How This CPG Founder Went From a Kitchen Experiment to 7,000 Stores

<p>Katie Lefkowitz was a lifelong Snickers fanatic when a colon cancer scare and a doctor&#39;s orders to cut sugar should have ended that relationship. Instead, she went home and started experimenting with date-based caramel in her own kitchen.</p><p><br></p><p>Katie is the founder of Harken, the better-for-you candy brand now in nearly 7,000 stores including Walmart, Costco, Sprouts, and Kroger, with Whole Foods launching this fall. Before Harken, she was COO at CAULIPOWER, the original cauliflower-crust pizza brand, and that food-world network is how a printed-out prototype with stickers on it turned into Harken&#39;s first national retail deal.</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of Unfinished Business, she walks through how that deal happened (including a calendar invite with no explanation attached), why she skipped the usual direct-to-consumer playbook entirely, and what she&#39;s learned running a five-person team through a Costco launch.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Our biggest takeaways:</strong></p><p>- How a colon cancer scare turned into a national candy brand</p><p><br></p><p>- The unmarked calendar invite that got Harken into Walmart</p><p><br></p><p>- Why she walked into her first retail pitch with fake, printed-out packaging</p><p><br></p><p>- The case for skipping DTC and going straight to retail</p><p><br></p><p>- Running investor relationships through a monthly two-hour office hours block</p><p><br></p><p>- Why Harken is overhauling its packaging in Q3, and what drove the change</p><p><br></p><p>- The fiber stat she says is moving more product than any ad</p><p><br></p><p>Subscribe to Unfinished Business for more unfiltered founder stories. New episodes weekly on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.</p>