Oct 09 2024 36 mins
Lindsey Cunningham is the Co-founder and CEO of RollinGreens, a brand that offers tasty, plant-based, clean label food. She was born into an entrepreneurial family in Scarsdale, New York and grew up with the dream of having her own restaurant. She is persistent, passionate and a risk taker.
Lindsey graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder with a BS in Journalism Broadcast News. After two summers at NBC, she listened to her childhood dream and started the RollinGreens food truck with her now husband, Ryan Cunningham. 10 years later, RollinGreens has thrived and expanded with a line of plant based frozen alternatives in more than 1800 stores nationwide. Their offerings include millet tots, cauliflower wings, and currently in the midst of launching their first shelf stable products.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
What inspired Lindsey to enter the food industry through a food truck
The type of food Lindsey and her husband offers to their customers
How Lindsey found a co-packer for her millet tots, got into to Whole Foods, and later entered other retail stores
How Lindsey expanded her line of products from her first millet tots to her current SKUs
How RollinGreens differentiates itself from other frozen food brands and why they decided to make their products shelf-stable
How COVID-19 has impacted Lindsey's business
The biggest challenge Lindsey faced in growing her business and how she's looking to fund it
The target market for RollinGreens' products
How Lindsey's background in journalism helped in growing her business and how they are positioning themselves with a different buying team
Lindsey gives advice to fellow entrepreneurs on how to run a business and debunks the myth that healthy, natural food doesn’t sell in Walmart
In this episode…
Millet is such an underutilized yet nutrient-dense whole grain that many people don't know about. It’s actually used for bird feed and people do not realize just how healthy it is for humans. In an effort to not just educate people about its health benefits but to also provide health and nutritious food alternatives, Lindsey Cunningham and her husband, Ryan, started a food truck business selling millet tots. They had an abundant supply of millet from Colorado farmers, which they took advantage of and soon their products were on the shelves of Whole Foods.
In this episode of Nexxt Level Brands, Lindsey Cunningham gets interviewed by Steve Cleere where she shares her journey of growing her natural, plant-based food brand with her husband Ryan. She talks about her family's history in the food truck business, where she sources her millet grain, the health benefits of this particular grain, and why entrepreneurs need to be persistent in growing and scaling their businesses. Stay tuned.
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Resources Mentioned in this episode
Lindsey Cunningham on LinkedIn
Finger Licking Dutch Stroopwafel
Nexxt Level Brands episode featuring Kara Romanik of Mamie’s Pies
Sponsor for this episode...
Our podcast today is sponsored by Kitchen2Shelf, the educational arm of NexxtLevel Brands. Kitchen-2-Shelf provides online and in-person courses and workshops for CPG entrepreneurs at any stage of growth.
Whether you're an early-stage startup, a local growing business, or if you want to just expand your distribution to a national level, Kitchen-2-Shelf can help you learn what you need to know to grow.