Her Story
About Stephanie
My journey in the CPG snack food industry began with a family recipe. OMG Pretzels was born from an after-school snack my mom used to make for my siblings and me when we were growing up. As she served them at family parties and gave them as hostess gifts, people kept asking where they could buy them. In 2014, OMG Pretzels was officially born, two pans at a time in my mom's kitchen. The name came from watching and listening to people's reactions when they tried our pretzels - once you pop one in your mouth, OMG comes popping out, and that still applies to this day. Initially, I helped my mom virtually from California, where I was living and working, using my background in packaging, flexible packaging, visual communications, and graphic design from my first career 20 years ago when I ran a marketing business for about 10 years. I was essentially a volunteer employee, helping with marketing and business building while my mom was boots on the ground in Pennsylvania drumming up sales. I officially became a partner in 2019, and in May 2020 during the pandemic, I drove cross-country to help because our entire team, which consisted of friends of my parents from church, was high-risk since my parents started the business when they were 70. I was literally pulling pallets of ingredients through the front door of the local synagogue where we were producing. We outgrew that space and found our first co-packer in November 2020, and we're now on our third co-packer, which is woman-owned. Today, I'm out doing events and being the face of the company, engaging with people in person to generate sales and grow brand awareness. We make seasoned sourdough pretzel nuggets that are free from artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, MSG, GMOs, nuts, soy, and sesame. We're sold in boutique gift gourmet small specialty food shops, travel shops, hotels, and independents across the country. 90% of our original customers from back in 2014 still sell our pretzels today, including our very first retailer, Anna's Corner Store, a woman-owned convenience store that gave us our first shelf space.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Stephanie
01What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Brand awareness is one of the biggest challenges we struggle with. Last summer, I did a community giveaway in our local area, and 85% of the people who came by said they had never heard of us, and that's in our own backyard. That was a big aha moment for me. In this industry, when you're in grocery retail or convenience, you really need to be able to get your product off the shelf, and what a lot of people don't realize is that it's the manufacturer, not the retailers, that are responsible for that. From a promotional standpoint, it's been a struggle for us to penetrate grocery retail or convenience because as a small brand, our promotional budget is very small, and we have to be very selective in what we do. We're up against the likes of Dots and Snyder's, legacy brands with deep pockets. So this year, we decided to lean into brand awareness by doing as many in-person events as we possibly could to get our pretzels in people's mouths, because we sample at every event. Then they can do an immediate purchase, which helps with our cash cycle and our sales cycle - instead of 30 or 60 or 90 days, it's immediate. We hired a younger social media person to support those efforts and really just get the word out so we can grow our community and have better brand awareness.
Keep Exploring
More Influential Women · Pennsylvania
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.