Late July Snacks: Nicole Bernard Dawes. Crackers and Cookies were Failing… Tortilla Chips Saved Them

**Guy Raz** (0:00)
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**Nicole Bernard Dawes** (3:30)
So basically we got all these great orders, but we also got a lot of customers where they were really excited about the idea, but Organic maybe hadn't taken off in their chain yet, and their customers didn't really know what it was. So we got a lot of big orders from stores that probably shouldn't have given us big orders.
And about two months after that show, our sales just disappeared completely.

**Guy Raz** (4:02)
Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how a family potato chip company gave rise to a brand new family business, Late July, a brand of organic snacks that struggled for years until it found its hero product.
There is something that happens when you build your business around a highly specific type of product. Most founders passionately believe in it, and naturally, they spend years trying to make it work. But sometimes, maybe more than sometimes, it just sputters along. This is what happened to Nicole Bernard Dawes. Her dad Steve founded Cape Cod Potato Chips back in the early 1980s. It started as a tiny storefront in Hyannis on Cape Cod, and over time, it became a huge success. So when Nicole decided to start her own snack company as an adult, her dad helped her get it off the ground. The company was called Late July, and Nicole focused on making organic snacks, mainly crackers and then sandwich cookies. But the business struggled to really grow, and then just as the financial crisis of 2008 started to hit, Nicole's dad died. Just weeks later, the bank called in a $3 million loan. Suddenly, Late July was in real trouble. Actually, it was technically in default, and Nicole needed to figure out a way to save the company fast. The idea she came up with was pretty simple, and it was the last best chance the company had to survive. That one idea didn't just save Late July, it completely transformed the business, which was later acquired by Campbell's. After that, Nicole would go on to start another company, this time in flavored sparkling water and soda, a brand called Nixie, which we'll hear about a little later.