860 Charles Coristine: CEO of LesserEvil

Speaker A: I, um, am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you just want to make sure you will get knocked

Speaker B: down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. Knocked out.

Speaker A: So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control, control, control.

Speaker C: Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Golden Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Hi everyone and welcome back to the Kira Golden Show.

Speaker B: What would make someone leave a successful career on Wall street, put nearly all of their savings on the line and buy a struggling snack company they knew almost nothing about? Today's guest is Charles Korstein, CEO of Lesser Evil. And back in 2001, Charles took a leap that most people would have called irrational. With no food experience, uh, other than the fact that he enjoyed it, he acquired a small popcorn company worth less than a million dollars and set out to build something very different. And his vision wasn't just to create healthier snacks or continue making healthier snacks. It was to prove that consumers shouldn't have to choose between ingredients that they think they trust and products they actually enjoy eating. So fast forward to today. Lesser Evil has become one of the fastest growing brands in the snack aisle. Cult favorite organic popcorn. To newer innovations like Munions and Cheesemo's. The company has transformed into a multi category powerhouse built on great clean ingredients, uh, with lots of innovation. And in 2025 the company was acquired by Hershey and Charles is still the CEO involved in leading Lesser Evil into many people's homes and mouths. So, so excited to have you here, Charles. Charles Korstein, welcome to the Kara Golden Show.

Speaker A: Thanks Kara. Um, I'm m excited to be here.

Speaker C: This message is a paid partnership with AT&T business. Hey everyone, Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business. Not the highlight reel, the actual day to day, the friction. Trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at hint a uh, retailer call, an order, a uh, decision, all of it. And you realize quickly connection isn't a nice to have. It's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time. That's why AT&T business matters. ATT business is the reliable provider for small business owners and we when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT&T Business Built to Work. Get AT&T business@ah business.att.com this episode of the Kara golden show is brought to you by Ima I've always cared about my health, but I'll be honest, supplement routines can get complicated fast. A bottle for this, a powder for that. Something for energy, something for focus, something for digestion. At some point it starts to feel like you need an entire cabinet just to feel your best. That's why iM8's daily Ultimate Essentials really

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Speaker B: So, Charles, for those who aren't familiar with the brand, Lesser Evil, what is the brand and what made you believe it was worth betting your entire future on?

Speaker A: Obviously, it's a food brand. It's a vertically integrated snack food brand. I like to think it's a little more than that. I like to think it's a lifestyle brand. The other question was what made me decide to do that? So that's a tough question. So I was a finance guy, um, working in New York City. I'm originally from Toronto. I moved to the States when I was pretty young to work for an American bank. And I got transferred to New York and I, I traded government bonds for close to 20 years. And, um, I think that it's largely a young man's game trading bonds in New York City. And I was starting to fatigue. I sometimes say I felt like life was blurring a little bit around the edges and I think I needed to find something else to do. So I'm a big believer in synchronicity. I kind of just opened myself up to trying to find something else. And a friend of a friend was selling Lesser Evil. And for some reason the name intrigued me. Um, I was really into food at the time because I had been going through a lot of stress. I had really focused in on my diet and I was meditating. Um, so I was looking for something a little more mindful in my life and I was like, uh, this could be interesting. I had no idea how hard it was going to be, but for some reason it resonated and I took a deeper look at the food space and I decided to jump.

Speaker B: So it was not just about walking into the space and taking it from there. I mean, you had to build it. And really not just the brand, but also the team. How much more difficult was that than you ever imagined?

Speaker A: Yeah, so when you buy an emerging brand, um, that was not vertically integrated, um, that was kind of, that had, you know, stagnated a little bit. Um, they just hadn't found their hero skew, you know, it had been, or the brand had been around for, you know, six years, I think when I, when I first jumped in. So, you know, I got into it, I realized pretty quickly that I wasn't going to be able to make it work unless I made some drastic changes. And it was either I was going to jump all in and bet it all on it, or I should have walked away. And I tell this story that when I left Wall Street, I kind of had told people that I was going to become an entrepreneur and that I was making the leap and my ego kind of got the better of me. And there was no way that I was going to not go all in at that time because it was a matter of personal pride at that point. So I decided I was going to basically invest in manufacturing, um, because that was the only way that I could turn around the margin structure of the business and, you know, and basically innovate.

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Speaker B: Here.

Speaker C: For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a uh, bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second guessing decisions. It can get overwhelming fast.

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Speaker B: It sounds like the manufacturing part was one of the first decisions that you made. But was there a first hire that you knew you needed almost as a mentor to some extent to help you get going?

Speaker A: No, I didn't hire a mentor. I hired a guy I went to business school with. That kind of was the opposite of me. You know, I kind of fly by the seat of your pants. You know, I'm probably a little bit more into like innovation and sales and stuff like that. Whereas I found my partner, which, uh, his name is Andrew Strive. He was much more pragmatic. He used the other half of his brain. He was very good at spreadsheets and business, um, models and all that kind of stuff. So he was a very good hire for me because we hemmed nagged particularly well for the first couple years as we made a lot of mistakes.

Speaker B: You had the finance experience, was he? What kind of experience?

Speaker A: He was a finance guy too, but I was kind of more of a trader, which means, uh, you know, that I'm kind of making, you know, you know, seat of the pants decisions based on what I think the market's going to do. And he was more of kind of like a quant guy that programmed stuff. So it's funny, you can have two different guys in finance, two different skill sets, so.

Speaker B: Interesting. So the brand, had they actually shut down or was it sort of kind of operating by the time you ended up acquiring it?

Speaker A: No, it was still. It was still operating. You know, it was one guy, um, and a bookkeeper. They were kind of keeping it afloat. Yeah, but unless you, you, uh, know, you know how it is. Unless you're willing to invest in the business, retailers don't really take well to brands that just kind of float around, you know, because they, you know, they require people to, you know, to invest in brands. That's how retailers make money. So it was, it was slowly getting discontinued. When I, when I, when I got

Speaker B: involved, you didn't have food experience, food industry experience. Do you think that that was a, uh, disadvantage or an advantage?

Speaker A: I think initially probably it was a disadvantage. You know, I, I remember going to food shows and, and writing up deals with different retailers and having no idea what I was doing and getting taken advantage of in a big way, you know, and putting together together promotional calendars that were probably ridiculous. You know, I, I was pretty trusting. And I think at the, at the beginning I probably got taken advantage of a lot. But maybe my naivete had me look at the, look at the, the space in a different way. I learned pretty quickly because the money drifted out of my account pretty quickly. And I also. Another thing I did is like, you, uh, know, I thought that any kind of distribution was good distribution. And I, and I put my products in places potentially where they weren't set up to thrive. And I lost a lot of slotting dollars at the beginning. I remember making a, you know, a, uh, $250,000 investment in slotting that I lost within six months. And it was like, wow, that was, that was fast.

Speaker B: So when you took this brand over, how many SKUs, I guess you kind of did a relaunch. How many SKUs did you go ahead and launch with? And did you do any SKU rationalization or what was kind of the thinking?

Speaker A: Yeah, so they had, they had a couple of popcorns, they were kettle corns, and they had, um, um, a line of potato sticks, like a French fried potato stick. I realized pretty quickly that I was, as I was losing distribution and potentially losing some of my distributors, like Unify and Khi that unless I came up with a product, a new product line really quickly, that I was going to lose potentially the biggest asset that I had. You know, the, the previous guys had done a really good job. They had gotten a lot of distribution and unbeknownst to me, because I didn't really know much about food was the asset that they had was that they had warehouse slots in every Unify and Kehi warehouse across the United States. And at that time, at first I'm like, well, m. This is probably a bad investment. But I realized pretty quickly after I went to go visit ah, Unifi in Rhode island that if I could keep all those slots, that I had a huge leg up. So I quickly launched a line of, of, um, black bean pop chips called Chia Crisps. And it was, wasn't a home run by any means, but it was, it was a solid single, maybe a shallow double meaning, uh, that I picked up some distribution and I was able to, like, swap out, you know, some of the products that weren't doing so well with something that had a little wind at its back. I also was able to get a couple of Whole Foods regions to, to bite on. And, you know, and I got what Wegmans was early adapter because I went to school in upstate New York. So I, I, I st. It was the first time I, you know, I saw a little, I saw a little success. But that was a, that was a co pack product. Um, so we, the margins on it still weren't great. So we, we were, we, we were still bleeding a lot of cash at, you know, at that time.

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Speaker B: So at what point did you go ahead and invest then in, in manufacturing. And for those who might not know what we mean by that, can you share the details?

Speaker A: Yeah, I want to say it happened pretty quick. I bought the business in November of 2011. I want to say that I made the decision to buy some popcorn slash puff equipment, you know, probably within a year, so maybe the end of 2012. And then we had to like install it in this, you know, in our first factory was like a five, um, thousand square foot, you know, looked like a, like a welding shop that we converted into a factory. It was, it was pretty unimpressive but for me it was pretty exciting.

Speaker B: That's awesome. And do you still have those factories today?

Speaker A: Uh, no, We've, we've since moved, we've moved into. We now have two, um, factories. Soon to have three. There's still uh, you. I mean our footprint is pretty. Because popcorn and extrusion aren't like these huge lines. We can fit like eight production lines into like a uh, 25, 30,000 square foot facility. So our facilities are pretty small. You know, we have two, let's say 30,000 square foot facilities and we're going to open up, you know, maybe a 60,000 square foot facility downstairs. So they're pretty small footprint.

Speaker B: When you think about the brand, lesser evil, what do you think the consumer thinks? What are like the top things about the brand and what I mean by this, when you're launching a brand and Scaling a brand, the consumer has to be able to define it or almost tell their friends this is what this brand is. And so for hint, the company that I launched and scaled was it's an unsweetened flavored water. And so there was a definition behind it. And then we came out with different flavors along the way. But it was something that the consumer, they might have a favorite skew, but they go try another one because they trusted the brand. What would you say about lesser evil?

Speaker A: Well, I think at the beginning it was like it was the guru or the Buddha guy on the front and it was pretty good tasting popcorn. I think we became known, you know, for organic, our commitment to organics into non seed oils and biodegradable packaging. I mean, I wanted the brand to be about affordable wellness that has soul. And I think that that's. I don't know whether all consumers feel that, but I think there are some consumers that believe that, if that makes any sense.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that is very relevant. So as you've talked to consumers over the year and I'm sure done all kinds of focus groups or surveys, ah, consumer behavior is sometimes surprising, right? Especially when you think like, oh, I've got to launch innovation because Whole Foods told me, or Wegmans told me, like, what do you got that's new? But then you look at the consumer, what have you learned about the consumer that maybe is counter to what, uh, new founders think about?

Speaker A: I think it's about taste and value. I mean, and I think it's about great packaging too, because I, I thought like, if you put this amazing product together that the consumer would find it eventually. But I've seen as we've iterated on our packaging, that great packaging is, you know, is a multiplier. And if you, if you're going to spend money. And one of the best investments I spent money on was doing a rebrand in 2018. And when I did the rebrand, our velocities definitely went up, um, you know, 20, 30%. So it's definitely worth spending some money on.

Speaker B: That's so interesting. What do you think what it was about the rebrand that made such a significant difference? You know, it's interesting while you're thinking about that, I'll tell you, when we did a rebrand, we were forced to do a rebrand for hint early on because New, uh, York City had a bottle tax that you had to put on the bottle and they were going to pull us off the shelf. And you know, we're running around trying to get the bottles off the shelf. And then we're like, maybe we should just change the labels. And no one could do a clear label, which was our original label with fruit on it. And so we were like, let's just do a white label. And it, it literally, like, in some locations, 10x the brand. I mean, it was like people could finally see the brand, uh, coming off the shelf. And it was kind of like, what were we thinking? I mean, and nobody caught it beforehand. But is there anything in particular and your rebrand that really caused it?

Speaker A: You know, Lesser Evil at the time wasn't. It was kind of like the master brand and was tucked up into the corner. And I had all these other kind of like, sub brands. So I had, you know, Buddha bowl and Green Elephant and all these different things, and, uh, nothing was unified. And people didn't recognize that sometimes, you know, that this was part of the same brand or whatever. So I dropped the name Lesser Evil as the mat, you know, really front and center. And the brand became all about Lesser Evil. And then I tightened the lines, uh, you know, the, the Buddha, the Laughing Buddha, which was on the package. I tightened it around and I, I made him a guru. And I, I wanted to keep the same spiritual message, but the guru became something more symbolic of what I thought was important, which was that, uh, wellness starts within. And you are your own guru. And no matter what anyone else says, your intuition is the most important part of wellness. And that's something that I really believed in because I had, you know, I, uh, started my meditation practice and I, you know, I found that happiness and calmness, and it was all found inside. And the more I looked externally for that, the less happy I was. And that if I just simplified my life to a certain degree, that, you know, everything else kind of fit into place.

Speaker C: This episode of the Kara golden show

Speaker D: is brought to you by Rhythm Health. Sometimes I ask myself, uh, are my workouts actually paying off? Are the supplements I'm taking making a difference? Is my diet really right for me? The truth is, most of us are investing time, money, and energy into our

Speaker C: health without a clear picture of what's

Speaker D: actually happening inside our bodies. That's why I'm excited about rhythm. Rhythm is the world's easiest blood test to help you understand what's going on inside your body. You can do it at home in just two minutes. No needles. It's a simple peel and stick device. You draw a small sample, send it in, and get your results back in just a few days. I recently did my first Rhythm test. And what stood out wasn't just how easy it was, it was what I actually learned. Seeing my biomarkers laid out clearly made me look at my health differently. I wasn't guessing anymore. I could see what was happening with things like cholesterol, inflammation, hormones and metabolic health. And where I may want to pay closer attention. That kind of information changes how you make decisions. It makes you think more intentionally about what you're eating, how you're moving, what supplements you're taking, and whether those choices are actually showing up in your results. And that's what I really appreciate about rhythm. You're not just getting a one time lab report that disappears into a file.

Speaker C: You're getting data you can track over

Speaker D: time, plus an AI health coach that helps explain what it means and what actions may make sense next. And the best part, rhythm is only $79 per month, a fraction of traditional lab testing. It ships right to your door and you can cancel anytime. Plus, right now, Rhythm is offering our listeners 15% off your first month and free shipping at Rhythm Health slash Karagolden. That's rhythm with 1 h r y t h m m dot health Karagolden for 15 off your first month and free shipping. Stop guessing.

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Speaker B: I love that so much. So you launched products like Munions and Cheesemos, uh, which are really awesome. So like, what's the innovation process like for you all today now that you're a, uh, national brand and I guess to some extent you're also sitting inside of a larger company. Did moon that came out before you

Speaker A: were acquired, like that came out. Our commitment to that came out before. So I, I kind of had to come to Jesus on that. Like I used to be create products that I loved myself, you know, like super bites and Paleo puffs and all these different things. And they were somewhat aimed at the natural food shopper that liked the same things that I liked. Obviously it was sales focused, but it also felt like I wanted to create the most good for the most amount of people and that if I was creating kind of these niche products that I was not going to reach deep into America. So I made a decision like, okay, you know, is black bean something that everybody wants to eat? And no, I mean it was quite obvious to me that if you look at spins data, uh, you know, or Sukana or Nielsen or whatever, that texture is important. So how, you know, why not go after some of these like bigger skus that are potentially, um, yes. Are made with or with corn which is probably not as high value of an ingredient, but it's. It's something that more people want to eat. So I decided. I was like, okay, these are the. This is. Why don't I take what I'm doing in popcorn and move it to something into a category that's even bigger than popcorn, which is the puff category. And I had the extrusion, you know, the extruders that I had already purchased, because that's what I had been making Paleo puffs on. And, you know, I think it was a pretty good move.

Speaker B: You guys did such a great job. My son was home and, um, ended up taking the entire. Both bags at one point, so he was, uh, quite happy about the product. So really great. So you came from Wall Street. So what lessons from your Wall street career have actually been super useful in building a consumer brand? And what lessons from Wall street turned out to be completely wrong?

Speaker A: Well, let's start with the one that I think worked well to my benefit was it was. I was very used to being wrong more than I was right when I was on Wall Street. And typically, it's against human nature when you're wrong to admit you're wrong really quickly and change direction. But in the natural food, um, what I chose to do was when I first launched, started launching products, I failed, and I failed on a lot of products. I think entrepreneurs hold, you know, they. They think they have this great product and they hold on to it too long and they bleed too much cash, you know, investing in something that velocities tell them that they shouldn't be, you know, investing in. So if you study the data really closely, you know, it can reveal a lot, you know, in. In a particularly short period of time. So I just kept launching new things and discontinuing things until I found something that really worked. And then I. When I found the thing that really worked, that's when I started putting the pedal to the metal.

Speaker B: What was the thing that really worked?

Speaker A: It was the Buddha bowl. Popcorn. The, The. The. The skew that I made with. With coconut oil and Himalayan salt.

Speaker B: I love it.

Speaker A: You wouldn't have thought. You would have thought that organic coconut oil, extra virgin coconut oil at the time would be somewhat niche. So, like, it completely unexpected that it was gonna like. I, When I first launched it, I was like, well, this is good. This is a. A bit of a winger. And, uh, it turned out that like a. The pot, the coconut oil, when you cook with it, it obviously, you know, it has a very strong taste. But when it goes on popcorn. It actually tastes really buttery. And popcorn, for whatever reason, hides the. Hides the coconut taste to it. And I. So I was very surprised that how well it did, you know, right. Right out of the gates.

Speaker B: So in 2025, Hershey acquired, uh, Lesser Evil. How did you know? It was the right time and the right partner to work with.

Speaker A: Okay, so the right time was. Was when, uh, you know, I kind of like. I, uh, kind of like being in control. And we were getting to a size where some of the retailers were starting to dictate terms to us a little bit. Well, not dictate terms, but it felt like, uh, if we lost some distribution or that. That I couldn't. I always wanted to grow here. Hopefully this is helpful. I always wanted to be profitable, you know? You know, and I wanted to grow at 40, 50% a year. And because we're vertically integrated, I couldn't grow much faster than that. You know, that's. That was kind of like how fast I could. And then there came a time where some retailers pushed our growth so hard that I felt that if I lost distribution, that I couldn't keep that growth rate up anymore. So the minute you feel like, you know, what if, you know, things could get up, the apple cart could get flipped over, I realized I'm like, okay, well, if. If I'm providing value to my shareholders, it's probably time now for them to take some risk off the table. And obviously, I'm, um, was a very large shareholder of our company, so I think people kind of agreed with me on that.

Speaker B: Yeah, it is so interesting. And then Hershey. Why Hershey?

Speaker A: Well, I wanted someone with experience in the snack space. I was very friendly with the guy who ran M and A at Hershey. I liked the fact that Milton Hershey had a school that 25% of the proceeds of the company go to fund the school. So it had a nice feel to it.

Speaker B: And.

Speaker A: And ultimately they said that they weren't going to change things, that they believed in what we were doing and that they wanted to continue to fuel our growth as is. You know, obviously we're going to. We're going to expand into a bunch more categories, which is really exciting. So I'm excited about our growth plans. Um, they obviously give us a much bigger sales force, and, you know, and they look at the business a little bit differently. It's been good so far.

Speaker B: Interesting and probably a bit educational, too, because that's all new for you, too, right? How they. How they work?

Speaker A: Oh, uh, the integration part of it has been. Has been a lot of, you know, has been. Has been some work, you know, I hear. I was like thinking, oh, things are gonna, you know, things are gonna relax a little bit. I've got some more help or whatever. But, you know, we've got to get ourselves up to Hershey standards and look at. Look, you know, and look at the world similarly to the. How they do but maintain, you know, are kind of like our renegade, um, upstart innovation kind of. So we're trying to be big and small at the same time, which is, you know, a tight, you know, a tight rope to, to walk across.

Speaker B: That's amazing. So, I mean, it seems like such a great fit for lesser evil, so. And such a great acquisition for Hershey too. So what's something about building a, I guess 200 million plus consumer brand that people consistently underestimate? I mean, I think this speaks to. There's different stages along the way. You grew this brand from a million to, to that. And I, as I've been interviewed about it, it's all hard.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: There's different stages along the way where it's just.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, those stages, those stages. Easy. I thought I could build the brand in five years. It, I think it took two and a half times, three times longer than I'd actually thought. Thought it was going to take. Just because you make money doesn't mean you free cash flow and opera operational leverage is like massively important, you know, so you've got to, like, you've got to utilize your lines and cover your fixed costs. And once you start doing that, and it takes a while to do, that's, that's when you start to feel some ease. And, uh, that probably took me 10 years to do. A lot of entrepreneurs don't understand that. I think partnerships are much more important. I think a lot of entrepreneurs want, uh, to go, you know, all over the place. They want to, they would. They think that ACV is like super, super important. I don't think it's as important. I think you want to build partnerships slowly over time and be very loyal to those partners. Um, and I think that that helped me out in a big way. You don't need a lot of people. I think if you get three, four, five people all with a great attitude who are willing to hustle, you can do a lot of stuff with a very small team. And I think that when people have transferable skill sets and everybody can kind of work with everybody else and kind of in different departments and stuff like that, that boded Very well for us. We kept our costs super, super low and that, and I think the brand message was felt so, so you, uh, know so closely by the team members that we all could talk interchangeably about the brand.

Speaker B: I love that. Well, thank you so much, Charles. This is amazing and such a great conversation. Congratulations, uh, to you and your team on all you built and the acquisition as well. Very excited to see where Leslie Lesser Evil goes. And for everyone who has not tried Lesser Evil, get at least one bag, many, uh, many bags of Lesser Evil, um, and follow the brand. We'll have all the info in the show notes and thank you again, Charles. And until next time on the Kara

Speaker C: golden show, thanks again for listening to the Kara Golden Show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who, who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at karagolden. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal best selling book, Undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and goodbye for now. This episode of the Kara golden show

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