Product Development Update | Vol. 01

we found our food scientist & have samples on the way. here's what that's actually looked like. 

A lot has been happening behind the scenes and we've been a little quiet about it - intentionally - but we want to catch y'all up.

The big milestones: we have our food scientist and we're about a month away from our very first samples!! 

Ever wondered what it's like finding and working with a product developer? We definitely did. Here's what it's looked like for us: 

we knew we needed help 

Gabriel and I are not food scientists. We’re two people who deeply believe in what we're building. We’re also two people who just decided last summer to learn how to cook (going great) but also hilarious that we then turned around immediately and said okay great, let's go develop a food product. 

We laugh about it now but it’s like truly we were just figuring out how to not burn things and simultaneously trying to map out a multi-fiber ingredient system.  

But this actually kind of worked in our favor. One thing we’ve heard pretty consistently of the from professionals is that founders who come in with a "perfected" home recipe often hit a wall. What works in a home kitchen with home ingredients doesn’t always survive commercialization. The recipe that tastes amazing at your counter can fall completely apart when you try to scale it. By not going too far down that path with our limited kitchen experience, we probably saved ourselves a lot of time and probably a lot of heartbreak.  

We had done the research. We'd run format tests, talked to consumers, built the Rootine Club, and gotten real signal that people want this thing. The question was never if - it was can it work, is it feasible, and what are the tradeoffs? We needed someone who could answer those questions honestly. 

So we started talking to food scientists.

we talked to a lot of people 

And we learned something from every single conversation. 

We'd get on a call, explain what we were trying to build, and some people would come back to us with the easiest possible path, the simplest recipe, the most straightforward process, the most proven approach. And easy isn't always bad, it’s actually very ideal if it works out that the best product and balance of tradeoffs also happens to be the easiest process and path forward.  

But we were so close to our own research. We had spent months understanding our consumer, studying ingredients, reading about fiber systems and vegetable processing and moisture content. We didn't just want someone to hand us an answer. We wanted to understand why that was the answer. Why this ingredient over that one. Why this process over another. What we'd be giving up by going one direction versus a different one. 

Because in building a product like ours, there are tradeoffs happening constantly. Nutrition vs. texture. Cost vs. ingredient quality. Taste vs. shelf life. Every decision has a ripple effect and we needed a partner who would walk us through those decisions, not just make them for us. 

We wanted someone who was excited by hard questions, not just comfortable with them. Someone who wouldn't just tell us what they thought we’d want to hear. 

We also needed someone whose working style matched ours. We're two first-time founders who think a lot about de-risking every step - something that got genuinely drilled into us through a class we were taking at Kellogg called New Venture Development with Rick Desai. We didn't want to hand over a check and disappear into a process we didn't understand. We wanted to be in it. 

and then we found Brian 

Brian Chau runs Chau Time, an R&D and operations consulting firm based right here in Chicago. He has launched over 500 SKUs across 13+ food categories and worked with clients across 18 countries. On paper, impressive. In person, even better. 

What stood out immediately was his patience. We knew what we wanted - but we didn't always know how to say it. A lot of our goals were still in ranges, still flexible, and still being figured out. Brian never made us feel like that was a problem. He asked questions we hadn't thought to ask ourselves. He pushed us to think more carefully before we'd even signed anything or handed over a dollar. 

He also never rushed us. He never made us feel like we were being difficult or taking too long. He just kept asking better questions. 

 What also stood out was his genuine passion and excitement for innovation. Some food scientists want to give you the proven path. Brian wants to know if there's a better one - and if there is, he's going to find it or build it. We're not trying to make a product that already exists. We needed someone who was equally energized by that challenge.  

He's also local to us, which has been wonderful in ways we didn't fully anticipate. Being able to sit across from someone, walk into stores together, talk through decisions in real time - it's different and we're grateful for it.

what the process actually looks like 

Here's the structure: Brian's process runs in three rounds of development. Each round, he formulates based on our brief, sends us samples, and we run sensory surveys. We give feedback, he iterates, and we go again. Three rounds to get to a formula we're proud of, with real feedback loops built into every step.  

Nothing is arbitrary. Every ingredient, every process decision, every spec has a reason behind it. And we've pushed hard to understand those reasons at every step. 

We came in with some hard yeses and hard nos. There are ingredients we will not put in this product. Guardrails we set early and aren't willing to compromise on. Our north stars are taste and nutrition - we aren't willing to compromise on either. Whatever we built has to be genuinely nutritious in a way that actually moves the needle, and it has to taste good enough that people actually use it.