Lindsey Cunningham is the Co-founder and CEO of RollinGreens, a brand that offers tasty, plant-based, clean label food. She was born into an entrepreneurial family in Scarsdale, New York and grew up with the dream of having her own restaurant. She is persistent, passionate and a risk taker.

Lindsey graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder with a BS in Journalism Broadcast News. After two summers at NBC, she listened to her childhood dream and started the RollinGreens food truck with her now husband, Ryan Cunningham. 10 years later, RollinGreens has thrived and expanded with a line of plant based frozen alternatives in more than 1800 stores nationwide. Their offerings include millet tots, cauliflower wings, and currently in the midst of launching their first shelf stable products.

What inspired Lindsey to enter the food industry through a food truck

The type of food Lindsey and her husband offers to their customers

How Lindsey found a co-packer for her millet tots, got into to Whole Foods, and later entered other retail stores

How Lindsey expanded her line of products from her first millet tots to her current SKUs

How RollinGreens differentiates itself from other frozen food brands and why they decided to make their products shelf-stable

How COVID-19 has impacted Lindsey's business

The biggest challenge Lindsey faced in growing her business and how she's looking to fund it

The target market for RollinGreens' products

How Lindsey's background in journalism helped in growing her business and how they are positioning themselves with a different buying team

Lindsey gives advice to fellow entrepreneurs on how to run a business and debunks the myth that healthy, natural food doesn’t sell in Walmart

Millet is such an underutilized yet nutrient-dense whole grain that many people don't know about. It’s actually used for bird feed and people do not realize just how healthy it is for humans. In an effort to not just educate people about its health benefits but to also provide health and nutritious food alternatives, Lindsey Cunningham and her husband, Ryan, started a food truck business selling millet tots. They had an abundant supply of millet from Colorado farmers, which they took advantage of and soon their products were on the shelves of Whole Foods.

In this episode of Nexxt Level Brands, Lindsey Cunningham gets interviewed by Steve Cleere where she shares her journey of growing her natural, plant-based food brand with her husband Ryan. She talks about her family's history in the food truck business, where she sources her millet grain, the health benefits of this particular grain, and why entrepreneurs need to be persistent in growing and scaling their businesses. Stay tuned.

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Kitchen2Shelf

Nexxt Level Marketing

Hema Reddy is the Founder and CEO of Crafty Counter, a food company that specializes in nutrient-dense food that also is pleasing to the taste buds. Their flagship product, Wunder Nuggets, provides a well-balanced meal contained in every serving. Crafty Counter is designed to help flexitarian families have better choices so that they can help long term health and still have a positive impact on our planet.

Join G. Steven Cleere as he is joined by Hema to talk about flexitarianism, Hema’s Food Startups Podcast, and what is coming next for the Crafty Counter Line.

• [2:36] Background on Hema and the origins of Crafty Counter
• [8:44] The longevity of Flexitarianism
• [11:20] Challenges Hema had starting a commercial kitchen
• [16:40] Selling in the frozen section versus the fresh section
• [21:51] Marketing strategy for Crafty Counter
• [28:13] Upcoming products that Hema is planning to add to the line
• [32:08] The unique relationship children have with food
• [36:48] Wunder Nuggets don’t need a dipping sauce
• [37:42] Hema’s experience on the Food Startups Podcast
• [40:29] Advice for developing brands

• Crafty Counter
• Food Startups Podcast
• LinkedIn for Hema

Encore Presentation from 2020: Ryne O'Donnell is the Founder of Sol-ti, a living beverage company. Ryne’s personal obsession with health and well-being along with the undeniable benefits of good, organic food and juice had on his body made him realize that there was a lack of quality options for travelers. This, coupled with the incessant infiltration of plastic packaging got Ryne thinking that it was time to address the gap in the market for glass bottled living beverages which was how Sol-ti was created in 2014.

Ryne is also the Founder of Permaculture Planet, a Costa Rica-based corporation specializing in permaculture design land development and design properties. He invested in a farm in Costa Rica as a backup plan in case his business failed and later moved there.

How Ryne O’Donnell's personal challenge led to the Sol-ti

Ryne talks about making smoothies and other beverages at home before starting his business

What prompted Ryne to leave the tech industry and develop a mobile phone app to help people find healthy food and juice bars

How Ryne started his Sol-ti business and the returns he got during the first month of sales

Ryne’s initial plans for Sol-ti, how he produced his products at a rental kitchen, and his initial sales run at a local yoga studio

Ryne explains what Sol-ti means, the flavors they currently have, and where the products are sold

How Ryne filled the gap between demand, distribution, and production

Ryne talks about Costa Rica and his decision to sell the beverage company only to buy it back later on

How Ryne handled sales for his business and what he learned from hiring sales reps

Ryne talks about the glass element and pricing of his products and why he refuses to use PET (Polyethylene terephthalate)

Ryne's advice to fellow entrepreneurs on building a classic and iconic company and brand that stands out

Many entrepreneurs in the food and beverage industry started their businesses to solve a specific personal challenge they had. For Ryne O’Donnell, the lack of quality healthy beverages on the road because he traveled a lot and the infiltration of plastic packaging for the available products got him thinking about addressing this obvious gap in the beverage industry. He then decided to make his own glass bottled living beverages.

However, Ryne soon found out that the food industry is tough and requires tenacity and persistence. He has learned so much about entrepreneurship after leaving the tech industry and knows that it can take years to build an amazing brand. But while it’s challenging, Ryne vouches that the view from the top is amazing.

In this episode of Nexxt Level Brands Podcast, Ryne O'Donnell joins Steve Cleere to talk about how he started and grew his beverage company, Sol-ti. He talks about the expectations he had while starting his entrepreneurship journey, growing his business, selling it and eventually buying it back again, moving to Costa Rica, and his future plans for his beverage brand. Stay tuned.

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