Maddy Hasulak, the Chief Love Officer of Love Grown “gets to spread the love all day every day.” She may seem like another female founder, but she’ll be the first to emphasize that she’s a female co-founder of a company with a male co-founder - her husband, Alex. The pair started a business at one of the worst times to start a business - during the 2008 recession. Between the two of them, they were working five jobs while trying to build Love Grown. One of the jobs was at Wells Fargo, where the managers of City Market, a subsidiary of Kroger, would come in regularly. Alex approached one of them for advice on how to get on their shelves, and the manager requested a sample of the product, which was based on Maddy's mom's granola recipe. Two months later, Love Grown’s products were on an end cap of one of City Market’s aisles. "We sold so well the first month that within six months we went from one store to eighty King Scoopers and City Markets in Colorado, and quit our jobs to take the biggest risks of our lives and pour ourselves into growing this business."
Maddy’s marketing approach was unique and very odd. She and her mother took guerrilla marketing to another level when they purchased an RV, covered it in diapers, and drove it across the country while working through Teach For America to “educate kids on the importance of eating breakfast, what whole grains are, and start delivering educational seminars to groups of kids throughout the country.”
It’s this same unique drive and ability to be passionately odd that allows Hasulak to think outside of the cereal box. “We didn't want to just be a Raisin Bran or a Cheerio; we want to innovate in a category that's really been stagnant. And so that's where we got this concept and idea that we could take beans - navy, lentil, and garbanzo beans - and make cereal out of them. And so we totally revolutionized breakfast by making the first wheat-free corn-free breakfast cereal, which has higher protein, higher fiber, and they totally taste delicious!”
LISTEN to learn about what sets Love Grown apart from its competitors, what Maddy Hasulak thinks is the most important aspect of a business, and whether she regrets driving across the country in an RV covered in diapers (spoiler alert: kind of, but not really).
