Welcome to Season 15 of the Troubleshooting Innovation podcast. Molly Blakeley, founder and CEO of Molly Bz, talks about how she built a nationwide cookie brand from $150 and an InstaPot experiment. Sponsored by CoPack Connect.
In Episode 2, we delve into the unique product development process that started with some leftover liquor bottles.
Learn more about this season here, and tune into Troubleshooting Innovation on Apple or Spotify.
Joanie Spencer: Hi, Molly. Thank you for joining me again this week.
Molly Blakeley: Hi. Thanks so much for having me back.
Spencer: Okay, this is going to be a really interesting episode. The Molly Bz cookie brand started with your last 150 bucks in your pocket and a garage full of alcohol from your previous business. You kind of got screwed over on and you were kind of left with, ‘Now, what am I going to do? What’s my next move?’ So we already dove into the wild journey that led to starting Molly Bz. But let’s talk about how this garage full of alcohol, these liquor bottles came into play. This is an incredibly unique cookie that you make, and some flavor varieties that you are not going to see anywhere else. So, how did you — let’s go into more detail of how you got the idea for these infused flavors.
Blakeley: You know, I owned a bar for a minute, over 10 years. And so I knew, because I was doing boozey cookies, I would just kind of make a drink into a cookie. I had one at one time that had, like, candied jalapenos and tequila and dark chocolate or whatever, and then some sea salt. I should do those again. They are so good. Anyway … I talked myself right into it! So that’s how I kind of started.
So, well, first of all, I was broke. So, that also helps because you grind. You do. You like, hustle, hustle. And so what do I have in my cupboard? I had some cereal. I had some Cheez Its, you know, like, ‘What am I going to use here that’s in my cupboard? Oh, I’ve got a nut, a Hershey bar. I’ll just break that up into pieces and and turn it into something.’ Not all of them were home runs. My poor son now he only wants regular chocolate chip cookies. I have burned him out of weirdness.
But for me, I love salty and sweet together. It’s like, my favorite thing. I love spicy and sweet also is really yummy for me. So, I decided I was going to do three things in every cookie. So one was like, it would have to have a nut and would have to have a chocolate, and then it would have to have some sort of other thing, like maybe coffee or something. But then I took it to another level, and I started researching, because I love to research. And so I researched Top 10 food trends for the year that I was at. So if it’s 2019-2020, and I would look at the top 10 food trends, and I would see what they were, and then I would figure out a combination that those would go really good with, and I would make it into a cookie.
So like back then, Earl gray tea and lavender were on the top trends that year. So I took Earl gray tea, and I found one that had lavender in it. And I tried a couple different Earl gray teas, and I found one that I really liked, and I didn’t steep it. I put the tea, but the whole leaf, everything right in the cookie. So you would like get pieces of tea all over your teeth! But that’s what I did, and it was delicious because I made it like this extra umph of love, you know.
And so then I would take my vanilla bean vodka that I’d be using for my, you know, at the time, for my extract, and then I’d add white chocolate and then a little bit of lemon because people like lemon in their tea. And so I would just innovate like that. Once I started getting money, I would just clothesline the cereal aisle or the cookie and cracker aisle. And this is, you know — Blockbuster was still around, and they had the best candy selection — so I’d go in there and try to find a really cool candy. So that’s kind of what I did. But I definitely followed the trends. That’s how I did the Hot Cheetos. Then mangos were on the list one year, and so I put — and I loved a mango Margarita, spicy mangos, you know — so I did that. And the Hot Mess was birthed from that. And, yeah, just lots of fun things like that.
Spencer: Okay, so lavender tea cookie. I mean that just to me, screams self care. I’m down with relaxing with … I am down with relaxing with some lavender tea in a cookie and just chilling. That sounds amazing.
I want to talk about the infused flavors and the extracts from the alcohol. So you figured out how to do this in an InstaPot. Because you had six weeks to figure it out. Like, Well, you had days to figure it out because you only had six weeks on the food truck.
Blakeley: I had, like, 24 hours.
Spencer: So how did you figure out that you could do this in an InstaPot, and then, like, where did it go from there?
Blakeley: Everyone was doing everything. People were canning stuff in an instant pot, which meant that, like, something’s sealing, and it’s getting to a certain temperature that’s good. So I just, I Googled, like, how they were canning and what temperature it got to. And in order to cook the alcohol out, it had to hit a certain temperature. I can’t remember now what it was, but I know that it hit that temperature in the InstaPot. And then it would do it within 45 minutes. And so then I started learning about making extracts, and you had to have, like, food-grade glycerin. And so I would take food-grade glycerin, and I would do like a third of it, and then I would pour all the rest of the booze that was in to the rest of it, put it in a mason jar, put the lid on, and stick it in an InstaPot. So I could do like, six at a time in different flavors.
And like me, everything I do, I’m extra. So then I, like, got out the oregano, and I made oregano extract, and I was using any soups to cook with. You know, I had the best time. I made so many extracts. So bacon, I put bacon. I made a bacon extract. I made so many different extracts!
Spencer: Okay, you are, you are, like a modern-day mad scientist with great hair who loves the color pink.
Blakeley: I do love pink. Frank with QVC – he’s now the vice president of my company – and he calls me a mad scientist. That’s one of the things he calls me.
Spencer: Yeah, I have this, this, I can see it perfectly in my mind’s eye.
So how was it when you started growing and the business took off and you had to scale, how did you scale that process? Because I feel like it’s learning how to make the cookies then learning how to scale the cookies. But part of those cookies is the extracts, and you have to learn how to scale that too. So you’re learning two different crafts at the same time while also figuring out how to scale them both.
Blakeley: So what I did — with the extracts — what I ended up doing is I ended up consolidating which extracts I use. So I was like, ‘Okay, whiskey and bourbon are pretty similar.’ I mean, if you’re a whiskey guy, you would kill me for saying that. Because I’m the bar business, I know that they’re not the same, but in a cookie, they taste similar. So I was like, I just need to have either a bourbon extract or a whiskey extract. And then rum extract was already in stores, so I could use a rum, and I could add some cinnamon and make it like a spiced rum and that sort of thing.
So, I started just thinking how to repurpose it with stuff that might already be out there. And so I Googled, and I found a couple different extract companies that made these certain extracts. So then I streamlined and condensed what I was doing, and I tried to use the same extracts and different things. So like one of them, I used fireball, which is also whiskey. So what I did is I took, I found a hot cinnamon flavored extract, and then I mixed it with my whiskey extract to make it taste like fireball, which is on our Straight Fire cookie, and that sort of thing. So I ended up, overall, probably using three different extracts, the most: rum, whiskey and the cinnamon extract, and then normal vanilla. And then I would just repurpose it in lots of different ways. And so that’s what I did. I found somebody that could do that — cooks vanilla actually — has a great line.
And since then, I work with a company called Mosaic, and they will make any flavor in the world into an extract. So you could, I could say, ‘I want an extract that tastes like this napkin,’ and they can do it. It’s amazing. The tea that I loved for the Molly Bz earl grey tea, which is the name of that cookie was called The Tea, they actually I sent them my favorite, the tea that I loved, and they made that tea into an extract for me, the exact flavor profile. And it was right in time because it ended up getting discontinued by Kroger right when I was making it into extract. So now we have what’s called the London Fog Boba Doodles, and we use the extract right in time. Yeah, close one.
Spencer: You are all about timing.
Okay, so I feel like Molly, you are the living embodiment of the saying, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention.’ That’s pretty much how you got this thing going. But then again, your straight biology, you have a gene that you inherited from your mother, who just constantly drove invention, regardless of need. So now your company is very successful, and you’re widely known. How would you describe yourself now? Like, where is the invention coming from? Like, where do you draw on your ideas?
Blakeley: You know, I still do the same thing. I Google the top 10 flavors or taste for the year before or the year of that are popular for food trends. And like Boba, for instance, was really popular. And so that’s why I came up with the Boba Doodles. I found a great pivot. I wanted to do a bite size one. We turned it into a shortbread and added little mini boba gels. And the Boba Doodles are taking the world by storm. Like, people are really loving them, and they’re in all the stores that I’m in right now are they’re carrying Boba Doodles, and some of them are doing the indulgent cookies too, but it’s mostly Boba Doodles. So really, I just really still follow the trends, and then I turn it into something that I know is a food item.
Spencer: Okay, all right. That’s so interesting to me because I just did a trends presentation for the American Pie Council. And I was talking about flavor trends, and, like, where pie makers can get some new ideas to sort of modernize pie varieties. And, yeah, texture is a huge thing right now. And I was talking about boba, like, how popular it is, and people — boba tea is just blown up. It’s crazy. And so boba in anything, I think, right now, is a great place. So Good on you for tapping into that.
Blakeley: It was such a pivot for us. We had a company that came to us and said, ‘We want to show you all kinds of different things that we can offer Molly Bz, and we want to partner with you.’ And they one of these things, were these little, tiny flavor pearls. And I said, ‘This is a mini boba.’ And so then we pivoted into this. And all of a sudden, something switched at that moment, and I went from pitching, pitching, pitching, to stores calling me, saying, ‘We want to carry your Boba Doodles.’ And I’m like, ‘What just happened?’ But that’s how God works. It’s always that way. And then I went from following the trends to being the trend. I was 2024’s Trend to Watch by Food Network this year for the Boba Doodles. Isn’t that wild?
Spencer: Okay, so let’s talk about these flavor varieties from a business or market perspective. How many cookie varieties are you selling right now?
Blakeley: We’re doing a switch right now because we’ve had the same nine core indulgent cookies since I started. You know, co packers, they hate doing anything except for doing a line wire cut and then having a bake and flowwrap. Like, if you have to hand touch them in any way, put frosting on it. As you can tell, over here, I have like, this one’s got a chocolate covered pretzel. This one has Fruity Pebbles and frosting. This one has frosting. This one has a cherry in the middle. That one has marshmallows. That’s a nightmare to a co-packer. But it’s who I am. You know, these cookies are visually beautiful. Because people eat with their eyes before they do anything else, and so you want to make sure it’s still good looking. But we are pivoting to some that are going to be a little different. I have a new cookie that’s coming out that’s coming out, that’s going to be in the stores in September, that is still fun, but it’s it’s called the Snack Master, and it has potato chips, it has M&M’s, and it has salted pretzels in the cookie itself. So it’ll still be like fun to look at, really yummy. Just vanilla extract, no boozy extract, but it’ll be like a really good, different pivot that people will still be excited about eating.
Spencer: So do you see certain varieties trending better in certain regions or areas or even specific channels?
Blakely: So here’s what I’ve learned — and I think it’s so interesting — that you have to have the taste buds of the buyer. Those buyers for all the stores, what they like is what they’re going to pick up. If they don’t like it, then it doesn’t matter if, let’s say, lemon’s on trend, and everyone loves lemon. If that buyer doesn’t like your lemon thing, they’re not going to buy it. Maybe they’ll get peanut butter instead. So you have to, the buyers are ruling the world in the CPG business. If they don’t like your product, they’re not going to buy it.
And it’s kind of a bummer, because there are some things I think that would sell really, really well in stores, but the buyers are like, ‘That’s not my favorite.’ And you know, sometimes they’ll have other buyers try it too, but it’s how it’s presented to that buyer makes all the difference. Because I could say, ‘Have you tried these Boba Doodles? What do you think?’ Or I could say, ‘Have you tried these Boba Doodles? You gotta try them. What do you think?’ It’s how it’s presented. And if I’m not able to present it myself, if they just say, ‘Send me a sample,’ and then they present it to a room, it’s going to be a different kind of hit. And so that makes all the difference. That’s who’s ruling the trends, are these buyers for stores. And so, you, you have to kind of learn what they like.
Spencer: All right, so in general, what have been the most popular varieties?
Blakeley: So that’s the other thing, is, the buyers will ask you, ‘What are the top four flavors that you sell?’ Well, so the first store that we sold to that’s going to be, obviously, our top four flavors. So that buyer chose which flavor was the top four, you know what I mean. So, so like, if say, say, Walmart said, ‘What are your top four flavors?’ Well, at the time they’re this, this and this, and it could switch for e-commerce or whatever, but for the stores, it’s still gonna be our top flavors, or those ones, because they’re buying the most. So it’s kind of a tricky question. It could pivot with times and trends and everything, but if the same stores are buying the same ones, and those would be our top flavors. So it’s not really a fair question, but they just ask that in just that way, ‘What’s the top selling flavor?’ So we are real honest about it and say, ‘Well, these are the top selling flavors.’
So it’s always the same four for us because they just keep taking those top flavors and expanding them to other platforms. But I mean, like I say, I do follow the food trends, and I try to do whatever. Like coffee last year was really popular, so I put ground coffee within the cookie and named it Big Joe. And with chocolate, it’s delicious. I try to push that, say, ‘Well, these are the top four, but the food trend is coffee right now, so see what you think of that.’ You know, and so try, that’s kind of what I try to do. But I don’t think they realize the amount of power they have. You know that they’re, they’re setting the trends.
Spencer: So interesting. That’s really interesting. I want to just give a shout out to Big Joe because I need that cookie.
Blakeley: It’s my favorite.
Spencer: I saw someone on your socials comment and say, ‘I’m going to take that cookie and dip it in my coffee.’ And I was like, ‘I’m with you.’
Blakely: This is a cold brew flavored, coffee flavored boba in our shortbread with a coffee flavored extract. It’s ridiculous how delicious they are. They are so, good, and they melt in your mouth. We do something with our shortbreads that makes them a different kind of — they’re very soft — and they actually start to dissolve in your mouth. It’s weird. And they’re so good. They’re so addicting. I love them!
Spencer: And I have a problem with shortbreads too.
Blakeley: You’re my kind of customer.
Spencer: Okay, I want to ask one last question for this week, to tee up what we’re going to talk about next week, and that is your co-packers. So, we’re going to dive deep into it next week. But for now, I just would love to talk about what it was like finding manufacturing partners. You talked about at the beginning of this episode, but let’s bring it back to that.
I know it’s real hard to find a contract manufacturer that is willing to do like smaller batches, or a lot of different varieties, like those small runs. And then you bring these unique flavor profiles into it, just like what you said, like looking at those products, when some of them are iced and some of them have a drizzle, and they all have a different kind of inclusion, how did you not give up just on that journey alone? I mean, that just sounds like it was impossible.
Blakeley: It’s a lot. They definitely don’t like to top anything. You know, I think because there’s so many now — since 2020 so many bakers have birthed, and they’re getting more and more popular — I think that they’re, they’re more open to it. But it’s still the biggest flex that I have on co-packers right now is that a lot of the co-packers that will do my cookies are actually brands that are my competition, and so they’re wanting to expand by also being a co-packer, but they’re also have their own brand. And so you have this NDA signed and everything, and think, ‘Okay, well, I’ll be good.’ And then we’ll have this conversation. They’ll see my recipes, and then all of a sudden, on their social media, they have their own version of the Hot Mess, and then they have their own version of all my cookies within the same week. That’s happened twice now, and so it sucks. Then I think, ‘Well, it’ll be okay, you know, we’ll get through it,’ or whatever. But then, obviously, I don’t want to work with them because their integrity is not where it should be. So that has been tricky.
But we work with so many different co packers. One of them, we have an airline in Alaska. It’s not Alaska Airlines — but they should call me and have my cookies on their flights. But we are working with one that’s called Raven Airlines. And I got a guy, a co-packer in Washington, that only does — he will not put anything in a tray. He will flowwrap the cookie and put it in a bulk box and then barge it to Alaska. That’s the only way he’ll do things.
Then we have another co-packer that they max out at six pallets on a good week. I mean, they can only do six pallets, and they mostly just do shortbreads. And so they were actually the ones who helped me birth the Boba Doodles. And they’re out of Washington, but they’re very small. Like their entire facility is probably 2,000 square foot. And they’re down like a windy road in Washington. And I love them, and they do all of our World Market orders, and they’re great. They have everything we need to do it.
But then we have, like, another co-acker that only will do 50 pallets or more. And so that’s our Costco co-packer. And so we have all these different ones that do all these things, but finding someone that’ll like top the cookie or whatever, that has been tricky. You’re having a lot of them will say, Nope, I won’t do that. I’ve been told that still.
We’re looking for a new co-packer right now, and I’m going to have a meeting with them tomorrow morning, and hopefully he will be able to do that. But still we’re having — the one that was doing ours on a pretty regular basis — just decided to launch their own brand. And so they said they want to do their own thing. I’ve been with them for five years now, and and so we’re we’re exiting that. And it’s fine, I have all my formulas. They’re not called recipes in the big world. It’s called a formula, and it’s cool. And I wish them the very best of luck, and I’m really grateful that they were the ones that took a chance on me. But now we’re having in this flex again, trying to find someone that will top a cookie for a good price. Some of them charge almost double what I’ve been paying. And now that butter and eggs and everything else, you know, it’s tricky. So you have to try to pivot. So we’re going from a three-and-a-half-ounce cookie to a two-ounce. We’re going to carry still — the three-and-a-half-ounce will still be out there, but now we’re also going to offer it in a two-ounce so that we can get in more doors, and also so that it won’t be too expensive.
Spencer: Okay. Well, I think that’s a great way to tease next week’s conversation. So we will go ahead and close out this week. But this was an awesome conversation, Molly, and I really loved hearing how you went from booze in the garage and InstaPots to your expansion and your ideas and working with the contract manufacturers. So we’ll get into those co-packers next week. For this week, I’m just gonna say thank you again.
Blakeley: Thanks so much. It’s been fun!
