SkinnyDipped: Breezy and Val Griffith. The Flourishing Snack Company That Almost Failed
with Breezy Griffith and Val Griffith
Executive Summary
Breezy and Val Griffith recount developing SkinnyDipped’s thin-coated chocolate almonds, finding manufacturing and building retail distribution. A large Target order exposed a serious ingredient and supply-chain problem. Later rapid growth concealed weak gross margins, and the founders describe a cash crunch, cost changes, a raise from individual investors and eventual profitability. Store counts, revenue, margin and fundraising figures are their and Guy’s interview-time claims, not current audited results. Personal loss is part of their founding story. Improvised production and uninvited sales tactics are historical anecdotes, not food-safety or marketing instructions.
Key Takeaways
Takeaway 1
Failing at micro-businesses is training. Before SkinnyDipped, Breezy ran a string of tiny, money-losing food ventures (organic sorbets made in an 11pm-4am commercial-kitchen shift in Miami, sandwiches, a New York cupcake business). As she puts it, she was 'cultivating a skill set by failing.'
Takeaway 2
The product insight was restraint, not novelty. Instead of fake sweeteners, they used less real sugar and a thin coating of good chocolate, borrowing the old 'truffling' technique (dusting in cocoa, freeze-dried raspberry powder, espresso) to protect the finish.
Takeaway 3
Manufacturing was the real moat and the real pain. Home-dipping on forks, a Home Depot paint-sprayer fiasco, and a Lucille-Ball-style trial on an Oregon enrobing line all failed before they found a Seattle-area chocolatier (tracked down through an esoteric chocolate blog) and commercialized the recipe in a converted chicken coop they call 'the coop.'
Takeaway 4
The founders describe extensive demos and small-store selling as early evidence. Sampling needs lawful access, food-safety controls and measured contribution; entering a cafeteria without permission is not an appropriate tactic to copy.
Takeaway 5
Saying yes to Target chain-wide (1,800 stores) with no co-manufacturer, no distributor and three months on the clock was nearly fatal: days before the run, they discovered 40,000 pounds of rancid almonds. A last-minute truckload sourced through a nut-industry contact saved the launch.
Takeaway 6
The growth-at-all-costs era masked the economics. No one asked about margins until 2022, when funding dried up and gross margins were in the teens. They cut everything - trade spend, marketing, reformulated chocolate and peanut-butter fillings, moved warehousing, shifted retailers from delivered to FOB - while protecting the team; leadership paused salaries to make payroll, and president Mark Mortimer made a personal investment.
Takeaway 7
The turnaround ended in a non-obvious raise: rather than a syndicated fund, Breezy closed the September 2023 round one investor at a time - 65 individual celebrity investors, anchored by Miami hospitality entrepreneur David Grutman - and the company turned profitable in 2024.
The Conversation Breakdown
Micro-business apprenticeship
Breezy recounts sorbets, sandwiches and cupcakes in Miami and New York, with shared accommodation, manual deliveries and small ventures that lost money. She interprets them as practice; their outcome does not show that repeated failure is required.
Loss, home and the idea
The episode recounts: The founders recount how the terminal illness and 2013 death of family friend Josh Dickerson (18) pulled Breezy back to Seattle and refocused the family; Val, a freelance TV producer (Travels to the Edge with Art Wolfe) facing an empty nest, was ready for a project. On a road trip to drop younger sister Emma at UBC, the roasted-almonds-versus-peanut-butter-cup snack contrast sparked the thin-coated chocolate almond idea.
Cracking the product
The episode recounts: Deconstructing Fran's chocolate almonds with a knife, tempering experiments, the truffling technique for a protective dusted finish, three launch flavors (dark chocolate, raspberry, espresso), the failed paint-sprayer experiment, four days hand-feeding an Oregon enrobing line, and finally the blog-discovered chocolatier and 'the coop' - a converted chicken coop with one pan machine and an eBay oven.
Hand-to-hand distribution
The episode recounts: Founding team grows with childhood friends Lizzie Resta and Chrissy Holler; night-shift packing in Spokane alongside a crew of workers with hard-life stories; door-to-door selling, relentless demos, one Whole Foods at a time, and an uninvited Google cafeteria sales visit, a historical anecdote rather than a tactic to copy.
The Target bet and the rancid-almond crisis
The episode recounts: A broker intro leads to buyer Tanya, who asks 'do you have any supply chain issues?' ('nope,' while still producing in the coop) and takes all flavors chain-wide to 1,800 stores in three months. Then the co-man's head tells Val the nuts taste wrong: 40,000 pounds rancid, days to produce-pack-ship, and a rescue truckload that arrives just in time. A Target-exclusive peanut butter almond buys them an end cap.
Growth at all costs meets 2022
The episode recounts: Inc 5000 number 32 in 2019, 20,000+ doors, sticky-note finances, gross margins in the teens - and then the funding window slams shut. Breezy's rock-bottom night sobbing in a New York shoebox hotel room, the 'soft landing or fix it' choice, leadership salary holds, Mark Mortimer's personal bridge, and a ruthless line-by-line rebuild of COGS, warehousing and trade spend.
Celebrity round and profitability
The episode recounts: The September 2023 raise assembled individually from 65 celebrity investors through David Grutman's partnership; profitability in 2024; 25,000+ stores; Val (66) on building a rare mother-daughter company and 'holding the course'; Breezy's answer to the luck question: 98% hard work, 2% luck.
Core Frameworks & Ideas
Skill set by failing
Editorial synthesis: review what each small experiment actually taught and cap the next risk. Failure can provide information, but doomed ventures are not necessary tuition or a promise of eventual success.
Product, people, package
Rohan Oza's early filter, as recounted by Breezy: a brand's success comes down to three things - product, people and package. SkinnyDipped had the first two and rebuilt the third.
Demo engine
Editorial synthesis: test whether permissioned sampling creates repeat demand at an acceptable cost. Historical demo frequency and sales are not a universal channel formula.
Fix the bucket, not the pour
Editorial synthesis: trace margin and cash pressure to specific inputs, freight, trade spending and operating choices. Evaluate quality, compliance, worker obligations and demand effects before any cut; no category of cost is always first or last.
Actionable Next Steps
- ✓If you're hand-making product, set the tripwires now for when professional manufacturing becomes non-negotiable - SkinnyDipped burned months on forks, a paint sprayer and an enrobing trial before the chicken-coop setup worked.
- ✓Before any big retail pitch, stress-test your supply chain for the order you hope to get; the founders said 'nope' to the supply-chain question while producing out of a coop, and it nearly cost them the Target launch.
- ✓Track COGS and gross margin from day one, even if finance isn't your background - a growth headline can sit on top of teen-percentage margins for years before anyone asks.
- ✓Review possible cost changes with their effects on product quality, safety, customer commitments and the team. The founders’ decision to protect jobs is one case, not a universal order for cost cutting.
- ✓Compare funding routes, dilution, legal obligations, timing and downside with qualified support. An individual-investor round can be labor-intensive and is not automatically better than institutional money.
Notable Quotes
“Really what I was doing was cultivating a skill set by failing.”
“there's nothing we can do. They're rancid.”
“And I just looked her dead in the eye and said, nope.”
“what makes a brand successful is comes down to three things product, people, and package”
“I have never met an entrepreneur who was ultimately successful that did not hit rock bottom. And this is your rock bottom.”
“I would tell you 98% hard work and 2% luck.”
“But holding the course and to do it with my daughter has been, you know, the great honor of my life.”
The One Thing to Remember
Growth can conceal weak contribution and cash risk. The founders say the downturn forced them to inspect costs; the useful practice is to track those economics before a funding shock, not assume a later rescue will arrive.