Katy Flannery - Beckon Ice Cream

The prevalence of gluten-free food options is no accident. Manufacturers saw that there was a sizable portion of the population who wanted foods that wouldn’t wreak havoc on their digestive systems and they responded. To a lesser extent, the same is true for foods catering to the lactose-intolerant among us, but the latter hasn’t quite reached the level of the former. There are all sorts of statistics that contradict each other on how many Americans are actually affected by lactose intolerance, but the gist is the same: it’s a sizable portion of the population. Our guest today is Katy Flannery, co-founder of Beckon Ice Cream. As someone who suffers from lactose intolerance, she knows firsthand how frustrating it can be to crave a food that you know would not be in your best interest to eat. So she and her co-founder Gwen created an ice cream that seemingly does the impossible: is full of dairy but without the problematic lactose.

Listen in as we cover everything from how she kept a photo of Tom Brady from his time at the NFL combine on her desk to inspire her, the importance of knowing when to kick in a door vs finding another one, why they were told to bring on a male co-founder when they started to raise capital (and why they ignored that advice).