Bobo’s: Beryl Stafford. A Single Mom Turns a Baking Project into a $100M Business

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Mar 9, 2026

Beryl Stafford, founder of Bobo’s Oat Bars who turned a four-ingredient family recipe into a national snack brand. She talks about starting from homemade bars and humble demos. She describes scaling pains: packaging bets, shared kitchens, Whole Foods break, distribution surprises, burnout, outside investment, and the high-stakes Costco moment.

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ANECDOTE

Shared Kitchen And Joint LLC With Justin’s

To scale production cheaply, Beryl rented time in shared commercial kitchens and then formed an LLC to share space and staff with Justin’s Nut Butters.
They pooled payroll and rent, shared employees who baked bars one day and made nut butter another day.

INSIGHT

Buying Retail Kills Early Margins

Early founders can stay scrappy but wasteful by buying retail ingredients; learning distribution and procurement is a step-change for margins.
Beryl initially bought organic oats and ingredients at Whole Foods retail until she learned bulk sourcing.

ADVICE

Demo Constantly To Win Retailers

Use demos relentlessly as your primary marketing to build in-store conversions and retailer relationships.
Beryl personally demoed every weekend at Whole Foods and later hired demo teams to maintain momentum across regions.

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Bobo’s: Beryl Stafford. A Single Mom Turns a Baking Project into a $100M Business

At 40, Beryl Stafford’s life cracked open. Her marriage ended, she hadn’t worked in years, and she had two daughters to raise. She needed income—fast.

So she did the only thing that felt real: she baked.

What started as 4-ingredient oat bars— hastily placed in a Boulder coffee shop—became Bobo’s, a national brand built in the Silicon Valley of natural foods.

In this episode, Beryl walks us through the scrappy early days: buying ingredients at full retail, a risky $25K packaging machine, the Whole Foods breakthrough, the burnout, and the pressure shift that comes with outside capital—and Costco.

It’s a story powered by community support, relentless demos, and a founder who kept saying “yes” before she knew how.

What you’ll learn:

Why “survival” can be a powerful founder advantage
How to sell your product before you feel ready (and why that’s often the point)
The unglamorous truth of early CPG: shelf life, shared kitchens, endless demos
In a trend-driven category, the value of sticking to a recipe “your grandmother could have made.”
The two faces of Costco: growth rocket and operational trap

Timestamps:

08:35—Divorced at 40… “I was trying to survive.”
12:02—The baking project with her daughter… and the unexpected product-market signal
17:21—The first sale: snack bars in cellophane; making up a price
28:38—Sharing a kitchen with Justin’s Nut Butters: scrappy collaboration + conflict
31:49—The first-time founder playbook: sell first, learn the rest later
33:54—Whole Foods says yes… before she knows what “freezer safe packaging” even means
39:10—Getting into national distribution: “What just happened?”
46:34—Burnout, hiring a CEO, raising outside money—and what changes when investors arrive
54:31—The Costco conundrum: huge upside, real downside

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This episode was produced by Noor Gill, with music by Ramtin Arablouei.

Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Alex Cheng.

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