From Tech Professional to Gourmet Chef With Laura Briscoe

Laura Briscoe is the Founder and CEO of Laura’s Gourmet, an all-natural, artisanal, and gluten-free granola brand. With over 18 years of experience in hospitality, private dining, and specialty food development, she is also a culinary instructor, mentor, and public speaker. A thought leader in the culinary industry, Laura’s a regular contributor at ABC15’s Sonoran Living. She’s also been featured in Shape Magazine, Fitness Magazine, In Business Magazine, Business Journal, and Gannett Publications.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Laura Briscoe discusses Peddler Con and its mission
Laura shares how she pivoted from a career in tech to a culinary professional
Conceptualizing an idea and launching it to market
How Laura has funded her company
The process of transitioning from direct sales to product distribution
Enlisting the expertise of a mentor to provide expertise and connections
Why CPG entrepreneurs need to understand slotting

In this episode…

Have you created a recipe you want to share with the world? Many commercialized food products result from a happy accident, but what was the process for conceptualization to market?

Chef and business owner Laura Briscoe advises food entrepreneurs to focus on passing the food trifecta test: taste, texture, and mouthfeel. She explains no one will want to eat a product with an unappetizing texture. Once a product is ready to launch, Laura recommends visiting stores, sending samples to their headquarters, and partnering with vendors who support local entrepreneurs to get your product onto shelves. Entrepreneurs should also consider bootstrapping their businesses and enlisting the help of friends and family to assist with packaging. Being a CPG entrepreneur can be challenging, but Laura encourages aspiring business owners to ask for help and find a mentor who can offer guidance, keep them on track, and hold them accountable.

In this episode of the Celebrity Gourmet Podcast with Odette D’Aniello, Laura Briscoe, Founder and CEO of Laura’s Gourmet, shares her entrepreneurial journey. Laura explains the process of conceptualizing an idea to market launch, funding a startup through bootstrapping, and transitioning from direct sales to product distribution.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

Today’s episode is brought to you by Celebrity Cake Studio, a family-owned and operated cake boutique.

Celebrity Cake Studio has been baking joy into all of their artistically designed cakes and desserts for 21 years.

They are proud to work with a vibrant team of cake designers and bakers that help you celebrate the sweet moments in your lives.

They have received numerous awards, winning Best of Western Washington for many years in a row and various small business accolades.

To learn more about how you can celebrate yourselves or the ones you love, visit www.celebritycakestudio.com or email them at info@celebritycakestudio.com.

Episode Transcript:

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Celebrity Gourmet Podcast where we feature top bakery and specialty food entrepreneurs from around the world and share stories and tips on how to create a successful life in the baking world.

Odette D’Aniello 0:23

Hi, my name is Odette D’Aniello, the host of the Celebrity Gourmet Podcast, where I interview specialty bakery owners, especially women, to hear how they live fun lives creating their dreams and running their successful businesses. I want to encourage you to go back and check out the past episodes with Katie Poppe, Founder and CEO of Blue Star Donuts in Portland and learn how Katie used her neuro psychology background to create a remarkable donut experience or her customers. You can also hear the story of Olga Sagan of Seattle’s Piroshky Piroshky and how she pivoted brilliantly out of the COVID pandemic. Today, I’m excited to chat with Chef Laura Briscoe, the Founder and CEO of Laura’s Gourmet in Tempe, Arizona. While growing her private fine dining business teaching cooking classes and cooking on camera. She experimented with a granola recipe that soon became a highly sought after healthy alternative to others in the market. Laura’s Gourmet Granola is available in many specialty retailers such as AJ’s, Whole Foods regionally, Gelsons in California, Central Markets in Texas, among many other independent retailers across the country. Today’s podcast episode is brought to you by Celebrity Gourmet Ventures, DBA Celebrity Cake Studio and Dragonfly Cakes. We are a family owned and operated specialty bakery in Tacoma, Washington. Celebrity Gourmet has in baking joy into all of our artistically designed cakes and desserts for over 25 years. We are proud to work with a vibrant team of cake designers and bakers who helps you to celebrate the sweet moments in your lives. You can find us at celebritycakestudio.com, Dragonfly cakes.com, or you can email me at Odette@celebritygourmet.com. Before introducing Laura, I wanted to give a big thank you to Amie Smith. She owns AMIE’S Bakery in Cape Cod. She actually was the last person I interviewed before Laura. And she had said you got to meet Laura, if you’re going to be in Arizona. She owns Laura’s Granola. She’s amazing. And then I am I was in Scottsdale at a food show. And guess who was two booths away from me? It was Laura. That’s how we met. I invited her to the podcast. I’m so grateful. She said yes. So Hi, Laura. Thanks for being on this podcast.

Laura Briscoe 3:09

Hi, Odette, thanks for having me. I can’t believe that was only last week. I’ve had another trade show since then. And been flying all over the place. So that was literally only what nine days ago.

Odette D’Aniello 3:22

I know. Can you please tell our listeners how, what what that show was about and and what you do, like?

Laura Briscoe 3:29

Sure, absolutely. So last week, we were all participating in a food show that was sponsored by one of our distribution partners which is Peddler’s Son Produce, based in Arizona in Phoenix. Peddler’s Son focuses their initial business primary business had been produced distribution across Arizona and then they expanded that to include specialty items to complement what they were doing with produce. So it’s been 10 years since we first onboarded with Peddler’s Son, and I remember my very first sales call with one of their principals, Joe, and he and I went and met with one of the chefs at a one of the restaurant chains here in town about using our product on their menus and it went really really well and that was Scrambled restaurants and they still use our product to this day. We still partnered with that with with the Peddler’s to do that distribution with them among a lot more. We’ve grown significantly to the show last week, which they called Peddler Con, was very much focused on giving all of the chefs in Arizona that they distribute to and also prospective Chefs for them to see the breadth of products that they distribute from produce to specialty items like ours and yours to chocolates to show coterie. You You name it, it was there and it was beautifully done at the talking stick resort, which is where they host it year over year. And then they also do chef competitions throughout the day, which was really cool to see how chefs utilize a lot of the ingredients that were shown on the expo floor, including ours, where we were featured in one of the desserts, and the chef who used us Chef Ken Aronson, one, using Laura’s Gourmet Granola, which was very exciting. So it was a good show.

Yeah, yeah, I have pictures of it, you’ll have to see the video for him to describe it. Let’s just say that this guy is brilliant. And one of the things I loved is that he smoked the dessert with cinnamon bark. So it had that aroma no matter what. And then he had used our product as part of a twill, if you will, that was resting on the on top of the dessert, so and he was.

Odette D’Aniello 5:40

So that was amazing. I missed that when I had to go to the airport for my next food show in San Francisco. I miss a certain section.

Laura Briscoe 5:49

Yeah, it never seems to stop, especially this time of year, I think things start rolling in August. And you’re we’re just in trade show after trade show after trade show after trade show. And I don’t know how our buyers make it because we definitely get trade show fatigue after a while, but, but they’re always on the hunt for the next great thing. So we have to be there so they can see it.

Odette D’Aniello 6:09

Well, speaking of speaking of that hunt, I wanted to know but how you started, you know, and how you went from, you know, an idea of a product or a recipe, and then you’ve taken it nationally.

[Continue to Page 2]