Christina Dorr Drake, Co-founder & CEO Willa's Oat Milk
Christina Dorr Drake, Co-Founder & CEO Willa's Oat Milk shares how she and her sister started the brand inspired by their grandmother's oat milk recipe. After observing a gap in the plant-based milk market, Christina, her sister, and husband set out to bring a cleaner oat milk (think no gums and lower sugar) to consumers. Christina took her experience working with brands at agencies along with her sister's background in food & beverage manufacturing, to launch a better for you oat milk (that was formulated in their grandmother’s kitchen!).
Now you can shop their best-selling oat milks online and select retailers. You'll also learn how Christina needed to change their launch strategy in 2020.
Such a great lesson in small bets, local activations, social listening, and trusting your gut!
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Hi everyone, welcome back to a new episode of Emerging Brands podcast with Kelly Bennett. Today I have the founder of my favorite oat milk and I'm not just saying this I genuinely have been in love with the oat milk that Christina Dorr Drake is the co founder and CEO of Willa’s oat milk. I'm telling you, it tastes different from any other oat milk I've ever had and I've had a lot of different Oh, milk. So when I had the opportunity to have Christina on the show and have her share her story, I nerded out big time. And so Christina, I'm so happy you're here.
Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. I love your pod and I feel honored to have had you as a fan.
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I literally was telling my girl for not too long ago. I'm like, I found the best oatmeal. I'm just going to put it out there because she's not a huge fan of oat milk but I'm like I found the one that will turn your opinion about oat milk so thank you for helping me do that. So something that really struck me about your product aside from the amazing taste is the story behind it. I love a good brand story and I would love to kick off this episode with you sharing a little bit of how you started the brand.
Sure, we start like the short version of the story is we started it because we were tired of plant-based milks that were mostly water and a lot of sugar and didn't really have plant-based ingredients or any sort of like a couple of their nutritional benefits.
And so we started with my grandmother's recipe. She made oat milk, you know, using real ingredients you can recognize. I was super delicious and we wanted to bring that to the world. And as we got further down the entrepreneurial path, we just kept asking questions about things we were seeing in the category and why there was so much sugar, especially in the oat milks out there. And what we found was that usually oat milk is made using just oat sugar and all the healthy parts are thrown out as food waste. And so really, this is my sister's brilliant. She and Laura and our team figured out how to mill the whole oats. So you get this super rich taste. It's got all the protein and fiber and less sugar, and it's a far more sustainable process as well.
I love it. I love it. So also, let's give a shout out to your grandma who was making oatmeal before making oat milk was cool and trendy. That's amazing. So it's really in your family tree to be pioneers of oat milk, which I love.
She was, she was such an incredible force. She loved cooking. She was just someone who was kind of, she, I'd always wanted to be a chef, but instead just, you know, got really into food, really into nutrition. She didn't know that oats had pre-botic fiber, but she knew they were really good for digestion, and she just started making it and making kind of changes and tweaks to her recipe to make it taste even better for her kids and grandkids. But yeah, she was a huge forced in our lives. And she was very ahead of her time in many, many ways.
Absolutely. So what was the journey of saying, okay, grandma makes this awesome oat milk? I see that there's a gap in the market. Did you start making it in your kitchen? How did you put it, you know, bottle it at first? I would love to hear that behind the scenes.
Yeah, there were so many different forces at play at the same time. I was kind of on the lookout and interested in doing something different I had had you know this wonderful career on the strategy side and agencies and I love that you're a strategist for instructors as well and I was wanting to build something and create something new and my sister and my husband you know we were always kind of brainstorming around ideas you know we just we couldn't understand why there weren't more options that were plant-based notes that actually tasted really good and and also used truly plant-based ingredient. And so my sister's background is in manufacturing food and beverages, total opposite of mine, which is super great. I remember growing up. We were like, how did this happen? We're so different. Like she loved chemistry. And I was like, that's my worst class ever. But now it's so kind of lucky that we're sort of two sides of the coin. So she started by taking my grandma's recipe and working on it in my mom's kitchen, which is oddly enough, my parents' house is where my grandparents used to live. So they sold their house to my parents. So literally, we were working in well as original kitchen, and nights and weekends, they were just doing version after version after version of her recipe, dialing it in even for an hour, making sure it tasted really delicious with coffee, matcha, everything, testing it on kids, adults, and they did lots and lots and rounds before we launched our first products and in each time we do a new you know a new launch of a new product we do tons and tons of testing blind taste tests with lots of people in our family and friends.
I love that and something also you just touched upon is having a family run business. Yeah how is that?
It's so short of answer it's great because we have so much trust in each other and go right into it. We were already having really honest conversations. We're very clear on our values. They're shared across the board. I mean, when it comes to making decisions about what kind of ingredients do we want to use, what kind of, you know, goals do we want to set for ourselves from like a climate friendly, climate positive standpoint, things like that. We're just extremely aligned. And then, you know, we work really well together. We all have different areas of expertise and really trust in each other's abilities, which is huge, hugely important. The about our relationships. I did not want this to impact my relationship with my sister or my relationship with my husband who's also one of our co-founders and I was like listening to all the podcast with founders and listening for the stories where they were still friends, you know, years and years later and what I heard was they all do therapy. Like they're all doing therapy on their own or they were and or they were seeing like a coach or a therapist together and that's something that we all do and believe really strongly in and we've been through so many challenges honestly like that that has been so critical to just I think us making really wise good decisions along the way. I love that and I think that's a really proactive approach to make sure that everyone side of the street is tuned in to doing their thing and then also how you're showing up for everyone else and having that support around you to do that. I think that's incredible. Thank you for sharing that. That's a really great also a takeaway and a really practical tangible task that someone can approach a co-founder with or if they're getting started, that is a really great note to take from this.
So thank you for sharing that. That's awesome. And something that you touched upon two is how you're doing things differently in your industry. So how did that go over, I should say, when you were starting to pitch maybe to retailers, starting online to consumers, what was the feedback that you were getting in the beginning?
In the beginning, it was, it was a really buffet because when we first had the idea, it was around 2017, we started on it kind of at the end 2018 launch until 2021. So in the early days, you know, I remember having a conversation right around this time of year when we were just getting started with a friend of mine who is vegan and she said to me, I don't really care what ingredients are in my plant-based milk. I just care that it doesn't have any animal products. And you know, this was when Impossible Burger was coming out and that scared me because I was like, well, if people, you know, just kind of move in this direction of being plant based in quotes but like don't really care what the ingredients are then we're completely irrelevant. We took, we took a risk and we bet it on people and demand kind of following the direction that we were headed and that's what we're seeing now. So in the early days it was a lot of educating people around, did you know that you know a lot of these are slumping, smell tap, a lot of sugar, they have grape seed oil you know people would say I mean I don't feel well when I drink this stuff and I don't know why and I'd say well let's Let's take a look at the ingredients. Now, everybody's become a lot more aware of all that and the growth and the category is happening around the cleaner labels, organic, less sugar. And so yeah, it was a real leap of faith at the time. Now it's like we need to really shout and make it clear that Willas doesn't give you the big glycemic index spike and crash that other oat milks do. 09:15 And people are already kind of ahead of the curve there which is really, really exciting to see. That's, I didn't realize that you had launched in 21. I thought you were around even longer because of how great the brand has grown. So congratulations. It's only 2023, which is still really relatively young. 09:35 So how have you been able, what has been the strategy to get to being on shelves, selling online? What, if you could give us a little bit of just how that aspect of the brand came together? 09:49 Okay. It evolves dramatically. So in the early days, I was terrified of retail. I was like, we don't have the money. 09:58 It's going to take to make sure that people see it and it moves off shelf. There's so much that can go wrong there. 10:03 So I was all about like offices, co-working spaces, and we had this whole plan set in place to launch in 50 WeWorks and a bunch of tech offices in spring of 2020 in New York. 10:15 So that will be a year and a half building towards that. So obviously that plan had to be shelved and we had to expand our stride. 10:24 Tina. I know. It was devastating. Well also thank you for sharing that because of what a pivot you needed to make. 10:34 Wow. And I feel like you could relate with this as a strategist when you've got your plan, your goals, everything, all this worked up. 10:41 And then you're like, I had to kind of like a race my memory of what that was in order to be able to think about what else was possible. 10:51 So it was kind of like in a way it was like a grieving and a shedding process and being like, okay, what are the other things we can do? 11:00 And so we got on to Amazon Prime by January 2021 and then we had some retailers reach out and so we started launching out retail and we did really well at the shelf which gave us a lot more confidence. 11:12 We build out our e-commerce and made sure that we had subscriptions available. In the end, it had a lot of positive outcomes because we ended up becoming Omni Channel and seeing that we had more levers we could pull. 11:27 We were more diversified. We had more options. But yeah, it was completely devastating at the time. Wow. So you really made a hard pivot, essentially the opposite of what you originally wanted to do, what helped give you that confidence to make such a pivot? 11:52 Was it just like we need to figure this out and let's just try it because we literally can't do anything else? 11:57 Or never mind, maybe this would really work? Well, I would love to hear just how that team conversation went. You know, I think a big part of it was was the idea that we could why not try things like that's what you kind of have to remember is a small brand in your early days. 12:25 You can make small bets. You can do small tests. You don't have to launch in 400 stores overnight. You can pick a retailer like Aeroan or Foxtrot or you know even one in your own neighborhood that maybe We have some cool marketing strategies that they found, or maybe they have some really great partnership 12:43 ideas, or you can do things in a small way and test it out and see what works. That's what we decided to do. 12:50 We're going to pick some retailers that have really good marketing programs and test it out. See what we can do. 12:57 See what we can learn. Amazon was a no-brainer. I was going to ask how that went as well. At first I was I was very worried about it because I was like I know Amazon is a beast but I'd thankfully had started early on in our entrepreneurial journey just trying to get introductions to every founder I 13:15 could in food and beverage and so I knew some who had been really successful in Amazon and I went to them first and got their advice and then I started asking around for like who do you know who can help us with you know our Amazon strategy and setup because the doubles are in details there and I think 13:34 part of what really got us through is early on in Willa's like my strategy was just to talk to as many entrepreneurs as I could and ask them what are the pitfalls to avoid? 13:46 What did you do? What worked? What didn't? What do you recommend we start with and then who else do you think we should meet with? 13:53 Who would be helpful? So going into the pandemic you know we might have been stuck at home but we had this network of people we could reach out to with questions and advice and things like that on channels we hadn't explored. 14:04 And that's such a powerful strategy that I think so many people overlook. And it's really saying, Hey, I see what you're doing. 14:14 You're doing awesome. I'm going to be doing something similar. I would love to hear your feedback. And more chances than not, people are very forthcoming with saying, Hey, Yeah, this is what worked beware of this. 14:27 I found two most founders and entrepreneurs love sharing that type of information to help each other because why the hell not and Just putting yourself out there could be scary and a bit daunting However, the amount of feedback and knowledge you gained to then apply to your brand and an epic pivot I'm 14:51 sure that was priceless that the feedback that you got Absolutely, and so much of it was about advising us around the things to say no to two just as much as the things to say yes to, which is often kind of the most important thing with food and beverage company. 15:06 Right. Yeah, I think so often entrepreneurs are portrayed in the media as being really territorial and competitive and cutthroat. And I have not found that to be the case. 15:17 I found them to be the most generous people. It seems like everybody wants to pay it forward. And you know, I may be a part of it that's, you know, you're kind of working by yourself a lot. 15:26 So you like that any chance to just talk to somebody else and get ideas or, you know, you never know. 15:32 Even if somebody is just getting started, they might unlock something for you when you're kind of in your day-to-day, just, you know, cranking through emails or whatever. 15:42 Absolutely. I could say that that was part of the reason why I wanted to have this podcast is that I could then also talk to other founders who are building emerging brands. 15:52 And here are their stories just because I love to nerd out on this. And I think we could all learn so much from each other. 15:59 And then to record these conversations and share them with my community of emerging brand founders. To me, that is such a cool aspect of this whole why we're doing it, right? 16:10 And the bigger picture of why we want to be founders and building things differently, sharing this type of information is such a critical piece to that. 16:19 So thank you for sharing that. That was also just reassuring for me to hear. I needed to have that reminder today. 16:26 So thank you. Something else that you touched upon is retail, and you have many amazing skews behind you. So how has been rolling out new products, new flavors? 16:40 I would love to hear a little behind the scenes there. Yeah, I think I think it can be really hard to figure out which products are worth launching and which ones to hold on. 16:53 And it's complicated because when you're a small new brand, each time you launch a new product, that's more cost, more logistics to manage, more complexity to manage, more that can go wrong. 17:05 At the same time, you know, no amount of research can fully tell you what the demand is going to be for a product that gets to the shelf. 17:14 And I think so much of your job in the early days is as quickly as possible, figuring out what your core is, figuring out what those products are and what is going to do the best from a taste, nutrition, and ingredient standpoint. 17:27 The way we've always approached it is doing as much research as possible, but also listening to our gut. So our unsweetened original product, that's the closest to my grandma's recipe, the cleanest one, the lowest sugar. 17:39 So that was a real good instinct on my point, on my part. You know, there wasn't really research telling us to make that product. 17:47 Some people told me I shouldn't make it. I should just double down on the skew that we had. And it quickly became our top seller. 17:55 So sometimes we have to listen to your gut. With our chocolate, we were doing these events that we were, so we were making like oatmeal, white russians for half an hour, much a lot today is in the morning. 18:08 We've got a ton of insight through those experiences and people kept coming up to us and saying, would you make a chocolate milk? 18:14 Because that's my guilty pleasure at night. And it was like every event, somebody would come over and say that to us. 18:20 And then we discovered that chocolate milks are like the highest sugar, the worst ingredients. And so we partnered with rock with chocolate and make it chocolate to make a really delicious, creamy, real ingredient chocolate milk with cacao and a little bit of maple sugar. 18:35 And that one became our most awarded product. So, yeah, that's really cool that you partner with Raka, because that is one of my favorite chocolate brands. 18:45 Oh, I need, okay, I need to go shop the chocolate milk. Yeah, no, their chocolate is out standing. I didn't even realize that was your chocolate partner. 18:54 Ooh, okay, I love that so much. So, you just touched upon a few things, small bets, local activations, social listening, partnerships, and testing, and listening to your gut. 19:13 That's a solid strategy while building a brand. And like, back to the basics, also, of building those relationships. I love it. 19:25 I love it so much. It's also the advice I need to hear because it's it's easy for any of us to just make that endless to-do list and kind of forget like what is actually what is actually going to move our business? 19:37 What is happening here? Totally, totally. And that was going to be my next question of what is the big picture that you're working towards for Wellas? 19:47 Well we are seeing a lot of success at retail shelves and we're testing some new things there you know launching in the pandemic sampling wasn't an option. 19:56 Right. You had to get really creative with other strategies. Now we're finding low and behold, sampling really works well for us and people love the taste of our products and maybe we should double down on that. 20:05 So a lot of testing and learning, just like constantly trying new things and then if it works, like doing more of it, always exploring new products. 20:14 Our team is prolific. I mean, they come up with so many amazing recipes. Sometimes it's I feel like one of the hardest things is saying we're not ready to launch this yet. 20:26 Let's wait until we've got the right retail partner or you know, or formulation really makes sense from a unit economic standpoint. 20:33 But we have some innovations that I'm really excited about over the next like year and a half or so that will be launching. 20:41 I can't wait. And yeah, And, you know, and then just constantly I think as a founder, like being super ruthless with your tongue, you know, I feel like that's my day and day out. 20:53 Like, aside from our north star of our mission and wanting to have a net positive impact on the health of people in the planet day and day out, I just need to remind myself to just make sure that I'm spending my time in the right places. 21:05 That's a good one and my last question was what piece of advice you would give to an emerging brand founder with that be it. 21:13 I think that's one. The other one is talk to everyone you can and ask them who else they think would be helpful for you to meet with and don't be afraid to ask them what the pitfalls are to avoid. 21:22 I feel like that question is almost more important than like, where should I start? What should I do with my time? 21:28 It's like. The pitfalls and the, you know, the landmines that you can end up in in food and beverage in particular are many and vast and it looks really cute to start a no milk company or, you know, a soda company, but it's complicated and there's just a lot that you want to know before you get started 21:50 . That is solid advice as someone who is the creative director of a restaurant. I learned a lot about food and beverage really quickly. 21:58 And we opened up two locations and all the things and I was like whoa this is food and beverage is its own be so I give so much respect to all founders but in particular food and beverage founders because it's a whole next level of what you have to do in order to get your idea to a shelf to a consumer 22:17 so yes lots of respect to you. I would love to hear how can people shop villas? So it's available on Amazon Prime. 22:28 It's available on WillasKitchen.com. We're offering a code for your listeners today, Kelly30 for 30% off on WillasKitchen.com. Thank you. And there's also a little bit of retail. 22:40 So here in New York, being in markets, Citarella, gourmet garage, Foxtrot in Chicago, lots of co-ops throughout the Midwest and then in LA, we're in, you know, Erwin, Bristol Farms and Jimbo's. 22:54 Amazing. As well in San Francisco. Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I truly love this episode and hearing more about your backstory and what you're building. 23:04 And as a fan, thank you for making my favorite oat milk. I really appreciate it. And through everyone listening, go get yourself some well as oat milk. 23:15 I promise you, it tastes different from the rest and use promo code Kelly 30. I'll put the links in the show notes and thank you again, Christina, for coming coming on. 23:24 Thank you so much for having me Kelly. You're welcome. Bye.
