Entrepreneur Sasha Millstein shares her journey launching Aunt Ethel’s Pot Pies and scaling this frozen comfort food brand from idea to shelves.

Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run, grow and exit your small business.

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The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez (00:16):

Welcome to this episode of The How of Business. This is Henry Lopez, and my guest today is Sasha Milstein. Sasha, welcome to the show.

Sasha Millstein (00:24):

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

Henry Lopez (00:27):

Looking forward to this conversation. There’s a perfect inspirational story and a lot of experiences that you have to share. And we’re going to talk to Sasha about her entrepreneurial journey briefly, but then how she launched and is scaling her business right now, which is called Aunt Ethel’s Pot Pies. So we’re going to explore all that, tell you a little bit more about Sasha in a moment. But just remember you can find all of the resources that we mentioned on this podcast, including the show notes page for this episode, which we’ll have special links. And if you want to find out more about my one-on-one in group coaching programs, just visit the how of business.com. I also invite you to consider supporting and joining our community on Patreon and subscribe wherever you might be listening to this show so you don’t miss any new episodes. So let me tell you a little bit more about Sasha and then we’ll get into the conversation.

Henry Lopez (01:12):

Sasha Millstein is the founder and CEO of Aunt Ethel’s Pop Pies. Aunt Ethel’s Pop Pies is a frozen food company that’s reinventing comfort food with an innovation with innovation, rather heart and hustle. She launched this business in 2020. Yes. During the pandemic, and Sasha has created the first and only two part pop pie to solve two of the biggest complaints that people have traditionally about pop pies, or at least the ones that we buy at a store and bring home where you have a soggy crust and it takes a long time to cook it perfectly because you’ve got two things there that you’re trying to heat up. So her patent pending design separates the buttery crust from the filling, which allows the customer to toast the crust so you get a perfect crust, but microwave the filling so you can quickly heat it up and that gives you that gourmet quality experience in under five minutes at home. Since launching at Ethel’s, she has sold over 75,000 units secured placement in over a hundred Wegmans stores. It’s a grocery chain in the northeast, right? Mostly

Sasha Millstein (02:14):

Right?

Henry Lopez (02:14):

Yeah. And sold out on QVC as well in under six minutes. And so the brand has also been featured in the New York Times and is slated to appear on NPR is how I built this. Was that the episode of the podcast you were referring to? I love that podcast. I have no issues with supporting that podcast. That’s one of my favorite shows. She’s based in Brooklyn, New York, and she is a solo founder and she’s going to share her challenges of navigating everything that she had to endure and get through to get this product developed and to market. Sasha Milstein, welcome to the show.

Sasha Millstein (02:47):

Thank you. I could not have said it better myself. Nailed. I

Henry Lopez (02:51):

Said we’re done. We’re good. We can tap out

Sasha Millstein (02:53):

Exactly.

Henry Lopez (02:54):

We were talking before we started recording. I’m familiar with that area because my daughter lives in Manhattan. And so you live specifically in an area of Brooklyn. That’s a great area to live in. Yeah. Did you grow up in the New York City area or where did you grow up?

Sasha Millstein (03:07):

I did not. I actually grew up in Seattle, but my parents, my aunt and most of my family are all from New York. So for me it was like coming back home to my roots and I get told all the time that I’m a New Yorker, so I’ll take that.

Henry Lopez (03:20):

Yeah, no, absolutely. You don’t have that deep accent, but you’re developing it, right? You’re picking it up, there’s no doubt.

Sasha Millstein (03:27):

Yeah, certain words definitely come out, but I haven’t achieved an Ethel status yet. Right.

Henry Lopez (03:32):

Not quite that level yet. Not yet. Fantastic. Alright. I’d like to start with a little bit of the story. Just briefly highlight, where did you start your career doing?

Sasha Millstein (03:41):

So my background was mostly in sales and marketing. For the first 10 years of my profession, I worked in companies like AOL Time Warner and Microsoft as a project manager overseeing different programs and initiatives. And then when I moved to New York, I actually got into angel investing, which introduced me to the CPG consumer packaged goods space. So I was getting pitched all the time from different founders and startups and small businesses, these really exciting products, ideas, opportunities. And I did that for about five or six years until one day the light bulb went off for myself.

Henry Lopez (04:22):

Interesting. Did you have prior to that aspirations of owning your own business at some point?

Sasha Millstein (04:27):

Well, I guess in a way I came from a very entrepreneurial family before even that word was a thing. My father started a lot of small businesses, mostly in biotech, so a little bit above my pay grade. But when I was young, my parents did start a restaurant that was very successful in Marin, California, and I think food and entrepreneurship, excuse

Henry Lopez (04:57):

Me. Right. Something like that.

Sasha Millstein (04:59):

Yeah. Has always been in my DNA and my parents have always been supportive of all of us starting our own thing if we wanted to. Strangely, I’m the only sibling that started at a seven that

Henry Lopez (05:10):

Sense that. Right. Interesting. Often I talk about this often that sometimes what happens to kids who do grow up around parents who own businesses is they only get to hear at the dinner table all the bad things, the headaches, the problems, and so they’re like, I want no part of that. Do you think though that even though you had family and parents involved in it, did that shy you away from it or did you see both sides of it?

Sasha Millstein (05:32):

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think I walked into the light. You’re right about children responding to their parents’ experiences and one of two ways, either becoming averse to it or walking to the light and running a restaurant back in the eighties was not easy. And of course it ended in tragedy and divorce. So I grew up hearing all the nightmare stories, everything that could go wrong with owning a small business. And so I think that’s probably why it took for me to reach the rip age of 40 to start my own company. And I only did this because my aunt has been a small business owner for 30 years and has proved herself to be wildly successful. So this was a way for me to continue that legacy that she had built for 30 years.

Henry Lopez (06:22):

It had that layer of it. So tell us, who is Aunt Ethel?

Sasha Millstein (06:25):

Aunt Ethel is the one and only Alicia Ethel Reish, who was born and raised in East Flatbush, Brooklyn and still lives here today.

Henry Lopez (06:36):

Is she still involved in the business or is she retired?

Sasha Millstein (06:39):

So when we came up with the idea, we quickly realized that we were both very alpha and both had very strong opinions, and once we started the business, we quickly realized that if we wanted to stay in each other’s lives and stay friends, which is obviously the most important thing for us, since I consider her my best friend, we agreed to stay in our lane. So she continued running her catering company in New York City and passed me the baton to run an Ethel on my own.

Henry Lopez (07:13):

And so the pot pie, this was something she had always made. This was one of the things she offered through her catering company. How did you come to this particular product?

Sasha Millstein (07:21):

So this all started about five years ago when we were vacationing in the beaches of Hoan and Vietnam as one does excellent. And I was listening to a podcast about a woman who started a chicken salad company and that night over Tamini, I asked her, she had been building this successful business for 30 years and just asked her offhandedly what was one of her most popular products. And without skipping a beat, she blurted out her chicken pot pie. And it only took me another half a tamini to realize the pot pie is the great American sweetheart dish. Doesn’t matter if you’re rich, poor, black, white, republican, liberal, everybody loves a pot pie. And so yeah, that’s how it started.

Henry Lopez (08:14):

The chicken salad person you’re referring to, is that the chicken salad chick business?

Sasha Millstein (08:17):

Yes.

Henry Lopez (08:18):

Yeah.

Sasha Millstein (08:18):

Yes.

Henry Lopez (08:19):

We’re big fans of them. My wife and I, we came to know them in when we lived in Dallas. Now we live in Florida, but they just opened a location here and we’re a big fan of their product, but their experience is fantastic. Yeah, I think if you walked into on what they’ve done from a branding and execution on a customer service level, they’ve got something. I mean, the chicken salad is wonderful and they’ve got all different types of chicken salad, but it’s more the experience I think is what’s winning people over. This is Henry Lopez briefly pausing this episode to invite you to schedule a free coaching consultation with me. I welcome the opportunity to chat with you about your business plans and offer the guidance and accountability that we all need to achieve success. As an experienced small business owner myself, I understand the challenges you’re experiencing and often it’s about helping you ask the right questions to help you make progress towards achieving your goals. Whether it’s getting started with your first business or growing and maybe exiting your existing small business, I can help you get there. To find out more about my business coaching services and to schedule your free coaching consultation, please visit the how of business.com. Take that next step today towards finally realizing your business ownership dreams. I look forward to speaking with you soon.

Henry Lopez (09:40):

When you identified the pot pie, you loved it. You identified this is a comfort food. Who doesn’t like a pot pie? At that point, had you also identified that the challenge with a pot pie that we take home frozen or cold or whatever?

Sasha Millstein (09:53):

Yeah. So as soon as we got back to the states, we actually did a popup because we had that in mind that we were going to emulate the business model for the chicken salad chicks. And after a wildly successful weekend, my exhaustion levels were through the roof and I realized this is putting on a Broadway show every night. This is not for me. I am not in the service industry.

Henry Lopez (10:15):

Well, because you thought you were going to go the restaurant route.

Sasha Millstein (10:17):

Yes catch. We thought we were going to open up a fast casual retailer, brick and mortar, selling all different types of pot pies with different crust and doing a mix and match similar to what chicken salad chicks had done. Of course, we did this in February of 2020, so everybody knows what happened. Three weeks later, the world shut down. So at that point it was a quick, easy decision to make that instead of doing brick and mortar, we were going to go the wholesale route.

Henry Lopez (10:45):

Yeah, it’s such a key takeaway here though, Sasha, because the whole starting with a pop-up is such, I always advocate for this, especially in the restaurant or food because it allows itself as opposed to having said, no, we’re going to fold in, we’re going to develop this thing, we’re going to lease a place and we’re going to start the restaurant. I think it’s brilliant to have started with a pop-up to validate this, not only to see if the market responded, but if this is what you really wanted. Right?

Sasha Millstein (11:09):

Yeah. Well, I’ve actually never told anybody this, but the popup actually started as a spite popup. If anybody’s familiar with curvier enthusiasm, the episode where he starts a spite cafe.

Henry Lopez (11:21):

That’s hilarious.

Sasha Millstein (11:22):

So we actually went around to different cafes and restaurants and tried to sell the pot pies to them for them to resell to their customers. And we targeted two cafes. One cafe responded really well. The other cafe never ever got back to us. My aunt was so incensed by this.

Henry Lopez (11:42):

She took it personally, I’m sure.

Sasha Millstein (11:43):

Yes. She found a vacant restaurant right next door to this cafe, and that’s where we held the first popup. And it’s safe to say that afterwards the cafe owner called us immediately and ordered all the pot pies. She

Henry Lopez (11:57):

Could love that. Love that. Okay, so COVID happens. You determined that I don’t want to go the restaurant route, I want to sell these either wholesale or online. What was the thinking? What was the channel that you thought, let’s go this route? Was it to wholesale them

Sasha Millstein (12:13):

As far as a customer experience goes? I mean, my experience has always been to buy chicken pop pies in the store in the frozen section. I just hadn’t eaten one in a number of years for good reason because they’re just not that great to be honest. And so we did about three months of r and d, which meant that we ate every single pot pie on the shelf. And by the end we realized that there were some major areas of improvement that the current pot pies on the market hadn’t been innovated in 50 years and also had two major pain points. One was the crust always got mushy and soggy, and the other one was that it took an hour to reheat, which we felt like this is a product of convenience, should be ready in five, should feel like it is been baking in your kitchen all day.

Henry Lopez (13:04):

Right. So you did that study, you analyzed that, I mean the recipe wasn’t the issue, it was just how to deliver this product to consumers and put it on, make it frozen, and to be able to either ship it, you sell it now, right now your channels are online right at your website and also add store shelves, right? They’re frozen section.

Sasha Millstein (13:24):

Exactly. So we sell our Popeyes through our website@annethel.com. We also sell our Popeyes through Amazon and we are in over a hundred Wegmans as well as another 300 retailers across the country.

Henry Lopez (13:39):

Alright. So you identified, just to keep saying the chronological order here, you identified this challenge. You of course pivoted to, you’re going to go direct to consumer, not a restaurant, and you identified this challenge of the heating it up, the crust versus the filling. And so that’s when you arrived at this patent pending layout. Describe how it works.

Sasha Millstein (13:59):

So our pot pies are the first and only two part pop pie. What that means is, other than it just sounding catchy, is that the crust sits in a domed lid and that’s sealed and the filling sits in a bowl and that’s also sealed. And so when you remove it from the freezer, you open the seal up from the crust, you pop that into the toaster for about 30 seconds just to warm it up. You toss the bowl in the microwave for five minutes and then when both are done, you marry the two together and they live happily ever after. And that’s how you have, yeah, that’s

Henry Lopez (14:33):

How you have, it’s a frozen product obviously. Otherwise it’s frozen until I go where to heat it up. Yeah,

Sasha Millstein (14:37):

Exactly. Yeah. Sits in your freezer until you get home late one night and you feel like you don’t have anything else to eat and you don’t feel like Ubering or door dashing something and you realize you have a gourmet pop pie sitting in your freezer that’s going to be ready in five.

Henry Lopez (14:53):

Alright. So who did you work with or how did you develop, you have a co-packing facility now, but early on did you have a commercial kitchen where you were doing this work? Where did you start producing them early on?

Sasha Millstein (15:06):

Yeah, so right from the beginning we actually worked out of my aunt’s kitchen until we got to be too big and then she kicked us out kind of like a baby bird being kicked out

Henry Lopez (15:15):

Of the process. I’m assuming there’s cottage laws that allow you to do certain amount or volumes in a kitchen, right, in a home kitchen before you have to go to a commercial kitchen.

Sasha Millstein (15:24):

So in the state of New York, you need to be under the Department of Health or the Department of Ag to do direct to consumer. And at the time, because we were in COVID and we still needed fine product market fit, we were actually doing popups at all the bars in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And that was because they had just implemented a new loss saying any facility or bar that serves just alcohol also had to serve food. So these bars were scrambling like crazy to find something that would satisfy the customers that they could reheat quickly onsite. So we kind of made a deal with all the bars that if your customers come for a drink, they stay for the food and then they’re ready to drink again. So it actually helped increase their bottom line and it helped us find product market fit and get great feedback from folks.

Henry Lopez (16:13):

Well, so what was the feedback? Did it lead to any major adjustments or did it validate what you had already in place?

Sasha Millstein (16:20):

Well, it definitely led to different packaging. We realized that the current packaging we had was not going to last or sustain on the shelf. And so we needed to look for more commercially viable packaging, which I just got to say, if you’re looking for innovative packaging, it is so tough to find that on the shelf. Interesting. And if it’s not on the shelf, you’re looking at 30, $40,000 to come up with new tooling. And then the MQs, the minimum order quantities are upwards of a hundred thousand, 200,000 units. So it’s really tough for a small business to start off if they’re going to be using innovative packaging that doesn’t already exist on the shelf.

Henry Lopez (17:02):

So what did you end up doing at least initially? Did you go with the custom packaging or did you just work with what was available?

Sasha Millstein (17:09):

We MacGyver the heck out of these packaging. We contacted like a thousand different companies and everybody told us it couldn’t be done. And so we ended up going with three different companies for three different packaging components. None of ’em which fit perfectly, but it was good enough

Henry Lopez (17:27):

Worked. Yeah, it worked.

Sasha Millstein (17:28):

Yeah.

Henry Lopez (17:29):

At least for phase one or stage one. Right,

Sasha Millstein (17:31):

Exactly. It was good enough to get it out of the kitchen and on the shelf.

Henry Lopez (17:36):

Okay. What was your milestone or your marker that you got to then at some point? And also give me an idea of the timeframe that then you said, okay, this is viable. Let’s take it to the next level. Let’s go to a co-packing or let’s get that custom packaging. What was it that led you to decide maybe it’s number of units? Okay, we’ve got something here.

Sasha Millstein (17:57):

I mean it was mostly from exhaustion, but it was also

Henry Lopez (18:00):

That was the measure.

Sasha Millstein (18:02):

No, it was also driven by the fact that we needed to get into retail. We had exhausted all of our platforms in terms of D two C and in order to start selling into various grocery stores, we needed to be USDA certified. And we looked into USDA certification since we were in a commercial kitchen in Brooklyn and we could have built that out, but it was too much money and it was too difficult in order to configure a USDA kitchen. So at that point, that’s when we started looking for co-packers.

Henry Lopez (18:34):

Now at that point, your only channel was selling. How were you selling directions? Were you online or just how were you selling? Mostly

Sasha Millstein (18:42):

Just online as well as into local bars, restaurants and cafes.

Henry Lopez (18:46):

Got it, got it. So wholesale and online. So it was when you were at that point where you said, all right, we’re ready now to take that next step to get on shelves.

Sasha Millstein (18:53):

Yes, exactly.

Henry Lopez (18:55):

And how long did it take from you got back from Vietnam to that stage? What are we talking about time-wise?

Sasha Millstein (19:01):

That took three years. Wow. It took that for two different reasons. One is that it took us that long to find product market fit. I didn’t want to build this company overnight. I saw companies that were growing at all costs, not being accountable, not understanding who their target market is, not understanding everything that could go wrong. And so I really built this company slowly, intentionally, making sure to cover all my bases because once you get big enough, those mistakes are a lot more costly. So I wanted to make as many mistakes I could on a much smaller scale before we scaled up regionally or nationally for that matter.

Henry Lopez (19:44):

You’ve obviously had the luxury financially of taking that much time. That’s often what pushes I think small businesses to have to move more carelessly perhaps is because you got no choice. So how were you funded? How did you fund those first three years?

Sasha Millstein (20:01):

I’m embarrassed to say because I definitely regret this, but I self-funded, I bootstrapped this whole company for the first three years, and at the time if anybody remembers in 2020 and 2021, you could pretty much mention to any investor that you were starting a CPG company and they would’ve written a check. And looking back, I wish I would’ve taken some of those checks

Henry Lopez (20:23):

That would’ve accelerated things that would’ve better funded things. What was the hesitancy? Why did you not, what was the mental or whatever the gap was or why did you resist it?

Sasha Millstein (20:34):

I think if I could be so blunt and honest, I think there’s a real gender divide in terms of perception and outlook on taking outside capital. And I’ve seen this with a lot of founders because I’ve been around this world now for the last 10 years and I see certain men coming up with an idea and then expecting millions of dollars in checks to be written when they haven’t proven the concept, the idea or the business model. And then on the other end, I’ve seen women who have been in business for 10 years who have proven to be wildly successful, who don’t have the chutzpah as we say, or the gall to ask for outside capital. Okay.

Henry Lopez (21:18):

So you think it was because the capital was there looking in retrospect, but you didn’t have the confidence or you felt like you might get rejected? Is that what I’m understanding or what?

Sasha Millstein (21:28):

Well, it was two Part. One is that I did have the capital, I’ve worked very hard my whole life saved, invested. And I’d been an angel investing and invested in other CPG companies, so who better to invest in that myself. And

Henry Lopez (21:43):

You also probably you weren’t willing at that point to give up any equity. Certainly, I suspect,

Sasha Millstein (21:49):

Right? That was the other thing is that the valuation of these companies was inflated. I mean, at the time, I remember an investor telling me that my valuation was around 7 million when I hadn’t sold more than a few thousand units. And so that would’ve been tremendously toxic to my business to take capital at that valuation and then realize we would’ve had to take a downturn or a down.

Henry Lopez (22:16):

It affects everything. It affects all of the decision making, it becomes what it’s all about. And that’s where often where founders lose control because then it doesn’t live up to the expectations and it’s all this undue pressure on the development of the business. Is that fair?

Sasha Millstein (22:30):

And also, there were a lot of investors that were coming into the market that weren’t familiar with the CPG space that were only familiar with the tech space, only used to companies that were 20 x-ing not realizing that CPG companies three, four x. And so I think the biggest takeaway was no matter how smart an investor thinks they are, it’s ultimately up to the founder to manage their expectations and to know your business better than they do.

Henry Lopez (23:00):

That makes sense. Alright, so you get to this point where you’re ready now to expand and get on shelves. Did you get help from a consultant or an expert on that, or how did you get on Wegman’s shelves?

Sasha Millstein (23:12):

So we definitely got caught up working with a lot of consultants that wasted a lot of our time and spent a lot of our money.

Henry Lopez (23:20):

Interesting.

Sasha Millstein (23:21):

Consultants are the predators of the CBG space. Every once in a while you do find a good consultant, but they can almost smell somebody who’s new to the industry, new to the business. To their credit, they will take advantage of that. And it’s such a great lesson to learn as a new business founder, what people’s are, and just to know what the motive is. And if you can accept their motive, then great, you should work with them. But always question what somebody’s motive is.

Henry Lopez (23:57):

Right. And making sure that that is an alignment or identifying that it’s not an alignment with what yours are, what your needs are and where you’re going.

Sasha Millstein (24:04):

Exactly.

Henry Lopez (24:05):

So did you do it with help or did you do it yourself? And just tell me at a high level, what did it take? Was it just persistence? How did you get in on their radar? How did you get in there? How did you get for them to even allow you the opportunity?

Sasha Millstein (24:21):

I would love to tell you that we got into Wegmans overnight that they discovered us and immediately put us on the shelf. But I would be doing a disservice to any other small business founder, which is these things take a long time. This is a marathon, not a sprint. We were in talks with Wegmans for three years. We went through four different buyers and the three previous buyers did not see the product market fit on their shelves. The fourth buyer did

Henry Lopez (24:53):

What did he or her see? What did they see or what did you have to develop to show them to get them to be interested? What do you think it

Sasha Millstein (25:01):

Was? Well, they actually saw the product that was the first fire

Henry Lopez (25:05):

Hire. So they took the time to have you come in and demonstrate the product or did they see it somewhere already?

Sasha Millstein (25:10):

No, in all fairness, and I have to give credit, and this doesn’t typically happen in the consumer package, good space, but we started a conversation with a distributor that was based in the northeast region who had discovered us at the Fancy Food Show back in 21. And she fell in love with the product and believed in it so much. Jill Maglis shout out to her that she pushed and pushed and pushed. She never took no for an answer. And by the fourth buyer, she basically nudged her way in to the meeting. She reheated the pot pies for us. She served the pot pies to the buyer and she got us on the shelf.

Henry Lopez (25:50):

She sold it for you. She saw the opportunity for Herb company, but it was an alignment with her leveraging her knowledge and skills and access to get it in there and get them to try it.

Sasha Millstein (26:00):

Absolutely. I mean, all I do is hear nightmare stories every day about distributors, but in this one case, they have been an amazing, amazing partner to us.

Henry Lopez (26:11):

Incredible. One thought that comes to mind because this has been a journey, obviously as you’ve described. What kept you on it? What kept you from saying, you know what, I’ve tried it. Let me go on to something else. What kept you focused on this?

Sasha Millstein (26:24):

What’s to say? I don’t feel that way right now. No, I think

Henry Lopez (26:28):

So. It’s being announced here, folks. She has sold the business. No, but especially those first three years, my goodness, that’s a long time. That takes perseverance. That takes, you have to have been, continue to be convinced or passionate about getting this thing to market.

Sasha Millstein (26:44):

Yeah, I mean in the first three years, I think I cried every single day. But ultimately what keeps me focused and what keeps me encouraged is having that North star. You have to know why you started this company. You have to know where the company is going. Even if it doesn’t go where you think it’s going to go, you at least have to have some end goal in mind. And I may sound a little delusional, but when I came up with this concept, it was in the living room of my parents’ house since I was staying with them. In the beginning of the pandemic, I was telling them about this company and this idea. They were kind of laughing at me and I said, just you wait. I’m going to build this company up. I’m going to scale it and I’m going to exit. Whether or not it’s through the stock exchange

Henry Lopez (27:28):

Or through Acquisi. Part of was proving them wrong is part of the motivation, which ain’t nothing wrong with that

Sasha Millstein (27:34):

Exactly.

Henry Lopez (27:34):

But what’s ultimately the why if you’re comfortable sharing?

Sasha Millstein (27:37):

Yeah, absolutely. So the Y kind of goes back to the beginning of the story that I didn’t share. So my aunt Alicia Ethel radish, she’d been running a catering company here in New York City and her and I have been really close all our lives. And about 10 years ago, she came to me, she said, I’d like to retire at some point. I’ve built up the successful company, but I have nothing to show for myself at the end of the day. In other words, she struggle with the issue that a lot of small businesses struggle with, that even if they are successful year in year out, selling their business is sometimes not feasible. And she asked me for years if I wanted to take over the business, which I immediately said no. And then she asked me if I would be interested in selling her book of business, which I explained to her. She had incorporated herself as intrinsically part of the brand. And so you couldn’t sell the business because her clients worked with her because of her, because of her. So when I was listening to this podcast about the chicken salad chicks company, that’s when the idea came to me, what if we took one of her products that has been wildly successful, commercialized it, scaled it, and then exited for us both to have something to show for ourselves. Because for me, it’s incredibly important that after 30 years there’s something worthwhile, something that values all that hard work and effort.

Henry Lopez (29:01):

Yeah, an asset that you’ve built that has some value, right?

Sasha Millstein (29:04):

Yeah, exactly. And so even though five years into this, we’re not ringing the stock exchange bell, we’re not getting our doors knocked in by ConAgra or another large company looking to acquire. We are building something and eventually I do see this scaling and I do see success and I do this because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s a great product that deserves to be on the shelves and the rest of the country deserves the taste.

Henry Lopez (29:33):

Yeah, absolutely. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing that. I want to go back for just a second though before we start to wrap it up here. On this point of that perseverance, the flip side of it as entrepreneurs is sometimes it can blind us to an absolute need to pivot or adjust our business model. But I hear that you’ve done that certainly because you spend so much time in developing and market validating this product. And so that’s what obviously led you to feel confident. I’ve got something here. It’s not just in my head. I’ve proven it to a certain degree that people want and like this when they try it. Is that fair? Is that what keeps you also focused on moving forward and not abandoning this altogether?

Sasha Millstein (30:10):

Yeah, I mean we have an unfair advantage in the sense that most small businesses start their business because they have an idea. We had a product that had been in circulation for 30 years and we had people that were paying $35 for a pot pie. So we really had this unfair advantage that we knew the product was great, we knew that people would be willing to pay for it. We just had to figure out how to execute it and commercialize it and scale it.

Henry Lopez (30:37):

Absolutely. Alright. When somebody, I’m sure they do all the time, comes to you and says, Hey, I’ve got an idea for a product, A CPG product. I know that’s redundant. Where do you advise that they start?

Sasha Millstein (30:47):

Firstly, I say don’t.

Henry Lopez (30:50):

It’s a tough road. Worst thing is a restaurant second worst. This is CPG.

Sasha Millstein (30:55):

Exactly. The margins are so slim. If you love working hard and making pennies on the dollar, go into CBG. No, I think my biggest learning and takeaway from this is that this space, I don’t know if it started this way 30 years ago, but it is this way now, which is that this industry is very capital intensive. It’s unfortunate, but it takes a lot of money to scale up a company. I thought that running a pop pie company was going to be more like running a lemon lemonade stand where I make the Popeyes go out and sell them, collect the money, make more pot pies, go out and sell them. But unfortunately the unit economics when you first start off just don’t make sense. So my biggest advice for anybody that’s looking to start a business in this space is to be as well capitalized as possible.

Henry Lopez (31:47):

And of course you touch on something that I harp on continuously on this podcast. I think that applies particularly in this space. But that is the biggest challenge for a lot of business owners because we, as most of us with small businesses, we come to starting our business with limited resources. We cut corners, we underestimate how much working capital we need, and then that’s what ends up killing a lot of small businesses is running out of money.

Sasha Millstein (32:09):

Money. That’s exactly it.

Henry Lopez (32:10):

What’s next for the business? What’s next? What do you see on the horizon?

Sasha Millstein (32:15):

Oh, we got big ideas coming up. Right now we only have three flavors, but we are planning on launching another two skews to add to the shelf. So those are coming out in 2026, which we’re very excited about, obviously from feedback, from talking to tons of customers. And the other thing that we are really excited about is that we are planning on going into your hometown with a large retailer, which I’m sure you can imagine

Henry Lopez (32:42):

Chain, a grocery store

Sasha Millstein (32:43):

Chain. Yes. Got it. Yes. So we hope to start expanding down the eastern seaboard. Wonderful. And into the southeast for all those New Yorkers who like to snowbird down in Florida.

Henry Lopez (32:55):

Lots of them down here. Absolutely. So if I wanted to stay up to date, probably, do you have a newsletter? Do you have an email list? How do I stay up to date on when that happens? Where it’s available near me?

Sasha Millstein (33:06):

Yeah. So if you go on our website, an ethel.com, you’ll see a popup welcome message. You can fill in your email, get 15% off your first order, and then what we typically do is send out emails on a biweekly basis just to keep people informed.

Henry Lopez (33:21):

Perfect. And right now I can buy online from you nationwide, correct?

Sasha Millstein (33:25):

Yes, exactly. Well, the contiguous 48 states,

Henry Lopez (33:29):

And of course Wegmans in the northeast is where I can find you currently retail wise, correct?

Sasha Millstein (33:35):

Yes.

Henry Lopez (33:36):

Perfect. Excellent. Alright. Always looking for a resource or book recommendation. You had mentioned a resource before we started recording. Tell me about that and how you’ve used that resource.

Sasha Millstein (33:45):

Yeah, so it’s a lonely space being a founder in the CVG space, but fortunately I discovered an incredible group of other CPG founders called Startup CPG. It started off online on Facebook, just a couple of founders getting together, sharing tidbits of insight and information and resources. And it has blown up to over 8,000 founders. They host social events all the time. You can get any type of information that you’re looking for in the space. They host tables at big, huge events that you can also get into and they’re all subsidized and they’re just a phenomenal resource for anybody looking to start a company in the food and drink space.

Henry Lopez (34:31):

So is it primarily still a Facebook group? Is that how I would find them?

Sasha Millstein (34:34):

Yes, you can go on exactly. You can go on Facebook and look at start of CPG, they’ll then send you an invitation for the Slack group and then you can get involved in local events.

Henry Lopez (34:46):

Wonderful. Thanks for that recommendation. Alright, we’ll wrap it up here. What’s one thing you want us to stick away from this conversation? If I’m either thinking about starting a business, it could be CPG, it could be something else or an existing business owner. What’s one or two things you want us to take away from your experiences and insights?

Sasha Millstein (35:02):

I would say do your research. I would say do as much due diligence as possible. You’re going to constantly be defending your product, your idea, and there’s going to be constant doubters that are going to be questioning your product and your idea. And you have to know the space really well. You have to know who your competitors are. If I hear founders all the time saying, oh, there’s nothing like this, or my product is the best or it tastes the best, that’s not going to be enough. You have to look at the space. You have to understand the category, whether or not there’s white space, the total addressable market. You have to understand if people are buying your product once or buying your product on repeat every week. You have to know what your velocity numbers are. You have to know what your overall numbers are.

Sasha Millstein (35:47):

You have to know what your projections are, your cost of acquisition for customers. When I started this company, I actually enrolled in the Columbia MBA program because I thought that that was going to be really helpful. And I realized that from starting this company, I ended up getting my street MBA, which was actually just as expensive, but I think more educational and more fun to get. But I think if you’re not willing, be obsessive about absorbing information and networking with people and knowing everybody else’s product and company inside out in order to understand yours better, you’re in the wrong business.

Henry Lopez (36:24):

How do you though determine when you’ve done enough research, when you’re ready? Is that where a mentor or a coach can help or what’s your advice there? Because I have a problem with that. I can overanalyze because really what I’m looking for is for the data to tell me that it’s guaranteed. So what’s your advice as to when have I done enough research to move forward and validate

Sasha Millstein (36:45):

Well, yeah, you’re right. You can definitely get stuck with analysis paralysis. The enemy of good is perfection or whatever that quote is. I think you develop a muscle, you develop an instinct if you know the competition and you know your product, what’s right for you. And always listen to yourself. Nobody knows your product and your category and your industry better than you, no matter how long they’ve been in the business, no matter how much money they have, your product better than anybody, and you have to have that conviction.

Henry Lopez (37:18):

Fair. Alright, tell us again where to go to learn more and also to order an Ethel’s pot pie.

Sasha Millstein (37:23):

So you can find us on www dot an ethel’s dot com and you can read about us on our story and you can order one of three flavors, the roasted chicken, the cocoa van, which is French for chicken and wine, and of course the vegetarian option, which is shrooms gone Wild medley of mushrooms and a cream and an herb based sauce.

Henry Lopez (37:43):

Yummy, yummy. To be honest, I’m not a big pot pie fan, but my wife is. So we’re definitely going to be trying one soon here and I am excited to hear that they might be even easier to acquire for us here coming soon. So thanks for sharing that, Sasha. Great conversation. Thanks for being so transparent, answering all my questions and sharing so much from your journey that we can all learn for from rather, thanks for being with me today.

Sasha Millstein (38:07):

Thank you so much. And I just want to shout out to the Popeye posse out there, the people that support us and that love us and that promote pop pies all over because it’s a great product and it deserves to be executed well. So we hope

Henry Lopez (38:20):

That it’s a classic all American comfort food, isn’t it?

Sasha Millstein (38:24):

Exactly.

Henry Lopez (38:24):

This is Henry Lopez. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Howa Business. My guest today, again, Sasha Milstein. Thank you. I release new episodes every Monday morning. You can find the show you listen to podcasts, including my YouTube channel, the How of Business YouTube Channel, and my website, the How of business.com. Thanks for listening.