Abby Kircher

Transcript:

Narrator  

Welcome to The Best of LKN, a podcast featuring the best small businesses and the most influential professionals around Lake Norman, North Carolina. Each week, we spotlight those businesses and individuals that are making a positive impact here in the Lake Norman area. Thanks for joining us, enjoy the show.

Jeff  

Welcome back to The Best of LKN podcast. Before I roll this really special interview for you, I just want to thank everyone that has signed up for our email newsletter. Signing up is really one of the best ways to support the work we’re doing here at the podcast, and also a great way to stay up to date with our most recent episodes and blog articles. If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s really easy. Just go to our homepage, www.thebestoflkn.com and scroll down to the email newsletter signup form, enter your first name and preferred email address and you’re all set. You’ll receive an updated newsletter from us every other week with links to our latest podcast episodes, blog articles featuring our favorite small businesses, and things to do around Lake Norman. We’re also working on curating links to carefully selected local news and upcoming events to share with you. We’d also love your feedback. If there are topics you’d like for us to include in the newsletter, please feel free to reach out to me directly by email at jeff@thebestoflkn.com. And don’t worry, we’ll never ever share your email address with anyone else and we’ll never spam your inbox. Thanks again for signing up for the newsletter, we really appreciate your support. Now, here we are at Episode 72 of The Best of LKN podcast, and we have an amazing guest for you to meet. Abby Kircher began her entrepreneurial journey at just 15 years old. She was inspired to begin creating her own nut butter spreads after reading the label one day on a jar of peanut butter. Abby loved peanut butter but didn’t want to consume a product that was full of unhealthy additives and preservatives. So, she threw together some ingredients and fired up her mom’s food processor, and the next thing she knew she had created something really great. Fast forward six years and Abby is now the CEO of a multi-million-dollar enterprise known as Abby’s Better, Inc. Headquartered in Mooresville, Abby’s Better is a clean-label snack brand that is producing delicious and healthy nut butter spreads and snack bites. Abby and her company have been featured in countless blog, newspaper, and magazine articles. She has been featured on the most talked-about podcast on this podcast – How I Built This with Guy Raz, an NPR production that has featured conversations with some of the most successful founders and CEOs in the world. We are so proud and honored to feature Abby on the podcast. Her story is amazing and inspirational, and I know you’re going to just love it. So, lean in and get to know Abby Kercher, founder and CEO of Abby’s Better, Inc.

Jeff  

Abby Kercher. Abby, welcome to the podcast.

Abby  

Hey, thanks for having me on.

Jeff  

Yeah, pleasure. I’ve been really looking forward to this conversation and featuring Abby’s Better on the podcast. I need to just say a quick thanks to Robert Maynard, the founder and CEO of Famous Toastery, who recognized you during our conversation a few, a couple months ago and spoke really so highly of you and was so excited about the business that you had started really all by yourself. It’s really cool. Abby’s Better produces really high-quality healthy nut butters and snack bites. I’ve been able to try them, they are awesome. In fact, I had the chocolate walnut snack bites for breakfast this morning. So, they are really good. Abby, for the listeners and for me as well, what I’m really excited to hear about is your background, you’re 21 years old, right?

Abby  

Yep, I am.

Jeff  

Okay, so getting ready to celebrate the fifth anniversary, or you already have celebrated the fifth anniversary of Abby’s Better?

Abby  

Yep.

Jeff  

And while you’ve accomplished a lot, your story’s really special, so share with the listeners your background, how did Abby’s Better start?

Abby  

So, it’s kind of crazy, a lot of people they ask me like, oh, what’s your background? And my background is really nothing but high school because that’s when I started the company. So, I created the products when I was 15. I’ve always been a really big foodie. And I was starting to get more into health and nutrition, and one of my favorite foods at the time was peanut butter. I ate it on literally anything I could find. But I was reading the label one day, the nutritional label and notice tons of artificial sweeteners and peanut oils, and just ingredients that I really kind of wanted to stay away from. So, at the time, it was summer of 2015 and I just thought, let me just make my own and see how it goes. So, I literally whipped out a food processor, some natural sweeteners like fruits and honey, and nuts like cashews, pecans, and almonds, kind of staying away from peanuts because at the time, almond butter was popular, but I hadn’t heard of any cashew or pecan butters on the market. So, I started to create these products that soon became our first ever nut butters that we ended up selling. And I was just giving it away to friends and family to get people’s opinions. I think I was just so excited and enthusiastic about this thing I had created, so I wanted other people to give me their thoughts. And I was just overwhelmed by the response, people couldn’t believe it tasted so good for how healthy it was. And they started to ask where they could buy it. It was kind of an aha moment. I was like, wait a second, people are actually interested in purchasing this stuff. What if this can be more than just something I make out of my kitchen for myself? So, I approached my mom who is now COO of Abby’s Better and said, let’s start a company called Abby’s Better and just sell at a local farmers market here in Davidson. And that’s really when it started to snowball into a business. We were selling out every weekend, we had to move to a commercial kitchen in Charlotte to meet demand. And it was then that I decided that I really wanted Abby’s Better to be about a lot more than just nut butter. That I wanted to create a clean-label snack brand that could be a one-stop shop for healthy, plant-based snacking. So, we started to get into our first local retail stores June of 2016. The next year, we’re in 100, the next year, 500 and now and over 1500 stores on the East Coast and Midwest. So, that’s kind of the beginning story, you know, it’s something I never expected. I really expected it to be a hobby or something to look good on the college resume, but it grew into something so much larger than any of us could have anticipated.

Jeff  

Fifteen hundred stores, wow, that’s amazing. Well, you proved the concept without even really, that originally wasn’t even the goal. Right? You were just kind of making it for yourself and for your family. And talk about an aha moment. Right?

Abby  

Right, exactly. And I think that’s how, like a lot of businesses start, especially like small businesses is, I had a need, and so I created a product to meet that need. And then you kind of realize, oh, a lot of other people have this need too. They have dietary restrictions, they’re, you know, trying to eat a certain way. And they might find products that meet their dietary restrictions, but they don’t taste good. And if it doesn’t taste good, who wants to eat it? And so, yeah, that’s really what gave me the passion and the drive to really create this product and be able to give it to other people, is I saw that they were needing exactly what I was looking for when I created it.

Jeff  

And you started creating the nut butters and snack bites when you were 15?

Abby  

Yeah, so the nut butters I created first, the snack bites I didn’t start making till, we didn’t start selling till 2020, beginning of 2020. I started really working on the recipe for a while, and the reason I wanted to create snack bites is because I wanted an on-the-go option for people who loved our nut butters and the purity of our product. So, I wanted to make sure and make something that, you know, you didn’t have to carry around a jar to you to work or to the gym. They’re using all the same ingredients that’s in our nut butters, but in a bite form.

Jeff  

Yeah, and that’s exactly how I enjoyed them this morning in the car on my way to the office, and now I’m actually recording from the kitchen table at home because there’s an internet problem at the office. So, hopefully the acoustics are okay but yeah, it’s great. It’s great to have the bags of the snack bites in the car. You don’t have to, you know, keep you away from the drive-thru, keep me away from the drive-thru. Anything I can find that will help avoid the drive thru restaurants is key.

Abby  

Likewise, I cannot even go through one otherwise I will make all the wrong choices in what I order.

Jeff  

Exactly, me too. Well, so I subscribe to Charlotte Business Journals, and was really amazed and surprised and impressed when I saw a feature that they did, a recent issue they ran a focus on innovation, and Abby Kercher was profiled in that article. And we had already scheduled this interview so it just, you know, just increased those levels of excitement for this interview even more, so really, really impressive. Let’s talk a little bit about funding and the funding process, because they mentioned a couple of big names that have invested, I believe in Abby’s Better.

Abby  

Yep, Yeah, that’d be Kevin Love and Kate Boch, is something really exciting because I’ve always been a fan of both of them. And we have two members on our board who are the connection to Kevin and Kate. And I really just, we started talking and they love nut butters, they eat nut butters in their day-to-day life, you know, obviously two very healthy people. So, we sent them some product, and they just loved it and they raved about it. Honey almond and coffee almond are actually their two favorite flavors. And as we were in discussion with them, they just became more and more involved with the brand and more and more a part of who we are and what we do. So, we’re really excited to announce them as investors and so we’ve been getting a lot of press on that and it’s really surreal. Whenever I read an article that talks about it, or I go on social media and see posts about it, it’s such a blessing to have them a part of the team and supporting our brand. So, yeah, it’s pretty crazy.

Jeff  

It’s just awesome. Go Cavs, my wife is a huge Cleveland fan and loves the Cavaliers, so she was so impressed to see that Kevin Love was involved with Abby’s Better. Very, very cool. When did the funding process start? Like when you started. How does that work? Like share a little bit about just a 30,000-foot view of what that looks like.

Abby  

Right. Um, so in the beginning, that was probably the most, I mean, every aspect of the business was new for me, that was probably the most new, the most I had to research and learn about. But it started with a family and friends raise of people we knew and people around us who had been supporting the product for a while and genuinely loved it and saw the potential for it. So, we started with the family and friends raise and did a variety of convertible notes, leading up to the seed round that we did with Kevin and Kate. Yeah, and we actually, quick story, Abby’s Better was invited to Food-X, which was kind of like an incubator done in New York City, where we were there with a bunch of startups, and we were kind of learning a lot about business in general, especially the aspects that we were less familiar with, and funding was one of them. So, that was an amazing place where we got in touch with a lot of people and got to meet people and just learn about funding for your business. Because it is, it’s one of those things where you’re always working on funding, like, there’s no point that you’re just oh, I don’t have to think about this, you’re always preparing for the next convertible note or the next raise whatever it is. Yeah, so it started with the family and friends raise because again, at that point, we just didn’t have the connections that we do now of finding people who are more experienced in funding. But obviously, this last round that we did, including Kevin and Kate, was the biggest we’ve done. And it was the most, honestly, the biggest learning experience, because of how familiar we were all with it before. But we’re incredibly blessed to be able to have done it last year, especially when so many companies were struggling through the pandemic. And our retail presence really struggled, but we found that with our retail presence going down because of COVID, our online and ecommerce sales just skyrocketed. And it was wild to see.

Jeff  

I was wondering about that. Because I know that there’s, you’re obviously have a big retail presence. And I was wondering how, you know, a lot of our conversations, we talk about how the pandemic affected businesses and so forth. And having that ecommerce side already up and running probably was a huge gift, really, during the pandemic.

Abby  

We always had a website, but we didn’t really focus on it, like I had mentioned, retail was our primary focus. But at the end of 2019, we decided to kind of pivot for a little bit and really hone in on and focus on our direct to consumer sales, and the timing was kind of perfect. Because when COVID hit we had kind of set ourselves up to be focusing on that anyways and have a lot of manpower and money and marketing spend to that. So, we went from like $4,000 a month in sales in January to $40,000 to $100,000 to $400,000, at the peak of our 2020 sales per month. And it was, it was wild, because at the beginning of 2020 when you know lockdown started to happen, none of us knew really what to expect, like we could see it going either way. Is this going to be the end of our company? Are we going to be able to maintain status quo? And we found that honestly, the difficulty was meeting demand and getting enough people to be in our manufacturing facility and to be able to supply the customers for what they were looking for. Because I think you know, during that a lot of people were trying to get healthier, they’re trying to be a little more mindful of what they were eating. And so, we just gained so many amazing new customers. And that really is what kept us alive during the pandemic.

Jeff  

Your manufacturing facility, do you also have a fulfillment center there as well for your ecom deliveries?

Abby  

Yes, we manufacture all of our products, and we fulfill all of our online and retail sales through that. Yeah.

Jeff  

Where’s that? Where’s that located?

Abby  

It’s in Mooresville. Yeah, it’s honestly, really close. And what’s great is that a lot of people, most people, most food companies who go through a co-packer, they have to rely on that co-packer for meeting their demand, which I can’t imagine how stressful that would be, because the lead times can be insanely long. But luckily, with our own manufacturing facility, we have the ability to turn around products really quickly, including fulfilling orders very quickly. But mainly it’s the recipe development and the new product launches that we’re able to do successfully by having our own facility, so it’s pretty great.

 Jeff  

That is awesome. So, 21 years old, have the last five years, six years been just a whirlwind?

 Abby  

Yes, it’s one of those things where, when I started it, it feels like it was an entire lifetime ago and it also feels like it was yesterday. Because, you know, just stuff with like having a business, things move so fast. And we’re always trying this and trying that, and we’re always busy and our minds are occupied. But it’s crazy to think back on, I was just some high schooler who liked some nut butter and thought she’d sell it at a farmers market, and here we are today. Full family business, employees, you know, retail sales, ecommerce sales, it’s crazy to see where we’ve come. And yeah, it is a constant whirlwind. It’s like every day, there’s always new experiences, new lessons learned. There’s no point to where I feel like I’ve learned everything because there’s always something else to learn, new problems that arise, and it’s just about working through those.

 Jeff  

It’s such an amazing story. And I love the story, it’s such a success story and so much work still yet to do and yet to be done and I just can’t wait to see what the future holds for Abby’s Better.

 Abby  

Yeah, likewise.

 Jeff  

You are, I’m kind of skipping ahead. I was gonna save this for later, but you are in the process of creating or producing a podcast?

 Abby  

Yes.

 Jeff  

Tell the listeners a little bit about what that podcast is going to be like.

 Abby  

Yeah, so I’m starting a podcast called Biz Bites with Abby Kercher, where I dive into the entrepreneurial stories of other young business owners and entrepreneurs, specifically in the food and beverage space. And I really wanted to do this because when I was first getting started, I listened to a lot of business podcasts, like How I Built That, for instance. But everyone I was listening to were so much older, and in such a different place in business, it was kind of hard to relate. I learned so much from those podcasts. But I really wanted to do something where it showed young entrepreneurs who did not, say have a degree in business and did not have years of experience in the food business before starting their own company and kind of getting their stories while they’re in the midst of owning a small business. So yeah, Biz Bites with Abby Kercher, gonna launch in about a month or two. And I’m really excited because I already have quite a few interviews set up with some really amazing entrepreneurs, people I’ve met at different food expos and stuff like that, so I’m really excited for it.

 Jeff  

That’s super cool. Yeah, I love the concept and I’m so glad to hear that you’re doing that. And I love the focus too on young entrepreneurs. My daughter, her name is Abby as well, she’s a Chapel Hill grad. And she does a lot of copywriting for The Best of LKN for our long form written blog articles.

 Abby  

Oh, that’s awesome!

 Jeff  

And she’s been really excited about this interview, because she has actually brought up to me a couple times in the last few months, how it would be cool to feature young entrepreneurs and do like featured stories and kind of like, you know, highlight the younger entrepreneurs in the area and their startups, so yeah, very cool. I love that.

 Abby  

Definitely.

 Jeff  

So, circling back, I had a conversation with Robert Maynard of Famous Toastery. And I don’t know if he’s an investor, or has he kind of been sort of a mentor for you as well?

 Abby  

Yeah, so he’s on our board, and he’s been a mentor from really, I want to say the get go. We were introduced to him through a mutual friend. And you know, we didn’t know too many people in the food space. And even though he owns restaurants, it was still amazing to speak with him just about the whole entrepreneurial and business world. And so, he’s been working very close with us from really the get go, you know, we’re good friends, we talk to him all the time, so it was really cool to be on this podcast after he’s already been on it. But yes, we’re very close with Robert. He’s on our board and is basically an advisor and has been from the beginning.

 Jeff  

Smart guy, very cool background and I really enjoyed the conversation I had with him. Super-high energy and really passionate about the business.

 Abby  

Yeah, no, he’s so great and like you said, passionate is how I would describe it, like he’s incredibly helpful and just helping us kind of think through strategy and certain business decisions whether I’m having a hard time, work throughs, including funding, and the manufacturing facility, really all areas of the business, he’s helped on.

 Jeff  

It just blows my mind how complex this company is that you’ve built, that you created. I mean, it’s just, I’m so impressed. I’m just like, there’s so much, I have 1000 questions I want to ask, but we don’t have all day and I know you’re super busy. But do you have other like, are there other local Lake Norman businesses or other mentors that you could give shoutouts to or small businesses that have been either helpful partners or just small businesses that you just love in the area?

 Abby  

Some local small businesses that I really just admire is, you know, of course Famous Toastery with Robert, Clean Juice, I’ve been there for a very long time met the founders, they’re amazing people, and Clutch Coffee. I have a Clutch Coffee in front of me actually. I go there pretty much every day. And they have such a cool brand. I literally I love them so much. Ben Thankachan is local with Cyrus Advisors. He was Director of Health Food at Walmart, including starting the Kind Human Foundation and was Vice President of sales at Sam’s Club, so incredibly, smart guy who’s been in the space for a very long time. He’s also on our board, worked with us very closely. He’s been a tremendous help in just all things food business. You know, we always try to surround ourselves with people who have been in the food space specifically. Because they just have a knack for the space and they’re so helpful. But those are just some of the many small businesses in this area. Because there really are so many companies in the Lake Norman area, amazing companies that you wouldn’t even think started here, but they did. So those are just a select few of my favorites.

 Jeff  

I agree. There are so many, we certainly can’t name them all. But there are so many wonderful small businesses and actually some really big concepts like you said that started right here in the Lake Norman area.

 Abby  

Yep.

 Jeff  

What are some future plans for Abby’s Better? Any additional, like new products in development or any other ideas in the planning stages?

 Abby  

Yes. So, we just launched our brand-new squeeze packs, which is something we’ve been working on for a very long time, we’ve been wanting this specific machine that we’ve been trying to get, and we finally got it. So, we just launched those squeeze packs, and we’re launching more squeeze packs in the next few days. Again, that’s a grab and go option for people who love our nut butters, want to put them in their purse, in their bag, take them on a hike, traveling, they’re literally perfect for anything. So, we’re really excited about those, we have more bite flavors that are in the works. We’re also coming out with holiday flavors, one of which is our pumpkin spice pecan butter. We launched that for the first time last fall, and it quickly became our top seller, which date pecan has been our top seller since day one. The second we launched pumpkin spice it like surpasses that, people love that flavor. And it’s seasonal, so they can’t get it year-round, so we’re really excited about that. And I’m always in the kitchen innovating, working on new product lines, you know, we’re a snack company, not just a nut butter company, so I want to continue to launch products that kind of venture out into the overall snack space. Yeah, those are the primary ones. You know, right now we’re mainly on the East Coast and Midwest, when it comes to retail, we really want to get and focus on the West Coast because that’s really a perfect clientele for us. And so many of our online customers are on the West Coast. So, we’re really working on venturing to get into more retailers there.

 Jeff  

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It seems like the West Coast would be a huge market for, you know, healthy, gluten-free, plant-based type products that you’re creating.

 Abby  

Yeah, no, definitely.

 Jeff  

You brought up the date pecan flavor. That’s actually my Abby’s favorite.

 Abby  

No kidding, perfect, that’s so great. That was the first butter I ever created out of all of them. No matter the products I create since then date pecan, it just, like almost doubles all of our other product’s sales. It’s pretty amazing to see. But it tastes like pecan pie in a jar I like to say. So, I kind of get why it’s so popular.

 Jeff  

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So how about, a topic that I love to ask entrepreneurs, especially successful entrepreneurs are, who are not, you know, startup wasn’t that long ago for you, so it’s probably still fresh in your mind. And we all make a few mistakes, we have our successes and certainly our failures during the startup process. What sort of advice would you have for young entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs as they begin their own entrepreneurial journey? What sort of advice would you offer them?

 Abby  

It’s tough because there’s so much that I wish I knew when I started. One of the things honestly, would be to never lose sight of why you started, it’s easy to get just overwhelmed and busy with the day to day that you lose, not that you lose your passion, but you kind of lose sight of why you started this company and what your overall goal was, so it’s very important to always remember that. It’s important to always remember the product, because I think a lot of people, they get lost in the marketing of it, or the packaging of it, and all of those are very important things. But if your product does not taste good, and if it’s not high quality, no one’s gonna buy it. So, to never, you know, to never be so focused on margins, or marketing, that you lose sight of the quality of the product, and that it’s always the same stuff that you wanted to create in the beginning. Also, one of the biggest lessons was just learning how to turn mistakes into lessons and not see them as a negative thing. Because it’s often when we learn the biggest lessons when we make the biggest mistakes. And when you’re an entrepreneur, and you’re starting a business, there’s so many unknowns. And so, you’re making mistakes all the time. And it’s easy to get down on yourself and to regret it and just beat yourself up about it. But in reality, some of the biggest things I’ve learned have been from just doing the wrong thing, and messing up and messing up again, and messing up again. But that is really how we grow and how we evolve and how we learn how to not do it next time.

 Jeff  

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more there. We kind of start our enterprise when it’s about 80% perfect, right? Because it’s never perfect. It’s never gonna be 100% perfect.

 Abby  

Yeah, and it’s so funny, it’s crazy, because we had the opportunity to work with this major international global food company, we got invited with other entrepreneurs to just kind of talk about starting our business, talk with their recipe developers, talk to their packaging team, it was kind of just a three-day involved, I don’t know really what you would call it, but we got to speak with all of their teams, and so many people who had been in this space for so long. And obviously, it’s such a large company, they have so many processes to launching a product. I remember specifically we were sitting down with their product development team. And the number one question they had for all of the small businesses there were, how do you guys create and launch a product when you don’t have all of the resources we have? She’s like, you know it takes us maybe two years to launch a product that goes through multiple stages of recipe development, it goes through multiple stages of testing with customers and multiple stages, you know, there are just so many, it’s such a long process. And all of us just kind of looked at each other and went well, we just go with our gut, like, we don’t have the millions of dollars to spend on testing a product. So, a lot of it is just going with your gut, trusting your instinct, and never creating something that you don’t truly believe in. But I always laugh thinking about that of just these major companies were like, how do you do that? It’s like, well, we kind of have no other options so we do it.

 Jeff  

Yeah, that’s the advantage of being a smaller company too. Right? You have that flexibility and freedom, for sure. You mentioned always remember your why and I’m always quoting Simon Sinek in my episodes, and I’ve listened to all his keynotes and all his interviews, and you know, read Start With Why, the seminal book that he wrote several years ago and that’s such a really great point that not to forget why you started your business in the first place. You know, a lot of us start businesses for more freedom, and we end up with a lot less freedom because we just get tied up with the day to day and growing the business. So, yeah, that’s a great point. I appreciate you mentioning that.

 Abby  

Absolutely. And the freedom that comes with being an entrepreneur, although there are obviously so many, you know, so many struggles and so many difficulties to owning your own business, the freedoms that come with it is really what makes it fun and what makes it exciting and what keeps it fresh and so it’s important not to kind of turn into a big business mindset and remind yourself that, no, this is my thing. It’s something I created. This is still a small business, we’re not Hormel. Like, we can do this. And we can try this. And even if it doesn’t work, we can quickly turn around and try something new. Like, all of that stuff is just, it’s what makes it fun, what keeps it exciting, and what’s really important to remember.

 Jeff  

I bet developing the new recipes in the kitchen is a lot of fun.

 Abby  

Yeah, it really is, you know, I go in there, I go in with a team of people, we’re trying it, we’re saying what we like what we don’t like. And then of course, we send it out to more people to try and give their thoughts. But it also helps with having such a simple, clean product, like I have these ingredient lines and you know, vegan, gluten-free, peanut-free, paleo, things I need to adhere to. So, it really does narrow down by the ingredients I’m going to be using. But no, it’s one of my favorite times, just to be able to get in the kitchen, do what I did first, what started the company in the first place and just create.

 Jeff  

Yeah, absolutely. What about books or online resources or other podcasts? Any recommendations there?

 Abby  

Yeah, How I Built That was a really big one, I listened almost every episode they come out with.

 Jeff  

I love that one.

 Abby  

Including their, I always get this wrong, it’s like how you build that. It’s like the end segment, after the episodes where they focus on more smaller businesses. I was featured on one of those a few years ago, I always love to listen through that as well, because like, you know, one of the reasons I’m starting Biz Bites the podcast is to hear more of those stories, so I always listen to that. Yeah, I’m always reading this or that I can’t think of one book specifically that I would recommend because honestly, I think people should just remind themselves to always read because reading is where I learned a surprising amount. Obviously, I’m learning a lot through running a business. But it’s always helpful to read simply because it’s amazing to see how much I relate to the stuff I’m reading. Where I think a lot of people who maybe aren’t entrepreneurs, they’re reading and they’re learning, but they can’t really relate to what they’re talking about. It’s crazy to be able to just dive in with a fellow entrepreneur and just read and hear about their stories and the struggles they had. That is the main thing is it is so nice to hear of other business owners who have gone through the same stuff we have, and have made the same mistakes, and have struggled with the same stuff it makes you feel not so alone in this whole process.

 Jeff  

Do you happen to remember which episode it was with Guy Raz that you were featured at the end of that episode? Do you remember which one it was?

 Abby  

I don’t remember. It was so many years ago.

 Jeff  

Yeah. It’s been a while.

 Abby  

I could certainly try to find it and email it to you.

 Jeff  

Yes. See if you can, I would love to put the link in the show notes.

 Abby  

Yeah, I’ll definitely do that.

 Jeff  

Yeah, that’d be awesome. I appreciate that. I’ll do some digging as well. I’ll go back. I don’t recall that episode. I haven’t, unfortunately, I haven’t listened to all of them. There are so many of them.

 Abby  

There’s quite a lot.

 Jeff  

But there’s so many really, really cool stories. That podcast comes up a lot in this podcast. Yeah, and Biz Bites is going to launch, when are you going to release the first episode?

 Jeff  

So, it’s going to be released in September. We haven’t found the specific date; we’re waiting on one thing, but it will be released in September.

 Jeff  

I’ll keep an eye out for that and share that when you do release, start releasing episodes and of course we’ll follow along as well.

 Abby  

Of course, yeah absolutely.

 Jeff  

Looking forward to that. Abb, share with listeners how they can learn more about Abby’s Better nut butters and snack bites.

 Abby  

So, you can always go to our website at www.abbysbetter.com, we have of course all of our products, a lot of which aren’t in retail. We also have more on the story of the brand and different recipes you can create with the products. Also, if you follow us on social media at Abby’s Better, we’re very active on that, you can see tons of customer reviews, tons of recipes, and really creative ways to use our nut butters, because I think a lot of people just think of nut butters as something you spread on a piece of toast and that is not it. You could do so many stuff with all of our products. So yeah, our website and social media.

 Jeff  

The products and the company is absolutely amazing. And Abby, I’ve been so looking forward to having you on the podcast and featuring Abby’s Better Incorporated and it really, just a real honor. And thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun.

 Abby  

Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed it and I look forward to maybe being on again some other time.

 Jeff  

Huge thanks to Abby for joining the podcast and sharing the story of her entrepreneurial journey. Friends, you can learn more about Abby’s Better, Inc. at www.abbiesbetter.com. You can find her healthy and clean nut butter spreads and snack bites locally at Whole Foods and other retail grocery stores. I’ll have the link to Abby’s Better, Inc. in the show notes along with links to the other local businesses Abby recognized in our conversation. As always, you can find the complete show notes to all of our episodes at the home for Lake Norman’s number one small business podcast, www.thebestoflkn.com. While you’re there, please consider subscribing to our email newsletter. It’s free, easy, and a great way to stay up to date on The Best of LKN and support the work we’re doing here. I’ll also have a link in the show notes to the Abby’s Better, Inc. feature over at the How I Built This podcast and NPR production. If you haven’t already discovered the How I Built This podcast, I highly recommend checking it out. Guy Raz shares the stories of some of the most innovative and successful founders and CEOs in America and beyond. Friends, that will do it for Episode 72. I want to thank you as always for following along. And thanks so much for supporting the amazing small businesses we feature here on the podcast. And for my small business owner listeners, I’ll close by repeating Abby’s sage advice to fellow and aspiring entrepreneurs. Never lose sight of why you started. Very well said. We’ll be back next week with another episode. So, until then, cheers Lake Norman. Bye for now.

 Narrator  

We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of The Best of LKN. For more information about this podcast, show notes, video episodes, and links to our featured businesses, please visit www.thebestoflkn.com. We publish episodes weekly, so be sure to subscribe and stay up to date. Until next time, cheers Lake Norman.