About a year ago we aired a podcast about the Samuel Adams Brewing The American Dreams competition and I’m excited today to follow up with last year’s winners, Katy Flannery and Gwen Burlingame who are the co-founders Minus The Moo; a gourmet lactose-free ice cream. One of the things I think makes their story so unique and inspiring is that they won this national competition despite having been in business for only about a year and a half. Proof that you don’t need to be a million dollar revenue business and sold nationwide to win business plan competitions!

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer: It was about a year ago when I aired a podcast in which I talked to Jennifer Glanville, who’s the Director of Brewery Programs for Samuel Adams, about the American Dream Wildcard pitch room. We’re following up on that initial podcast today by talking with the winners of the 2016 competition. So, Katy and Gwen, they … I’m so excited to have them on today to have them tell us a little bit about their company, but also about their experiences going through the competition. So thank you guys for joining us.

Gwen: Thank you so much for having us on.

Jennifer: Absolutely. You know, I just want to start with, can you tell us a little bit about your company? The name is Minus the Moo. So tell us about it, and how it got started.

Katy: Hi, this is Katy. So we started Minus the Moo because I love ice cream, and growing up, ice cream was a huge part of my life. But unfortunately, over time I started realizing that I was lactose intolerant, so it left this huge void in my life that I wanted a traditional premium ice cream that my friends and family would be willing to enjoy with me, but that was just lactose-free. So I went to my kitchen to start creating a lactose-free ice cream that still made with cream and milk and all the same ingredients as a traditional premium ice cream, but we just add the lactase enzyme to break down the lactose. That way, those who are lactose intolerant and those who aren’t can share the same kind of ice cream together.

Jennifer: So how did you, can you tell us a little bit about your background, because how did you realize that, hey I can create a premium ice cream product, with using things like the cream, but I can take the lactose out of it?

Katy: Gwen and I actually, so we went to Villanova University, and that’s where we met and became friends, and I was a nursing major. So while I was sitting through my organic chemistry classes and biochem, learning more and more about lactose intolerance, the lactase enzyme, and all the involvement around that, I was daydreaming about how one day I can have a premium ice cream that was lactose free. So my background in health sciences, and working in the field it gave me the tool kit to be able to identify what was wrong and what I needed to do to fix it, and then subsequently I went to the Penn State ice cream short course back in 2015, and learned more about ice cream. So I already started working on my recipes at home, but going to that program helped give me more tools to be able to figure out how to perfect our recipes to make our premium ice cream taste just like any other ice cream, but just without the lactose.

Jennifer: So when you were originally developing those recipes, were you doing it with the mind set that you wanted to start this up as a business? Or were you doing it with the mind set that I just want something that I can have for myself at home?

Katy: So I wanted something I can have at home, but when this is all coming about and when I was in college I would tell my friend how...