How This Ex-Attorney Reinvented Hard Candy as a Health Tool

The Startup CPG Podcast · 25 Sept 2026 · 30m · Episode 375

What this episode covers

Erica Haft, founder of Sweeter Collective, explains how she left a 10-year legal career to create an organic hard candy that serves as a mindfulness tool for health goals. She details the two-year R&D process, including abandoning the 'panning' technique for a boiling method using soluble tapioca fiber and oats to achieve a slow-dissolving, round sphere shape. Haft discusses the challenges of finding a co-manufacturer with the necessary molds, the brand's planetary inspiration from her hometown of Jupiter, Florida, and real-time customer feedback from Sprouts demos regarding price perception.

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • How I Built This · 1h 14m

    SmartSweets: Tara Bosch

    Tara Bosch, founder of SmartSweets, explains how she developed a low-sugar gummy candy recipe in her grandmother's basement and secured debt financing to launch the brand. She details the critical decision to pivot from 'Stevie Sweets' to 'SmartSweets' after investor rejection, and the subsequent challenge of finding a reliable manufacturer after a partner attempted to steal her formula. Bosch describes scaling production, securing a national deal with Whole Foods, and eventually selling a majority stake to TPG for $360 million to accelerate global growth.

  • How I Built This · 1h 07m

    Lily’s Sweets: Cynthia Tice

    Cynthia Tice, founder of Lily’s Sweets, explains how she launched a sugar-free chocolate brand at age 59, leveraging stevia and erythritol to create a product that tasted like traditional chocolate. After securing a national launch at Whole Foods with just four employees, she navigated a costly legal battle with a former partner before partnering with VMG to scale the business. The company was eventually acquired by Hershey’s for $425 million, validating Tice’s prediction that consumers would pay for healthier treats.

  • People of Packaging · 37m

    244 - Jody Polishchuk from Sundays on how they made the first zero sugar creme cookie

    Jody Polishchuk, founder of Sundays, discusses his journey from previous CPG ventures like The Juice Box and Yuga to creating the first zero-sugar creme cookie. He details the extensive R&D process, which involved three co-packers and three R&D teams over three years and $100,000, to replicate the taste of an Oreo without sugar. Polishchuk also explains his strategic decision to launch with a strong, affordable brand identity designed by Christine Brown and Django Jim, rather than spending heavily on a traditional agency.

  • How I Built This · 21m

    How I Built Resilience: Kara Goldin of Hint

    Kara Goldin, founder and CEO of Hint, explains how she launched the unsweetened flavored water brand after quitting diet soda to improve her health. She details the challenges of entering the saturated beverage industry without prior experience, specifically the difficulty of convincing retailers to stock a new category and the technical hurdle of creating a preservative-free product using real fruit. Goldin also discusses how Hint navigated the pandemic by leveraging its automated US-based manufacturing and pivoting aggressively to direct-to-consumer sales, which tripled during the crisis.

  • How I Built This · 1h 04m

    Spindrift: Bill Creelman

    Bill Creelman, founder of Spindrift, explains how he pivoted from a failed mail-order smoked fish business and a successful cocktail mixer brand (Stirrings) sold to Diageo, to creating a sparkling water made with fresh-squeezed fruit. He details the immense technical challenges of preserving fresh juice without refrigeration, the struggle to find bottlers willing to handle pulp, and the strategic decision to drop a profitable soda line to focus entirely on the sparkling water brand. The episode also covers the five-year development of Chime, an automatic chai brewing machine by Gaurav Chawla, highlighting the difficulties of hardware prototyping and supply chain management for physical products.

The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by The Startup CPG Podcast. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.