Founder's Story - Building a Chocolate Empire Across Multiple Countries with Zero Experience, A Founder's Story with Jake Karls | S2: E5

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

Mid-Day Squares is not just a candy but a company for the next generation of snack lovers and healthy eaters. Its production and marketing strategy and social media presence have turned the 21st-century health-forward brand into the fastest-growing functional chocolate maker in the packaged food industry today. Mid-Day Squares is not just a chocolate maker but the maker of the first functional chocolate bars, which, according to Co-founder Jake Karls, is the founders’ idea of what a healthy afternoon craving killer should taste like. Mid-Day Squares chocolate was designed for those on the go who want to cut their hunger and cravings in between meals. It’s made entirely with superfoods; all our ingredients are raw, vegan, gluten-free, and organic. Most importantly, it’s made with real chocolate and tastes like chocolate. Subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss out on exclusive interviews and special content: https://foundersstory.beehiiv.com/subscribe For more info on guests and future episodes visit pix11.com/impact and https://fox5sandiego.com/fox-5-partners/impactful/  Our Sponsors:* Check out PrizePicks and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: www.prizepicks.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to Founders Story, the podcast where trailblazing entrepreneurs share their extraordinary journeys, uncover the passion, grit, and vision that drive the world of business and innovation. Suddenly it's there, this craving in the middle of the day, and eventually we end up eating unhealthy snacks. Especially having a sweet tooth can be very challenging when you want to live a very healthy lifestyle. This is Founder's Story. I'm your host Diana Lammers. Thanks to innovative and passionate entrepreneurs though there is a light at the end of the tunnel especially for chocolate fans. Jake Hart is co-founder of Midday Squares chocolate bars that also contain a lot of protein and are vegan. Welcome.

Oh, every time I hear that, that's like music to the ears. Yeah, this is a product for people that have that slump midday and that want that chocolate craving, that want something to satisfy that, but also give them better for you ingredients that are actually good for you and not just, you know, palm kernel oil or sugar. So super fired up to be here. Thank you. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. Jake, even though chocolate is sweet, the industry is not. It is actually very competitive and your company is a little bit the David challenging the Goliath. How do you compete against the other chocolate bar giants? Well, I want you to imagine us like this.

Imagine Hershey's or Mars or Mondelez, the chocolate giants were to start in 2023. That's what Midday Squares, our company, is trying to do. We're trying to make a new age version of a chocolate bar, something that's functional, better for you, but also indulging like the chocolate bars that we know. So how do we compete? It's simple. We tell a story that is very emotionally connected to the consumer, meaning that we bring our consumers along the journey by documenting and sharing everything in our marketing, the good, the bad, the ugly of how we build this business. If you go on our social media, you will see literally therapy sessions, breakdowns, milestones, successes.

And what that does, it makes our consumers feel like they're buying from a friend, a family member, a neighbor, rather than just a chocolate bar. So that alone separates us from the chocolate giants. But also a product that's better for you, that also tastes delicious, is allowing us to win in this very competitive market. The business is a family business that must be tough sometimes. How do you keep the partnership strong? So yeah, my partners are my sister and my brother-in-law. So they're married. It is very fragile, very wild, chaotic.

But the way that we save this partnership and the way that we invest in it and keep making sure that's actually successful, we actually see a business therapist, a real therapist once to twice a week minimum in good or bad times. And the idea is to create a safe zone for communication between the three of us so that we stay aligned and we don't build tensions.

And I think that this type of therapy is something that most companies actually need to enhance partnerships or maintain successful partnerships. Otherwise, communication just gets broken. You mentioned social media. This is a very, very big part of your growth. Tell us a little bit more about that. So for us, social media, we knew that the world is in this era where attention is everything. People's attention is very scarce and people just scroll through like never before.

And in order to grab people's attention, you can't just put out an ad that says, oh, this is the best tasting chocolate bar. That doesn't mean something to anybody. So what we focus on is emotionally connecting and resonating with the customer, meaning we give them content that relates to their life. It has nothing to do with the chocolate bar. It has to do with everything to do with the drama or the chaos of building our business.

That's building on human nature, storytelling that builds on human nature rather than, hey, let's advertise and sell to you. Let's bring you on this journey so that you could opt into our content, give us your attention, and then we could sell to you. What makes your chocolate bar so different? And you have many different flavors as well. So which one is for whom? So I think for us, we wanted to build a dark chocolate bar that satisfied your cravings and also kept you full for a couple of hours throughout the day.

That way you felt good when you had it. We have a cookie dough flavor, which is very nostalgic. It tastes like dark chocolate cookie dough with our own homemade chocolate chips. We have a peanut butter chocolate, which is like a healthier version of the famous peanut butter cup. And then we have an almond crunch, which is very crunchy almond. The texture is very unique to more like a Ferrero style bar. And then our originals are brownie batter, which is just dark decadent chocolate that tastes like that battered chocolate. But I think what makes it very unique is not the flavor profiles. It's actually that we have our own texture. We actually had to build our own

manufacturing plant to actually manufacture these because the way that other machines did it couldn't make the bar the way we wanted so they wanted to change it so when you try midday squares when you bite into it you'll see there's a two texture layer there's a chocolate top hard top with a brownie like soft bottom that's very unique to us and our chocolate is all homemade in-house so it's our own version of chocolate not anyone else's chocolate sometimes chocolate bars, they have a unique way to eat them or fans just create a unique way to eat them. What is the best way to eat yours? Like eating the top first and the bottom both at the same time? I think you got to do it. Everyone does

it differently. And I think for me, I eat the top first. I like the hard crunch to the soft bottom first. But I think what we really emphasize is we want you to have this moment in your day midday because at midday, people get tired, people get hungry, they want they crave something we want to be that moment in your day where you can get something that's enjoyable and indulgence, but also functional in the sense of better for you proteins, fibers, good fats, so that it fills you up. That's what we're focused on is to be your everyday midday moment. Often there's an argument, refrigerated or not refrigerated? Some say yes, some say no. Yours actually needs to be refrigerated. Why is that?

I love this question. So yes, we are not located where all the other bars are in the grocery store. We are located in the refrigerator and we're super proud about that. And the reason why we're proud about it is because we don't use any additives. We don't use any preservatives. Our product needs to be in the refrigerator to stay fresh, to actually eat it. That being said, it could be on the go outside of the refrigerator for five days, no problem. So if you're traveling, you're going to the gym, if you're going to your office, it's fine. But we're proud to be fresh. We're proud to be in the better for you category.

And I think that not using those additives and the preservatives, it gives your actual digestion or the way that you eat your product a way better experience than having the high sugar, you know, high process types of product. Thank you, Jay Kards. Thank you for tuning in to Founders Story.

Keep exploring, keep dreaming, and join us next time for more inspiring entrepreneurial journeys. This is Scott Campbell from the Stupid Things for Love podcast. I have a seven-year-old son, and the biggest mountain I climb every day is trying to put shoes on this child. And I'm so grateful to Skechers for making the only shoes my son will willingly put on by himself. Their slip-ons are amazing and he doesn't have to deal with laces, he doesn't have to deal with anything. They come in the perfect color blue. Thank you Skechers, the comfort technology company. And you can find Skechers everywhere. Skechers.com,

a Skechers store, or wherever stylish footwear is sold.