GARY: Next on Start Up, we head to Seattle, Washington, to meet up with Caitlin and Christina, the founders of Chunky Deli, a company that combines food storytelling with playful gifts.

All of this and more is next on Start Up.

♪ CONNIE: I truly thought "I'm gonna be alone for the rest of my life."

I realized I can try so many different things.

I can make anything happen.

More than 60% of sales in Amazon's store come from independent sellers like Connie at Seattle Gummy Company.

Amazon, a proud supporter of Start Up.

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ANNOUNCER: Running a business isn't easy.

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♪ GARY: My name is Gary Bredow.

I'm a documentary filmmaker and an entrepreneur.

As the country faces significant challenges, small business owners are navigating their way through a changing global marketplace with strength and perseverance while continuing to push the economy forward.

We've set out for our 13th consecutive season talking to a wide range of diverse business owners to better understand how they learn to adapt, innovate, and even completely reinvent themselves.

This is Start Up.

♪ ♪ Children's books originated with fables like Aesop's tales, and in the 17th century, works like Orbis Pictus began to combine pictures with text for teaching.

The 19th century saw the rise of fairy tales and adventure stories from authors like The Brothers Grimm.

And by the 20th century, popular writers like Roald Dahl and Dr.

Seuss became a staple in any home with young children.

Today, I'm heading to Seattle, Washington, to meet up with Caitlin and Christina, the founders of Chunky Deli, a company that brings fun foodie books and gifts to curious little minds.

I'm both a book worm and a foodie, so I'm excited to learn how Chunky Deli has created a company around two of my favorite things.

♪ ♪ ♪ Let's talk about the name, because our audio guy on the way here thought that we were going to be featuring big salami subs and like a chicken parmesan sandwich dripping with marinara.

I told him it's booked.

He's like, "Okay.

All right."

CAITLIN: (laughs) Can't eat those, but hopefully just as fun and tasty.

GARY: Definitely, just as fun.

So, why "Chunky Deli?"

CAITLIN: We just started coming up with words that we liked, and "deli" is a fun word.

GARY: It is.

So is "chunky".

CAITLIN: Yes, chunky.

Chunky is in the children's space.

It's like everyone loves if your kid's a little chunk, right?

GARY: Yeah.

CAITLIN: Like, chonk.

There's so many ways to say it.

So yeah, Chunky.

Then deli is just like, it's a fun word to write and say.

And delis are creative- GARY: So really, it's just phonetics.

CAITLIN: Yeah, but delis are creative spaces, right?

GARY: They are.

CAITLIN: Anyway, it just felt right.

GARY: What is Chunky Deli?

CHRISTINA: Chunky Deli is a children's product company.

We started with books and then moved on to apparel and toys, and we just focus on the foodie space for kids.

GARY: Talk about the early days of Chunky Deli.

CHRISTINA: Cait and I met a long time ago.

We were always working together, and we've just been the worm in each other's ears being like, "We need to start something together.

"We need to see what we can do because we know we love to work together."

So we started just having these conversations regularly, like, "What should we do?"

And at the time, I had a three-year-old, and Cait was pregnant.

We thought about what we love, which is design and food.

We wanted to build something for kids, especially being new moms.

Initially, when we started, we just knew we wanted to do something that was bold and creative and colorful in the children's space.

and so we talked about books, but we also talked about blankets, and we talked about just creating home decor because we both love interiors and home design, and eventually, we landed on building a book and just see it as our first test.

GARY: What was the motive behind the books?

Because you wanted to do something in the children's space, but was there any sort of educational component or anything like that, any sort of mission behind the books?

CHRISTINA: Both of us wanted something that felt authentic and wasn't too preachy.

There's a lot of people telling you what you should and shouldn't do when you have kids.

GARY: Yep, moral lessons.

CHRISTINA: Yeah, exactly.

We didn't want to be those people telling you that this is the food that they should eat, this is what they shouldn't do.

We just wanted to have fun, and we knew we wanted it around food.

So naturally landed or gravitated towards pasta because it's so fun.

There's all these different shapes.

We wanted to see... My kid at the time was obsessed with mac and cheese, so it was like, "Let's see if we can diversify her palate a little bit."

GARY: Now, you had the idea to the physicality of actually getting a book.

Is there a printing process involved?

CAITLIN: For us, and in our past lives, working in product development, it was always about finding a production partner that you can rely on as a- GARY: To produce the actual physical books.

CAITLIN: Yeah.

GARY: Okay.

CAITLIN: That you have an excellent working relationship with.

So we talked to probably 30 different book printing companies, and we didn't go with the cheapest.

We didn't go with the most expensive.

We went with the one that was collaborative and would take our print files and troubleshoot with us.

Then we ordered samples, had them sent here, and from there reviewed the quality, and we went with them from the get-go.

The working relationship was so good at that point that we... GARY: You just didn't want an order taker.

You wanted somebody to be more of a production partner, invested in the success.

CAITLIN: Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah, because book printing is complex in that they take your file, they completely redo it, they make sure all the colors match, and there's bleeds and things.

We needed the engineering mindset on the other side that wasn't going to, like you're saying, just take a print file.

We found that person.

We've never switched vendors.

But it does come with... There was some legwork.

We interviewed a ton of suppliers.

GARY: Let's talk about publishing.

Going with a publisher or self-publishing.

What are the pros and cons, and what do you guys do?

CAITLIN: Yeah, we self publish.

You can do a lot of the things as a self publisher, like get an ISBN number, get a Library of Congress number.

You're responsible for your manufacturing.

We don't mind that at all.

It's kind of fun, and it's what we did in the past life, so it works.

We have so much flexibility to repackage and rebundle our own products.

We write three books and we put it in a box set, and then we do a new box set that's a different... There's just so much flexibility.

GARY: There would be a ton of bureaucracy and red tape if you had a publisher.

CAITLIN: Oh yeah.

Yeah.

And we can ship internationally, so that's a good thing.

I think it's a little harder to get sales internationally.

GARY: Where is the manufacturer based?

Are they domestic or foreign?

CAITLIN: Foreign, yeah.

Wenzhou, China.

GARY: What were the challenges with domestic providers?

CHRISTINA: Lead times would be really long, or we'd go for a quote and we wouldn't get quotes back, or we'd ask for samples and they would want to charge obscene amounts.

We needed someone who would be flexible and work with us and can move quickly.

We're trying to get our ideas out as fast as possible to test them, and we needed that speed back from a manufacturer.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ GARY: Did you already know what you wanted to do with it in terms of getting these into the hands of consumers?

CHRISTINA: Yeah.

I mean, everything we've been doing to this point has been just a test.

We got the books back, and we started by doing a friends and family launch.

We just launched it to the world on our own personal social media.

We didn't even have a website at the time.

It was more like trying to sell on other e-commerce platforms.

We sold out on our first pre-release right away.

GARY: How long did it take to sell out?

How many units?

CHRISTINA: Well, we got 100 of each of our first books in, and it took us, I think, a week to sell through those.

GARY: Wow.

CHRISTINA: For us, that was like, "Oh, my God.

100 people or 100 books."

That was huge.

GARY: That feeling of, "Oh, my gosh, "something that was in my brain might actually work.

People may actually pay me money for this."

Talk about that feeling.

CHRISTINA: In my mind, I'm doubting myself like, Oh, it's just because our friends are supportive.

GARY: Exactly.

CHRISTINA: It was like, "We sold out to friends.

Okay."

Then I remember we got our first stranger sale.

Someone on the internet found us.

GARY: Do you remember their name?

CHRISTINA: Oh, I don't.

I wish I did.

But it was so crazy to be like, "A stranger found us on the internet.

"They bought our book, and then they liked it."

I think we even got a first review and we're like, "Holy crap.

Do you know this person?"

"No.

Do you know this person?"

GARY: Celebration time.

CHRISTINA: Yeah, it was crazy.

GARY: Financially, what was the investment for you to be able to even test this?

CHRISTINA: From the get-go, we had set aside some money each to put into this as a test, and we kept saying to ourselves, "We won't put any more money than our initial investment."

GARY: What was that dollar amount?

CHRISTINA: $2,500 each.

GARY: Each, okay.

CHRISTINA: We were very cost-sensitive.

Every single little thing, every little subscription, $10 here, $10 there, was like penny-pinch to the max.

Any money that came in would then go to fund new product or to get another purchase order and invest back into the business until it's something that's actually growing and sustainable.

CAITLIN: We wrote a "Little Book of Cheese", or sorry, a "Little Book of Pasta" and a "Little Book of Cookies" at the same time, and we launched them at the same time.

Our initial print was 500 of each, and that was it.

That was what we were willing to risk.

It's kind of a test to see which one does better.

The pasta book, nail on the head with a food trend that was already established.

GARY: Cookies?

CAITLIN: Cookies, a little slower.

GARY: They wanted pasta.

CAITLIN: They wanted pasta.

They liked pasta.

But had we launched one of them alone, we would have thought we were geniuses, right?

Or we would have thought we're not in the book business.

GARY: What made you launch the two different categories, which I think is incredibly not only smart, but was there a conscious effort to say, "We want to test them against each other?"

CAITLIN: Yes, or just run more tests.

GARY: Got it.

CAITLIN: Run more small tests as fast as you can.

We had to hit a minimum order quantity of a thousand.

So we're like, "Okay, a thousand for one book.

"Let's write a second book and then spread our risk a little thinner and go from there."

♪ ♪ GARY: Are you selling in physical brick and mortar stores?

CAITLIN: We are, yeah.

GARY: Talk about that.

How do you get into stores?

I know it's very competitive.

CAITLIN: It is, and it's nerve-wracking.

We haven't figured it out, but we're trying.

We're making friends.

We're emailing, calling, reaching out to stores actively.

But there's also a platform that allows boutiques to place small-scale orders.

We would fulfill orders of five books at a time.

GARY: Oh, wow.

CAITLIN: And it's fun to see who places orders.

You'd think it'd just be children's stores, but it's actually wine and cheese shops, gourmet food centers.

We have children's stores, all sorts of people.

GARY: That's interesting.

It's just the underground marketplace for retail store buyers and products?

CAITLIN: Yeah.

It's just a place for retailers to find smaller brands.

GARY: What is it called?

CAITLIN: It's called Faire.

Since then, it's just grown.

We now sell all over the world to retailers through Faire.

GARY: How many brick and mortars are you in?

Do you know?

CAITLIN: Oh, my gosh.

It's on our website.

I would say it's over... It's probably getting close to 150 stores.

GARY: That's a lot.

CAITLIN: Yeah.

GARY: You're shipping out a lot of product from here.

CAITLIN: Yeah, yeah.

A lot of wholesale orders.

That feels the best.

Then we get to have a direct relationship with store owners that tell us about the reactions that their customers are having in store, which is like, "What?

This is so cute."

Yeah, it's great.

♪ ♪ GARY: What do you do here at Island Books?

BECCA: I am a bookseller.

I specialize in the children's section.

GARY: If you're willing to accept a book for sale in the store, what are you looking for?

BECCA: A lot of the time, we look at how well the book is put together.

We look at the content, if it's something that we think would be appealing to our customer base.

If the art is good and engaging, especially for children's books.

GARY: When was the first time that you learned about Chunky Deli?

BECCA: I came into work one day, and there were these really cute new little board books that I hadn't seen in before.

I am a big food person, so I was like, "Oh, yes, a little book about cheese, "a little book about pasta.

That's great."

Fills a little niche that didn't have anything really specific in it before.

♪ GARY: Being in this subject of the creativity behind books right now, I mean, AI is coming through like a freight train.

What are your thoughts, fears, concerns around it?

CHRISTINA: AI has its role, and I think that people will build books.

I think what it's going to do is oversaturate the market with a lot of garbage.

I think that the art really comes into curation and being able to have a point of view and stick with it and be creative in what that initial idea is because AI is taking over.

I think that the true value is going to come into finding the brand that builds products consistently and does a really good job with it.

GARY: Talk about some of the other products besides the books that you guys are doing right now.

CHRISTINA: We do books, we do apparel for kids, and we have toys.

After our books, we started thinking about newborns and how they're drawn to the high contrast colors and shapes.

That naturally was a great collision with pasta because you think about all these different shapes.

So we started making these pasta for baby cards that would teach babies pasta, knowing full well that they're not going to learn the words.

But it's this funny idea that you're teaching a kid about farfalle or in the... GARY: Cute and colorful visual cue cards for kids to look at, at least.

CHRISTINA: Exactly, yeah.

And it's crazy because so many of the friends that I've gifted these to will send pictures of their babies that are just so mesmerized by the black and white shapes.

It's been very cool to see.

♪ GARY: Talk about your business partnership and your individual lanes.

What do you specifically focus on in the business versus Christina?

CAITLIN: I focus mostly on writing.

I'm more on the operations side, and Christina is more design-focused, but we have such great overlap that I think there's a blend.

She gives me excellent feedback in editing on all of my operational things or copy and then design, I weigh in, but she's a genius.

GARY: I understand your partner lives in Jersey?

CAITLIN: Yeah.

GARY: And you live here in Washington?

CAITLIN: Yeah.

GARY: Are there any complications with that relationship?

CAITLIN: We've figured out how to be collaborative online, which is a lot of video conferences, but we also send a lot of videos to each other working.

If I'm doing something, she can then review a video of whatever I did with our advertising or whatever I did with creative later.

So, yeah, figuring out Async work has been a blessing for us.

And then we were also doing fulfillment locally.

So managing that process and all the things.

GARY: So putting things in envelopes and seal it and send it, ok.

CAITLIN: And for a while, it was... For me, I'm a mom full-time.

So if I had to pack and ship, it was before they wake up or after they go to bed or nap time.

We got to a breaking point with that where I had no time left in the margins, and so we hired some support to help with fulfillment.

GARY: Excellent.

And they're coming here to your home and packaging for you?

CAITLIN: Yes.

Yeah.

And then helping receive large pallets of inventory because books are the heaviest matter known to man, right?

GARY: Great for shipping.

CAITLIN: I can't do it.

But yeah, we have a warehouse where we store all of our large shipments long term.

GARY: Was there any fear behind that?

Like, okay, now we're signing the lease on a space.

CAITLIN: We always say, "Are we being..." that phrase, or "penny-wise, pound foolish?"

We can budget like, no tomorrow.

But there's times when we have to spend.

And so it is nerve-wracking for us.

And then a lease, we're going to have to be responsible for this until the end of the lease.

But by then, the business was cruising.

So we didn't go with something that was going to take us 10 years to grow into.

We went very small.

I think we started with 280 square feet.

GARY: Okay.

Just a small... Yeah.

CAITLIN: Yeah.

And then the warehouse we're at, they have more spaces.

So we've procured a second space.

GARY: You can grow.

CAITLIN: Yeah.

Now we have two spaces that we do all of our business out of.

I think it'll be maybe... I mean, by the end of the year, hopefully, we're on to a third space in this same location.

♪ GARY: Tell me a bit more about this warehouse space that you were able to find.

CAITLIN: Yeah.

So it was a rainy March day, and we had to find something to put the three pallets of books that arrived on my doorstep.

So we wanted it to be quick and easy for me to get to if I had to get something, and I only had a little bit of downtime.

So only downside, and I feel like we just had to make the... We had to make the choice, is it has a lift.

So we unload our pallets on the ground floor, and then we have to make sure we don't overcome the weight capacity of this lift.

We take our books, super heavy books, up and then put it into our unit, so... GARY: Like a freight elevator.

CAITLIN: Freight elevator, yeah.

But it was one of those trade offs.

We needed a space right away.

It needed to be on budget and the right size because you can get 5,000 square feet.

But at the time, we were just so small.

GARY: How long of a lease commitment did you have to make?

CAITLIN: One year.

GARY: Okay, that's okay.

Yeah.

CAITLIN: And we just renewed.

So now we've been there a year and a half and everyone there is just rooting for us.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ GARY: Where does the company sit right now?

Are you... Is it pretty profitable and doing well?

Are you able to sustain a lifestyle with that?

CAITLIN: Yeah, so we... For, like I said, $2,500 is what we put in.

We rolled absolutely everything back into purchasing more inventory for two years.

Last year was the first year that we started to take home from the company, and it's been a lot of fun.

GARY: Like take a salary from the company?

CAITLIN: Yeah.

GARY: Okay.

What do you think has been the most challenging part to date for you personally with this?

CAITLIN: For the last three years, we've had three more children.

GARY: Got it.

CAITLIN: So it's been a mix of... I mean, we've had to be very adaptable with our time and slow down when we need to slow down for personal reasons and then put on the gas when we want to come up with more products.

So it's finding time in the margins.

That's the hard part, but it's the fun part, too.

GARY: Speak directly to other folks out there in your position and either a working mom or stay at home mom that has a dream, a vision for doing something on the side, but maybe a little bit scared to take that leap or try anything.

CHRISTINA: It's just about testing something, just get out and try anything and not be afraid of failure.

I know in the beginning, you put something out in the world and you're a little bit scared that somebody might criticize it or you're going to have your haters online.

GARY: Or that it'll just bomb.

CHRISTINA: Yeah, and that's fine.

And it'll bomb silently.

And no one will even know it bombed because no one will even know about it.

And that's fine.

GARY: What do you love most about this right now?

CAITLIN: About the company?

GARY: About the company, yeah.

CAITLIN: Getting to collaborate with Christina on the daily.

Closest friend.

It's just so fun to be able to have a friendship, but then be creative with your friend and build something together.

I love hearing how people are enjoying our products with their families, truly.

Reading a stranger review on the internet.

Someone took time out of their day to write something nice.

GARY: Oh, yeah.

CAITLIN: It's just the craziest gift.

Yeah, I love that.

GARY: If you could, as you sit right now, go back to yourself at the very beginning when you started this, what would you say?

What would your advice be?

CAITLIN: I would say it's going to work out.

You're doing the thing you need to do, which is start, but that it's going to work out, and it's going to be a lot of fun.

So just go for it.

♪ GARY: I really enjoyed my time with Caitlin and Christina.

And despite living on opposite coasts and being incredibly busy with young children of their own, they're adding incredible value to the landscape of children's products.

Their fusion of food, storytelling, and play is not only innovative, it's fostering future generations of culinary adventurers.

By creating products that inspire creativity and togetherness, they make reading fun and delicious, and it's helping families create lasting memories together in the kitchen.

And Chunky Deli isn't just about food.

It's about nurturing connections, curiosity, and a love for fun words that can last a lifetime.

For more information, visit our website and search episodes for Chunky Deli.

GARY: Next time on Start Up, we head to Los Angeles, California, to meet up with Brian Hollowaty, the founder of Los Angeles Brands, an innovative company that designs and manufactures a portfolio of locally-produced brands.

Be sure to join us next time on Start Up.

Do you want to learn more about the show?

Or maybe nominate a business?

Visit us at StartUp-usa.com and connect with us on social media.

♪ ♪ We've got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us ♪ Got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ Before we pay our dues ♪ We've got a long GARY: You're not my father.

CAMERAMAN: He's not your father.

♪ (Gary screams) ♪ (clapping) ♪ (cheering) MAN: Hold on, if they ever doubted it was fake.

There it is.

GARY: Oh, yeah, there's nothing fake about this.

ANNOUNCER: Running a business isn't easy.

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COLIN: When you get obsessed with an idea, and you can't stop thinking about it, and you dream about it and you wake up thinking about it.

That's when you know you have to start something.

More than 60% of sales in Amazon's store come from independent sellers like Colin at Sheets and Giggles.

Amazon, a proud supporter of Start Up.