We knew 3 things — how to be scrappy, hustle, and sell by Kelly Sanders
Photo credit: @Bentheflye
Kelly Sanders, 27, is the Founder and CEO of Klean Plate. Their flagship product is Bliss Batter, the first and only high protein pancake and waffle batter on the market. We were lucky enough to meet Kelly and taste her pancakes earlier this week and…WOW. These things taste just as good as any carb-loaded, butter-basted flapjacks you would get at your favorite restaurant. When we saw how Bliss Batter’s nutrition stacks up to other products on the market, we almost had to cancel the article because we thought Kelly was lying. Long story short, these things taste amazing and are better for you than anything else out there.
Check the bottom of the article for your exclusive discount code and get your hands on some Bliss Protein Batter today.
I don’t have kids, but I imagine being an entrepreneur must feel similar to taking home a newborn infant and feeling full of love, fearful of messing up, and absolutely exhausted.
My company, Klean Plate, is my baby. It keeps me up at night, it literally breaks my back from lugging around product, it completely took over my personal life, and it fills me with more joy than anything I’ve ever experienced.
One thing I’ve heard constantly from other entrepreneurs is that in order to succeed, you have to be prepared to lose everything. I guess that’s what made it easier for me to become an entrepreneur; I’ve never had much to lose.
Food has always been my passion. When I graduated from culinary school in Philadelphia, I was thrilled to learn I had been accepted into America’s Test Kitchen’s intern program in Boston. While I knew the money wasn’t great, I didn’t think it much of a problem until I searched for housing on Craigslist and not one but two people got back to me informing me my budget would limit me to a parking spot in their lot, rather than an apartment in their building. That said, luck prevailed when I managed to find a walk-in closet being rented by several other “young professionals” for $450/month. I was thrilled.
As a recipe developer at America’s Test Kitchen, I received an education that I could not buy at any restaurant or culinary class. Their dedication to finding the perfect recipe for a muffin, pie, baguette, you name it, was like nothing I had ever seen before. Every day felt like the culinary equivalent of Navy Seal training. One week, I made the same zucchini muffin recipe 113 times to make sure it consistently resulted in a muffin with the perfect cakey center and lightly crisped top.
I took so much pride in my internship with the hopes it would lead to full-time employment. Unfortunately, after months of conducting inventory, cleaning cast iron, and prepping thousands of recipes, I wasn’t one of the few selected for a position. Lucky for me, however, desperation does not afford you the luxury of sitting around and feeling sorry for yourself.
I was coming off of my father’s health insurance later that month which, up until that point, had covered majority of the Botox treatments, neurology clinics, physical therapy, and meds that I needed as someone who suffers from both a herniated disk and severe chronic migraines that leave me bedridden and sometimes blind for days. I needed a job fast so I reverted to personal training and nutrition, something I had done throughout my late teens and college years when I needed to pick up extra cash.
I landed a personal training job at Beacon Hill Athletic Club and in a matter of months, I became their most requested trainer with a large, dedicated clientele. I attribute so much of the success I’ve had with Klean Plate to the community I found at Beacon Hill. They gave me the autonomy and support to do what I thought was best for both the gym and our clients.
In fact, when my clients asked me to do meal prep for them to support their fitness regime, Beacon Hill gave me their blessing to launch my clean eating meal service with them, which was a smash hit at the gym. I called it Klean Plate.
Before I knew it, my little red Fiat went from housing whatever I couldn’t fit in my walk-in closet “bedroom” to now also carrying 40+ plastic containers of grilled chicken, cauliflower rice, and mango salsa for my clients at the gym. My life hit a whole new level of busy and chaotic.
You may think starting this side hustle would be a dream come true. It was a nightmare. Clients often canceled orders or placed them last minute. I was constantly driving to and from Costco, lugging heavy bags of groceries up and down the stairs to my apartment where I’d spend the next 6–8 hours making and measuring hundreds of meals for my clients.
Free time and I were total strangers. Worse, it was an expensive venture, and I soon figured out it was actually costing me money. The cost of groceries, gas, packaging, my time — it all added up. At the end of the day, I was working 7 days a week, 12+ hours a day, and my gross earnings between training and Klean Plate came in just shy of 40K.
In an effort to gain some sanity and control over my life, I signed up for my first figure competition, a hobby I knew would demand my all and reintroduce regiment to my life. My diet was meticulous. I ate every 3 hours, weighed every gram of food that entered my mouth, and cut out all processed food and sugar.
While pursuing a state of physical perfection, my sweet tooth tantrumed and I was infuriated with the products that were posing as high protein. They all had high carb counts, preservatives, and sugars which I could not have.
I was a broken woman without carbs so I put my America’s Test Kitchen hat back on and spent weeks creating a protein pancake recipe that tasted like the real thing and also met the needs of my competitor diet. I tested over 300 different recipes before I cracked the code. When I tried that first bite, I knew in my heart I discovered something truly special and I couldn’t wait to get it on the Klean Plate menu.
My clients went crazy for the pancakes and so did my sister, Bryn. So much so that she immediately dedicated herself to helping me pivot Klean Plate from a meal service to a wholesome convenience food company. We threw ourselves into the business, cannonball style. Between my experience living paycheck to paycheck and Bryn’s background in advertising startups, we both knew 3 key things — how to be scrappy, how to hustle, and how to sell. Anything we didn’t know, we googled. Any doubts we had, we cleared.
We conducted blind taste tests with our friends, asking them to rate and compare leading protein pancake brands to ensure quality. We researched the market inside and out and, to our astonishment, we discovered there wasn’t a fresh protein pancake batter on the market. We loved the opportunity to be the first to market so we again pivoted from selling protein pancakes to selling Bliss Batter, the first ever protein pancake batter. Just pour batter onto a pan and flip; no mixing bowls, no mess.
We created a 25-page business plan that supported our research and raised $22K in funding through friends and family; my largest investor being a good friend who had allowed me to rent his gorgeous home to teach cooking classes back when I was in culinary school. Bryn and I designed our own logo, website, attained insurance and licenses to sell, and even secured a commercial kitchen for use after hours. For free.
Bryn and I were a dream team. I pushed the legal legwork, getting papers signed and driving around Boston in between clients, while Bryn drew up marketing kits, organized spreadsheets and crunched numbers. Even with my BA in culinary management, it took no time to learn that there was no clear path to starting a food business. It was trial and error.
To get into stores, I offered free pop-ups with samples for customers with the option to buy on-premise. I tagged all of it on all of our social media pages to help raise awareness. Pop-ups got us fans, fans shop at retailers, and retailers got us sales. About 3 months into operations, we were in a position to scale to CommonWealth Kitchen (CWK), a co-packer in Quincy that supports female and minority food startups for an amazing price.
Securing CWK was pivotal. It allowed me to focus even more of my energy on hunting for new accounts. By the end of our 8th month, we had sold over 1,100 units of Bliss Batter, were picked up by 12 stores, and gained over 3,000 followers between Facebook and Instagram. We managed to do all of this without spending a penny on advertising outside of promo tables and product gifting through Julius, the influencer marketing software company Bryn works for that helped us discover and connect with fitness and foodie influencers on Instagram with dedicated followers in the Boston area.
I’ll be turning 28 this summer and when people hear I own my own company, I’m always surprised by their show of admiration. The truth is, we’re all entrepreneurs, whether we know it or not — we’re the Founders and CEOs of our lives. Every single day we’re all investing our time, energy, and money into something we think is worthwhile. For me, I couldn’t think of any better way to spend my life than by making clean eating easier, more accessible and, above all, downright delicious!
A huge thank you to Kelly and her team for sharing their story (and their magic pancakes) with us.
Receive 10% off your Klean Plate order at kleanplate.com with the promo code: THEHUM
