On today's episode, I sit down with Lucy Dana, co-founder and CEO of One Trick Pony, a peanut butter brand built around Argentinian peanuts and a novel approach to jar design.

Lucy walks through the tradeoffs involved in supplier selection, inventory risk, and manufacturing control, including the very real consequences of getting early production decisions wrong.

We get into how One Trick Pony thinks about differentiation in a crowded, commoditized category, why jar design — not ingredients alone — became the company’s primary growth lever, and the operational and margin implications of introducing custom packaging.

Lucy also shares how pricing decisions have evolved alongside rising input costs and tariffs, why DTC played a critical role early on, and how the business is balancing e-commerce with retail as it scales.

This was a thoughtful, transparent conversation about building a modern food brand from scratch and I learned so much during my conversation with Lucy. As always, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.