Beyond the Die Line: Unfiltered Founder Life, Building a Brand Empire, and No-Bread PB&Js with Jake Karls 🍫🚀
Welcome back to Beyond the Die Line, hosted by Tom Seymour from Bison Bag! In this high-energy episode, Tom sits down with the wild, authentic, and unstoppable Jake Karls, co-founder of Mid-Day Squares.
Jake gives an unfiltered look at what it really takes to build a disruptive CPG empire alongside his sister and brother-in-law. From hand-making chocolate bars in a condo kitchen from 5 AM to 5 PM, to getting rejected by 26 co-manufacturers, to building their own manufacturing facility producing 150,000 squares a day—this episode is packed with real talk on scaling, packaging, and going on offense during a crisis.
🌟 Key Highlights From the Episode
* The Condo Kitchen Hustle: Jake recounts the early days of launching on August 4, 2018. The three co-founders spent 5 AM–5 PM making 50 bars a day by hand, packaged them from 5 PM–6 PM, and hand-delivered them to customers from 6 PM–10 PM with handwritten notes.
* Radical Social Media Transparency: Instead of just showcasing a polished product, Mid-Day Squares documented everything—the chaos, founder arguments, and even team therapy sessions. This raw storytelling created an emotional connection that turned customers into superfans.
* 26 Co-Packer Rejections & Building Their Own Plant: Every co-manufacturer told them their formula was impossible to scale without changing the ingredients. Refusing to compromise their product, they built their own custom manufacturing plant that now cranks out ~150,000 squares daily!
* Turning Crisis into Offense: When lockdown hit and sales plummeted 70% overnight, they didn’t play defense. They donated thousands of bars to hospital workers, shifted momentum, hired aggressively, and turned it into one of their biggest growth years.
* Winning the Refrigerated Aisle: Why build a refrigerated bar in a world of dry snack aisles? Jake explains the strategy behind avoiding the overcrowded “sea of sameness” in traditional snack aisles and taking over the high-growth, fresh-snacking fridge space.
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