Alice Couderc 0:00

In the former companies that I was a part of, I was always in the sales department. And I realized building the business that managing salespeople is very different from managing all types of uh people. And so like I was used to incentives and uh reaching targets, and this is how we made sure that the team was working well. But building at home, uh, it's a very different style of leadership because I have a very comprehensive view of what's going on, and I now understand all like all the decisions that are made. I understand why.

Angela Robertson 0:34

Welcome back, everyone, to the Stormy Stories show. I am your host, Angela Robertson, CEO of Ace Tech. We are a non-for-profit membership society for tech CEOs and founders all across Canada. We exist to make sure that no Czech CEO or founder has to grow their business alone and that they and their companies can thrive. I'm delighted to introduce you to today's guest, Alice Couder, co-founder of Atome Bakery, a fast-growing food startup making healthier artisan sourdough bread accessible across Canada through an innovative frozen delivery model. After leadership roles at DoorDash, Fedora, and several high-growth startups, Alice helped build Atome from a local experiment into an award-winning brand that has delivered tens of thousands of orders nationwide. Welcome to the Stormy Stories show, Alice. Thank you so much for the warm welcome and thank you for having me, Angela. Oh, I'm delighted. I cannot wait to dive in, especially because I, alongside, I think many of our listeners consume sourdough on an inordinate basis. So I am so delighted to have you join. But before founding at Tome Bakery, you built your career in high-growth companies like DoorDash and Fedora. What inspired you to leave that world and start your own business?

Alice Couderc 2:09

Well, I think the company found me more than I decided to leave and found it. What happened is I moved from France to Canada in 2018. And with that came a lot of cravings for bread. And you know, when you grow up in France, there's just bread at every meal. You can find it everywhere. There's a lot of bakeries around. And so moving from France to Canada, it was kind of a cultural shock for both myself and my partner. Um, especially him, actually, because he used to eat bread on a daily basis. He's still does actually. And so that that's really where it came from the just the need for him to have bread all the time and good quality bread with no added sugar, no added yeasts. And so he started making his own bread here in Canada and then experimenting with uh freezing techniques so he didn't have to do it so often, because as you know you might know, making sourdough bread can take up to three days. It's a very lengthy process. And so he decided to basically freeze the bread before baking it at the proofing stage, which is a well-known method in French bakeries to be able to keep the quality of the bread whilst being more convenient. And that's when he did it for us, for our household. Then friends started asking if they could buy some from us, then people we didn't know started reaching out to buy some. That's when we realized that there really was a demand for this product. And I've always wanted to start my own business. I went to business school in the entrepreneurship major. And so we just decided that it was a good opportunity for us to try to build something and to make better bread accessible across Canada.

Angela Robertson 3:50

It's such an important issue. Honestly, Alice, as I'm sure you found it is so difficult to find bread of the quality that you can have, obviously in France, but in Europe in general. I mean, I've so many people talk even about how the demand for gluten-free products is maybe potentially because of the exposure to such challenging, you know, bread and niece products that we have here. And your bakery at home is rethinking how artisan bread reaches consumers. What opportunity did you see that others in the food industry were missing?

Alice Couderc 4:26

Yes, exactly. So what we noticed when we arrived is there are some good artisan bakeries for sure. In a lot of uh Canadian cities and in Vancouver, there are some really good artisan bakeries that we love to go to. But we just lived about 20 minutes away by car to the closest one. And so the issue that we noticed was the problem of accessibility for this quality of bread. If someone lives in the suburbs or in a rural area, it's very common that the closest thing that they'll get from bread is at the supermarket. And often to be able to have a long shelf life in the supermarket, the manufacturer needs to add preservative. Sometimes they even add yeast, even though it's a sourdough on the product, they will add yeast to make sure that the process goes faster for the fermentation. They can also add sugar to basically boost the process. So what we noticed is there was an inconsistency in the access to good bread in Canada. And it was also, I think, an under-represented market because there's maybe you know five bakeries in a city big as big as Vancouver for that quality of bread. And so that's what we noticed. There's just a gap in the market that is not present in France. So being an immigrant in a in Canada gave us, I think, a unique perspective on what people were doing in other countries and what we could bring to Canada. And uh yeah, that's I think that's the main thing that we noticed.

Angela Robertson 5:56

And I think sometimes it can be a challenge though to see this potential for a product that is a physical product as opposed to, you know, setting up your own brick and mortar store, right? So coming to it, you know, saying that there's a gap in the market, why not just make a bakery in your own neighborhood? What were some of the toughest early obstacles that you had to overcome in starting this business? And what made you go down this route as opposed to maybe think going a bit smaller at the start or you know, creating this brick and mortar option for your local economy?

Alice Couderc 6:33

That's a great question and one that we get all the time, including still today. Um, I think our our main discussion when we realized that there was demand in the market was that we don't want to just be another bakery because we wouldn't be solving the problem at a scale. We would just be solving the problem for people in our neigh in our neighborhood. And so that's when we started looking into frozen shipping and what it means to ship frozen to consumer goods. And we looked into models like True Local, and they do this for the meats. Um, there are some examples of frozen boxes in the US also with ButcherBox. So we looked at these and we realized that it is possible to ship frozen products. And so we decided that our mission wasn't to just provide great breadth for one neighborhood, but rather to try and fill that gap between quality and convenience that is all around Canada. But it did come with a lot of obstacles, as you mentioned, for a physical product, especially frozen. Um, one of the biggest ones that we have is finding the materials to safely ship the frozen box, especially, for instance, the liners. Uh, so it's the insulation that you put in the box to make sure that everything keeps frozen with the dry ice that we put in the box. And it is uh extremely rare to find a manufacturer for these types of liners. So we've tried um a lot of them, and most of them to be affordable, you have to order by full truckloads from the United States. So that was our first barrier to really get a good insulation. Um and you know, to give you an example, when we started, it was so expensive to get these liners that we would actually order some leaf bags, you know, the bags that you collect the leaves in in the autumn. And we would just like manually cut them with scissors and just use them because they're like made for before being water resistant and they're really good at insulating the product for like the same-day delivery. So instead of getting the expensive liners that you need to get in a big batch, we would just cut these manually, and that's how we got started.

Angela Robertson 8:48

Oh my gosh, how innovative. And look at how far you've come. You recently celebrated more than 20,000 customer orders. That is such a great milestone. What were the key moments that convinced you Atom Bakery had real market traction?

Alice Couderc 9:03

I think there were several moments. Uh, the very first one was when we got an order from someone we didn't know. So that I think in any small business, that's a big aha moment when you realize someone you don't know is trying to purchase and they're interested in what you have to give them. Later on, I think it was seeing the repeat rates from our customers that really made it for me. Because, you know, someone can take a chance on a product and try it once, but we have about 80% of our customers that repurchase within 12 months. And so that shows that people really have a need for the product and they're interested in continuing a subscription with us. And very recently we opened the market in Ontario, where I am today. Actually, I'm traveling today to Ontario. And in I think from September when we opened until January, uh, it grew to be 40% of our monthly sales uh in just the span of uh four months. So that really showed us there was a lot of traction outside of DC and Alberta, you know, the markets of Canada too.

Angela Robertson 10:04

Now, not everyone goes into frozen foods in particular or frozen goods transportation because of how expensive it can be to transport. How did you address that challenge, or what is something that you are overcoming in that barrier? Because I would think that this area, especially of food and beverage, is a one that is particularly competitive, but it's also can really cannibalize margins as well.

Alice Couderc 10:33

Yes, you're right. It's very expensive to ship the frozen products, and there's different layers to that. Uh, but we also need to compare to other distribution channels that are available to small business right now. And it is also very expensive to sell on a frozen aisle in a supermarket. Like you need to pay a distributor, you need to pay all the marketing fees for the for the retail partner. And so if you compare cost to cost, it is actually not that different to own your customer journey and ship to them rather than go through the retail routes. But it does necessitate to have a minimum order that is quite high so that you can obviously amortize the cost of the dry ice, of the insulation, uh, and of the carrier because of the size of the box. So our smallest box, for instance, right now is at $120. Um, and that's how we're able to ship them directly to consumer. We wouldn't be able to ship just one loaf of bread, for instance, with that model.

Angela Robertson 11:34

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, you have to find that sweet spot, right? Of what's going to make business sense and also what's going to work for the consumer as well. Now, many founders talk about the importance of product market fit. How did customer feedback shape the evolution of Atom's products and business model?

Alice Couderc 11:53

I think it is constantly shaping our product and business model. Uh just to give you an example, our most recent product that we launched was a potato gratin. So that's quite far from the sourdough bread that we started with. And it's fully based on what customers are telling us that they want to see in the boxes. So we started with only our sourdough bread line, and then we extend it to pastries, we extend it to fresh pasta, and now even more savory options. Um, just be because people here maybe don't eat as much bread as what we do. And so having uh every month or every 60 days a box uh full of bread can be a little bit much uh for people who don't eat that much bread. And so listening to what they want in the box is a big part of our product selection. Uh, but just the business model in itself, shipping the boxes also comes from feedback, early feedback from customers because we used to have a pickup model where we had partnerships uh with local businesses across the Vancouver Greater area, and people would just uh book on the website and then go to their pickup points uh to get their order and drive traffic to those local businesses. But we got more and more requests from people that were outside of the greater Vancouver area to just be able to order and get it delivered, and that's what motivated our first move to delivery.

Angela Robertson 13:20

And it comes back to the original problem you were trying to solve, right? With people from more rural areas having access to quality products. If they have to drive to go and pick up their order, it's you know still the same challenge. So that's an amazing evolution. I know that I would probably be in the minority of people who could easily finish that box of bread within a 60-day period, but I there you go, we're in good company. You've gone from startup employee to startup founder. How has your leadership style changed now that you're responsible for building the company yourself?

Alice Couderc 13:56

So, in in the former companies that I was a part of, I was always in the sales department. And I realized building the business that managing salespeople is very different from managing all types of uh people. And so we were like I were used to incentives and uh reaching targets, and this is how we made sure that the team was working well. But building at home, uh it's a very different style of leadership because I have a very comprehensive view of what's going on, and I now understand all like all the decisions that are made. I understand why, which might not have been the case before. Obviously, people in companies uh that are bigger are not able to always be very transparent about the decisions and and what's going on. And I remember that it frustrated me when I was an employee that to not understand why decisions were taken sometimes. So I think that's what I'm bringing to at home is I always try to justify the decisions that we make to the staff and explain why we're making them. So it's a very transparent environment, and hopefully people feel comfortable asking us when we do something and they don't understand why. Um it's really important to me that the communication is free and people can ask any question about the business model or why why we're taking such and such actions.

Angela Robertson 15:18

Do you think being a part of an environment where things were really moving and building at such a fast pace equipped you to have that kind of understanding of the level of transparency that you would want to bring to your company?

Alice Couderc 15:32

Yes. DoorDash, for instance, was very, very fast moving for sure. And uh I'm I've learned a lot from that structure. I really enjoyed working there, and I'm trying to bring some of it to Atom for sure. And it was a very big company at the point where I was in there. So that's also where I saw conflicting decisions being made between departments, and maybe more transparency would be a way to solve that. So this is lessons learned from previous experience to try to bring that to Atome.

Angela Robertson 16:02

It's amazing. What has been one of the stormiest moments in your entrepreneurial journey, and what did it teach you about your own resilience?

Alice Couderc 16:12

I think it was when we expanded into the United States. So last year we built a big marketing campaign, and it took a lot of time because you need some accreditation, you need like to go cross-border, we needed a partner over there. So it took a few months to build this up. And the week that we announced our launch into 10 states in the US was the week that Donald Trump was elected. Um, and so it it was a lot of uh information going around. We had a lot of backlash from Canadian customers that weren't happy that we were going into the US. And so most of our marketing strategy was relying on existing customers to use word of mouth and and bring it to who they knew in the US. So that was a very tough moment for us to see month and month of work and investment um that were really hard to pull through. Um, and then we we continued, anyways, in the US, but very fast we had some troubles at the customs because of changing uh requirements, and uh custom agents weren't sure what they needed to do with each shipment, so we had some shipments uh sit at the border, and for frozen shipment, it can be really tough. And so we made the decision after six months to retreat from the US at this time and go into Eastern Canada instead, where we still didn't have any footprints. So I think we learned that you know it it can feel like a very bad decision at that point in time to take everything we've built over a few months and just cancel everything and and start back from scratch. But now looking back, I think it was a really good decision for us to tackle Canada first, make sure that we're really strong in our base country and continuing to grow and to be more efficient with our capital and really nailed on our unique economics before we go back into the US someday.

Angela Robertson 18:12

And I think also a lesson in timing, too, right? That you can plan for everything and then, you know, not necessarily anticipate how the market can shift so quickly in such a short time. And yeah, it's challenging to prepare for something like that. But look at how quickly you were able to make a decision that was in the benefit of the business overall to be able to take what you've learned and apply it to a market that's maybe a a little bit easier to enter.

Alice Couderc 18:41

Yes, absolutely.

Angela Robertson 18:43

That's amazing. So, what lessons have you learned about scaling a consumer brand while maintaining the quality and the consumer trust?

Alice Couderc 18:53

It relates to what you you just mentioned. I think pivoting when confronted with a truth, that wasn't what we planned. Maybe we waited a little bit too much before taking that decision because six months is a long time when a company is only three years old. And so we did continue to invest a lot in marketing money and you know other partnerships that we built. So I think what we learned from that experience is to clearly look at the facts and where we are and try not to think about what we've invested so far and make a decision at that exact moment for what's best for the business. And in terms of scaling, I would also say as a Canadian brand, I think it's important to really first focus on the Canadian market to really understand the business and make sure that when we grow everything follows the same trajectory that we'd plan.

Angela Robertson 19:44

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Alice. It was such a pleasure to get to know you, to learn more about what you and the team at Dome are doing. And merci beaucoup and pleasure de parle aujourd'hui. At Ace Tech, we believe one of the most valuable resources a leader can access is another leader's experience. That's why I created the Stormy Stories show to bring you honest conversations about the moments that test us, shape us, and ultimately make us better CEOs and founders. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.