217 - Erica Rankin on her packaging pivot at Bro Dough
Erica Rankin, founder of Bro Dough, explains her pivot from selling functional cookie dough in 6-ounce tamper-evident tubs to single-serve flow-wrapped bites to solve scaling and consumer experience issues. She details the operational nightmare of manual labor for tubs and the high minimum order quantities (MOQs) for printed packaging, which forced her to buy 20,000 manually labeled units at a premium. Rankin advises startup founders to prioritize buying for need rather than price per unit to avoid inventory risk and cash flow traps, a lesson she learned while navigating supplier pitches and SKU changes.