[Sweets and Snack Series] Revolutionizing the Snacking World Against All Odds With Jake Karls

Jake Karls is Co-founder and Chief Rainmaker of Mid-Day Squares, a Montreal-based functional chocolate company known for its bold transparency and viral storytelling. After early ventures in fitness and fashion, he found his niche in brand building and community engagement. Since launching Mid-Day Squares with his sister and brother-in-law, Jake has helped scale the company to produce over 90,000 bars daily and achieve multimillion-dollar revenues. Recognized on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, he champions authenticity and emotional connection as the keys to modern entrepreneurship.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [04:00] Jake Karls discusses how Mid-Day Squares started with 50 bars a day in a condo kitchen
• [05:58] Why Mid-Day Squares’ team hand-delivered samples and built early DTC momentum
• [08:31] How blocking out negativity and setting bold goals fueled Mid-Day Squares’ growth
• [10:08] Using customer feedback to continuously improve Mid-Day Squares products
• [14:29] How the team navigated the chaos of COVID and kept staff employed
• [17:01] Jake talks about handling a potential recall and protecting consumer safety through in-house manufacturing
• [20:45] Why Mid-Day Squares built its own factory instead of outsourcing production
• [23:57] Raising over $4M in debt in order to scale their operations
• [28:44] Why choosing to be a refrigerated product was a risk and a differentiator
• [30:58] How Mid-Day Squares launched in 1,700 Target stores nationwide
• [37:00] The role of therapy in sustaining co-founder relationships and leadership growth

In this episode…

Launching a new food product is already a challenge, but doing so in a saturated market like snacks, with refrigerated items that require special handling, makes it even more difficult. Entrepreneurs often encounter skepticism, limited shelf space, and high operational costs, particularly when trying to differentiate themselves with bold branding and unconventional strategies. So, how can you grow a disruptive food brand without compromising product integrity, consumer trust, or scalability?

Jake Karls, an expert in community-driven brand building and marketing, outlines how he and his co-founders tackled these challenges through relentless storytelling, unfiltered transparency, and unapologetic self-belief. He emphasizes the importance of building a fan base rather than just a customer base, capturing early momentum by personally delivering samples and gathering feedback. He also shares actionable strategies like leveraging content for trust-building, securing unconventional financing, investing in manufacturing infrastructure, and leaning into therapy to strengthen co-founder dynamics and leadership.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Jake Karls, Co-founder of Mid-Day Squares, about building a disruptive snack brand from scratch. Jake dives into creating brand loyalty through storytelling, taking risks like owning manufacturing, and dealing with crises like a potential recall. He also discusses mental health in entrepreneurship, redefining success, and how dancing with a boombox helped land investors.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Jake Karls on LinkedIn
• Mid-Day Squares

Special Mention(s):

• Taja Dockendorf on LinkedIn
• Pulp+Wire
• Manitoba Harvest

Related episode(s):

• “Growing Your Business and Serving Your Community with Cameron Healy of The Healy Foundation” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Destroying Metabolic Disease With Tom Bilyeu of Quest Nutrition” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Expanding Your Brand Impact Through Social With Duncan Alney of Firebelly Marketing” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “We had this unconditional self-belief that we could do it, so we blocked out all the noise.”
• “If you could withstand pain and keep showing up every day, you’re going to give yourself a chance.”
• “The power of community is when you get people to believe in what you’re doing, not just buy your products.”
• “People want to eat more products that have a more natural feel to it — fresh snacking.”
• “You are your best version when you are you, and that’s how you win the game.”

Action Steps:

1. Build a loyal community through storytelling: Sharing authentic behind-the-scenes moments creates emotional connections that turn customers into brand advocates.
2. Embrace radical transparency on social media: Revealing both wins and failures builds trust and humanizes your business to the public.
3. Use adversity as a growth opportunity: Innovating during tough times can generate momentum when competitors are pulling back.
4. Prioritize internal communication and therapy: Team therapy fosters emotional alignment and prevents conflict from derailing your leadership.
5. Focus on your strengths and delegate weaknesses: Operating in your zone of genius increases effectiveness while reducing burnout and frustration.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:00

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of Inspired Insider where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Jake Karls of Mid-Day Squares. If you haven’t tried them out, try them at your local grocery store. My favorite is the cookie dough.

The problem with me, Jake, is I just want to eat ten at a time. That’s the issue. But before I formally introduce Jake, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out, since this is a top CPG brand. We had Cameron Helion, who’s the co-founder of Kona Brewing and he was a visionary behind Kettle Chips Empire. Check that out.

It was interesting. We’ll talk about some of the challenges, which is fascinating with Jake’s story. And I remember Jake, Cameron was talking about how, like all the oil one day spoiled. And they had to throw out like, all the potato. It was just like a nightmare situation.

And sometimes we see these brands on the shelves like, oh, everything’s hunky dory and perfect. They have challenges along the journey too. So Tom Bilyeu shared, the founder of Quest Nutrition shared the journey. Duncan Alney talked about kind of brand impact for growing CPG on social. So we’ll talk, you know, check those out and many more on InspiredInsider.com.

This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that in two ways.

One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, accountability, and the full execution. Number two, we’re also an easy button for companies corporate gifting. We make gifting easy. You just send us the addresses.

We do everything else around it. We’re kind of, you know, Jake, we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for people to build amazing relationships by featuring them on a show, to share with the world what they’re working on, and also sending them sweet treats in the mail. So we’ll have to add Mid-Day Squares to those packages. I’m excited to introduce Jake Karls and Jake Karls is the co-founder and chief rainmaker of Mid-Day Squares. Mid-Day Squares is the better-for-you chocolate snacking brand that turned a kitchen table dream into a North American household name.

And you know, to your credit, Jake, I think I heard about Mid-Day Squares. Two people told me about it. Tiffany Wilburn of Clever Disruption, who’s a fractional CMO for CPG. She’s like, they’re doing cool stuff. You got to check them out.

And then Taja Dockendorf, I think you were featured on her podcast, Pulp and Wire, and she specializes in design for CPG. So they told me I was walking around the aisle, I see it, I buy several of them and love them. So now when I walk by there, that’s what I get. So it always comes from that personal connection. That’s what Jake is all about.

He was a finalist for Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the year award, was also on the Forbes 30 under 30. And we’ll talk about the journey six years ago, making 50 bars a day. And they recently posted, whenever you’re listening this, you may be listening five years from now, it’s going to be triple this. But last week they hit 130,000 bars in a single day. Jake, thanks for joining me.

Jake Karls: 03:23

I appreciate you having me. I’m fired up to be here. There’s sunlight out. I feel like I’m getting burnt because the wind, the sun is in my face. Even though I’m indoors.

And yeah, I know. Excited to be here I appreciate you having me. And I’m excited to get into the good stuff.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:38

I’m going to share my screen here. This is going to be video for anyone listening to the audio as well. These delicious bars. We had to show them on the screen here. But let’s talk about the 50 bar days.

Like when it first started, what did life look like in the very beginning? And I know you’re with you know, this is a family, quote unquote, family business.

Jake Karls: 04:00

Yeah. So my sister, my brother in law and I started this company in August of 2018, and it was actually way before that. But we launched it then and we came together and we wanted to build a modern day snacking company that’s in the better for you space, and a brand that’s trusted for the afternoon snacking that has, you know, chocolate bars. We call our first line a chocolate bar with some function. And the idea was.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:23

That the brownie batter was the brownie.

Jake Karls: 04:25

It was the brownie. It was the brownie batter. We were making them in our condo kitchen, hand making these bars maximum 50 bars per day. And the idea was, we want to build the next biggest snacking business of our time. And, you know, people thought we were crazy people, you know, made fun of us.

They doubted us. Everyone would tell us, you know, the world doesn’t need another chocolate bar. The world doesn’t need another protein bar, even though we’re not either of those. We’re kind of like a blend of both of them. But, you know, we had this, you know, unconditional self-belief that we could do it.

So we blocked out all the noise And, you know, we just started to do things day by day, hand-making the bars, taking content of how we do it and then delivering them at night by hand and meeting our customers. And we start to compound that and, you know, went from 50 bars a day to 100 to 200. Now, you know, like you said last week, you know, six years later, you know, we’re making up, you know, 130,000 bars a day. But, you know, this journey has just been painful. And I mean by painful is, is just part of the process.

It’s the middle of everything. It’s the middle that, that, that that’s all the juice, you know. And we ended up going to build our factory, which is a cool thing because not a lot of food companies do that. So yeah, I’ll never forget those, those condo days when we were hand making them. We still have the same values and principles or more or less similar ones from those moments.

But that was when we really hustled 16, 18 hour days and it was quite, quite chaotic.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:49

You know. So you’re making him in the kitchen. Where do you sell them early on. Are you going like a farmer’s market? Where’d you get the initial sales?

Jake Karls: 05:58

So we started selling them on our website, DTC. We were selling a sample, so one bar you can get for it was $0.25 at the time. We just wanted people to put their credit card down so that they could actually commit to wanting to try. And then we would hand deliver them, because it was only in Montreal region where we were selling them in local, local city because no one else knew us and we’d actually had we’d hand delivered, meet the customer at night time and understand why they bought it, and kind of what they like, what they don’t like and find out how they even found us. And a lot of the time they found us by watching us on social media.

You know, we since day one, we’ve been documenting and sharing, you know, practically everything on social media from like moments of complete chaos and failure to some of the most glorified and crazy experiences of our journey, where we’ve had huge successes, in our opinion, doesn’t mean it’s huge for other people, but in our opinion, it was huge moments. And when we showed the spectrum of good and bad, People really resonated with it, so they wanted to support us. It was like, oh, I want to support this brand. I’m a fan of what they’re doing and I want to try their product. So we did that sample program and then we would hand deliver and it was just burning too much money.

But we actually built momentum. People started seeing us, people started talking about it. And then as we continue to do that, we went to a local bagel shop, which was a friend of ours. He had like a small little bagel shop and he’s like, I’ll take your product to sell. I can’t remember if it was consignment or not, but I think it was.

And the idea was, is he put it in the first day and we drove, we used our storytelling and it literally sold out within like the first couple of hours. And there was so much momentum that as we continued to tell that story and sell out, sell out, you know, push people to the stores, it ended up getting us more stores and everyone was talking about it in our little local community. So we did like a ground-up game to build like energy in the city, getting everyone talking from a local standpoint and just knocking on the local shops, like the grocery, like the Sorry. The bagel shops, the juice bars, the gyms. And we would just like be everywhere, demoing everywhere, hand delivering and showing the story of the good, the bad, the ugly and all of that together created a magic that allowed us to start to scale slowly.

And at least, you know, push through the barriers of, of the hardship of is to build a business. You know, there’s so many odds against you, especially in CPG and especially in the refrigerated section of a store.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:19

Talk about the hustle, right? I mean, and also, I love the no-brainer offer. I mean, listen, just take it. Just pay us when you sell these things, and it makes it compelling so you can build on the next, next one. Right.

Jake Karls: 08:31

Yeah. And you know what? Like, look. No, like, we had to start somewhere and, like, you know, one thing that we was critical at that time is we blocked out, like I said it earlier, but we blocked out all the noise. People were we’re always saying like, maybe it’s time to get a job or like, this is like a side gig, or like they were saying these like comments that kind of like, you know, tick you off very easily.

So what my partners and I did, which is my sister, my brother in law is we literally just put like horse blinders on and we blocked it all out and we just we really had this delusional belief that it was possible to sell in the first year, $250,000 worth of chocolate bars, but that was it. Mid-Day Squares it was. We could do that. And even though it sounded outrageous, it sounded crazy and almost impossible. We had this, like bit of hope and optimism that was driving us alongside our execution and just, you know, again, unconditional self-belief.

And that allowed us to, you know, we blew through that in the first 3 or 4 months. Wow. And we realized that there was momentum. We realized there was energy. We realized there was this potential for this to go, you know, pretty far.

And, you know, I’m proud to say we’re you know, we’re almost seven years in or six and a half years in and we’re still standing. We’re still surviving. And it’s been crazy.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:46

Oh, you know, there’s I know you talk about success and having a great product and having great marketing. Right. And I want to talk about the product for a second and the evolution of the product. Initially you were going door to door in, not door to door, but you were delivering in person. What was the feedback you were getting and how did the product change?

Jake Karls: 10:08

So the product continuously changes. And what I mean by that is just continuous improvements. You know, we tried to enhance the product. We learned new information. We try to bring it in.

You know, all this stuff is happening consistently throughout the time with our R&D team. But at the beginning we used just the three of us. So, you know, the product was pretty much the same for a long period of time until we had the resources, information, knowledge, all that stuff. But as we were meeting our customers hand to hand, like sorry, hand delivering, which was face to face, we would ask them what they liked about it, or when they tried it to give us the feedback of what they thought. And because we were such a transparent company, because we were so loud and showing again, the good and the bad.

People actually want to share their either constructive criticism or their love for the products. And we would take an immense amount of feedback in simply because we had communication with our consumers. We were able to have a community that had, you know, that wanted to chat with us, that wanted to engage us, that wanted to help us get better or promote us. And I think that that was something that was really critical early on that we apply a lot of those values to today is building a community, building a fan base rather than a customer base. And yeah, it’s critical.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:25

What were they saying? What was some of the feedback that let you kind of change or improve the product? I mean, I see like we’re looking at it now and you could see you have some very interesting, you know, ingredients, right. I mean, there’s Jerusalem artichoke powder, right. And I’m sure that wasn’t in on the first the first run you’re like, hey, let’s sprinkle some Jerusalem artichoke powder in here.

Right. There’s cashew butter. There’s really kind of delicious but kind of functional ingredients in here. What were some of the feedback you were getting?

Jake Karls: 11:54

Just, you know, some of the main feedback was it’s very satiating and it keeps us full in the afternoon and it’s a great afternoon snack. So we kind of, you know, we really leaned into can we be the, you know, indulgence in the afternoon that also gives you a little bit more than that. So like a little bit of protein, a little bit of fiber maybe keep you full. And we wanted to just take all that feedback and, you know, optimize people’s afternoons because we realize people have crashes, people get tired, they want a snack, they want to build. And we would take that and continue to make it better and better.

And look, it didn’t please everybody. As soon as, you know, we took feedback, you know, you’re never going to be able to please everybody. So some people would get upset with the changes. Some people love the changes. A big change was we went from two bars, two squares in a package to one square in a package, making it smaller.

And you know, a lot of that feedback was for, you know, from the idea that they would eat one square and then put it back in the fridge, you know, fold it up. And then it was less fresh when it came out after. So that was one great feedback. And we actually, you know, when we had a supply chain crisis, we couldn’t afford to stay as a two-pack unless we raised prices significantly. So what we did is we just took all that feedback that we took for so long, and we turned it into one, one pack and it ended up, you know, at first hurting us for the first three months.

And then as consumers got back to, you know, getting used to the product, you know, being in a new format, they ended up loving it. And we ended up selling way more and being a lot better for the use case. And it’s just a small example of improvements of listening to your consumers and also buying data. Data is critical to apply the data and what your community wants, and then apply the magic of the brand to that. And you have what I call the best serendipity in the world.

So yeah, we continuously try to take feedback in good, bad. And again, not everyone’s going to like a Mid-Day Squares. It’s you know, it’s dark chocolate. It’s got a little bit of protein. It’s not you know, it’s not a it’s not a confection product.

So you know it’s not for everybody, and that’s okay. There’s many people in the world, and if you try to please everybody, you really please nobody, right? So, you know, we focus on what our strengths are and we really have good communication with our community.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:01

You know you mentioned chaos versus glory. So I want to talk about those two things for a second. Let’s start with the chaos. Right. Because you guys are totally open through the journey.

And one of the one of my favorite stories of chaos, but I want to hear a couple of those kind of points of challenges was Covid. Yeah, those are scary times. Talk about what happened there.

Jake Karls: 14:29

Yeah. Covid was a rough time for our business. You know, being a food manufacturer we self-manufacture. We have a great team that, you know works in a manufacturing plant. And when Covid came you know we lost 70% of our retail sales like instantaneously.

And it was really scary. You know, we were put in a position where, you know, what do we do? What do we do to keep everybody working? You know, and in that moment, you know, there was two things to do. It was either play defense or play offense.

And most people are playing defense. I think most brands at the time, you know, were pulling spending back except.

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