GoodLove Foods, with Chennelle Diong

In this episode, host Joshua Ross sits down with Chennelle Diong, an entrepreneurial University of Denver alum and the founder of GoodLove Foods, a gluten-free consumer packaged goods company. Chennelle delves into her journey of starting a business in the gluten-free industry, explaining what gluten is and the rising demand for gluten-free products. She shares her motivation behind launching GoodLove Foods and the company’s approach to positioning itself for long-term growth in the rapidly expanding gluten-free market.  

 Transcript:

Joshua Ross:

My name is Joshua Ross and welcome to the Entrepreneurship and DU podcast.

Chennelle Diong:

And that’s basically the point where we knew that we had something really special, but also there was nothing on the market like it. There was nothing frozen ready to bake.

Joshua Ross:

I had the opportunity to sit down with Chennelle Diong a DU alum and the founder of Good Love Foods. Good Love Foods manufactures and sells gluten-free frozen, ready to bake goods such as cinnamon rolls, puff pastry, biscuits, and most recently pizza crust.

Chennelle Diong:

But the reason why our product and good love our brand resonates with our customers is because we understand their language. We speak to their pain points. We’re fun. We are Celiac safe, but we’re unbelievably gluten-free.

Joshua Ross:

What a year it’s been for Good Love Foods. This up and coming brand has been on an absolute tear with an average order of 80 to $90 and their pre-orders are selling out in 20 minutes. Back in June, they won the CSU Spur Colorado Pitch Slam competition. Then in September they took Home Top honors at Denver Startup Weeks pitch competition. Good Love Foods tripled the revenue in the last quarter of 2023 and their momentum continues to grow. And Instagram reel they posted recently went viral, racking up 3 million views in boosting their follower account to over 66,000 to keep up with constant demand, they’ve had to double their production capacity. And recently the Colorado FoodWorks Association nominated them for brand builder of the year. Here’s my interview, Chennelle. Well, I’m really excited for this podcast. One of my favorite humans on the earth has joined us today. So Chennelle, welcome to the entrepreneurship at DU podcast.

Chennelle Diong:

Yes, thank you so much for having me.

Joshua Ross:

So we’re going to jump right into it and going to the first question I have is what inspired you to start a gluten-free consumer packaged good company. And so for the audience, we’re going to use an acronym CPG for the rest of the episode, which is consumer packaged Good. So was there a personal need or a rising demand in gluten-free products that you saw what inspired you?

Chennelle Diong:

Yes. I 100% blame my husband, who is also my business partner. Really short backstory on that is when I met my husband and business partner in 2008, I had no idea what celiac disease was. It was here in Colorado and even at that time in Denver, gluten-free quote, gluten-free was just becoming more mainstream, I should say. It was still hard to find. So he told me what celiac disease was. I taught, I bought a gluten-Free for Dummies book because I grew up making food for others as a form of love. So I wanted to create everything for him, gluten-free that I could. So throughout our whole lives together, food was our therapy and we wanted to eat and partake together. And then fast forward, I was also diagnosed with the markers for celiac disease and we as consumers knew that there was this really specific need in the market for high quality baked goods that are gluten-free, but also which is a twist celiac safe, which not all gluten-free products are the same and or are celiac safe. And we just knew we had to provide this opportunity for customers to have fresh baked goods at home that were free from all the other allergens and for safe for them to consume.

Joshua Ross:

Is gluten, is it an allergy, is that the same with celiac or is it something you’re born with or is something you develop over time? How does it work?

Chennelle Diong:

That’s a great question. It’s all of the above. That’s why there’s such a big growing need. And we call, there’s celiacs. These are the biggest groups I should say. There’s the celiac group, there is the gluten intolerant and there’s also what we like to call the gluten-free curious. Those are the trend seekers, but also the ones that just for some reason they feel better eating gluten-free. But really there’s so many reasons why people eat gluten-free and why there’s a need. One of the biggest needs is really because of celiac disease. What gluten is, it is the protein that’s found in wheat, barley and rye. And if you’ve never really had an allergy or an intolerance to something and you just kind of look at the calories, let’s say on a nutrition label, then that’s amazing. That’s so good for you. But if you’re a celiac, you are basically a forensic label reader.

You will read every single ingredient. And if you do that, you will know that gluten is in everything, basically everything processed or even things that are natural and healthy for you that are processed can still have gluten. So if you take that into account and you go into the grocery store, just count off 90% of the products in a grocery store you can’t have as a celiac. So the growing need is to put in perspective, probably coming up to 34 million people in the US are under that umbrella of celiac intolerant and or just feel good eating.

Joshua Ross:

Okay, so you decide to move forward with good love foods and at some point in time you have to decide what products make the most sense. And you started with biscuits, cinnamon roll and puff pastry, correct? Correct. How did you come up with these recipes and why did you choose those three products?

Chennelle Diong:

I’ll start with products. At first I grew up baking biscuits. It was one of the first things that I just became obsessed with and when I was seven years old is when I would just, every single morning I would wake up on the weekend and I would make this biscuit recipe that I found. And my family loved it and I loved it. And for whatever reason it became the thing that I had to do every weekend and I had to perfect it. So years later, tying those pieces together, I was like, you know what? It’s weird. That’s one of the things I haven’t tried making for Justin or even just gluten-free. I tried all the dry mixes, I tried all these other recipes that were available online. Nothing felt like a true southern style biscuit that I grew up baking. So I revamped all these recipes.

I made something. And when I knew we hit the mark is when Justin, who his family’s from Tennessee, they know biscuits. You cannot give them a bad biscuit because they will tell you. And his father who was not celiac, tried the biscuit and he was speechless. He took a bite, didn’t say anything, took another bite and was like, this is gluten-free. And that’s basically the point where we knew that we had something really special, but also there was nothing on the market like there was nothing frozen ready to bake. Same with the cinnamon rolls. There’s a lot of dry mixes, there’s a lot of already baked goods that are frozen that you would have to reheat, but there’s always a textural thing or so many other additives that are in the ingredient lists that you don’t want. And puff pastry essentially is non-existent in the gluten-free world.

So all of those three things were like, this is exactly what we have to bring to the market. Before I even started on any of those products, I kind of knew what our list would be. So I started with the biscuits, then came and perfected that started with the cinnamon rolls and then puff pastry took the longest. It’s a very technical product to produce, especially at scale. Our customers love our products because they’re unique because there’s nothing else on the market like it. And as a consumer, I just knew that was what we needed to bring to the table.

Joshua Ross:

So those are your three signature products. Are you ready to announce a new product?

Chennelle Diong:

Yes, it’s actually, we’ve kind of soft launched it for a while on top of being gluten-free. We also want to be allergen friendly. That was one of the things actually after launching our first product that I didn’t realize was such a big deal for other folks too because Justin again was my prototype. So he’s allergic to most nuts and other seeds and other top nine allergens essentially. So I wanted to make sure and make a product that was free from all of those. So we’re not free, we’re egg free, we’re soy free, we’re free from oatmeal, oats are gluten-free, but they can also be triggers we’re free from all these other grains that can cause triggers with people with other autoimmune diseases. So on top of that though, we’ve had a lot of requests for dairy free and our next line coming out super exciting is vegan and dairy free, all organic ingredients and we have pizza crust.

So locally, if you’re lucky enough to live in the Denver and northern Colorado area, we’re in two great locations in Boulder and Fort Collins called Lucky’s Market. You can also find us in Denver at lever’s. Locavore a great neighborhood market, they’re just fabulous. They have all these local other brands as well. And we are in cheese and porters in Longmont, which is where our facility is. And coming up very soon we’re going to be in Hive Market, which is Colorado Springs. We ship frozen directly to your door. So most of our customers who really love our products, really want our products. We actually ship across the us. We have a great fulfillment partner in Denver. So if you don’t happen to be in Colorado, just go to our website, we will ship it directly to your door.

Joshua Ross:

So can you walk me through your manufacturing process? What regulations do you have to adhere to? Can you manufacture in your own kitchen, in your own house, or do you have to have a commercial kitchen? Are there certifications to ensure gluten-free integrity?

Chennelle Diong: (

Yes, great question. So really when you’re making a product for others to consume, you can use your own home kitchen. You would still have to get a license for that. That’s called a cottage food license. The clinch there is that you can prototype and launch an NM VP for example, and then you can get that cottage food license and then you can start selling at farmer’s markets. But you typically have to stay within certain boundaries. So you can’t ship out of state, you have to only basically be in your county. So there’s restrictions there. Immediately I knew that our product, I wanted to get out to the masses because I knew how popular it would be. So I went straight for a manufacturer’s food license. In the state of Colorado you have to apply for it through the Colorado State Health Department. And in order to do that, you do have to be part of a commercial kitchen that can basically vouch for you.

So I found a gluten-free kitchen in Colorado Springs that had some space for me that I could use a prototype as well as an opportunity for me to apply for that license so that I could create a product and then start shipping it and also just start getting it outside of our own county lines for example. So within those terms, you really don’t have you to follow the FDA guidelines and kitchen safety protocols, but regarding certifications, you really only need to follow those in order to get your manufacturer’s license. When it comes to gluten-free, you have to follow again, the FDA guidelines. You have to understand and be able to produce a nutrition label that is factual. You can’t have ingredients that aren’t listed that are actually in your products. You have to have all your nutrition facts correct. And if it is produced in a facility that has gluten for example, you should have to put that on your label.

So for us, we’re a 100% gluten-free facility. So we can put made in a hundred percent gluten-free facility and knowing that all of our ingredients are gluten-free, so we don’t technically have a certification, but that is I would say the gold standard of getting a gluten-free product. So there’s a couple of certifying bodies in the US that are huge. They’re kind of like the gold standard. So there’s the GFCO, it’s the gluten-free certification organization. That’s probably the logo you see the most on gluten-free products when it’s certified. And then there’s a couple other smaller certifying bodies and it costs money. It is time invested. And so that would be the next step for us in order to get that stamp of approval.

Joshua Ross:

And you manufacture right now in a commercial kitchen?

Chennelle Diong:

We do actually. So after we launched our first product, we were living in Littleton at the time, so if you’re not familiar, Littleton is about 60 ish miles north of Colorado Springs. So every other weekend we were driving round trip or myself just by myself all the time, going down to Colorado Springs producing, driving our product all the way back up to Denver. This was not a long-term solution, but it helped us get our product out there. So knowing that I had to find another gluten-free kitchen, which if no one knows, it’s really hard to find one in general, but two as something that can be 100% gluten-free. It’s really hard to find a commercial kitchen space like that commissary kitchen. So I found it just happened to be that I found someone who had a gluten-free space that she was ready to sell her company and I bought her out of her manufacturing kitchen. Didn’t have the funds at the time, but I knew I had to make it work. And so we have our own facility in Longmont that is a FDA certified kitchen.

Joshua Ross:

So going back to that commute down to Colorado Springs, at that point in time, if I remember correctly, you were also hand delivering most orders.

Chennelle Diong:

Yes. And this was pre shipping. So we wanted to get the product out there where we were getting a lot more customers that were just word of mouth, letting their neighbors and their friends and their family know that, hey, we’ve got this amazing product that you have to try. So our best form of distribution at that time was either picking up from our own personal address, which I had that blasted on our website, but people need their products. And if you were in, I think it was an 18 mile radius, so sometimes within, and it was in Littleton, so sometimes those addresses would be all the way up in Evergreen. But an 18 mile radius around Denver is pretty big, and which you have, let’s say 12 orders that come in that are all delivery, which I didn’t know at the time until I did it for myself. It takes a whole entire day just to do 12 orders, but it was the best way to get our product there. We were hand delivering, hand dropping, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes early in the morning, sometimes it just was whenever it was possible. But I would hand deliver and do a custom text message letting them know that their product was there on their doorstep. So you don’t do delivery anymore because we’ve basically surpassed that. But we did what we had to do.

Joshua Ross:

You did what you had to do. It’s a perfect example of doing things that don’t scale over time, but you have to do them for a number of reasons. But most important to find product fit, you wanted to make sure that people actually wanted what you were selling. And I have friends that you delivered to and got those texts early in the morning or late in the evening and they would reach out to me. I’m like, this is crazy. They just actually hand delivered this, these biscuits to me

Chennelle Diong:

And a handwritten, I did print a very formal looking like packing slip, but I would put a cute little note on the bag, staple the bag, put the bag on the doorstep. It was all very personal, all high touch points. But yeah, it was the best way to get our product out there. And it was encouraging though, even though it was really grueling at times, and no one likes to be on the road that long if you’re not a delivery driver, I should say there were so many things that were going through my mind every single trip I could be doing this instead, but I have to do this right now is just that the feedback from the customers was immediate and was positive.

Joshua Ross:

So there’s obviously a demand for gluten-free products. What makes your gluten-free product stand out? Why is somebody going to select good love foods over the competition?

Chennelle Diong:

I love this question when it comes to good love foods, when it comes to the product specifically I had mentioned earlier is that we just knew that this set of products specifically was not available. And if we came to the market with these, we had to one do it right because customers are discerning if they don’t like your product, they’re not going to buy it again. So that was first and foremost. We had to have something high quality and amazing. We had to blow their minds because ultimately we wanted people to think, are you sure this is gluten-free? But also it had to be convenient in a way that really hadn’t been done before. In the gluten-free space, tons of baked goods in the gluten-free space typically are on the dry shelves or if they’re in the freezer, like I’d mentioned you defrost or reheat. So our whole concept of having a fresh baked good at home that you didn’t have to put the work in was really novel and it still is. There’s a few competitors that have come out since. But the reason why our product and good love our brand resonates with our customers is because we understand their language. We speak to their pain points. We’re fun, we are celiac safe, but we’re unbelievably gluten-free. What we like to say is that we are crave worthy convenience that anyone can share whether you’re gluten-free or not.

Joshua Ross:

Alright, so I first met you in about April of 2022. You were applying for the entrepreneurship at Base Camp Accelerator and you were part of our first cohort. So walk us through before Basecamp and after Basecamp, and we had a chance to talk off air before we recorded this podcast, and you delivered quite a bit of interesting information about how you’ve all accelerated and grown. So walk us through what’s happening with good love foods.

Chennelle Diong:

Yes. So pre-B base camp, I would say we were in operation for about a year before that and I was finishing up my MBA at du and I really loved the idea of base camp, but for whatever reason I had my own reservations and it took me up until the day that the applications were due to submit my own application and to feel I guess pride in what I was doing or not feel scared that what I had wasn’t going to be received well. So I submitted my application and up to that point, I hadn’t done any pitches. I had worked on the marketing, I’d worked on our brand and built our brand image and I wanted to make sure that was set. We had our product, but I’d never pitched, the very first pitch I did was to get into base camp and I was shaking, I was scared.

I literally didn’t sleep the night before. So through the whole, and well surprise, I did get into Basecamp, it was amazing, learned so much. But one of the biggest takeaways for me was just the technique of getting your pitch, getting it down and the different formats of how to pitch and changing it on who your audience is that has to change. And so learning that really gave me the confidence that I needed to continue basically speaking about the brand and not just to our customers who we already knew loved it, but to people in the industry outside of good love foods, whether it was investors or anyone in the natural food space, buyers for grocery stores for example. I learned so much. So taking that into consideration, I basically had the confidence to start applying to other pitches and 2023 was huge. So that was in the summer of 2022 leading into 2023, same kind of concept where I was like, am I ready?

Are they even going to like this product? I was really scared, but I applied for Expo West’s pitch Slam, which if you’re unfamiliar Expo West is the largest natural foods expo in the us. I mean 60,000 people plus attend buyers, suppliers, brands, of course consumers also, depending on what field they’re in, also attend. It’s just this huge insane event in Anaheim. It’s been going on for years, but that’s kind of the gold standard as well. That’s where you want to get to. And as someone who, we weren’t really on grocery store, we had barely just gotten into our first retail store when I applied and then got the really amazing call that we got into their pitch slam among nine other semifinalists, and you happen to be in California and you showed up for that really big event. But going from pitching at Basecamp in a small little office with amazing DU professors feeling and insanely scared to fast forward about five months later, six months later, I was pitching at the largest natural food expo in the US on a main stage in front of a crowd of a couple hundred people. And I didn’t shake and I mean I was still nervous, but just putting that into perspective, that’s what Basecamp led me to feel empowered to do something like that.

Joshua Ross:

And it was a lot more than a few hundred people and she was pitching against some really amazing products, some with two, three, $4 million in revenue and you held your own up there. You did a great job both in the pitch and in the q and a, but we’re not going to stop there. So then what’s happened since there? Let’s talk about the growth of the business and I think you’ve won a couple other pitch competitions.

Chennelle Diong:

So all in 2023, I just had this fire, my partner Justin, basically right after expo, we started building more awareness and we were getting repeat orders, and that’s about the time too where we transitioned to shipping, which helped grow our business, but it’s super costly. And so we were not even really breaking even at that point on top of having a lease and all of the other costs that come with being an entrepreneur and starting a CPG capital heavy sort of company. But we knew we just had to keep grinding and keep building awareness and good things would come applied for a couple other pitches I pitched in the inaugural Colorado collision, which you are also at. This is hosted by CSU Spur in Denver and won that pitch, which was amazing. Kept that rolling. And I don’t know what prompted me to apply for this, it’s not food specific, but I decided to apply for Denver Startup Weeks pitch competition.

It was one of those situations where I just felt good about applying, but I was okay if I didn’t get in because it’s typically designated for tech. But really I just had that feeling like I really wanted to apply and see what the community that I was in and actively selling products and being part of with how they would receive me and made it through the semifinals, got to the finals, and I’m getting goosebumps now because I still freak out about this, but we won Denver Startup week in 2023. This was in September. And it was a really defining moment I think for me personally, but for my partner and I as well, getting that big huge ginormous check and all the services that come along with it and just feeling welcome and accepted, but also that people believed in us as much as we believed in ourselves.

And then since then our sales have, I don’t even know the percentage now. Basically we’ve grown on average 400% year over year. So to put it into perspective, when I pitched at Expo West in March of 2023, I think like you said, there was some five, $6 million annual revenue brands up there. We had a measly $60,000 to date, and at the end of 2023, we closed out almost at 250,000. All of those sales, by the way, most of them were from October to December. So you can see it snowballed. And we went viral on a couple of our Instagram posts, which catapulted our following of about three to 4,000 to over 60,000 in about a week, which was also insane. And also orders were just coming in. We had to close down and shut down the website multiple times and we basically have to throttle our sales right now, which is a good problem to have. But at the same time, if we just had product all the time, our sales would just be even more in insane than they are now. But we’re just really trying to manage and provide an experience for the current customers and for future customers. So we’re just doing our best to really keep up with this demand. But we are probably on track to exceed 500,000 before the end of the year.

Joshua Ross:

And so if you go with potentially not next year, you’re going to do 400% again. But let’s say you double your revenue. I’m going to do the simple math here. That’s a million dollars in revenue in 2025.

Chennelle Diong:

It’s hard to wrap my brain around because like I said, it’s just my partner and I and all of this. We both have manufacturing backgrounds, we also are production oriented. I still work in event production and event marketing where you have a project from a big client that you just don’t know how you’re going to do it in the beginning, but then you do it. And that’s kind of what every month feels like because every month, since I’d say about November of last year, we get all of these orders in and we increase it every single time. How are we going to get 200 extra units out this week? And we somehow do because on top of the direct to consumer sales, our velocity in our retail stores has also just increased exponentially. So restocking retailers every single week while also tripling our output of our production every other week. It’s a lot to handle, but we also improve our systems and our processes, which doesn’t sound that sexy, but it really is. It’s really hard to do that when you have a physical product. So I think we closed out the end of March at almost 50 k,

Joshua Ross:

Done, well done and well deserved. So give us a day in the life of Chennelle.

Chennelle Diong:

Oh my gosh, I want to say something really cool,

But I wake up, we make coffee, take our dog for a little walk, we dub our facility, the lab, we call it the Good Love Lab, but this is where our production facility is. So we get to the lab, which is about a couple miles away from where our apartment is in Longmont, and we literally just produce all day. It’s not always manufacturing all the time. We’ve increased our production because we’ve dialed in some of those processes. But in conjunction to good love, I also still do my other side gig. I also do Step or DU and just trying to be the CEO and the boss and all of those things. It’s like I sit at my desk, I do some emails, I go to the kitchen, I produce, I come back and that’s on repeat every single day. So pretty much it’s that. And then I go to bed.

It’s not anything glamorous whatsoever. But what’s really fun is that some of our customers that have been with us since the beginning know this, but some don’t. When we went viral, for example, people see our branding, they see this beautiful page and they see all these amazing products and they kind of assume that we’re this huge company and why are your guys sold out all the time? I’m trying to find your products. You really should get into Whole Foods where I live. And I’m like, I would love to do that, but it’s literally just two of us right now, so we’re going to get there. That’s the goal for sure. This is a really glamorous moment, not this previous holiday season, but the one before that where really we were also exponentially growing. We had a really big deadline to get our shipping orders out right before Christmas. And the only way I could do that was if I slept at, and this is before we moved up to Longmont and we were still living in Littleton and still commuting, which is just a big of a trek as driving down to Colorado Springs. But the only way I could do it was if I slept at the lab. So I made a little cot and I got about three hours of shuteye, but I literally slept in our kitchen overnight in order to produce enough product to get it out the next day,

Joshua Ross:

Sleeping at the lab, driving around metro Denver delivering foods that does sound glamorous. Yeah. What are some of the challenges you face running good love foods in terms of is it cashflow, is it scaling? Is it creating good product? Walk us through some of those challenges and how you deal with ’em.

Chennelle Diong:

Yes, all it’s all been a challenge. I think one of the things that set us up for success to manage those challenges was just being really strong and tenacious when it came to understanding our market, understanding our product, our unique profit selling proposition, as well as coming up with a brand and developing our brand beforehand. That’s one of the things that if you’re a younger brand, things can change and you can do that, but you don’t want to be focusing on brand development if you’ve got a really hot product that people want because it’s really hard to do both. So I would say that helped us set us up for a success in order to focus on the crazy demand we’re experiencing now. But I would say, for example, the facility I guess would be the second thing that helped us really jump over that.

One of the biggest hurdles was production we couldn’t produce in the small kitchen down in the springs. And so we found our own place and maybe we weren’t ready at the time, but now we’ve already maxed it out. And so it was a really necessity in terms of our growth. But growth in general, it requires a lot of cash, especially with a physical product. So cash flow, I’m still managing it. It’s still really hard, but it’s getting to a point now finally, almost three years later where we’re in a groove of growth and I can really see the light at the end of the tonal in terms of our next stage of growth. Because really you’re not, as an entrepreneur, especially as a startup, you never stop thinking about the next step when you feel like you’re in this really intense, pivotal moment where like I said, you’re just grinding all the time, that’s amazing because that means you’re about to get over that hurdle, but immediately you’re in that next hurdle and you’re already thinking about how am I going to get through this? So dunno if that answered your question, but

Joshua Ross:

It’s great. And if I could offer one piece of advice that I struggled with as an entrepreneur, well, I struggled with many things, but I never enjoyed the moment. And I was always, to your point, looking at what was next or stressed about cashflow or stressed about employees. I never just said and just ba in small victories. So you have had quite a few victories basking those at least for a minute.

Chennelle Diong:

Yeah, I completely agree. And that is a really good point. That’s a reminder I need to tell myself and my partner and I both this week for example, we have a really amazing pop-up event in Memphis. So we’re going to do a biscuits and bikes popup on Friday, and in order to do that, we’ve had to triple our output that we haven’t really done before in one week. And so we are not getting any sleep. We do double shifts. I was up this morning or we were up this morning at 2:00 AM producing after falling asleep the night before at about 10. So it’s not recommended whatsoever, but it’s also right at that hurdle where we know we’re going to get over it. And we’ve got people starting over the summer, which is really for us. We already have hired internally. We have someone that started in our kitchen that does all the dishes and other odds and ends, which has been a huge help for us. But also I have my very first intern starting, which is really big for me. I’m so excited for that. So she’s going to be starting in May, and then we have someone else that’s going to be starting in our production kitchen as well.

Joshua Ross:

Oh, that is fantastic news. So with that, how do you personally define success for good love foods and how does Justin define it and are they the same?

Chennelle Diong:

You know what I would say the reason why we’re such good partners is because they’re not the same. So for me, thinking about good love, success, I don’t want to sound cliche and just say it’s just growth. I do originally when I launched this company, and it’s still my goal, it’s like I do, I want to become a freezer staple. I want good love foods to be that next product that you see in every single grocery store because it’s always there. That’s still my goal. But at the same time, it really is about building community throughout launching good love. One of the most comforting things that I’ve, and something that also fuels the fire is that customers will come up to us and just say thank you. Not just for the product, but just for being you guys. And that is so encouraging and so exciting to hear, and I just want to continue to build that community and have a place where people feel welcome.

Inclusivity has always been something that we have strived for and I’ve always wanted to create within not just the gluten-free community, but all the other allergens as well that we’re free from. But just from a food perspective, we want people to feel welcome that they can enjoy and eat our product. So for me, it’s more about the community, but while also just getting in every single grocery store we can. Ultimately, for Justin, I would say he just wants to keep building the brand. And from an internal perspective, since he’s manufacturing focused, is we just want to be able to not have to physically do the work ever again. It’s hard, it’s grueling, we love it, but we are all about putting systems in place and purchasing machinery that will help us. So truly focused on building a manufacturing facility versus a handmade product. I would say that is his biggest goal for us is to be like, all right, we need a few people, but we need some machinery and we needed someone to push the button and thousands of units to come out versus us hand cutting a thousand biscuits in a day, which this is my biscuit cutting arm right here.

Joshua Ross:

There will be a time as you become more and more successful, which I’m positive that will happen, where you two will be like, I just want to go back into the kitchen and cut biscuits. I don’t want to deal with employees, I don’t want to deal with investors. I don’t want to deal with the accountant. I don’t want to deal with any of that. I just want to go back to make investigates.

Chennelle Diong:

That’s a great dream. I cannot wait for that to happen. Yeah.

Joshua Ross:

Okay. So gluten-free has evolved. I have friends that are gluten-free and we go out to dinner and I always check the menus and early on it always seemed like an afterthought with a lot of these menus. Here’s this little side gluten-free menu, and the food frankly looked terrible over time. It’s become very impressive what people are able to make gluten-free. How has the consumer’s taste evolved over time and their demand for quality products?

Chennelle Diong:

Yeah, that’s a great question because I think that is actually what has triggered the change in the market is the consumer base. I would say we really saw we meaning consumers of gluten-free products saw a shift in this and in the mid 2010s I would say is when you could see that customers weren’t just willing to go somewhere that just said they had gluten-free options, or there was a product that said, gluten-free on it. We all have discerning pallets and we can say no to that product. So I think a lot of products, actually CPG wise, that came out that probably didn’t succeed because just because you put gluten-free on it doesn’t mean they’re going to continue to buy it. They may try it. So that was one big shift. And then in the restaurant and hospitality, which I also have a background in, I will say it is all about education.

I think because the awareness has built so much over time and that people are testing their kids earlier, so kids are actually learning that they’re celiac at a younger age versus really even when Justin, he found out when he was a senior in high school. So that is a life-changing event when you’ve already been living 17 years of your life eating gluten and then you can’t have it. So awareness education has really shifted that in hospitality and peanut allergies or something like that were really what chefs or restaurants focused on gluten-free was an afterthought, like you said, because it was like, I think most people thought it was just a trend or it was a health conscious thing, but it wasn’t necessarily taken to the extreme of like, oh, it’s a peanut allergy. True, there are wheat allergies and people can be anaphylactic, but when you’re a celiac, for example, 20 parts per million or less can ruin your, not just day, but two weeks, you’re internally just dying. It hurts so bad. Basically 20 parts per million is the tip of a thumbtack. So one little tiny piece of gluten and you’re screwed for two weeks. So understanding that customers would not go back to a restaurant if they quote got or felt like they were gluten. So that has shifted tremendously within the hospitality industry.

Joshua Ross:

And I’ve told you this story before, but I’ll profess my ignorance. There’s this brand that came out a number of years ago. It was a gluten-free beer holiday, and I heard about this brand and I’m like, that is serving such a small market that is bound to fail. And boy was I wrong because A, as Chennelle talked about earlier, how big the gluten-free market is and how many people demand it and require it. So this brand was actually serving a very large target market. But the more interesting thing about this is most or all breweries cannot brew a gluten-free beer for fear of cross-contamination. But if you go to most breweries and you’re with your friends that have a gluten-free requirement and there’s no gluten-free beer, they’re stuck drinking the root beer or something else. So now Holiday daily is selling into every one of these breweries because they all want to have a gluten-free alternative, but they don’t want to do it themselves. And I believe last time I heard they were now in seven different states.

Chennelle Diong:

Yes, shout out to Holiday Lee. They actually were an amazing partner when we first launched our brand. They gave us sort of a platform to be able to test our first product, but that is exactly what’s shifting in the gluten-free market. It’s a great analogy for what people used to think was only delegated to a specific group like, oh, that’s only you can have it, or only. I think what’s more poignant is saying only you can enjoy it. Just because you’re not gluten-free or you can consume weight, doesn’t mean you’re not going to enjoy something. So that was something that has shifted and has been destigmatized by a company like Holiday Daily because what people enjoy is beer. They enjoy community, they enjoy being able to drink something with their friends in a space and feel comfortable. And that’s what they’ve provided and that’s what they’ve destigmatized as well, because you’ll go there on a weekend and the tap house is packed, and I can guarantee you not everyone in there is gluten-free, and they’re all enjoying the beer.

Joshua Ross:

Alright, so we’re sitting here a year from now, we’re having this conversation about what you have accomplished over the last year. Walk us through what your goals are and what your hopes are for the remaining part of 2024 and part of 2025.

Chennelle Diong:

Oh, I was thinking about that actually before coming in here, and it was really hard to think of something unique because really for me it’s still just that growth. It’s still just maintaining it while maintaining it in terms of a sustainable way because I don’t want to burn out. But at the same time, I just continuously want to bring products to the market that customers love and we’ll keep coming back for. So a year from now though, let’s just say hypothetically I do want to, if it’s not because of machinery or because of a co-packer, for example, I just want someone else producing our product so that I can do all the other things that we have to do in order to run our company, not just as an afterthought. Production takes all of my time and energy for the most part. So a year from now, someone else is producing it, someone else is trucking it, someone else is driving it to distribution centers. And we have one scheduled full day off a week, which we don’t have any days off ever right now. So if I could factor in one day off every week, that would be amazing.

Joshua Ross:

Alright, my final question to you. What advice would you give other entrepreneurs looking to start a business? Obviously there’s a lot of advice, but what should they zero in on?

Chennelle Diong:

I will say just from experience, I will say focus on your brand. Things will change and that’s fine. But I think if you understand your brand, you’ll feel more confident bringing whatever it is, a physical product or a service to market. But ultimately the umbrella over that is there’s nothing as perfect. Don’t be a perfectionist. I feel like entrepreneurs inherently are because we see something and we know that we can do it better or want to try to do it better, but do not get stuck on being a perfectionist and anything, whether it’s your product or service or your branding, because that’s just going to slow you down and that’s going to hold you back. I’ve had to, in the beginning, and even now, it’s taken a while to launch our pizza. It’s taken a long time to launch the puff pastry. Some of that was really dialing in, of course, the formula, but other times it was just thinking like, oh, it’s not ready. But you know what? If you have that mindset, you are never going to be ready and you just need to do it. So don’t let yourself be held back by thinking something has to be perfect before putting it out there into the community. Whether it’s a business to business type service or product or anything, just do it. You’ll get the feedback and you’ll change it. Your life won’t end if you get something negative, it just will help you grow.

Joshua Ross:

Well, Chennelle, thank you for joining us today and thank you for making me a little bit smarter.

Chennelle Diong:

Thank you so much.

Joshua Ross:

The entrepreneurship at DU podcast was recorded in Marjorie Reed Hall on the University of Denver campus. You can find us on Instagram at du Entrepreneur on Twitter, x at DU entrepreneur, and on Facebook at entrepreneurship at du. This episode was engineered, edited, and produced by Sophia Holt. Entrepreneurship at DU is part of the Daniels College of Business, which has its own podcast. Check out Voices of Experience wherever you get your podcasts.