From Buffy to Betty Crocker: Sarah Michelle Gellar Launches Baking Start-Up
*By Carlo Versano*
Sarah Michelle Gellar wants to slay the baking industry.
The actress formerly known as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and her two partners are the brains behind Foodstirs, a new organic, non-GMO line of baking products that seek to inject some new life into a stale aisle of the grocery store.
Partners Galit Laibow, Greg Fleishman, and Gellar told Cheddar in an interview Thursday that, as parents of small children, they all saw an opportunity to re-imagine the baking process when they noticed that most of the mixes on the market had hardly changed since their grandparents were using them.
The opportunity was "hiding in plain sight," Gellar said.
Foodstirs sells cake and brownie mixes, "bake your own" bars, and kits for pancakes, donuts, cake pops, and other treats for anyone with a sweet tooth.
Products sell for an average of $5.99, Fleishman said, thanks to the direct-to-consumer model. "We get the best costs because we direct source."
The organics craze has spread from a "hippy dippy" corner of the market and become one of the most-important attributes to the modern consumer, Laibow said. Still, amateur bakers were at the disposal of a $7 billion prepared-foods industry that was slow to transition to a healthier product. "People are more aware of what goes into the body," Laibow said ー and that extends to desserts. Foodstirs leverages social media and Gellar's star power to market itself as a disruptor ー "modern baking," as its tagline reads.
For Gellar, her new role as an entrepreneur was a natural outgrowth of her other job: mother to two kids under 10. She said she noticed that the best "times of connection" in her house were around food, whether it was cooking or eating together. But she found that when it came to baking, most products were either delicious and bad for you, or nutritious and "taste free." Foodstirs aims to solve all the pain points of the home baker at once: ultra-clean ingredients, easy recipes, and a "from-scratch" taste.
"We were answering our own problem," she said.
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
Jeff Benedict, author of 'The Dynasty,' weighs in on the Kansas City Chiefs being the next big dynasty, who he thinks will win Super Bowl LIX and more. Watch!