“My goal is for it to become like a Snickers bar,” said Barb Kobren. “With the same kind of sensory memory. You can taste it without putting it in your mouth. Someday I hope it will be the same thing.”
“It” is her product, bobbysues nuts!, which is what you get when you mix an aunt”™s recipe from Lancaster, Pa., Kobren”™s nickname growing up, three middle-aged women who decide to start a business during a recession and a desire to alleviate the plight of animals in shelters.
Kobren, of Chappaqua, along with her friend, Deb Mehne, and a third partner who has since left the business, got the idea for this in 2008. “The shelter (the SPCA in Briarcliff Manor) propelled Deb and me to think about what to do to make everyone able to contribute to the shelter in some small way that would eventually allow us to make changes to it to make it more modern, and have more programs, and do a better job of housing animals,” Kobren said.
Mehne is the chairman of the shelter, Kobren is the secretary. “We were in my kitchen, we love to cook, the nuts have been in my home for 25 years. We turned to each other, and said, ”˜We should sell these nuts.”™”
Back in 2008, Kobren”™s younger son was working for Hillary Clinton as she campaigned for president. Kobren made the nuts and gave them to her son to test market as he criss-crossed the U.S. “We got feedback from all over, everyone loved them. So we said, ”˜Let”™s do it.”™ We met with a food chemist, and came up with three flavors. We sent them out to Colorado to my older son, (Adam, who is in charge of strategy for the company) and he tested it out on people. We created a company from a nut.”
The seed money came from the two women. “We each put about $25,000 into the business,” Kobren said.
From the planning stages, she said, it took a year until the launch April 25, 2009. “We launched it at an SPCA Walkathon,” she said. “It wasn”™t simple though, to take it from that to where we are today.”
Where they are today is a company with almost $500,000 a year in revenue. The nuts are sold in 140 marketplaces, including 14 Whole Foods stores in Westchester, Connecticut and New Jersey. They are also in Murray”™s Cheese in New York City, Blue Hill Stone Barns, Lord & Taylor, the green room at “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” Gilt Taste and even Mario Batali”™s summer home in Michigan.
Besides her son Adam, who is also the chief financial officer, Kobren has two employees, the operations manager, Sarah Largess, and Marta De Sousa, who is the head of shipping and social media.
As for the financials, neither Kobren, 60, nor Mehne, 57, takes a salary from the business. An eight-ounce jar of nuts sells for $10. It costs $4.80 to produce. Of that, 48 cents, or 10 percent, goes to the shelter. The business can produce 85 cases of nuts a day, 12 jars to a case, slightly more than 1,000 jars a day. The nuts are made at a facility in Millington, N.J., which they rent.
Kobren was asked if all this trails, meets or exceeds her expectations for where the business would be after three years. “A year ago I expected to be where I was,” she said, “but over the last eight months I didn”™t expect growth to be as it has been.”
Neither one expected any of this in 2004, when Kobren was an empty nester, running her husband”™s dental office in White Plains. Mehne was wrapping up a job of 25 years as principal at Lansco Colors, a supplier of pigments to various industries. Their different backgrounds serve them well as business partners, Kobren said. “Deb has more patience. She takes everything into account. She”™s the COO. I do promotion, PR; we complement each other. She comes from more of a hard-core business background.”
As for the future, Kobren said they are going to have a need for capital and will be looking for investors. “I would say we”™ll need about $200,000 within the next six to eight months.” The shelter will need money too, she said, about $2 million to rebuild it. “We gave them $5,000 in 2010, probably about $14,000 in 2011, and this year we”™re on track to give twice that.”
