They called them "mompreneurs"... Today, Canadians Lauren Levy and Devin Connell are better-known as the women who walked straight into an $18 billion category dominated by legacy giants and wellness noise — and cracked 500 retailers in a year.
They didn't meet in a boardroom. They met through their kids, became friends, and spent years quietly admiring each other's businesses before finally asking the question: what if we built something together?
Devin Connell grew up in food — her parents opened an artisanal bakery when she was 12, she trained at Le Cordon Bleu, launched Delica Kitchen, wrote a cookbook, and became a Food Network Canada personality. Lauren Levy came at it from media, marketing, and brand-building, including years co-founding a maternity brand.
When their previous businesses wrapped up around the same time, they reverse-engineered an idea from scratch — starting with "food should be joy, not function" and working backward until they landed on cookies. What followed was a failed Madeline-style cake, broken sheets of cookies that couldn't scale, and over 200 failed test batches across a year of R&D before they had a small, crispy, slightly-too-salty cookie that broke every rule the category was following.
Now Odd Cookie is in 500 retailers across Canada, launching on Amazon next month, outgrowing its own production facility, and gearing up for a U.S. expansion and capital raise.
In this conversation, Devin and Lauren sit down with Jess and Talia to talk about what it actually takes to build a physical product business from zero inside one of the most saturated, capital-intensive categories in retail — where getting on shelf is the easy part, staying on shelf is a street fight, and your biggest edge might be not knowing the rules well enough to follow them.
They open up about the actual chemistry behind a 12-month shelf life, the billboard stunt that nearly turned into a very public embarrassment, what it's like being called "mompreneurs" while trying to raise money, and why treating the business as high stakes but low stress has kept them both sane.
Devin and Lauren share:
- The 200 test batches and full year of R&D it took to engineer a cookie that's crispy, shelf-stable for 12 months, and "slightly saltier than your average" — and why the recipe is closer to a science experiment than a bake
- The billboard they put up above a Metro store telling shoppers to "stop if you want a cookie" — and the very awkward 48 hours that followed when they walked in, champagne in hand, to buy their own product
- Why nailing your margins has to happen before you nail your recipe — the blunt rule a mentor gave them that shaped every decision since
- What it's like being called "mompreneurs" and getting "tapped on the head" in rooms full of investors — and why they've stopped bothering to correct anyone
- The three non-negotiables they tell every founder trying to get a product onto a grocery shelf
- Why "walk before you run" has meant saying no to cookie butter, cereal, and half a dozen other ideas they're dying to launch
(00:00) Intro
(01:33) Reverse Engineering a Profitable Brand
(03:06) How Lauren and Devin Became Partners
(08:24) Standing Out in a Saturated Market
(10:40) Founder-Led Branding and Nostalgia
(13:33) Flavor Development and Test Kitchen
(17:52) Scaling to 400 Stores and Staying On Shelf
(21:43) Retail Merchandising and Billboard Disaster
(25:01) Origin of the Odd Cookie Name
(27:00) CPG Margins and Capital Intensity
(29:55) Canada as a Test Market and Mentorship
(33:55) Plans for a Future Capital Raise
(35:06) Letting Go of Traditional Career Paths
(37:49) Future Flavors and Product Extensions
(41:03) Defining Success and Team Praise
(45:04) Women, Money, and Ambition
(49:49) Top Tips and Built For This Meaning
(52:43) Why Brands Sell Identity Not Products
