The bedroom became the meeting room, the kitchen became the factory product line, and the legacy chocolate industry became their biggest nemesis.
(How was that for an introduction? I’m working on my dramatic effect).
Mars, Nestle, Hershey, 3 giants who rule the industry with pockets deeper than my SKIMS straight leg classic fleece. Partnering with the world’s biggest celebrities, benefitting from a well-oiled supply chain, those 3 brands might as well be untouchable.
That was until a scrappy family-run Canadian chocolate brand came to disrupt…
It’s 2018, Lezlie Karls is playing around with different chocolate bar recipes in her kitchen, when she stumbled upon the perfect combo of sweet and functional (go Lezlie, and I speak for all of us when I say I love the way you spell your name).
Peaking the interest of her husband Nick, the couple began making 50 bars/day in their condo to perfect the recipe.
Within weeks they knew they had something and they brought on Lezlie’s brother, Jake, as a Co-Founder. At the time Jake was running a clothing brand on college campuses, hosting parties, and building all sorts of momentum on socials (more on that later).
That’s when the trio had their breakthrough.
All of the legacy chocolate brands leaned heavily on their piles of cash to get story posts from Kim Kardashian (who’s sweatpants I linked about for free – ugh Kim and her machine), commercials, and primetime ad placements during the Super Bowl.
Now what if Lezlie, Nick, and Jake could build a chocolate brand from the ground up by relying on INTERNAL CELEBRITIES? Building themselves into well-known faces?
Millionaires, kindly meet Mid-Day Squares, the chocolate brand that went from kitchen countertop to a fully automated chocolate factory producing 90,000 bars/day within 6 years. Their goal? $100M in ARR by 2025. I think they can do it, because I’ve tasted these suckers and they’re GOOD. More on that later.
How are they getting there?
ROAD TO $100M ARR
From Day 1, the Mid-Day Squares founders have had cameras in their faces. Broken machines, employee turmoil, relationship hurdles, they’ve documented IT ALL. Like the founder running around like crazy when they broke the Costco Road Show RECORD a couple of months ago. Quite the way to 9-figures if I may say so myself.
While other brands strive to achieve an aura of perfection in every touchpoint, Mid-Day Squares hones in on showing you the EXACT THINGS that their competitors (big-chocolate) wouldn’t DARE to show.
Like $300,000 worth of product about to melt because of a factory malfunction, hundreds of thousands of defective packaging putting delivery lead times in danger, or giving a peek into the numbers behind their big milestone achievements.
It’s genius.
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Forget the functionality of the product, Mid-Day Squares is getting you to buy based on EMOTION. I for 1 only buy on emotion I think, FML.
But that’s not all that this content-first approach has proven, the community it has created is killer.
Just look at their comment sections. ❤️
Something else magical that the brand does:
For 5 years, the brand has HAND-DELIVERED Mid-Day Squares to the grocery story, TAU.
It’s not just a regular delivery though, the pair (Jake and Stewart) now do weekly DANCE OFFS that are posted to Jake’s LinkedIn.
They could have found 100 reasons to NOT continue to hand-deliver the product to Stewart and TAU. It’s not efficient, it’s not scalable, but building community is all about scaling the unscalable.
Stewart now manages the Mid-Day Squares account at TAU, sales at the stores break records, and each week this dance turns into a viral moment for all parties involved.
Their investment in community doesn’t end there though, Jake and the Mid-Day Squares team have been hosting in-person dinner meetups, often.
Oh but wait, there’s more.
Lezlie and Nick crashed their fans’ wedding. I’m not even kidding.
They didn’t know the happy couple, but they shared a common bond…chocolate, specifically Mid-Day Squares chocolate.
Would Hershey ever do that? Don’t answer that.
As their individual notoriety grows, so will the brand. There’s a lesson there. ❤️
To paint this picture even clearer, look at who’s the hero image of their site (it’s Lezlie). She IS the celebrity. Go Lezlie. ❤️❤️
(I hate the website overall but I’ll talk about that another time).
There’s no pennying up for massive brand partnerships with influencers when each Founder is busy creating their own content, doing talking-head style videos, speaking at in person events, and making their own music videos (look at this LOL).
Doing what everyone else is doing can only get you where everyone else has been.
Take it from Mid-Day Squares, do what other brands are AFRAID of doing. And, try this flavor – my husband Daniel is a peanut butter lover and he’s told me it’s his favorite food. Not peanut butter as his favorite food, this specific Mid-Day Squares is his favorite food.
I’m more of the Johnny Rockets Chili Cheese Fries type but pop off I guess.
