Ep 30: Seven Figure First Year: Building a Category Busting Bar in Public

Aug 27, 2020

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This week’s DTC podcast with Mid-Day Squares Co-founder and COO, @Nick Saltarelli is dedicated to wives and partners everywhere!

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2ZB_N0Vpg6iB5HxdxWg8gQ

My wife and I love quality chocolate, and she’s a huge fan of protein bars. When she came across Mid-Day Squares, which, according to their ads are “Everything a chocolate bar isn’t, everything a protein bar wishes it was,” she knew she had to pull out her credit card.

She told me about the company and I promptly booked a podcast with Nick Saltarelli, the COO and co-founder of Mid-Day Squares out of Montreal.

Nick’s wife has been a true partner in business since they met, and the recipe for their category blending confectionary functional bars was her original idea. Multiple failed business attempts (plus one big winning exit), and a multi-year partnership with McGill University Food Science Lab and Mid-Day Squares was born.

With product names like “Fudge Yeah,” and “Bust a Peanut” (coined by a female staff member, he’s quick to point out), Mid-Day Squares shot to $1.6 Million in sales in their first full year (in Canada alone). Now with US retail and DTC expansion in sight, they’re aiming for 8 figures in 2021.

This podcast was an amazing deep dive on:

🍫 How to find and combine two niches ready to pop (quality chocolate + functional bars)

🍫 Breakfast is clogged, but the afternoon snacking market is a blue ocean

🍫 Name your company with how to consume your product

🍫 How to “build in public” and create content that drives unstoppable momentum with only your personal network

🍫 Why their first employee was a videographer

🍫 How to measure the true impact of your marketing, and determine retail lift from ad spend

🍫 How to leverage University partnerships to tackle high barrier product development

🍫 How Mid-Day went from 15% DTC to 50/50 when Covid hit.

🍫 The real job of a COO (moving sidewalks)

🍫 Centralized vs Decentralized decision making in your organization

Nick challenged all DTC marketers to embrace a truly omnichannel pricing strategy that makes it so your product costs the same, no matter where it’s listed. The days of DTC companies passing savings on to customers for “going direct” are over, he says.

The goal of building longevity in the space is to make as many people as much money as possible, while still being profitable. This is the reason he’d never undercut a retail partner by offering Mid-Day Squares cheaper online.