May 28, 2026 • 20 mins
YuChiang Cheng - CEO of Hero Bread /Hero.co | CEO's You Should Know
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, This is Steve Dallison and welcome to the
Speek's edition of CEO. As you should know, I'm thrilled
to be joined by YC. Chang, the CEO of here Bread.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey, glad to be here. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Why I see, I'm excited to jump into your journey
and learn more about the company as well.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So why don't we kick it off?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
I know you've operated as a founder, an investor, and
many other hats. How is switching between those roles really
change the way that you elevate product market, fit in
the team potential?
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Oh wow, Well, each of those roles have allowed me
to see like a different perspective about how products play
a role in growing company. And so, like, I think
the founder side of it has really shaded my opinions
the most, which is about, you know, you should really
focus on your consumer because that's who you're servicing, that's
who you're trying to deliver a product to, and you
(00:50):
know they're ultimately the people that are trying to satisfy.
But from an investor hat on, you know, you realize
that if a company doesn't have a great product, like
there's no real true longevity to that company, sure, and
so it really helps me appreciate that the product is
really a big differentiator, a big focus. And you know,
(01:11):
I think in CpG, now now that I'm working there,
you realize how many sort of okay products there are,
and yet the really great products differentiate themselves. And so
now as an investor, I look for that a lot more.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
It's a great perspective having like all those different avenues
of the business world to be able to have that
like one vision now moving forward. Yeah, So I know,
looking back, you've had three entrepreneurial journeys. What belief did
you have early on that completely changed your mindset when
it came to approaching each of those?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Oh, I think the biggest eye opener was really about
raising capital and investors. You know, I think when you're
just a startup entrepreneur or you're someone trying to raise funds,
I think the naive question is like, why wouldn't people
want to give me money? You know, I have a
great company, you have a great idea, have a great team.
(02:03):
Why why don't you write me a check? You know,
you invest in companies all the time, that's your job.
But then you suddenly realize there's tons of other dynamics,
and especially you know, being part of my own fund
now and I've invested over one hundred different companies now
and I've raised gosh, probably over a billion dollars for
different companies now that the game is not that simple,
(02:25):
that there's a lot of dynamics on the fund level,
within the fund itself, like kind of what their strategies are,
or where stage they are in their deployment of their capital,
you know, they're just starting or are they just kind
of nursing the fund? And and then just the politics
of everything and how they how they manage the expectations everyone.
(02:46):
So like, yeah, the naive view of raising money, I
think is what dramatically changed. And then the other is
just the asymmetry of information that an investor has. And
that's actually why I do what I You Now, it's
really bridge between founders and investors because you know, now
I sit in a seat where I have really a
(03:07):
first hand view into over one hundred different companies and
I could just call up their CEO, I could go
look at their balance sheets. I can go you know,
ask for their you know, meta data or their Colavio data,
and I can see everything across all these different companies now,
and as a founder, you tend to get too siloed
and so you only just really know your number is
(03:28):
really deep, but you don't really have the up to
date information on like what good looks like. You know,
at a company this stage, at this industry, you know
how much are they really spending a marketing as a
percentage of revenue or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And now an.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Investor seat like I can see that immediately and it's
not just like some report that gets published once a year,
because that changes too rapidly now, So being able to
see that data in real time and try to right
size the businesses or you know, I help and assist
a bunch of founders on boards and stuff like to
be able to say, hey, like right now at this
(04:06):
moment with these tariffs and they just feel surcharges right like,
this is what we're seeing. And to be able to
share that information but use it in my own businesses
is like super super helpful, and that information asymmetry. I
feel like when I was at least moving up the
ranks and doing stuff like, I felt a lot of
(04:26):
investors held that to themselves and they used it as
power and control, and so I think democratizing that information
to all the founders just helps people run better businesses.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, it's a great perspective, and it's kind of like
a competitive edge now that you're able to have all
those expertise, that experience, to be able to see all
those hundreds of companies and now be able to give
like little tidbits of what's working and what's not.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah, I wouldn't have been well, I guess. I don't
know for sure, but I don't think I would have
been asked to be the CEO of hero Bread if
I didn't have that perspective and that access to information
and be able to to you know, kind of right
size and grow the company.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
It's awesome. We talked about teams a little bit you
mentioned earlier on in the conversation, and obviously you want
to have a high performing team, and any organization that
you're running, what specific leadership, habit or system have you
consistently put in place that really separates good teams from
truly exceptional teams.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I just wrote about this on my sub stack, really,
but I think the biggest one that I learned along
the way is really a great balance of focusing on outcomes.
I think that a lot of teams and a lot
of companies like to just I call it work of
the busy fool, where you're just checking things off the list,
(05:41):
and a lot of times teams don't know what they're
driving to or why they're driving to. You know, I
think something that I used to do early in my
career is just say, hey, team, do this, do this?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Do this right?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
And I thought, from my advantage point, I can like
call down and tell them what to do and solve
the problem of why. In fact, you know what I
really liked in a book that I read early on
as a book called Empowered Teams or empower and it's
all about like explaining the why right. It's almost like
(06:13):
Simon Sineks, like why why does it matter? Focus on
the outcome and where you're trying to go, and then
let your team come up with all the solutions that
do that. And I think you're able to hire better people,
retain them better, and they have to use their brain
matter more and they're more engaged, and they feel like
there's more buying and ownership for the things that they're
doing to solve that. And so that's like a pattern
(06:33):
I see really good high performing teams is that you
can tell them why and then you can agree on
the goal, and then you just kind of let them
do it. But what I learned at Top Golf is
that there's a balance to that, cause if you just
give them goals, they may sometimes get there in a
way you don't feel is healthy.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Right. That's where, like I.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Guess we're sort of around Wall Street. You get Wall
Street kind of like cheating the system or cutting corners
or people being jerks, but getting the outcome, and so
you have to balance like focus on the outcome.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
But how you do it does matter.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
But I'm not gonna tell you the solution to do it,
Like you come up with a solution. That's why I
hire you, That's why.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I pay you percent, That's why you trust them to
do They're just right. It's not just delegating every single task.
It's actually having that belief and that faith in the
people that you're bringing into your inner circle.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, one hundred percent. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
At hero Bread, obviously, innovation means something different, right, It's
kind of recreating a nostalgia with a breakthrough product. Tell
us a little bit about that process on what you
were able to innovate with hero bread that didn't lose
what people think about in the grocery store.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
So one thing you'll learn about me is I just
love food and I try to eat out as much
as if I can and go discover it and do whatever.
So yeah, I think the opportunity was there was a
real big sort of gulf between Hey, I really like food,
I'm gonna go get my artisanal tartine, country loaf or
(08:02):
whatever pedestry, and then there was this like really mass
marketed bread. And I think bread and bake goods have
been one of the most sort of maximized food products
in terms of cost and convenience. It's really been driven
to become a commodity and a lot of the retail
(08:22):
stores where you know, people only want to pay like
ten cents of slice and they wanted to sit on
their counter for like a year without molding and all that.
So what we really saw was this like middle solution
where you can get the convenience and you can get
the taste of what you love at a grocery store,
(08:42):
but with the higher nutritional value and the cleaning clean
ingredients that you can get sort of more at artisanal place,
and so that's where real Here Bread came. Is like
we wanted to get that every day accessibility but upgraded
as like an everyday luxury almost where you feel like
you're getting something better than you would get traditionally at
(09:03):
grocery store.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And we want to make sure we match.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
The taste profile because especially if you have kids, you
know you don't really want them to change, right, you
don't want They love their Wonderbread, they love their King
Swine Roll, their love their bagel. And so what we
try to do is match that, match the comfort and
the taste profile, but add the nutrition and then cleanliness
to it.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
When we open the lunch box, you want to make
sure the sandwich is gone. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, that's one of our limits tests is like if
if your kids think we changed the product, then you
know you're in trouble, so we won't release that product.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
They like the white bread. Literally, I hear the story.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
And we get emails every single week of a parent saying, hey,
I changed to your white bread at Hero Bread from
Wonderbread or whatever other brand.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
And by the way, my kids didn't even know.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
And so you know they're getting their protein, they're getting
fiber heard they're getting a much cleaner product with no
sugar and they're.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Just as happy. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
We talked a little bit about your leadership around teams,
but let's dive into your leadership style overall. So, obviously,
as someone who teaches and practices leadership, I'm sure that
along the way you've had to adapt your leadership style
from being in the early stages of maybe a scrappy
startup to obviously now being the CEO and in a
much more structured, growth oriented organization. How is your leadership
(10:24):
changed from the very very beginning to where you see
yourself now?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Oh well, yeah, there's really two dimensions to that. I'll
try to keep it brief, but one is just my
own personal journey, right. My own personal journey is I think,
very similar to a lot of sort of high performing
people where it's like I thought I knew all the
answers and I thought I could outwork everybody, and I would.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I thought the job of a leader was just like bossing.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
It out to people, right, like you do this, do this, this,
this is the way it should be done or whatever.
It was very dictatorial and just it was very hard.
It was very hard to scale I was and getting
the outcomes that I wanted because I was limited to
my own ideas and what I could push through and
force people to do, and just over time just learning
(11:09):
right how to actually be a leader not a dictator,
and allowing the teams.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
To really do the job right.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
It just my job is to help them get there,
hire the right people, put the right structure in place,
and remove barriers for them. But like in terms of
company wise, like as the company scales from like three
employees to thirty thousand employees, you know, the one commonality
of the whole thing other than that structure and outcomes,
(11:38):
which I think applies to all stages, is that it's
just helping people move from single contributors to managers to teams.
That's a huge transition. And what's really hard is keeping
the entrepreneurial risk taking thing through the whole process because people,
(11:59):
yes you do need process, Yes you do need operations,
and you need to scale, so you need to be repeatable.
You can't just have individual heroics all the time, but
you really lose the ability to take risk. You know,
it's so surprising, Like I always find out, like once
you get past like twenty five people. People get really
risk adverse, and I don't really fully understand why. I'd
(12:19):
love to do a study on it. So every day
I'm reminding people in my old boss at talk Coffee
just to say, hey, if you're not risking ten percent
of the company at a time, you're not really taking
a risk because that could totally fail in the company
but be totally fine. And so like something I push
every team on a matter of stage is like you
need to take a risk, Like you need to have
courage to do what you think is right. And if
(12:40):
you're not, then you're not really helping the company.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, you're not having like growth mindset and being able
to go to what's next totally absolutely. I know that
in the past you've spoken about bridging digital and physical platforms.
How does that philosophy show up concretely in Heroes, Go
to Market strategy and right and identity as well.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, I think think that the way it shows up
for me is that we are truly omni channel. You know,
we're not just retail bias or not just D two
C bias. We want to make sure that you truly
have a full channel digital experience. Even though it's really
physical bread and it's a really sort of I guess
traditional authentic feel, right. Breaking the bread is just like
(13:22):
a visceral moment. But yet, if you want to learn
about the product, you can have this whole digital experience.
If you want to buy it digitally, you can buy
it digitally.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
You know, we.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Embrace all the creators who talk about our product. So yeah,
I think it's just the modern world you have to do.
But yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
I know that we talked earlier about like the mom
who wrote in and talked about how she transitioned the
former bread to Hero Bread, And I'm sure a lot
of that consumer journey went into when you were thinking
about how to position the product itself. Right, how did
you prioritize between the product perfection, the storytelling aspect of it,
and the distribution aspect of it.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Oh well, I'm really biased, and our founder Coal Glasses
really biased too. It's like product first all the time.
It's got to be wonderful, you know, we really don't
let perfection get in our way like a progress, but
it's got to be really good, and that's where we
spend most of our money. Like the first four years
(14:24):
the company was all product. They didn't even commercialize it
at all, which is like shocking in a CpG company.
But yeah, the product's right, and the consumers love it
and there's repeat there and as part of their everyday lives,
then the distribution will come yep. And then we actually
spend very little on marketing. We really let the product
and word of mouth drive the day.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
That's great, I'm sure reimagining a staple food like bread
on the both the emotional and the scientific side. Was
it all obviously positive along the way? Right? What were
some of the challenges you might have occurred early on
or still even today that you were able to over come.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Oh my gosh, like I don't have enough podcast without Yeah, yeah,
actually I love that. Yeah, I think the big stuff
is just like traditionally at Hero Bread, they weren't CpG
people like I don't even come from traditional CpG. I
only learned because I invested a bunch of companies. But
you know, there's channel strategy problems, Like they went food
(15:23):
service first with Subway, and it was like too expensive
and they couldn't quite get the product right to subway
specs and and all that stuff, and so just had
to reboot the channels, reboot the products. The team was
really big, so we had to like right size it
and get the right people in the right seats. And
there wasn't any like success management routines, you know, like
(15:47):
just really simple stuff like do we have a monthly
all hands No? Well how does everybody know what's going on?
And you know, like do you do one on ones
with all your managers? No?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Okay, well maybe we should probably fix that. Yeah, what's
the accounting?
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Like you're like, okay, go, let's do we know how
much inventory you have you know in the beginning.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
No, So yeah, it's just a lot of things that
you need to put in place.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
And yeah, what held the company together is just you know,
the great products that the team has been making in
the founder, which bought us time to fix everything else,
which you know, again is something I've seen in tons
of companies over and over again. If the consumers love it,
the product delivers its own value, you can fix everything around.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
It and get there.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
For the founders that you consult and any founders that
might be tuning in that are trying to build both
a really strong product and a meaningful brand, what's a
mistake you see repeatedly happening that they should do differently.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Oh loaded question.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
I know. The one I see is like, don't drink
your own kool aid. It's funny how many people make
products and so many people tell them it's great and
it's not great, and you just start believing.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
It and you spend all this time on something that's not.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Yeah, perfection, Have some integrity, have you know more outside
point of view. Have people who are willing to challenge
you and listen to the customer, because yeah, I've seen
so many products that everybody says it's great. We found
product might don't fit and it's like, no, you have not.
The data shows it has not. The reason why you're
(17:19):
spending that much in marketing is because you do not
have fit and all that stuff. That's the most common mistake.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Probably good advice.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
So a lot of exciting stuff happening for Hero Bread,
But what's next? Are there any exciting developments or any
expansions on the horizon that you could share.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, well, we're we're starting to expand more and Walmart
and Target, So we'd love it if people would go
there and shop there for us and find our breads there.
We recently launched a noodle product, so cool. We have
an elbow product and a penny product which are really
really delicious. You know, we just saw this gap in
(17:54):
the market where a lot of people are trying to
make clean, protein forward pasta. But there were you seeing
non wheat products and they were using like peas and stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Like that, which didn't taste great either.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
To be honest, it didn't make my stomach feel very good.
So we decided we're gonna try solve that problem. So
we make a really phenomenal, really clean ingredient pasta that
I just love.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
That's awesome. You can go go buy it nowt Hero
sounds good.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
I know we covered a lot, but is there anything
that you want the listeners to know. What would be
like the one thing you want them to know about
the mission of the company?
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Oh well, I think we talked about it a lot.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
But at the end of the day, like I think
for me, I know, everyone's life is very complicated. There's
a lot of stuff going on. It's really chaotic, and
the way I walk into work every day is to say, hey,
how can I make this decision easier for you?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
How can Hero do the work for you?
Speaker 3 (18:51):
So that you have some faith that if you pick
up that are you know, a loaf of bread from
us or a box of pasta from us, that we've
done the work to make sure that it's clean, to
make sure that it tastes great, and that you can
use it every day without changing your routine. And it's
just like a simple upgrade for you that you can
feel confident that you're you're kind of doing the right
thing for yourself and your family. And so that's what
(19:12):
we try to focus on every day.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Well, if someone's tuning in that wants to do the
right thing for their family and they want to try
a Hero Bread, what should they do?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Well, we would love you to go hero dot co.
We have a great online platform there. We have a
crafted collection of really handmade bakers that you can't get
anywhere else, which I love and they personally subscribe to it.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
But yeah, you can.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Find us at Whole Food, Sprouts, you know, Walmart, Target, Wegmans, Publics.
You know, we're in over almost nine thousand doors now,
so I probably add to your store near you, and
if you don't have it, please ask them for us.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
We really like the help for you to help us there.
That's awesome. Well, y see, thank you so much for
coming in.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Thank you for telling us about here bread, but obviously
also all about your background and your expertise.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
We really appreciated the journey. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Awesome, and thank you all for tuning in. Tune in
next week for next week's edition of CEOs You Should
Know
Hi everyone, This is Steve Dallison and welcome to the
Speek's edition of CEO. As you should know, I'm thrilled
to be joined by YC. Chang, the CEO of here Bread.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey, glad to be here. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Why I see, I'm excited to jump into your journey
and learn more about the company as well.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So why don't we kick it off?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
I know you've operated as a founder, an investor, and
many other hats. How is switching between those roles really
change the way that you elevate product market, fit in
the team potential?
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Oh wow, Well, each of those roles have allowed me
to see like a different perspective about how products play
a role in growing company. And so, like, I think
the founder side of it has really shaded my opinions
the most, which is about, you know, you should really
focus on your consumer because that's who you're servicing, that's
who you're trying to deliver a product to, and you
(00:50):
know they're ultimately the people that are trying to satisfy.
But from an investor hat on, you know, you realize
that if a company doesn't have a great product, like
there's no real true longevity to that company, sure, and
so it really helps me appreciate that the product is
really a big differentiator, a big focus. And you know,
(01:11):
I think in CpG, now now that I'm working there,
you realize how many sort of okay products there are,
and yet the really great products differentiate themselves. And so
now as an investor, I look for that a lot more.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
It's a great perspective having like all those different avenues
of the business world to be able to have that
like one vision now moving forward. Yeah, So I know,
looking back, you've had three entrepreneurial journeys. What belief did
you have early on that completely changed your mindset when
it came to approaching each of those?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Oh, I think the biggest eye opener was really about
raising capital and investors. You know, I think when you're
just a startup entrepreneur or you're someone trying to raise funds,
I think the naive question is like, why wouldn't people
want to give me money? You know, I have a
great company, you have a great idea, have a great team.
(02:03):
Why why don't you write me a check? You know,
you invest in companies all the time, that's your job.
But then you suddenly realize there's tons of other dynamics,
and especially you know, being part of my own fund
now and I've invested over one hundred different companies now
and I've raised gosh, probably over a billion dollars for
different companies now that the game is not that simple,
(02:25):
that there's a lot of dynamics on the fund level,
within the fund itself, like kind of what their strategies are,
or where stage they are in their deployment of their capital,
you know, they're just starting or are they just kind
of nursing the fund? And and then just the politics
of everything and how they how they manage the expectations everyone.
(02:46):
So like, yeah, the naive view of raising money, I
think is what dramatically changed. And then the other is
just the asymmetry of information that an investor has. And
that's actually why I do what I You Now, it's
really bridge between founders and investors because you know, now
I sit in a seat where I have really a
(03:07):
first hand view into over one hundred different companies and
I could just call up their CEO, I could go
look at their balance sheets. I can go you know,
ask for their you know, meta data or their Colavio data,
and I can see everything across all these different companies now,
and as a founder, you tend to get too siloed
and so you only just really know your number is
(03:28):
really deep, but you don't really have the up to
date information on like what good looks like. You know,
at a company this stage, at this industry, you know
how much are they really spending a marketing as a
percentage of revenue or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And now an.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Investor seat like I can see that immediately and it's
not just like some report that gets published once a year,
because that changes too rapidly now, So being able to
see that data in real time and try to right
size the businesses or you know, I help and assist
a bunch of founders on boards and stuff like to
be able to say, hey, like right now at this
(04:06):
moment with these tariffs and they just feel surcharges right like,
this is what we're seeing. And to be able to
share that information but use it in my own businesses
is like super super helpful, and that information asymmetry. I
feel like when I was at least moving up the
ranks and doing stuff like, I felt a lot of
(04:26):
investors held that to themselves and they used it as
power and control, and so I think democratizing that information
to all the founders just helps people run better businesses.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, it's a great perspective, and it's kind of like
a competitive edge now that you're able to have all
those expertise, that experience, to be able to see all
those hundreds of companies and now be able to give
like little tidbits of what's working and what's not.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah, I wouldn't have been well, I guess. I don't
know for sure, but I don't think I would have
been asked to be the CEO of hero Bread if
I didn't have that perspective and that access to information
and be able to to you know, kind of right
size and grow the company.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
It's awesome. We talked about teams a little bit you
mentioned earlier on in the conversation, and obviously you want
to have a high performing team, and any organization that
you're running, what specific leadership, habit or system have you
consistently put in place that really separates good teams from
truly exceptional teams.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I just wrote about this on my sub stack, really,
but I think the biggest one that I learned along
the way is really a great balance of focusing on outcomes.
I think that a lot of teams and a lot
of companies like to just I call it work of
the busy fool, where you're just checking things off the list,
(05:41):
and a lot of times teams don't know what they're
driving to or why they're driving to. You know, I
think something that I used to do early in my
career is just say, hey, team, do this, do this?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Do this right?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
And I thought, from my advantage point, I can like
call down and tell them what to do and solve
the problem of why. In fact, you know what I
really liked in a book that I read early on
as a book called Empowered Teams or empower and it's
all about like explaining the why right. It's almost like
(06:13):
Simon Sineks, like why why does it matter? Focus on
the outcome and where you're trying to go, and then
let your team come up with all the solutions that
do that. And I think you're able to hire better people,
retain them better, and they have to use their brain
matter more and they're more engaged, and they feel like
there's more buying and ownership for the things that they're
doing to solve that. And so that's like a pattern
(06:33):
I see really good high performing teams is that you
can tell them why and then you can agree on
the goal, and then you just kind of let them
do it. But what I learned at Top Golf is
that there's a balance to that, cause if you just
give them goals, they may sometimes get there in a
way you don't feel is healthy.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Right. That's where, like I.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Guess we're sort of around Wall Street. You get Wall
Street kind of like cheating the system or cutting corners
or people being jerks, but getting the outcome, and so
you have to balance like focus on the outcome.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
But how you do it does matter.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
But I'm not gonna tell you the solution to do it,
Like you come up with a solution. That's why I
hire you, That's why.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I pay you percent, That's why you trust them to
do They're just right. It's not just delegating every single task.
It's actually having that belief and that faith in the
people that you're bringing into your inner circle.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, one hundred percent. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
At hero Bread, obviously, innovation means something different, right, It's
kind of recreating a nostalgia with a breakthrough product. Tell
us a little bit about that process on what you
were able to innovate with hero bread that didn't lose
what people think about in the grocery store.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
So one thing you'll learn about me is I just
love food and I try to eat out as much
as if I can and go discover it and do whatever.
So yeah, I think the opportunity was there was a
real big sort of gulf between Hey, I really like food,
I'm gonna go get my artisanal tartine, country loaf or
(08:02):
whatever pedestry, and then there was this like really mass
marketed bread. And I think bread and bake goods have
been one of the most sort of maximized food products
in terms of cost and convenience. It's really been driven
to become a commodity and a lot of the retail
(08:22):
stores where you know, people only want to pay like
ten cents of slice and they wanted to sit on
their counter for like a year without molding and all that.
So what we really saw was this like middle solution
where you can get the convenience and you can get
the taste of what you love at a grocery store,
(08:42):
but with the higher nutritional value and the cleaning clean
ingredients that you can get sort of more at artisanal place,
and so that's where real Here Bread came. Is like
we wanted to get that every day accessibility but upgraded
as like an everyday luxury almost where you feel like
you're getting something better than you would get traditionally at
(09:03):
grocery store.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And we want to make sure we match.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
The taste profile because especially if you have kids, you
know you don't really want them to change, right, you
don't want They love their Wonderbread, they love their King
Swine Roll, their love their bagel. And so what we
try to do is match that, match the comfort and
the taste profile, but add the nutrition and then cleanliness
to it.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
When we open the lunch box, you want to make
sure the sandwich is gone. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, that's one of our limits tests is like if
if your kids think we changed the product, then you
know you're in trouble, so we won't release that product.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
They like the white bread. Literally, I hear the story.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
And we get emails every single week of a parent saying, hey,
I changed to your white bread at Hero Bread from
Wonderbread or whatever other brand.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
And by the way, my kids didn't even know.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
And so you know they're getting their protein, they're getting
fiber heard they're getting a much cleaner product with no
sugar and they're.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Just as happy. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
We talked a little bit about your leadership around teams,
but let's dive into your leadership style overall. So, obviously,
as someone who teaches and practices leadership, I'm sure that
along the way you've had to adapt your leadership style
from being in the early stages of maybe a scrappy
startup to obviously now being the CEO and in a
much more structured, growth oriented organization. How is your leadership
(10:24):
changed from the very very beginning to where you see
yourself now?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Oh well, yeah, there's really two dimensions to that. I'll
try to keep it brief, but one is just my
own personal journey, right. My own personal journey is I think,
very similar to a lot of sort of high performing
people where it's like I thought I knew all the
answers and I thought I could outwork everybody, and I would.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I thought the job of a leader was just like bossing.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
It out to people, right, like you do this, do this, this,
this is the way it should be done or whatever.
It was very dictatorial and just it was very hard.
It was very hard to scale I was and getting
the outcomes that I wanted because I was limited to
my own ideas and what I could push through and
force people to do, and just over time just learning
(11:09):
right how to actually be a leader not a dictator,
and allowing the teams.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
To really do the job right.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
It just my job is to help them get there,
hire the right people, put the right structure in place,
and remove barriers for them. But like in terms of
company wise, like as the company scales from like three
employees to thirty thousand employees, you know, the one commonality
of the whole thing other than that structure and outcomes,
(11:38):
which I think applies to all stages, is that it's
just helping people move from single contributors to managers to teams.
That's a huge transition. And what's really hard is keeping
the entrepreneurial risk taking thing through the whole process because people,
(11:59):
yes you do need process, Yes you do need operations,
and you need to scale, so you need to be repeatable.
You can't just have individual heroics all the time, but
you really lose the ability to take risk. You know,
it's so surprising, Like I always find out, like once
you get past like twenty five people. People get really
risk adverse, and I don't really fully understand why. I'd
(12:19):
love to do a study on it. So every day
I'm reminding people in my old boss at talk Coffee
just to say, hey, if you're not risking ten percent
of the company at a time, you're not really taking
a risk because that could totally fail in the company
but be totally fine. And so like something I push
every team on a matter of stage is like you
need to take a risk, Like you need to have
courage to do what you think is right. And if
(12:40):
you're not, then you're not really helping the company.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, you're not having like growth mindset and being able
to go to what's next totally absolutely. I know that
in the past you've spoken about bridging digital and physical platforms.
How does that philosophy show up concretely in Heroes, Go
to Market strategy and right and identity as well.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, I think think that the way it shows up
for me is that we are truly omni channel. You know,
we're not just retail bias or not just D two
C bias. We want to make sure that you truly
have a full channel digital experience. Even though it's really
physical bread and it's a really sort of I guess
traditional authentic feel, right. Breaking the bread is just like
(13:22):
a visceral moment. But yet, if you want to learn
about the product, you can have this whole digital experience.
If you want to buy it digitally, you can buy
it digitally.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
You know, we.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Embrace all the creators who talk about our product. So yeah,
I think it's just the modern world you have to do.
But yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
I know that we talked earlier about like the mom
who wrote in and talked about how she transitioned the
former bread to Hero Bread, And I'm sure a lot
of that consumer journey went into when you were thinking
about how to position the product itself. Right, how did
you prioritize between the product perfection, the storytelling aspect of it,
and the distribution aspect of it.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Oh well, I'm really biased, and our founder Coal Glasses
really biased too. It's like product first all the time.
It's got to be wonderful, you know, we really don't
let perfection get in our way like a progress, but
it's got to be really good, and that's where we
spend most of our money. Like the first four years
(14:24):
the company was all product. They didn't even commercialize it
at all, which is like shocking in a CpG company.
But yeah, the product's right, and the consumers love it
and there's repeat there and as part of their everyday lives,
then the distribution will come yep. And then we actually
spend very little on marketing. We really let the product
and word of mouth drive the day.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
That's great, I'm sure reimagining a staple food like bread
on the both the emotional and the scientific side. Was
it all obviously positive along the way? Right? What were
some of the challenges you might have occurred early on
or still even today that you were able to over come.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Oh my gosh, like I don't have enough podcast without Yeah, yeah,
actually I love that. Yeah, I think the big stuff
is just like traditionally at Hero Bread, they weren't CpG
people like I don't even come from traditional CpG. I
only learned because I invested a bunch of companies. But
you know, there's channel strategy problems, Like they went food
(15:23):
service first with Subway, and it was like too expensive
and they couldn't quite get the product right to subway
specs and and all that stuff, and so just had
to reboot the channels, reboot the products. The team was
really big, so we had to like right size it
and get the right people in the right seats. And
there wasn't any like success management routines, you know, like
(15:47):
just really simple stuff like do we have a monthly
all hands No? Well how does everybody know what's going on?
And you know, like do you do one on ones
with all your managers? No?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Okay, well maybe we should probably fix that. Yeah, what's
the accounting?
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Like you're like, okay, go, let's do we know how
much inventory you have you know in the beginning.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
No, So yeah, it's just a lot of things that
you need to put in place.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
And yeah, what held the company together is just you know,
the great products that the team has been making in
the founder, which bought us time to fix everything else,
which you know, again is something I've seen in tons
of companies over and over again. If the consumers love it,
the product delivers its own value, you can fix everything around.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
It and get there.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
For the founders that you consult and any founders that
might be tuning in that are trying to build both
a really strong product and a meaningful brand, what's a
mistake you see repeatedly happening that they should do differently.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Oh loaded question.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
I know. The one I see is like, don't drink
your own kool aid. It's funny how many people make
products and so many people tell them it's great and
it's not great, and you just start believing.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
It and you spend all this time on something that's not.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Yeah, perfection, Have some integrity, have you know more outside
point of view. Have people who are willing to challenge
you and listen to the customer, because yeah, I've seen
so many products that everybody says it's great. We found
product might don't fit and it's like, no, you have not.
The data shows it has not. The reason why you're
(17:19):
spending that much in marketing is because you do not
have fit and all that stuff. That's the most common mistake.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Probably good advice.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
So a lot of exciting stuff happening for Hero Bread,
But what's next? Are there any exciting developments or any
expansions on the horizon that you could share.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, well, we're we're starting to expand more and Walmart
and Target, So we'd love it if people would go
there and shop there for us and find our breads there.
We recently launched a noodle product, so cool. We have
an elbow product and a penny product which are really
really delicious. You know, we just saw this gap in
(17:54):
the market where a lot of people are trying to
make clean, protein forward pasta. But there were you seeing
non wheat products and they were using like peas and stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Like that, which didn't taste great either.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
To be honest, it didn't make my stomach feel very good.
So we decided we're gonna try solve that problem. So
we make a really phenomenal, really clean ingredient pasta that
I just love.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
That's awesome. You can go go buy it nowt Hero
sounds good.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
I know we covered a lot, but is there anything
that you want the listeners to know. What would be
like the one thing you want them to know about
the mission of the company?
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Oh well, I think we talked about it a lot.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
But at the end of the day, like I think
for me, I know, everyone's life is very complicated. There's
a lot of stuff going on. It's really chaotic, and
the way I walk into work every day is to say, hey,
how can I make this decision easier for you?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
How can Hero do the work for you?
Speaker 3 (18:51):
So that you have some faith that if you pick
up that are you know, a loaf of bread from
us or a box of pasta from us, that we've
done the work to make sure that it's clean, to
make sure that it tastes great, and that you can
use it every day without changing your routine. And it's
just like a simple upgrade for you that you can
feel confident that you're you're kind of doing the right
thing for yourself and your family. And so that's what
(19:12):
we try to focus on every day.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Well, if someone's tuning in that wants to do the
right thing for their family and they want to try
a Hero Bread, what should they do?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Well, we would love you to go hero dot co.
We have a great online platform there. We have a
crafted collection of really handmade bakers that you can't get
anywhere else, which I love and they personally subscribe to it.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
But yeah, you can.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Find us at Whole Food, Sprouts, you know, Walmart, Target, Wegmans, Publics.
You know, we're in over almost nine thousand doors now,
so I probably add to your store near you, and
if you don't have it, please ask them for us.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
We really like the help for you to help us there.
That's awesome. Well, y see, thank you so much for
coming in.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Thank you for telling us about here bread, but obviously
also all about your background and your expertise.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
We really appreciated the journey. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Awesome, and thank you all for tuning in. Tune in
next week for next week's edition of CEOs You Should
Know
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