checks that were not made and I didn't feel comfortable moving forward with them So it was really tough I was six months pregnant and I had to make the decision that I was going to now go into a Shared kitchen space on and take on the production myself ⁓ Right before launch and my launch had already been delayed It was it was a whole thing, but it was a tough decision because here I am waddling

Jordan Buckner (04:48)
my goodness.

Angie Kaminky (04:55)
around pretty much knowing that it was going to be physically demanding but

If you believe in your product and the path forward, I think as an entrepreneur you just have to do whatever it takes, right? And at that moment in time I was like, I need to do what it takes and I need to figure this out by myself. So, know, hairnet on, apron on, pulled my mom into the kitchen too to help me make some muffins. And it really helped us get to the point where we were able to launch. I don't think at the time I necessarily thought, wow, this is just gonna continue to get harder and harder even after I have the baby.

I wouldn't trade it for the world. It's been quite a ride and I think it's just something that you just do, right? Like there's so many other working parents and working pregnant mothers out there who are just getting through it because that's what you have to do. And so that's how, that's what we did. And there are a lot of sleepless nights, really long days. And I'd be lying if I said those were over, but that's okay. I think it's just part of the journey and building out that.

sort of life and that career path for yourself.

Jordan Buckner (05:56)
Well, it

definitely takes a lot of strength to be able to go through that. know just from, you know, supporting my wife going through her two pregnancies, like it's different every single day. You know, some days are probably great. Other days are like, why am I doing this? And just being on that journey to know that you're building this for your child and, know, doing something that you really believe in is so powerful. My wife's so fine. She tells a story when she was born.

Her mother was like on the restaurant and basically took her into the restaurant the day after she was born because they had the restaurant to run in a small business and couldn't take the time off. And so she literally was like, yeah, so she was born or grew up in the restaurant. And so I've totally seen that process happen and heard about that as well. Are you still self-producing in the Shared Kitchen?

Angie Kaminky (06:45)
Yes, we are. It's definitely a lot when you have a newborn. I'd be lying if I said that she wasn't in the kitchen at one point in time, but that's okay. You do what you gotta do. We are self-manufacturing currently, but we're exploring co-manufacturer partnerships at this time. The volumes are just getting a little bit bigger than what we can manage on our own, which is exciting, right? Like that's exactly where we want to be, but yeah, it's a busy time at Minky Muffins for sure.

Jordan Buckner (07:12)
I love that. Where are you producing out of?

Angie Kaminky (07:14)
So there is a favorite restaurant in town that has a few locations in the western suburbs who kindly opened their beautiful kitchen space to us on their off hours. So a lot of nights and weekends and then there's one full day a week that we can get in there. But yeah, it's definitely a crazy schedule right now, especially with a four month old on the side.

Jordan Buckner (07:25)
Love us, meeting.

Oh my goodness, I've been there. had the, when

I launched TeaSquares or energy bars, we started off with working at commercial kitchen. My mom is a chef, she had a catering company. And so we were able to like work out of that facility. But I kind of been there like working off hours and like making the product in an ideal situation in terms of like having the right equipment and being able to just having to do everything by hand and what we could afford at the time. And so no, that's been a grind to do so.

I'm kind of curious, have you looked at manufacturers and co-manufacturers who can make the muffins? And is that an easy or hard process in terms of one, just finding them by now having the minimum, meeting the minimum order quantities is also always a challenge.

Angie Kaminky (08:22)
Yeah, I think I'm always reaching out to co manufacturers and have been for the past year and it's just a matter of trying to find someone who's willing to work with you and probably who sees a path forward for your product as well. Because we are just past the point of where we do need a little bit of automation within our process to make the muffins. And so trying to find someone who doesn't have a really, really high order minimum, that's been a little bit of a challenge. But we've had a few conversations lately that

pointing us in the right direction and I feel like we're gonna find someone that we can work with pretty soon.

Jordan Buckner (08:54)
That's awesome.

I'm going to connect you with someone who I think can help just in the process. He was a veteran of the baking business and built their own baking company, exited and is now retired, but focused on helping other founders. I don't know if you had a chance to meet Bill Skeens, but he's in Chicago, great person, just like very kind and gives back. He does a lot of mentoring at like the hatchery in Chicago and a lot of places.

but he'll be definitely someone to talk to. He ran a company called Prairie City Bakery and they did the, one of first like muffin top products where they basically just like the muffin top. Worked with contract manufacturers to build that business and had like a number of them and so awesome resource. I'll connect you to him as well. He's always looking.

Angie Kaminky (09:39)
Thank you. actually just, I'm pretty involved at the Hatchery and just graduated their cohort program. It's like an accelerator that they have. So yeah, would love to connect with them. Thank you.

Jordan Buckner (09:45)
Yeah.

Awesome, that sounds good. So tell me about the journey of getting mini muffins into people's mouths because I know everyone's familiar with the idea of a mini muffin except it probably has this negative connotation of like artificial flavors and really bad ingredients, know, almost like a Twinkie or something that can like last forever. And so tell me about what it's like meeting customers and your, your sales strategy focused on retail or deep DTC

Angie Kaminky (10:16)
Yeah, that's a great question. So right now it's a little bit of both when it comes to DTC and retail. We've started hyper local and we plan to do the same and just kind of spread out a little bit more as we continue. So right now we're actually in farmers markets and we're in all of the Foxtrot stores that are in Chicago. And that was a great first retailer that we were able to partner with as they support a lot of emerging brands in the space.

We have started to build a community that's very much centered around the Chicago land area first and foremost. And so with that, we, it was funny. I was nine months pregnant and I was connected with someone at Foxtrot and they said, okay, send me samples of your muffins. And I'm like, okay, I gotta do this. Like, gotta get this in the mail. who knows when this thing is gonna pop. So I mailed them samples.

Kind of forget about it have the baby a week after I get back from the hospital I get an email from foxtrot saying hey We like your muffins and we want to have them in our stores and i'm like, my gosh freaking out. Yes This is our first retailer. So excited know and that takes a little bit to the point where you actually end up on shelf and so I want to say it was my baby was about eight weeks old when it was time to launch at foxtrot and it was Going to be negative seven degrees in chicago february in chicago

Jordan Buckner (11:29)
my goodness.

Angie Kaminky (11:30)
it's truly the

Jordan Buckner (11:30)
Yeah.

Angie Kaminky (11:30)
worst. I question why we live here every February, but anyways. And I am planning to bring my baby with me just to like drop off muffins at all the stores in Chicago, but with that temperature I'm like, I can't bring her out. Absolutely not. So luckily we live near a lot of family members and I was contacting everyone because it's a random Tuesday. I had to go during the day.

And I finally was able to get in touch with someone in my family, an aunt, who was like, yes, I will come over. I will watch her for four or five hours, whatever you need to go all around Chicago and deliver these muffins. And that was hugely helpful. So just being able to rely on anyone in my local community network that could help out at a time like that. But anyways, that was huge for us. We were able to really push that out on social media and say, hey, we're launching a Foxtrot So exciting. And a lot of our target audience

still does live in the city too and they are near or walking distance from a Fox shop where it's on their way to work. And my gosh, our community showed up. We sold out in half the box shop stores in six days and they were reordering. And so that was really cool and that led me to believe, okay, we need to continue to.

get out and more retailers because that's what our customers are asking for. But really focus on where our community is, meet them where they're at physically, which is the Chicagoland area right now and more broadly in the Midwest. And so that's really where our strategy is today is let's start with where our community is and really start to then expand outwards from there. So we do direct to consumer. We ship across the nation on our website at Minkysnacks.com.

Jordan Buckner (12:42)
Yeah.

Angie Kaminky (13:01)
But we are very focused on the Midwest for our initial retail strategy. And that even bleeds to like influencers too. Anyone that we're reaching out to, we're trying to say like, okay, if you're in the Midwest and you fit our target audience criteria, that's who we're gonna be hitting so that we can really flush out this like hyper local strategy.

Jordan Buckner (13:20)
Tell me about your experience in deciding to start the company with a newborn, basically, a kid on the way, knowing that you don't get maybe the maternity leave of having a company behind you, right? Because on one hand, when you run your own business, theoretically you think you should be able to control your time and do what you want. But as you just told with Foxtrot, they're like, okay, we need the product here.

Like you have to figure out how to get that. can't be like, all right, can we just launch in like four months when things are a little bit, a little bit slower? And I don't even know if that's going to be the case versus, you know, I have a lot of friends who are like, you know, I want to move on their job or have a new thing, but like having the maternity paternity leave, like it's such a huge thing of, knowing that have that flexibility.

Angie Kaminky (14:02)
my gosh, i am laughing because i never know how to answer the question when i'm asked, so when do you go back to work? because there was there is no going back to work, was just i was always working. i mean i hate to even admit this but my husband snapped a picture. i was in labor messaging facebook because i don't know or meta sorry, i don't know if you as a small business they don't really care about you but you care a lot about them and your business on their platforms and i finally had a customer service representative respond to me at like 1 a.m.

Jordan Buckner (14:08)
Yeah. ⁓

Well done.

Angie Kaminky (14:29)
was yeah it was a whole thing but anyways um no it's a valid question I mean I I didn't really get a maternity leave but I think what is most critical around this topic is the preparation so I mean

you have a few months, you know that you're pregnant, you're going to have a baby, right? And so I think what was most important for me was, all right, I know in a couple of months, I will be removed from the equation. I won't be able to be a soul woman show. I have to remove myself from the kitchen and from all of our sales and marketing and figure out what's my plan and how am I going to make sure that this business continues to move forward and still has a little bit of growth at least for the time that

physically cannot be there. Because I've never had a kid before, I have heard at this point, I'd heard that you know it takes over your life and you might not be able to walk for a few weeks at least afterwards. And so for me it was really taking a step back a couple months before my due date and saying alright what are the pieces of my business that I have to make sure are still running without my involvement. So for me when I looked at it and probably this would be somewhat similar for other CPG founders is one actual

Jordan Buckner (15:20)
Yeah.

Angie Kaminky (15:40)
Making of the product right like I couldn't go in the kitchen and do this one week after so I had to make sure that I hired a Baker and then the second was in my eyes was Social media sale a little bit of sales and marketing just to at least continue to get Sales in the door and have some cash flow right that's always gonna be critical And so for me I put out job posts I was so nervous because I was like what if I have a few days where I can't even respond to

Jordan Buckner (16:07)
out yeah

Angie Kaminky (16:07)
email

or a text or whatever it might be. So it was really hard to interview people that you'd never met before, right? And so I got really lucky but I ended up going down the path of like who do they know, you know friends and family and all the things and for the baker

My husband came home after work one day and was like, you know what? I actually have someone that I've worked with in the past who loves to bake and I think might be able to tell like we know her. She's reliable. She's great. And I said, of course I'll talk to her. I'll talk to anyone. Right. And it ended up working out perfectly. She was fantastic. She was so great in the kitchen. She quickly took the test and we had probably six weeks of time together in the kitchen to prep so she could learn all the procedures and how to do every

Jordan Buckner (16:35)
Hehehehe

Angie Kaminky (16:49)
so we could get to the point where I was comfortable not being in the kitchen with her and making sure that we were still hitting my quality control standards for the muffins and everything like that. And then when it came to social media, this was so lucky. You know, I think it's so important to just continue to network, right? And it's something that we probably don't all love to do, but...

Jordan Buckner (16:57)
Yes.

Angie Kaminky (17:09)
This came from an event that I had gone to like two months prior. I was talking to a few women at this event. Didn't really think much of it but we followed each other on LinkedIn, social media, all the things. And I put a job post on LinkedIn for a social media position and one of the women, she reached out to me and she was like, I applied. I have an agency on the side. We'd love to help. But you know, I'm sure you're getting an influx of applications. And I was like, please, let's get on the phone right now.

whenever you're able to talk to her and I knew immediately I could trust her. She was gonna show up even if I went dark for a little while and it could not have worked out better for those two positions but it wouldn't have if I didn't start that process way in advance and talk to anyone and everyone who would listen to me about, do you know someone that can do this, this or that? And so I think that is really huge and in the food and beverage industry specifically, I'm sure Jordan you can relate to this.

Jordan Buckner (17:37)
He

Angie Kaminky (18:02)
you have to plan ahead. If you don't, you might be missing a key ingredient during a big production run or your packaging might come in late and you have to push everything back or you know it's like one small thing can ruin your timeline and your production and getting the product where it needs to be when it needs to be there.

Jordan Buckner (18:17)
You're like an orchestra director with all these different pieces

that all have to work together at the same time.

Angie Kaminky (18:22)
Exactly, and that is something I totally underestimated before jumping into CPG. Let me tell you. But no, I think if anything that experience just made me realize how tight everything needed to be and how much ahead of time you do need to plan to avoid any mishaps like that. So it's great. And basically at the time when I was, I don't know, like eight months pregnant in November, thinking like, okay, what do I need to do today so that I continue to have sales, but I'm also growing in April.

2025 right like looking five six months ahead and just making sure that you're doing the bare minimum to keep the ball rolling in the right direction and honestly we did like between the Foxtrot launch and I would try and get myself to make like one batch a week of new flavor testings so that I could put us in the position to be launching our second flavor in early Q2 which which we did which was fantastic and that's what has led us to continue to grow.

Jordan Buckner (19:04)
Yeah.

Angie Kaminky (19:13)
And now, you know, we have childcare support between family and daycare and all the things. And so we are able to support more growth in the business because of all those pieces that we put into place a few months back.

Jordan Buckner (19:26)
I love all that planning just in terms of getting to that point. I know it doesn't always go as expected, but at least starting to think about that will have some of those pieces in place, even if you need to adjust for other things that happen last minute. I'm curious, how are you thinking about building the business with being a parent in mind? Cause I know there's two tensions that always happen. One is cash is usually tight at the early stages of being able to fund everything that you want to do. And so there's usually at some point a

a need slash desire to like raise money to support the business and all the things that you want to do. At the same time, once you take on investment, you also lose some of the optionality because at least the larger stages and VCs like they need to get their money back. So invariably like you're setting up to exit and sell your business at some point. I'm curious how you're thinking about it in this stage in terms of continue funding the business at a smaller stage versus taking on larger investors.

Angie Kaminky (20:21)
Yeah.

it's a battle, right? So I think the way that I look at this right now is I am trying to get as far as I possibly can by bootstrapping and starting with savings to be completely honest. And that's one of the reasons too why we want to start with a hyper local strategy because I think it's more feasible. And the more founders that I've listened to in terms of interviews, books, articles, whatever, it sort of supports that thesis too. It's a common thread that I've heard is to really

just focus on your initial retailers. Don't try and do too much at first in the very beginning. I really want to make sure that the initial retailers that we partner with, we can support strong velocities and then we can use that to more slowly probably grow. And I hate to the word slow because it's not slow. You're still, it's just, you know, it's maybe not trying to, it's not trying to be unrealistic about your expectations for growth at the same time. And, you know, I think we'll

Jordan Buckner (21:06)
It's steady.

Angie Kaminky (21:16)
probably get to a point where we might need to tap into a small angel investor hopefully or friends and family kind of a situation but I I'm trying to push that out as long as I can and that's where I think your margins really come into play and that's something that I'm evaluating on a weekly basis is where can we improve our costs right and what can we do because if you're acting off of your own money especially in the beginning I think you're a little bit more maybe on topic for finance.

and maybe scared too, right? Like I'm not afraid to admit that. So yeah, that's where we're at for now. And I think it's something that I just evaluate on an ongoing basis as well.

Jordan Buckner (21:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. And you one thing that I've just learned from my experience with TeaSquares, our plan was to try to sell the company in five years. We ended up bringing in investors. We raised like a hundred thousand dollars within, I think our first six months of being a business. But at that time we did like, I don't know, we were less than $10,000 in sales. So like tiny, tiny. What I learned through that process was that once we took on that

money, it led us on a path where we had to exit. And ultimately I realized we didn't quite have product market fit in the early days. And because of that, were using the money, but it was dwindling down faster than we were able to break in sales. And then we still found it was like, yeah, there's some initial seat money that you need to just test the idea, but you really want to develop that product market fit.

where you find the right sales channel with the right customers, the right price point, the right product, and having those repeating sales so that you can see the growth potential before you start adding on lots of more money. Because once you do, it's easy to spend money on things that will end up just losing more money than actually making money. And so it's always a really tough thing. But as best as you can, I always recommend

proving that product market fit early and if you can boost after minimal investment before looking to take on outside investment.

Angie Kaminky (23:13)
Yeah, I completely agree with you there. And to be completely honest, there's still some things that you just mentioned there that we're testing out. We're trying to figure out. That's why we're in the farmers market this summer is we're testing out bag sizes. We're testing out price points. I mean, I feel pretty good about our MSRP today. But, you know, and I'm trying to just hear from people who are.

right in front of me eating the muffins and picking up the bag what they're saying what questions they're asking and how do we need to refine our messaging who's it really hitting with you know like we had someone last week at the farmers market who they came by they took samples their kids took samples and then five minutes later the dad is physically running back and said i have to buy this before i leave my kids are demanding it and i just need to make sure that they get their muffins and so we quickly handed him his muffins he ran away but it's like okay great so the kids are actually driving the sale and that conversation

Jordan Buckner (24:00)
Yes.

Angie Kaminky (24:01)
And so just seeing and hearing more interactions with our product like that is totally essential to make sure that we have product market fit and we're able to reach our target audience and continue to harp on that messaging.

Jordan Buckner (24:14)
Yeah, I think that's really true and I think that's something that you learn over time, right? You have to get something in the market, but then you might think like, if there's always going to be multiple different types of people who going to buy your product, right? There might be, yeah, millennials, I'll say like millennials who have that nostalgia for the mini muffins that we grew up in. There's kids now who just also want like good muffins. And so your packaging, your language can be geared towards one or the other. And so

which one is gonna be the market that you really wanna go after, and then how do you design your messaging, your packaging, and everything around that, kind of based on that learning, I think is really key.

Angie Kaminky (24:49)
Yeah, so I think we started a little bit more neutral because we were saying that our

that our customers were a combination of, let's call it like the older Gen Z cohort, who's like a working professional, busy, active lifestyle, and then also the younger millennial parents with young kids. And so we purposely made it a little bit more neutral in terms of gender and age there. What we're doing now is refining the messaging towards those groups a little bit farther. So you'll see kids who just recognize the packaging and they grab it and they love just like seeing it, the blue for the blueberry.

or like the Brownsford chocolate chip, can recognize that. And so now we're trying to hone in a little bit more on our messaging towards parents who are making the buying decisions for their kids, if that makes sense.

Jordan Buckner (25:32)
Okay.

Yeah, one of my favorite things, have you thought about doing any packaging or messaging testing at the farmers markets? Like having a kids version and the normal version or like something that's a little different to say like, which one do you like better? Which one appeals to you?

Angie Kaminky (25:50)
I haven't, but I think I might. The only thing that we are testing is the patching size, how many muffins we're going to put in a bag, like a family value size versus our smaller packs that we have today. But I might have to bring that out. That sounds like good idea.

Jordan Buckner (26:01)
Yeah, I would

highly recommend that. even if it's kind of packaging is kind of expensive, you can even just have a poster board that has a rendering or a picture of the package. And you're like, hey, this is our current one. The parents with kids, when they come by, what do you think of this one? Does this appeal to you more than this? Or does this make the kids want it, which make you more comfortable? Is protein call out, how important is that? And what amount of protein is important?

because it's going to be different for adults versus kids. And then you can kind of see who gets most excited. And you can switch it up and change it around. Because I think that can be a really great way of testing that feedback. Because like you mentioned, you get to see the reactions in person. Like, oh, wow, that's really cool versus, huh, OK, what's this one over here? Right? Like, you can definitely tell that difference.

Angie Kaminky (26:47)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's something that is so critical.

as you know we're considering additional flavors too like are you going to go basic to the point where kids you know they know chocolate chip they know blueberry they know whatever the basic ones are or are doing something a little bit more fancy for you know that the older group like a lemon poppy seed or something around those lines so yeah i think that makes a whole lot of sense to try and test out that way and people love supporting local business right like that's the best part about the farmers market is you can ask more questions you can put you know a few different iterations of things in front of them and

Jordan Buckner (26:53)
Yes.

Yes.

Angie Kaminky (27:19)
engage their results because they're not masking their feedback to you at the same time.

Jordan Buckner (27:24)
Exactly. I love that.

love that. Angie, thanks so much for being on the show today and for talking. I love this conversation and am so excited about your journey and where things are going.

Angie Kaminky (27:36)
Thank you so much for having me, Jordan.