How This CPG Founder Went From a Kitchen Experiment to 7,000 Stores

Katie Lefkowitz was a lifelong Snickers fanatic when a colon cancer scare and a doctor's orders to cut sugar should have ended that relationship. Instead, she went home and started experimenting with date-based caramel in her own kitchen.

Katie is the founder of Harken, the better-for-you candy brand now in nearly 7,000 stores including Walmart, Costco, Sprouts, and Kroger, with Whole Foods launching this fall. Before Harken, she was COO at CAULIPOWER, the original cauliflower-crust pizza brand, and that food-world network is how a printed-out prototype with stickers on it turned into Harken's first national retail deal.

In this episode of Unfinished Business, she walks through how that deal happened (including a calendar invite with no explanation attached), why she skipped the usual direct-to-consumer playbook entirely, and what she's learned running a five-person team through a Costco launch.

Our biggest takeaways:

- How a colon cancer scare turned into a national candy brand

- The unmarked calendar invite that got Harken into Walmart

- Why she walked into her first retail pitch with fake, printed-out packaging

- The case for skipping DTC and going straight to retail

- Running investor relationships through a monthly two-hour office hours block

- Why Harken is overhauling its packaging in Q3, and what drove the change

- The fiber stat she says is moving more product than any ad

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