EP.174/ SPRITZAL COOKIE
Scaling Sweet Success: Inside Spritzle’s 11-Year Retail + DTC Journey
In this episode of Retention Chronicles, host Mariah Parsons sits down with Taylor Walker, co-founder of Spritzal Cookie Company, to unpack the 11-year journey of scaling a family recipe into a fast-growing clean-label cookie brand. Taylor shares how Spritzal evolved from rainy Saturday farmer’s markets to mass retail distribution, the pivotal decisions behind SKU reduction, packaging revamps, and transitioning from cottage production to manufacturing partners.
They dive into customer acquisition strategies that actually work for small, non-VC-backed CPG brands—founder-led storytelling, community-driven sampling, TikTok and Instagram consistency, and the power of organic word of mouth. Taylor also breaks down what customer retention looks like in consumables today, from thoughtful email cadence to in-store surprise-and-delight tactics.
Whether you're building a CPG brand or fascinated by modern consumer behavior, this episode is packed with must-hear insights on scaling thoughtfully, staying scrappy, and keeping authenticity at the center of growth.
EP. 174
TAYLOR WALKER
Hello everyone and welcome back to Retention Chronicles. Taylor, thank you so much for
joining me today. I'm stoked to have you on the show.
I can't wait for our audience to get to know more about what you are doing, how Sprint got to
where it is right now, and why you are joining Retention Chronicles. So please say hello to our
audience and tell them a little bit about yourself. Hello, thank you for that nice intro.
My name is Taylor Walker and I am the co-founder of Sprintful Cookie Company. We're a
mother-daughter baking duo with an overall brand recipe based on my great-grandmother's
Christmas cookies. So 11 years ago, started the business, you know, farmer's market and now
are scaled up to mass distribution retail, which is crazy.
And then e-comm side too. Yeah, so impressive. And I think that it's so cool that your ethos is
like your family recipe, taking it from a farmer's market and just like selling it directly to a
person at an event versus now, like you said, mass scale where it's, you got a bunch of different
channels.
We'll go into detail about retail, about DTC. And before we do that, I'm curious, do you guys still
kind of go to like farmer's markets or is it like, oh my God, we are, you know, we did that. I will
let some other upcoming entrepreneurs have the founder grind at the farmer's markets from
now on.
I did my dues, I paid my time. And then in about 2020, 2021 is when we kind of pivoted away
from doing stuff like that. It just gets, there's a lot going on and there's too many things to do.
And I know some brands will still kind of do those things and they have the bandwidth to have
those, but yeah, we unfortunately do not. I like to go support locally. I go every Saturday to my
market.
We used to do, and I still go and buy, you know, nice produce and support my friends that are
there. So yeah. It's different when you're in the merchant seat versus the customer seat, it's a
little bit more relaxed.
It's a little bit less logistic. You don't have to put as much brainpower behind it. So I'm not
surprised to learn, you know, you have passed the baton in that aspect of things.
Yeah. Those 8 AM setups on a rainy Saturday sometimes are just, they're memorable, but not
the vibe. They can weigh on the heart a little bit, the heart and the body.
Yep. I hear you. Okay, great.So now give our, if you could give, you know, like five minute overview of just like timeline,
obviously we know 2014, you guys started in those farmer's markets and then have grown
since. Can you give our guests, no, our listeners, there we go, a little bit of background around
like these were the kind of choices you were making. This was the decision that led to, okay, this
is the right time for us to kind of step away from farmer's markets and go more into retail and
DTC.
Yeah. It all was very circumstantial and everything that's happened over the past 11 years. So
first of all, my mom actually started a year before I joined her.
I helped her start, but like a young 20 something, you're trying to find out what you want to do
with your life. So I up and moved to Atlanta and she started here in our house doing like
cottage license to market farmer's markets. So like one or two, and then got new, a handful of
local gourmet stores.
And then she decided to, and this was like right when I think Instagram was like really just
starting. I think I started one for my dog that kind of took off. So I was helping her from afar.
She had sent me photos and I would like manage that and Facebook. And then she really was
like looking at doing a lot of like the e-comm. So she applied for some grants in Massachusetts.
It's where we're headquartered and she ended up getting some, so put some effort into a
website. And at that time she was doing like hand pressed spritz cookies. Cause that's where
our recipe comes from.
They're traditional Swedish Christmas cookies. And then she was dabbling in some more of like
the gourmet, like upscale. We had like 12 flavors and she decided to keep going on that route
and got into some other larger markets in Boston called SOA, which is like a big weekly
Saturday farmer's market.
And then got discovered by the whole foods forager. So that was pretty cool. And she ended up
moving to a shared kitchen in Boston to continue baking.
And she had like once a week. And by that point, I had had enough of Atlanta. So I called her
crying and I was like, can I come? I think it was 25.
Yep. So I lasted a year there. It wasn't made some great friends and people, but like just
realized I like the sales side, but not it.
I was like, maybe, you know, cookies and marketing would be more fun. So yeah, packed up the
car, trekked home and kind of helped develop the continuation of our website and like do it. We
did all the baking at that point.
My dad built out a commercial kitchen, which is now still my office. We've since disbanded that
and really focused on like growing into some of the whole foods. And that was back when I'dhave to go like knock on every bakery by her door in whole foods area.
So just like focusing on the few that we could handle and then still building up our e-com side.
So, you know, we'd have a cookie of the month club that we started and people would find the
subscription and I'd be pushing that at the farmer's market being like, Hey, subscribe here. And
I had like the whole, you know, cute little, what do they call it? Packaging like boxes, like ribbon
tape.
And it was, it was a lot. It was shredded paper everywhere on the office floor trying to do that.
So then we decided to like scale it back, like just really focus in on a few SKUs instead of 12,
because we were finding as much as we wanted to build that up back then.
Still, there wasn't really a lot of like paid social. So it was really hard to drive like e-com traffic
unless you had really good SEOs. And we were not on Shopify at that time.
We were on another, I think like Wix platform. So that was just like all code and not easy to deal
with. I'm not a techie by any means.
So like that was totally, unless you had somebody to fix it for you at a thousand an hour kind of
situation, it was really hard and challenging. So that's when we actually pivoted over to Shopify.
I think it was like maybe 2016.
And we're still on that today. It's really, really easy to manage and you can, you know, find all
the different apps and plugins to kind of customize. And at that point we had a different
package in general.
And then in 2019, we got, I was doing a demo at the Wegmans in Westwood and the TGX buyer
came over on her day off. She was just grocery shopping with her daughter. And we had a
totally different package at that point too, totally different logo.
A few of our same flavors we still have that got renamed since, but she was like, can I try a
cookie? You know, told this brickle story, great grandma, plain label, minimal ingredient
cookies. And so I heard her daughter crying from three aisles over and she was like, my kid
wanted another cookie, by the way, I'm the TGX buyer, like here's my card. And she was great.
So that kind of started our second or third look transition, completely overhauling our
branding. It used to be like this red and watermelon logo, which red for me is like just not a
pleasant like color. When I think of cookies, cookies are supposed to be fun and vibrant.
So it took a little teeth pulling, but I got my mom to switch over to our hot pink logo that we still
have today. And then we added in some fun flavors. Like we have our birthday cake, which is a
natural vanilla shortbread cookie with like natural rainbow sprinkles.
So no food dyes, no seed oils, no palm oils. We have our lemon, which is our Ula lemon. We
have our deliciously almond chocolate chip.And then we just launched a brownie chocolate chip. But we've been through a few packaging
transitions along the way to it. So like, as a small brand, you're never like stopping.
But in 2023, we pivoted away from our box cookie, which is more like pigeonholing as overall in
retail, and on ecom side, and we moved to our cookie bites. So they're snackable, they're
resealable, cute pouches, and then added a lot of those clean ingredient call outs. And we've
become one of the top trending clean brands within the cookie category within the past four
years, which is crazy.
That's awesome. It's really hard to summarize 11 years in five minutes too. I apologize to the
listeners on my dabbling.
No, I always say five minutes, but I give that context to really share, go in as much as you want.
This is a podcast, right? So it's like people want to hear the story and the reasons behind
different things. And this sets us up so well to talk about all these different elements.
Because I think anyone who is listening, who has either seen something very similar with their
brand or just knows of like, oh yeah, this big pivot, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of energy.
It takes a lot of resources.
I think it is so relatable to hear people's founding stories of how you get to where you are
today. And then even down the road, where it's like, oh, we'll continue to see changes or
updates or new flavors, new SKUs. And to know for our listeners, to be able to see like, oh my
God, I remember a year ago, you were at this point.
So never apologize for giving me all the details on this podcast. Word vomit, but I don't know
where to start and stop sometimes. And all the lines have become so blurred and a lot more
gray hair in the past 10 years.
Now I just turned 35 this year. So a lot. I don't think I wouldn't, if you asked me what I'd be
doing when I was graduating college, this was it.
But I, nonetheless, I love it. I just, I think CPG and consumer products is so interesting. I love
like brand strategy.
I love marketing and I love like cookies. So I think it's just an overall win. Yeah.
It's a great thing that you're in your seat, you know, that you're doing exactly that. I want to
take like a quick, just a quick couple of seconds to go over like grants. Cause I think it's really,
really a great resource that not a lot of people take a lot of time to talk about when they're, you
know, starting a business.
So if you could, you know, share just any details of kind of like where your mom was looking,
um, like finding them, just anything that might help, you know, entrepreneur on this call. Sure.
So, I mean, we're in Massachusetts, so we have the SBA, which is the small businessadministration.
And we still kind of utilize and work with them today. So we, she became, we're woman owned,
obviously mother, daughter. So to start, she got us certified with Massachusetts diversity
supplier.
So SDO, and there's a lot of different resources, at least in Massachusetts that I'm aware of that
you can talk to, you know, people that have knowledge in those areas and just contacting like
your local government. And also like women owned, there's a lot of diverse supplier. I just know
from my side on the women on side, but there's a lot of different grants and opportunities out
there that you can apply for.
Some are based on like the e-com side, which should help like develop a website or like find
those people that are able to come in without, you know, having to go into your own pocket.
And then others, some are like competition. So obviously there's a whole lot more that goes
into it just to be able to apply for it, but it's worth a shot.
I mean, if you have a half an hour, sit down and watch TikTok for scrolling, you have a half an
hour to go apply for some grants. One may be funner than the other, but you know, that's what
ChatGPT can also help you for. I've prompted, she knows everything about Spritzl now.
So that's my other, if you have no time, go learn ChatGPT. So yeah, she, and my mom is really
good about that kind of stuff. Like my dad owns a commercial roofing business in
Massachusetts.
So she's always been like the back person who knows how to like dot the I's and cross the T's.
And then I'm the person who's like, all right, let me just go blow our sales budget on a
marketing refresh. Fun times, right? We've had a few versions of our websites, but this one, this
most recent one was great and I had a great person that developed it.
So, you know, just kind of looking at other brands too, that are in a similar space or like kind of
what you're thinking you want to do that speaks to your brand and just kind of pulling in those
ideas to make it a cohesive, like easy, transitionable website that doesn't confuse a consumer. I
think that's important as well. So our first version was like not easy to work with.
Again, that was not Shopify. So I find Shopify is like so easy. If I can go in and fix the code,
anybody can.
I relate to that. Yeah. I'm not like the most technical person either.
And so if you can have a site that is super, super easy to navigate, it really does help just the
speed and the efficiency. And even Shopify has now their sidekick. And so being able to ask a
question and get a pretty accurate answer, honestly, for how you update something, if it's
within a special section of your settings or your theme or whatever it is, I'm a big proponent of
Shopify.And I think there's a lot of reasons why a lot of brands are too. So I want to go into also making
the pivot to lesser SKUs, because I think this is something that'll blend in nicely to talk about
customer acquisition. Because I think it can be really the narrative around, you know, like
obviously our brains think that the more options you have, the more customer acquisition there
will be.
If like, okay, you can kind of have 12 in your case SKUs. And theoretically, that should capture
people's attention more because there's more flavors. People have their preferences, yada,
yada, yada.
So I can imagine from a customer acquisition point and customer retention point of reducing
the amount of SKUs would have been a scary decision to make of like, okay, let's pull it back in.
And then really, you know, I think you had three at the time, because you just launched a new
one, but really hone in on these specific flavors first, and then maybe pick up the wheel, you
know, later on. Yeah.
So back then, I mean, it really came down to if an order came in for like a cherry chocolate chip
that we had, and it was like three, I'd have to stop my day, go over, we would pre-produce like
dough pucks, we had a formatic machine in our manufacturing commercial kitchen that we
had. And so it was more time efficient to like, make a batch, they were frozen. So like, you can
kind of similar to take and bake situation.
And that just helped on that side. But it would be really like, stuff would get stuck in the back of
the freezer, like you'd forget about it, you didn't do like the last in last out. And it just became so
much because we always had the markets going on.
And then retailers, we were only offering like four or five flavors, just to keep it easy on our side.
So that just became too much like at that point. And then as we've grown into what we are now,
we have a manufacturing partner who does all of our drop shipping.
Yes, we have a 12 month shelf life. But we have a really high minimum of production. And we're
also managing our retailers.
So like Kroger is a big customer of ours food line, we do Costco, like all that stuff on top of
independence on like fare or Mabel or all goods, which if anybody's listening out there in those
kind of spaces, you're probably familiar with them too. So you have to have inventory, but you
don't want your inventory aging out of like, what is acceptable to send to a customer. So, you
know, that came down to more efficiency of like managing inventory, and just our hero SKUs
that do the work outside of our ecom.
But then our ecom just helps to kind of support those needs. Or there may be a retailer that
only has one or two flavors, but our package, we have our QR code. So it'll drive them to our
website.
And then they'll try some of our other flavors that we have on there. Like we even justeliminated, we had a blueberry pie and a key lime and the customers love them. They're very
seasonal and they're very regional.
So it didn't make sense to keep those SKUs in mind, which is why we just launched our brownie
chocolate chip, which is not on our website yet. It will be soon. So don't worry.
You can find it at Kroger. And they're on sale right now. So go support.
But yeah, we, we added some more flavor varieties that like consumers were looking for. And
then you look at your competitors and see what they're doing well and what they're not doing
well and try and kind of merge in the middle. So that's, that's been my strategy.
It's just makes life easier to not have like 1000 packages and it gets costly as a brand to sit on
packaging and it gets costly, even more costly once you create that unit, because then you're
taking the time down. So yeah, it's kind of most I think most strategy and then you just learn as
you go like what consumers want. And then sometimes the people will do limited edition
releases, which is cool.
I wish we had the bandwidth to do that. We just don't right now maybe in the future. But yeah, I
think that's where you can win your audience though, too, is like, hey, if you like our flavor, we
have a three month subscription or like a once a month subscription, it gives you a better
discount and you can just have it auto shipped right to your door and you don't need to go to
the grocery store, like those kind of things.
So yeah, we try and use the email marketing strategy through that. But SKUs can get really time
consuming and costly if you don't manage them correctly is what I'm round about trying to say.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think it's a great call out because I know that's a lot of the times the trade off that you'll
have to make of like what your team dynamics look like and having a small team, you're not
going to be able to do everything, right? So you have to make those adjustments, you have to
make those calls of what is worth it, what can we do well, and if there are things that we want
to do, but we're not going to do them in the best way, put them in the back of the burner
because you're not going to be able to sustain what that looks like for your brand. And then
other areas of your company are going to suffer or your wellbeing as a founder of like, I cannot
do this right now. I need to pivot the business so that you're not stretching yourself too far and
too thin.
So I love that call out. So I want to sit a little bit longer in customer acquisition world. So tell us,
obviously we know you had mentioned packaging.
That's one of the things that has changed throughout the years and now has more call outs on
your packaging, more flexibility in terms of where you can sit in a retailer. You have the QR
code that brings people to your e-comm website, but what has kind of been the best customer
acquisition strategy for you all? Yeah. I think obviously it varies differently between if you'retalking about a retailer acquisition because that's something that you invest money in upfront,
but it's not always tangible until a few weeks later or you get the lovely billbacks from the
retailer, which you have to account for that trade spend.
You're going to work with this retailer and they require that much trade spend. So you build it
into your unit costs and that's cost metrics for that side. But then when it comes to e-
commerce, obviously margins, you can buffer a little bit more, but you still want it to be a
consumer saying, being like, oh, this is only this much on here.
And if I get three of these or six of these, then it's a little bit more of a discount. So looking at
other brands from my side was how I kind of mirror some of those acquisitions. Obviously
some of these brands that most people see on TikTok or Instagram are all VC funded too.
So they have pockets of money that they're able to just kind of throw at it. For us, we have to be
more strategic and organic about things. Luckily for us, we have some great consumers who
have become repeat customers, finding us in the retail stores or finding us at an event and then
purchasing our product and subscribing to our email or list.
So utilizing those email subscriber tools, Instagram and TikTok, we do some influencer affiliate
marketing and then really just putting in the effort to make sure you're present daily on
anything. I think founder face forward brands seem to have really great success because the
consumer is seeing that person behind the product. It's not like Oreo, who's a cookbook
bomber of Mandalay.
Like, hi, I'm Taylor Walker and I'm daily on Spritzle Cookie. And that's me. If you email the
customer service, that's usually me responding.
So I think that's been helpful for us too. People like to see the transparency from brands. And I
think that's happening a lot more these days in the consumer market.
Five years ago, better for you was not even a thing. And this day and age, people are really
stopping and reading ingredients. We were already there, so we didn't invent the wheel.
We just made it better through our packaging and our marketing. Yeah. Yeah.
I think it's a really good call out of being founder facing and education, having consumers,
knowing that the trend is people are more educated about, like you said, ingredients and just
making it easier and more front of mind or front of packaging for your brand. Because yeah,
people are looking for it. And so it's like, how can you make sure that you're there and showing
up? And I also agree, I think with the brands that I follow and the brands that I meet, it is... I
don't know the actual percentage, but I know it's the majority of brands who are founder
facing, willing to put in the work, willing to put themselves out there.
And I think it's a very vulnerable position to be into because you're like, it would be easier to
just not be founder facing, not put yourself out there or answering support tickets or doingthese things that when they're done well, they really do make the consumer feel part of the
brand. But obviously, it's a lot to put yourself out on social and open up your inbox to questions
and concerns and feedback and all of those things. But I think the brands who do it and the
brands who really do stand out with their consumers because they feel that community aspect
of it.
And I think that's awesome. Okay. So now let's pivot into customer retention.
So obviously with something that is consumable, you have a little bit of customer retention
baked into the product and just the industry that you're in. Tell me a little bit about how you go
about retaining customers. What are you kind of doing to stay top of mind? How does that
differ retail versus DTC? That's a great question.
And I wish I knew the answer half the time. That's a good answer too. I feel like every day I'm
learning, I'm winging it.
And like I said before, with being forward facing and having that situation, being able to turn
somebody's bad experience into a good experience and then them becoming a monthly
customer because they're like, wow, it's not just some ticket answerer on another portion of the
world being contracted out. It's the founder that's emailing me and asking me what the
problem is. I think that's been helpful.
I've turned a lot of friends upside down and then they leave a nice five-star review. And then
just knowing people get bombarded daily, every day on TikTok, on Instagram, it's like
everything has become shoppable. And sometimes that can be annoying to the consumer.
I know it becomes annoying to me. So I try to take that and melt it down a little bit. I'm not in
your face about it, but consumers, if they like the product and they want to support something,
that's amazing.
So that's my strategy on that side. I know there's people that are marketing gurus and I love
marketing. I don't have all the time to deal with it.
So I try and do once a month email blast, keep people up to date on where the products are in
stores. We have Q4 coming up. So of course, I already have all that like auto emailed strategy
out there, but I'm not going to be annoying.
Everybody, we're not going to be bombarding your inbox, like Black Friday, every hour on the
hour, like I do see in my inbox. We don't want ourselves going to junk mail. So trying to not be
annoying or spammy, I think is super helpful as a brand.
And then sometimes I'll just go pop into a store. Like if we're in TJ Maxx right now, and I walked
into my local TJ's the other day and I bought like five bags of cookies and I just walked around
the store. I was like, Hey, they're fully sealed.This is not weird. This is me. This is my product.
If you like it, try it, tell your friends. And my face was on the back of the bag and people were
like, Oh my God, is that really you? I'm like, yeah, that is really me. Yeah.
That's a really cool idea. I really like that Taylor. Yeah.
Yeah. I've done that a few times. If we're trying to drive trial, this is pivoting away from e-com,
but if we're trying to drive trial in retailers, because you have to hit a movement per week in
stores and it's really hard as a small brand to do that.
So like we'll partner on our socials, like with other brands that are in the store or like are
targeting those same consumers in the same region. Like we'll do like a hundred dollar three
winners get a hundred dollar Kroger gift card along with like whatever prize pack those people
sell on there and we sell on there. We're driving trial that way and retaining customers that
way.
And then, you know, we'll blast it on our emails and get subscribers and try and do fun
giveaways too on Instagram and Tik TOK. Like we're very, we like to do stuff like that. But like, I
think that's the fun part and it's what makes it more like organic and social too.
Like it's not just another name on the shelf. It just humanizes things a little bit more. Yeah.
I hear you. I, so I totally agree. I think giveaways and fun things on social are really what pulls
people in, especially when you are a small business and you can do stuff like that.
Right. Like, I think there's a lot more flexibility when it's you behind the steering wheel and
you're like, you know what, I'm going to go to TJ Maxx today and I'm going to walk around and
I'm going to go talk to people and give them samples and kind of tell them a little bit more
about that, like put in that work. Whereas you're not going to be able to do that where if you're
at a larger brand or even a conglomerate where there's just going to be more red tape.
And this is a little teaser. I haven't even actually announced it on the podcast, but it fits so well
that I'm working on my own brand as well in the apparel space. Oh, thanks.
Thanks. And I I'm building it out. Right.
Like, so it's been really fun to sit in the brand side of things and like get my own Shopify store
up and running and be able to be like, okay, what do I want to do? Like, what do I want to see
as a consumer? And giveaways is one of the best, most valuable thing I feel like you can do for
someone, especially when you're just starting out, because it's like, I know that this is a new
product, right? Like you don't have the thousands of reviews. You don't have the UGC. You don't
have other people's opinions on it yet.
And so I found like social media, that is the one thing that is like really, really like people are
like, oh my God, I love this. I'm so intrigued coming back and playing. And I feel like that isexactly tied to what you're saying about like giveaways and free product samples.
I even saw on LinkedIn, like this one founder posted like a message that they got about from, I
don't know if it was a customer or someone just randomly of like, hey, I have my bachelorette
coming up. Like, would you be willing to give free product? And the post on LinkedIn from the
founder kind of was popping off. Like people have a bunch of opinions about like, yes, do free
product.
Don't, no, don't do free product. And I feel like you can do things. Sure.
You have to obviously look at the financial side of things, right? Like you have to be smart,
especially for like not being VC backed, but if you can do those things, even just on some
cadence, I do feel like it comes back in rewards that you won't be able to measure in that
moment when you're making that decision, but just further down the line of like, oh yeah, this
customer that you met in TGMX went and told all their friends. And then now they're trying
them. And then now they're more loyal.
They're going to come and shop with you again because of their experience. So I feel like that's
really... I love when I hear brands who are leading the customer retention side of things of
like... And customer acquisition, but leading with, okay, let us bring you in the best ways we can
and then go from there. Yeah.
Yeah. I think like you said, with like the giveaways, I get, we get DMs all the time, especially like
if you boost a post or something, like you're trying to boost it and then your algorithm pops off.
And as a small brand, it can get really costly.
Like we're not able to send a thousand packages because shipping is expensive. And then we're
giving away a product and the core get that goes with it. Like there's so many that we'll do a
month.
So I did like a fun little thing. I got like a bunch of bachelorette things that we're probably going
to do around too shortly. But we did like a bachelorette like of the DMs of the story.
And I'm like, let our audience vote on who is the best option. So the women that won this time
is a group of nurses. That's a sister's bachelorette.
And they're doing like a spa weekend. So they'll have a nice little snack. And then we do affiliate
marketing.
So you can sign up. We have a link on our website. So if you want to exchange product for a
review
