If you’ve dipped your toe into the world of functional, non-psychedelic mushrooms, you’ve likely seen Alice’s chic adaptogenic chocolates grace your social media feed or the shelves of your local boutique grocer—you have Charlotte Cruze to thank for that. In 2022, Cruze and her co-founder Lindsay Goodstein launched Alice with two products: Nightcap, a sleep aid, and Brainstorm, an energy booster. Today, the line has expanded to include an aphrodisiac chocolate called Happy Ending and a limited-edition lingerie collab with Fleur du Mal. But before she was creating mushroom chocolates, Cruze spent most of her career in media at companies such as Refinery29, InsideHook, and NBC. During that time, Cruze realized she loved the food industry, and in the early days of the pandemic, she enrolled in a food studies master’s program at NYU with the intention of pivoting her career. From there, she took on a role as the head of operations at meal-kit company Quinn and later led growth at Nutella-alternative brand TBH. While Cruze was still working at TBH, Goodstein, a former pharmaceutical salesperson, tapped her to help build Alice, and the rest is delicious, benefit-packed history.

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