How I Built This with Guy Raz - Advice Line with Christina Tosi of Milk Bar

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

Today’s callers: Whitney in Utah  wonders how to bridge the gap between pre-seed and institutional investment for her fitness/retail combo space. Then Chloe in the U.K. considers which markets to target for her at-home crafting kits. And Christy in Washington wants to convert gifters into repeat customers for her coffee flavoring brand.Plus, Christina’s take on why Milk Bar is better served with her as Chief Experimenter rather than Chief Executive.  Thank you to the founders of The Beau Collective, Cotton Clara, and Vashon Island Coffee Dust. If you’d like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode—where Guy and former show guests take questions from early-stage founders—leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and a specific question you’d like answered. Send a voice memo to [e-mail] or call 1-800-433-1298. And be sure to listen to the story of how Christina founded Milk Bar from our episode back in 2019.This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley.You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram and sign up for Guy's free newsletter at guyraz.com and on Substack.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. I talk to entrepreneurs all the time who are looking for a way to upgrade their digital footprint. Well, whether you're just starting out or you're scaling your business, Squarespace is the easiest way to build a great website that stands out. It's an all-in-one website platform that gives you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your products, and get paid. Anyone can use Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools to build an online presence that truly reflects what makes your business special. There are templates, intuitive drag-and-drop editing, and even an AI-enhanced website builder. Then, Squarespace's built-in analytics tools help you make smarter business decisions. Review website traffic, learn where to focus engagement, and track revenue all in one place.

Looking to grow your business, Squarespace even offers fast, easy business financing through Squarespace capital. Go to Squarespace.com slash built for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code built to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Loans issued by Celtic Bank and serviced by Stripe. All loans subject to credit approval. One of my favorite places to visit is a small, rugged island in the Irish Sea, the Isle of Man. Last time we were there, instead of a hotel, we booked a home on Airbnb. It was an old stonehouse overlooking the water, big windows, ocean views. And every morning we just sit there with coffee, watching the light.

change. But honestly, the best part was the connection to the place. The host left us with a list of local spots, a tiny bakery, a coastal trail, and within a couple of days, we were talking to locals, finding places we never would have discovered otherwise. There's something I always look for when I book a home on Airbnb, not just a place to stay, but something that feels connected to where I am. And it got me thinking, while we were away, our own home was just sitting there empty. But if you host your home on Airbnb. It could be making you some extra cash, maybe for a renovation or even your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we

help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on this show who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call, and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you like help with. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is Milk Bar founder, Christina Tosie. Christina, great to have you back on the show. Welcome back. Guy, I've missed you. I know you too. It's been so many years. I mean, you were on the show back in 2019. It was a live show. It was so fun. I remember that show. It was like jammed. People were cheering. They were so excited to see you. If anyone listening has missed that episode, go back and listen. We'll drop a link to it in the show notes. So check it out. The basic story, milk bar started in 2008. Christina opened up the first milk bar where they popularized, she popularized, cereal milk ice cream, compost cookies, the now famous milk bar pie, which is insane. Fast forward to today, their cookies. They're cookies.

and treats and ice creams are available at thousands of retailers, Whole Foods and Sprouts and Walmart, and they're so good. Christina the brown butter chocolate chip, the super crunchy mini cookies are so insane. They've completely messed up my, I'm going to know, not to do sugar, but. It's a little bit of sugar. It's a little bit. It's a little bit. It's a little bit.

Didn't eat the whole bag. That's a problem. I just, I'm like, I just look at it. It's the crunch. We're texture hounds, you know. It's so, they're so good. I know you step down. as CEO of Milk Bar a couple years ago to focus on on the creative side of the business,

which is I think probably the most interesting, the funnest part of the business. And I urge everybody to do that. Can you give us a quick update on what you've been up to these days and a little bit about your role at Milk Bar? I mean, guy, when I think about the time we got to spend in person in 2019, like we had no idea that night that the way that we walk through the world would change so dramatically a year from then, let alone where we're. what, five, six years from the now, seven years almost. A few years ago, I had two babies

during, I got bored and I'd like to say, Will and I got bored and we started having babies. We got a giant dog and named her butter. And then when it was time to kind of go back in to work in the office, we moved everyone back into New York City and we thought, the lot of this does not work for us anymore. And one of my big things was because the milk bar business had been so stress tested through these last years since we spoke, I really had to take a step forward and backwards into each side and sort of say, where am I best suited here? Like, I'm every bit as passionate. My tank is full with fuel, but I can't just keep driving down the same road. You know, the same feeling with the same map, it's all changed. And my biggest thing was,

I am shortchanging the milk bar business holding on to the CEO seat. I would much, much rather focus on what I'm specifically and uniquely positioned to do, which is like the creative, the culinary, right? Like no one's taste buds or my taste buds or your taste buds. And so now I'm sitting in Nashville, Tennessee, which is where we moved about a year ago. I'm sitting in a garage where I do all my baking. What you can't see off camera is all of the different messy baking experiments I have in my head that might make it to the milk bar menu at some point.

I just feel more alive and firing on all cylinders than ever. It's so awesome. And I can't wait to see that kitchen, all your, the tubs of like ingredients. I could just imagine them perfectly lining the counters and like, yeah, I sometimes when I use like odd ingredients, like milk powder for cooking, I think of you. Because it's something you don't use every day, like you toast it and then you how you use it. And anyway, so thank you for that. Chewy brown buttery notes. My favorite thing about you is that most people don't realize.

is that you are a baker and a foodie, among many other things. I wouldn't call. Gosh, baker. I wish. I wish. I love cooking. I love cooking. If you're talking about toasted milk powder, my friend, you are a baker in my book.

I'm curious, I mean, from a business perspective, right? I mean, you have, there are so many different things that you do, right? You cook books and TV shows that you host. But from the milk bar side, right, there's the direct sales, the tins and the cakes, and the milk bar pie, but also, as I mentioned, you can go to Whole Foods or Walmart or sprouts and buy milk bar products off the shelf. Where do you guys see, like, the most potential for growth? Is it having more products on the shelves in big retailers? Is it direct to consumer? It's so interesting. You know, we've intentionally built our brand in a way that's much bigger and broader

than what the top line revenue of our P&L is. Yes. Because that's the challenge. It's the challenge for our sales channels to try and catch the size and reach of the brand. So I would say that our biggest opportunity is to continue to find ways to show up in unexpected places. We just did a Krispy Cream collab that launched yesterday.

And like is that bringing money to our bottom line pennies, right? Like it's not about that. It is getting to share like, the milk bar spirit with people all across America. And for us, what's economically savvy about it is it's free-earned brand and media as opposed to needing your sales channels to drive a revenue that brings enough money to like the EBITDA line that you can invest in it from a marketing standpoint. Because at this point, if you're not running a profitable business in 2026, I don't know, like, you know, where that was different in 2019. Yeah, I think that's such an

important insight because a lot of founders, right, and people who run brands don't always want to do the collaborations. They don't always want to focus on the brand sort of building side of it because it feels like a waste of time, you know, and you don't necessarily see the return. It's not measurable. Right. You can't measure it. But it opens you up. It sort of creates the foundation to find those places where you can find the products and the ideas that will connect in. because people already know and trust the brand. And I think that's really important because a lot of people, a lot of brands, I mean, I've been on the side of it too with some of the things I do, don't want to do the slow and sometimes hard and sometimes not so satisfying things like stand, you know, in front of a coffee shop all day or Whole Foods or whatever it might be. Yes.

That's it in a nutshell guy. All right, Christina, we should probably bring in some callers. Are you ready to take our first call? I can't wait. Let's do it. All right. Hello, caller. Welcome to the Vice Line. You are on with the founder of Milk Bar, Christina Tosi. Please tell us your name where you're calling from and just a little bit about your business. Hello, Guy. Hello, Christina. I'm so excited to be here. My name is Whitney and I'm calling in from Park City, Utah. My business is the Bo Collective. And we are a fitness and retail hub where locals can sweat, shop, and stay connected. Wow. Okay. Well, welcome to the show. Thanks for calling them. Whitney. So the bow collective, as in B-E-A-U, like my beau, okay.

It's a fitness studio and a retail space. So explain like you walk in and what does that look like? Yes, it's kind of like a mullet, really. You walk in, it's a retail party up front and then fitness classes operate in the back. So when classes before they begin and after they're finished, we have space to dwell. And we let people connect and shop and have coffee and hang at the social table before they leave. Got it. Okay.

So, and what do you sell in this shop? I mean, is it most like workout gear and shirt? No. It's full scale, all the goods that we love from Lulu Lemon, Marine Layer, things like that, where I've always just wanted to be able to shop before 10 a.m. And we're open at 6 a.m. when people are finishing their workout. It's all apparel, Whitney? It's apparel and gifts and home goods and brands and things that we've loved and we've curated over the last decade.

Okay. And Gimme and the classes are like... They began hit style, always 45 minutes. And then we've kind of evolved into more heavy lifting, more hybrid setups and things like that as well. But everybody can count on a 45 minute high spirited experience every time they're in. All right. Awesome. Tell us a little bit about the... revenue, like how much comes from memberships or people going to classes, how much from the retail shop? Yeah, it's about at this point, it's 55% from the fitness, 45% from the retail. And either of those growing more or less, you're seeing trends in other direction? We're actually seeing the retail as an uptick.

Interesting. So I think convenience and delight and fun where people can purchase things, and a lot of these brands can showcase what they do to all of these people, where they already are. Got it. And this is one location in Park City is just give us a quick sense of the ambition here. Is it a Park City business you want to just or what? Yes. So the ambition and the plan right now we're expanding and to my hometown in Phoenix.

And I really do believe especially, you know, it's fitness and retail, but it's really community and connection that we're selling. And I really see that every town needs something like this. It's not a bar or restaurant, but it's hospitality in a healthy form. And it's getting people to move together to pick up some goods that you don't have to run out in all of the traffic you can grab at sunrise. And it's really just a reimagined way for people to connect that's good for them. Got it. Okay.

Before we dive in further, what's your question for us? We've run this business for 10 years in Park City. It's profitable. It's doing great. So my question is in the finance world. of this, we're in that sweet spot just north of friends and family fundraising and just, you know, below anything institutional. So my question is about bridge capital. When we're really trying to secure that, how do you really align with people that understand what you're building? Got it. And this is you're raising money to open the location in Phoenix. Yes. Okay, got it. And so you've raised some. And just roughly, how much have you raised from friends and family?

Friends and family, we've raised about 600,000. Okay, and you need closer to a million to open this up? We need about 200,000 more. Okay, got it. All right. I want to bring Christina in. Just launch into it, Christina. Welcome to me, Whitney.

I mean, I am so excited for you, Whitney. Just really quickly, will you give me, like, what is the, like, average order value or whatever acronym you use in place of AOV for a customer, whether they're buying from the retail or the fitness? Yes. Retail average ticket is between 60 and 85, and then it's, you know, it's. $200 memberships monthly. We have about 200 members. I got an idea there for you. Okay, I'm coming back to that. And then what about day parts, night parts? Like, are people coming in and buying in retail at 6 a.m.

Or does that happen during a certain consolidated time of day? Sure. A typical day is we open the doors at 6 a.m. classes run from 6 to 10 a.m. All of those people call it 80, 100 participants and members. they're able to shop at any point. And then when classes end, the location is in a center. So we just open as a shop and behind the shiplap wall is just vacant until the classes start again. And is your vision that you continue to build Bo Collective and own and operate it yourself as a private company? I think we would establish guardians in different markets and cities that have been trained through us, where we own it at a corporate level.

But then we have great local people that care so much about the communities that we grow them that way. Got it. Like a franchise-ish model. I mean, my first thought in the fundraising, like, the niss of your question, right? Like, how do I complete this sort of like 200K bridge round? One of my first thoughts, Whitney, as you were talking about this new community that you're going into, the power of community, the collective. 200K is a lot of money and not a lot of money, depending on who you're talking to on the fundraising round. Right. One of my thoughts is, why not pre-sell some of your memberships, right?

Like, knowing what the cost of a membership is, how do you pre-sell the access to this really cool collective and community? What could that look like? I think that could be really interesting. I also wrote down, as you said, Park City, like, let's think about what works in Park City, right? Or what Park City is. It's a pretty affluent area. I immediately thought, oh, my gosh, Arizona, is it going to be in Paradise Valley? What about Aspen? What about Jackson Hole? Like, people that have the finances to both want to spend on the retail level, have maybe a little bit more free time, create community, and that also want to care

for their own health and well-being. Like, what does that look like? Because one of my questions, how is this new market going to support you? How do you know how much you need? That's always the question when you're opening a new unit. Is this market the right fit? And then the other thing I'd really inspire in you to do is if you don't already have the space, like, really get in there with landlords because there's a lot of vacant spaces all across America. And you can get really great landlord terms. You can get them to pay for your TIE, which stands for tenant improvements. A lot of them will build out a space for you, deliver the electric you need, the plumbing, et cetera, et cetera. There is a way that you might not even need 200K or maybe you need less than that. And really, really, bring the landlord in because it sounds like whoever the landlord is, this Bo Collective is an

amenity to them, whether it's to the other tenants on the right or the left, or if it's, you know, mixed use and there is commercial or residential above. Like, there could be some wheeling and dealing there as you're modeling Bo Collective. Yeah, I think it's interesting because you have, and I was thinking about, you mentioned some of these other places, right, Paris Valley. And I look at, you know, I'm looking at photos of the Bo Collective. I'm thinking of like Kilauea and Kauai, you know, one of these really cool places where you've got a bunch of affluent people. And I wonder whether you might want to consider something a little radical, ripped out of the playbook of there's a bagel chain here in California, small chain called Boiuchick bagels.

It got a lot of press in New York Times a few years ago. When they expanded outside of Berkeley and other than Southern California, they actually offered a chance for their customers to have some equity, you know, and not in small checks. and maybe it's like a bunch of checks for a thousand bucks. I mean, I'm not saying that's easy, but, you know, could you get 200 people or even smaller checks or some might write $5,000? And maybe it's, again, it's like a convertible note alone and they get a 10% discount card, which they can use in Phoenix or in Park City. And they're a member of the club. You know, it's like they're not just a they're an investor, but they're an insider. I mean, if you've got passionate people who are going there, it might be worth literally putting up a flyer and saying, would you be interested in investing in our expansion?

And, you know, it could be an interesting way to raise money. I think you're right. In the spirit of our people, we really are kind of like the tailgators, the people that, you know, went to college and some days miss it a little bit, right? It's a co-ed vibe of people that just root for each other. There's such great people that really turning it into even just on a small scale that they could have a piece of it could be really fun. And by the way, Whitney, like what guy is talking about if you think about it? Like, how do people choose like where they're going to work out or shop? I don't know about you, but for me it's like proximity, right?

The easiest. So like how do you canvass the area closest to your new Phoenix Bow Collective with word of mouth? Maybe you're part of, you know, other local business owners and shops where you're putting up these physical flyers or digital flyers. On top of that, you get these people to buy in. Girl, you don't even have to be stressed out about marketing when you open, right? Because you already have 200 or 400 new customers who are spreading the word. That are excited to come in. And what I'd also say to you, Whitney, is a few things. One, one person's opinion, you want to take institutional capital as late in the game as possible, if not wait forever. Right? Like challenge yourself to never take it. There's a lot of great things that come from institutional capital, but you're on the record, right? Like they believe in you and your vision and your dream, but there is a lot of extra work

in terms of reporting and strategy and board level things that also take you away from the founder entrepreneurial visionary spirit. And there are so many clever creative ways in nowadays than ever before to not have have to go to that well. I think a lot of times as early on entrepreneurs, I know I was that way thinking that's a sign that I've made it, right? When I'm able to raise money and leverage that money and at end, but there's so much else that comes with it. So unlocking this yourself is going to give you the future power of choice on so many different levels while also training your entrepreneurial brain to be smart and savvy and gritty in all the ways that you are going to need for all of the years of

Bo Collective to come. I totally agree. Whitney, it's congrats on building this. Good luck in Phoenix. The company's called the Bo Collective. If you're in Phoenix, look out for it. Whitney Kozlowski, thanks so much for calling in. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, now I'm on the website. I'm like, yeah, the brands are cool. The clothes are cool. It's like a nice curated space. And yeah, I mean, it's... The site is awesome. Should we quit our day jobs? I want to both go work for Whitney. Right. Do you want to work out and then have a cookie? I will be your chief of staff, babe.

Let's go. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz, and we're answering your questions right here on the advice line on how I built this lab. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. And my guest today is Christina Toasty, the founder of Milk Bar, and we're taking your calls. And let's bring in our next caller. Oh, I can't wait.

Hi, Guy and Christina. I'm Chloe, and I'm calling from Leicestershire in the UK. And I'm the founder of Cotton, Clara. We make beginner-friendly craft kits that are designed to help people discover crafting and making and hopefully find a hobby that they love. Welcome to the show. Thank you for calling in, Chloe. So Leicestershire is Midlands, right?

Yeah, right in the middle. Yeah, Leicester, Nottingham, kind of Birmingham. Birmingham. Okay, cool. Yeah, awesome. Thank you for calling in. Thanks for listening to the show. So tell us a little bit about Cotton Clara.

You sell, like, craft kits and, like, describe them. So they're designed to be beginner friendly. I kind of saw this market, you know, 10 years ago, and it felt so old-fashioned. And I felt like there was a gap for design-led, modern kits that appeal to people that have a kind of are design-conscious. and want something beautiful in their homes. And what can you get like you make? I mean, is it like embroidery or sewing? Like what are the things that you make?

So depending on the kit, so you either create a kind of a little work of art that is framed in the hoop that you stitch it in and then you put it on your wall. Or one of our really popular kits is a friendship bracelet making kit. Oh, nice. We have paper craft kits, all different types of things. We have a flower press kit.

It depends which kind of craft you choose. Awesome. And you said you started this 10 years ago, about 10 years ago? Yeah, I mean, the seed of an idea was 10 years ago, but really the business got serious in 2020, kind of end of 2019, 2020. And do you sell everything direct to consumer, or do you also sell into stores? It's about 60% direct to consumer and about 40% wholesale, but wholesale is really growing at the moment, especially wholesale to the U.S. Okay, and are most of your customers in the UK in Europe or also you mentioned wholesale to the US? Where are they coming from, your customers?

Most of our wholesale customers are in the US, but most of our D2C customers at the moment are in the UK. And where do you sell in the US, by the way? We sell to Barnes & Noble, anthropology, and then loads of kind of shops, independent, small, or maybe small in America, but in the UK, they're huge. And give us a sense of your annual sales. Like what do you expect to hit this year? Yeah, this year. We've just had our best year yet, and we turned over $1.2 million this year or last year.

So that was our best year. So that's a huge milestone. And before we dive in further, which question for us? So our question is, our business serves three different markets. So gifting, craft enthusiasts, like your classic crafter, and then the kind of wellness movement. And we're not sure which positioning will best drive the scale we need to build a truly profitable business.

So we'd love advice on how to identify the audience most likely to buy repeatedly and how that should shape our product development and our route to market. All right. So gifters, craftsters, wellnessers. Yeah. Okay. Who do you, where do you go to? Okay, Christina, Christina Tosi, I want to bring you in. Crafting, cool business. Over a million dollars in sales now. Awesome. She's doing great. But there's some choices and decisions to make. It is so true. I mean, Chloe, first off, congratulations, $1.2 million.

That's huge. Second of all, I want everything on your... I'm a crafter. I was raised by women. The granny spirit is alive and well in me. It's definitely how I was raised in all of the free time we crafted. Craft kits did not exist, so you had to, like, raid grandma's basement for, you know, for thread and for old pieces of fabric. The fabric store, the yard.

sales, that sort of stuff. I also think it's a really interesting moment where you're at, where to your point, like that the business really started taking off in 2020, right? Like that shows like a macro trend, but an interesting one because I see your business as crafting, acknowledging that gifting and wellness are ways that crafting finds its way into people's lives that aren't just thinking about crafting first and foremost. Also, at least in the U.S., what we're seeing, we're seeing a lot of, like there's a and Etsy took off. But there's also a reason why craft stores, like the big box Michaels, Joanne, a lot of those crafting first stores have suffered on just like a brick and mortar

real estate basis. But also when you look at our other big boxes like a Target or a Walmart, they're doubling and tripling down into this crafty spirit. You're on to something. You're on to an activity that we picked up in the pandemic that we haven't lost, right? That we're continuing to find really, really dynamic stickiness with, joyful stickiness with. As a baker, I am a believer that the activities where we get to create and bring things to life, whether we're being serious about it or not being serious about it, are activities that are going to continue to be really powerful for us in an age that continues to be increasingly digital, right? We feel like that. Like the potential is massive and huge, yeah, for kind of this.

industry. What do you, like, where, what do you want to do with, with Cotton, Clara? Is it, is it international expansion? Is it, um, how are you thinking about that? I appreciate the like, what are we? But I am curious to sort of like, what do you want to be? Yeah. We want to be a, a big global brand. We want to get people making all over the world. I, I want to be a brand that does that in a sustainable way. So yeah, we're dreaming really big. Got it. Okay, here are some thoughts that I have for you, Chloe.

I wonder if, and this is something my husband and I, my husband's also an entrepreneur, this is a game we play at home all the time. When we're faced with a challenge of like, is it this, is it this, is it this? We force ourselves to create one additional option. So when I hear you say, are we gifting, are we crafting, are we wellness? I go, what if you're none of those things, what would you be? and if I had to force myself to come up with another word, it's makers, right?

Like, what is the, why? What is the stickiness? I think it's because people are making something. Like, when we are at a crossroads at Milkbar, and we're trying to figure out, is this the right product or is that the right product? Is this the right language? What's going to be sticky?

We go to our community first, and knowing that you have a 60% DTC customer base, pull them. They may have some of the answers, they may give you some texture that helps give you direction. And then the other thing that I think could just be cool, I have a friend named Elisa. She's actually a neighbor of guys in San Francisco on the West Coast.

She fell in love with baking. And for her, baking is about, like, community. She started doing this thing a few years ago called cake picnic. Oh, yes. And she has gotten sponsors. And now she throws these things and people come together in a park one day. and they eat cake together. It's literally a party as an excuse to eat cake.

Yes. And people make these beautiful, elaborate cakes. They do do it at Golden Gate Park. It's incredible. So part of me is like what is the maker's picnic where people come and cross-ditch together or friendship. I mean, girl, I'm a friendship bracelet wearing fiend over here. Like, you need the idea of making, crafting, whatever it is,

to get out much further beyond growing up. your business, I believe that's going to be a secret to your global domination and success and getting us excited about being makers. All right, Chloe, take it for wordsworth, but I have a slightly different perspective, which is I actually think that your customer is the repeat customer. Like, it doesn't matter if they're a gifter and they're buying or if it's, I think craft enthusiast probably is the most challenging because they are probably often looking. for the best value or lowest price, let's say, not even best value. But it's like, so, and I think

the wellness thing is really interesting, right? I don't think it's a trend. People aren't, you know, they're looking for ways to find fulfillment, spiritual meaning. And for better or worse, it's a massive exploding industry when you consider everything that fits inside of it. So, I mean, I think that, you know, you want to start looking to see who's buying your stuff more than once. Who's buying it four or five times a year. What is it about them? Maybe contact them or see if they will talk to you in exchange for a free product and just download who they are, why they're buying it, what they like about it. Because I think every decision you make, whether it's a marketing campaign or social media or whatever you can put into that, it should all answer that question.

How do we get people to come back? How do we deepen the relationship with them? Wait, can I say one thing about the wellness thing? Because I like where you're going in it. My caveat or my sort of like asterisk that I'd say to it is, it is wellness, but it's inherently a joyful wellness pursuit, right? And so how do you think about what the right word choice is? Because if you use wellness too closely, it's going to feel like you're saying, eat your vegetables, and we assume that are going to run in the other direction.

So what is the like wordsmith of this look like as you're, so you have a few different options when you go to talk to your repeat customers, and-an-and. Is it about unlocking creativity? Are they creativity kits and not crafting kits, you know, etc, etc? Yeah, play. I really love that play. I think that's a great idea. You don't want to say wellness, exactly.

It's like you're hitting people over the head with it. You want to talk about unlocking creativity or, and you can also start to explore potential partnerships with really big candle brands or, you know, products that are sort of wellness-ish or adjacent that where you might have people interested in doing some kind of cross-promotion or, or, you know, you know, products that are sort of wellness-ish or adjacent, that where you might have people interested in doing some kind of cross-promotion or, or collaboration. This leads into this other idea, which could be, I mean, it takes some energy, but could be worth it, like a vertical, just a business vertical, a completely separate part of your business where you start to work with brands, you know, brands that we've had on the show like Airbnb or Canva Milk Bar? I was going to say, can I get a milk bar crustace? Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at some of your designs here and they're cool, like little bento boxes and ramen and you could potentially, you know, Canva has a giant staff like convention every year.

Thousands and thousands of people from around the world. Like could there be some kind of collaboration where you can stitch a Canva logo or, you know, something like that, which could be an interesting, totally separate business. Yeah. No, that's great. All amazing ideas and, yeah, lots to think about. Chloe, congrats on the business. Cotton, Clara. Thank you.

Good luck. Thank you. Thanks so much. Keep going. Thank you. Bye. Bye. I, the thing I love about this, these kids, is that you can be completely useless. Like, I am really, you know, I have a lot of patience for cooking, but for some reason, like, I just can't get my head around this. But I think, because this is easier. This is like, she's got things where it's like paint by numbers. I could get into that. Also a friendship bracelet. I mean, I know your kids are like cuss. too old, but like, I make friendship bracelets all the time. Like, I bring embroidery thread in a little sewing kit on the plane with me because it is just, it's something that I can make for someone else. It makes me feel good.

It makes them feel good. Like, because once you do it, guy, you'll be hooked. You'll be like, I can't believe I made that. I'm sure. Your friendship bracelet era is about to begin. Something tells me. It's about to begin. All right.

We're going to take another quick break, but we'll be right back with one more caller. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to the advice line right here on how I built this lab. Welcome back to the device line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking calls with Milk Bar founder, Christina Tosi. So, Christina, ready for our next call? Oh, let's go. All right, let's bring in our final caller.

Welcome to the advice line. Tell us your name where you're calling from and just a little bit about your business. My name is Christy Clement. I'm calling in from Washington State, and I'm the founder of Vashon Island Coffee Dust. So we make spice blends to flavor your coffee without sweeteners. So there's no coffee in coffee dust, just real spices, cinnamon, cardamom, cayenne, things like that to add to your coffee. And it's a clean alternative to creamers and syrups. Or if you're a black coffee drinker, it's just a fun way to change it up in the morning.

Oh, awesome. Welcome to the show, Chrissy. So these are, they're powders, but it's not, they're not sweetened and it's not like a, you know, powderized milk. It's just spices that you add to the coffee. Yeah, so the whole idea is they're blends. Some people already add some cinnamon or nutmeg to your coffee, right? And these are super fun blends. So we have a gingerbread blend. We have a couple of spicy ones, a hot mama and a spicy papa that have cayenne in them.

And the hot mama, for example, is cocoa and a little bit of cinnamon, some cayenne and some sea salt. That's it. Interesting. And does it, I mean, I'm curious because if you add that to coffee, it doesn't necessarily dissolve, right? I mean, how does it, like, integrate with the coffee? Do you really get those flavors? You really do. Yeah.

So we get our spices ground extremely, extremely finely. And that helps to dissolve in. I'll also hit it with a frother. So you can add it to your coffee after you've made it, just dust it on top. That's what most people do. You can also froth it with your milk. Oh, I like that. You can add it to your grounds.

You use a little bit more, but you can brew it with your whole pot. How long, when did you start this business? About five years ago. This is a COVID baby. I used to be an IT consultant teaching. software teams to act like startups. But I've never been in the food business. And I was a new coffee drinker during COVID, filling, as most new coffee drinkers do, they're coffee full of junk, right? Cream and sugar and things like that. But a friend introduced me to spice blends

adding to coffee. And I was able to get off the cream and the sugar using that method. And I just fell in love with that. I started playing around with other flavors. And as work started picking back up at the end of the pandemic, I thought, all right, well, I don't have time for this. I'll just buy it from somebody because I was completely addicted at that point. But nobody made it. And so I knew I had to start a business. All right, Vashon Island. That's the island in the Puget Sound, right?

It's in Puget Sound. Forgive me. Yep, yeah. Yeah, near Seattle. Okay, so you are selling these how, where, mostly through your website? We have five different channels. We're on our website. We do a lot of in-person markets.

We do Etsy. We have a wholesale channel. We're in about 50 independent gift stores and coffee shops across the country, and we sell on Amazon. Awesome. And how did you guys do last year? We did 277,000 in revenue. And we've been profitable from day one. And we've been doubling our revenue. Amazing. Okay. So before we dive in, what is your question? So I know many coffee dust customers discover us through gifting and then become loyal buyers for themselves. And that flywheel feels really powerful, but I'm not sure how. to deliberately design for it. Christina, I suspect you had a similar challenge with Milk Bar, and I'd love both of your thoughts on how I can intentionally create that gifting, loyal buyer loop.

All right, Christina, fashion island coffee dust. Christy is looking for some ideas on how to get those people coming back again. Thoughts, ideas, questions? You know, it's so, first of all, Christy, congratulations. One, I think it's a great concept. like people's drink ritual is truly that. It's sacred. It's a ritual. And I think because we all love food and flavor, like the sweet spot of what you're doing makes a lot of sense. You know, when we started milk bar, first of all, my goal was to like have a bakery and stay alive. I did not anticipate

being a gifting experience. I thought I was just selling a warm cornflake chalk chip marshmallow cookie out of the oven or a slice of, you know, cake unfrosted on the sides or a little ding a soft serve. And the DTC part of our business, we launched our care package business just so we could reach someone that was never going to make it to our New York City bakery. But what we realized really quickly was that it became a thing. If it is gifting, you have to think first and foremost about, of course, the take rate, right? Who is who is gifting it? And then how do they want it to appear as a gift? How do you make their job as the gift giver as big and brilliant as and easy as possible.

So thinking about, you know, we chose a literally shipping in the mail. It's insane to use a white box, right? It doesn't arrive in pristine white box order. But babe, in a sea of cardboard Amazon boxes when that box arrives, that we have social media that's just people being like, oh my gosh, I can see this white box with a pink milk script in a sea of cardboard, right? Like how does it show up in a way that gives someone that tingly, joyful, right? Like, I love that.

And I think it's the same thing. If gifting is your segment, really, really thinking about that. And there's going to be some tension points, right, between what is absolutely the most efficient and what is going to feel giftable and gift worthy. Then you're thinking about, okay, so how do I afford nicer packaging? Can I bundle it with a frother? And then it's an even cooler experience, but I can actually charge me. more and afford for the nicer packaging because a frother doesn't actually cost that much money.

Then when it's being gifted, how is it showing up in someone's life? For us, it's usually like a high value occasion. It's someone's birthday. It's someone's graduation. It's someone's wedding. For you, it might be a housewarming gift. This is going to be, it's free marketing for you girls. It's like a Trojan horse, right? You get to be on their coffee counter. So what should that look like from a coffee counter standpoint? You don't see my coffee in my house because no one has figured out how to make the coffee experience look pretty enough to sit on the shelf of my kitchen. And so it gets tucked away in a cabinet. Is there something beautiful that's also efficient in the way that it is used that can enhance someone's coffee station? Like,

those little things I think are really important. Look at me. I'm like in and so excited for you and going to try all these dust. But I'm also going, I drink coffee in the morning. But my evening tea, I want the healthful cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, nutmeg. I want that in my tea at night. And so that's the other thing that I would just, you didn't ask for this advice, but I'm going to give it to you as a very impassioned consumer. I have beverage rituals that extend beyond coffee. And I believe that your dust could extend there too. And that could be an interesting way to expand and grow business while you think about giving. And we do tend to, when we first explain it, it's really about the coffee. But we do when we see.

send it out, send a little info sheet on what else you can use it in because it is other beverages, but it's also, you know, add a little cocoa column, which is cocoa and lavender to your whipped cream and with some strawberries. It's amazing. I had a customer one time tell me they used captains on chicken as a dry rub. Like blew my mind, right? It sounds like you have a fair amount of UGC user generated content anecdotally or otherwise, right? Like, did you know you could use captains on your next chicken bake, you know? Did you know you could, you know, add this to hot water and get an incredible tea. You can steep this in your hot chocolate, et cetera, et cetera. Like you can really test and learn what's sticky for your regular customers

without it feeling so direct of like a repeat ploy as opposed to giving them more reasons to come back because they hadn't thought about using your product in a different way. You know, I was thinking about what you were saying, Christina, and I totally agree. Like I, because I'm looking at this product and I'm thinking, okay, you know, you want to focus on making it really easy and frictionless on how to use it. And you had mentioned, Christy, that you sprinkle it on frost coffee or something because I just figured people are just mix into the coffee. So initially I was like, well, maybe you should have a QR code with a video. Maybe you do that already when people get it. Like here's a video, here's me making it.

Here's how I love to do it. But actually, the frictionless side of this is to think about how do you make this so easy, right? Like a K-cup, right? You don't, I look this up. You don't need a license to make a K cup. I guess the patent or whatever expired over 10 years ago. Anybody can make a K cup shaped pod where you just stick it in. And that's it. You've got it.

You've got all the flavors and the benefits, et cetera. That's great. I love that. I mean, it's not easy to do right away. And sure, in the meantime, you know, you want to figure out again how to create repeat customers, right? because you want people to use this every day. Yeah, yeah. Christy Clement, Vashon Island, coffee dust.

Thanks for calling in. Good luck. Thank you guys so much. It was a pleasure. I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks. Hi, Christy. Christina, you are like, wow, you're a business school professor because your practical advice is so good.

You too, school of hard knocks, right? Yeah. To run and grow a business over the last 18 years, right? Like, you learn a lot about what you don't know, and then you learn to stay super, super duper curious and passionate about what you don't know, you know, truly. Before I let you go, I want to ask you one final question, which is if you could go back 18 years to, you know, in those early days when you were built out milk bar, what would have been helpful for you to know back then that may have made a little easier or better or maybe

not? I don't know. You know, I'd spend a lot of my time these days reflecting probably because I'm waiting for a batch of, you know, cookies or cake, whatever it is, to bake. It's not the early day advice, believe it or not. It's probably like the year three, year four, year five, all the way to like maybe year 10 advice. And it's really simple. It's you know what you know better than anyone else.

Do not lose the way. As the founder, as the entrepreneur, you know what you know about your business better than anyone else. So stay open and curious, but do not ever short. change what you know. You may not have a business degree, right? You may not have all these other things that these other collaborative partners or mentors have, but I'll tell you the one thing you have that no one else has, and it's what you know to be true right here. Yeah. And I, I, that's one thing. I'm saying it to you because I remind myself of it every single day. Once I

learned it, I thought, ooh, I'm never going to forget it. Yeah. Christina, thanks for coming back on the show. I had so much fun with you today. Thanks for having me, Guy. It's great having you. That's Christina Tosi, founder of Milk Bar. And by the way, if you haven't heard Christina's original How I Built this episode, you've got to go back and check it out. Really great. Episode's super fun and funny. And here's one of my favorite moments from that interview. I just remember my Blackberry kept buzzing and buzzing. And I was like, what is going? Like, did the bakery catch fire? Is my family okay? What could this possibly be? And I had all these voicemails. And I have a, my favorite voicemail was from this woman in Kansas City who I think maybe was

someone's grandma. And she was just like, well, I heard, you know, Anderson Cooper talk about this crackpot. And I just, I'm never going to make it to New York. So like, would you mind shipping me one? And it was like, are you going to tell her? Are you going to call her back and tell her no? Because I was not going to call her back and tell her no. And we now have an online business where you can email us.

And daddy is like, when opportunity knocks, what are you going to say? Like, mm, not today. When it's time to rise to the occasion, you rise. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. And by the way, please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at gairoze.com or on Substack. And of course, if you are working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one minute message that tells us a little bit about your business

and the questions or issues that you're currently facing because we would love to try and help you solve them. You can call us at 1-800-433-1298. Leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach you and we'll put all of this information in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music composed by Rumtin Arablui. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Jimmy Keely.

Our production team also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, Elaine Coates, Chris Messini, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, Sam Paulson, and Neva Grant. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to the advice line on how I built this lab.