How Will Toto Scale Its Adaptogenic Cookie Business?

If your grandma’s homemade cookies were packed with gluten free, clean label and adaptogen ingredients, they might taste something like Toto — or so the brand hopes.

Founded by CEO Sydney Webb in 2020 as a line of cookie dough, the brand has undergone numerous makeovers during its early life, but Webb believes Toto’s current trajectory will lead them down a winning path.

“The overarching theme I hope Toto stands for, as we continue to grow, is the concept of celebrating things that aren’t typically celebrated,” said Webb. “If you look at the brand, visually, it’s very bright, it’s very cheerful, it’s very happy. But the roots of the story and where it comes from are a pretty dark and scary place.”

What is Toto?

Webb started Toto after using adaptogens during her own health struggles. She was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and colon cancer and began adding the ingredients to her daily routine, but said she quickly realized the difficulties of making good tasting foods that also contained her required, hefty doses of the natural remedies. Why not try a sweet treat like cookie dough?

While the functional dough didn’t make the cut, the idea of functional indulgences did. The brand now sells a four SKU line of Reishi and Turkey Tail-infused cookies in Sea Salt Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, Birthday Cake and Double Chocolate Chip flavors. Each almond butter-based treat contains 10 grams of protein, is sweetened with coconut sugar and made with 13 ingredients or less, depending on the flavor. The 2.5 oz cookies sell for $31.90 per 10-count box online and are available as grab-and-go singles for about $3.19 in stores.

Toto originally began by selling its cookie dough in tubs, but after running a test launch with pre baked cookies, Webb said the finished product’s velocity was moving at “an incredible pace” compared to its unfinished format. “The dough was a lot more expensive to manufacture due to the logistics of cold shipping and after doing a small test with cookies while we were still selling our dough… we realized we had an opportunity to double down,” she said.

How Else Has The Brand Evolved?

Alongside that significant format shift, Toto also underwent a total business “overhaul” late last year including introducing a new recipe developed specifically for cookies and shifting packaging to better fit the finished goods. In order to produce already baked cookies, the company also had to find a new co-packing partner.

“One of the things that’s unique about Toto is that the product is not super straightforward to make,” said co-founder and COO Bennett Quintard. “It’s a little bit more complex [and] it has unique ingredient profiles. It’s not something that you can just kind of hand to anyone and say ‘just put it together.”

To add fuel to the fire of change, Toto already had locked in a national distribution deal with Vitamin Shoppe when it decided to revamp its cookie product and was gearing up for a roll out in February 2023. Luckily, the brand was able to find an experienced cookie manufacturing partner who, while new to working with adaptogens, was willing to collaborate.

“I’ve had a lot of time to figure out what brands are really credible, where the sourcing is, what the potency is [for our adaptogenic ingredients],” Webb said. “But [the success of this partnership] was really a combination of our manufacturer putting his best suppliers forward for the ingredients that he already had contacts to and me putting my best contacts together for the ingredients that he wasn’t used to working with before.”

Since making the shift to finished treats, Webb said the business “has taken off” and its path to scale has come clearly into focus. As of last summer, the product was only on shelf in about 50 retail stores, but has expanded to over 1,200 in the year since and expected to be in about 3,000 doors by the end of 2023. Toto recently launched into Sprouts stores nationwide and is also sold at Mothers Market, Gelsons, Bristol Farms as well as Gold’s Gym locations across the country.

What’s Ahead For Toto?

Webb and Quintard said this year is about expanding its retail partnerships and scaling production runs to match that demand. The brand is focused on natural and specialty stores first and hopes to secure space near checkout registers to help drive trial for the grab-and-go format.

“This year we are setting the foundation, getting those first 2500 to 3000 doors so that going into next year, we can really push into more of the mainstream retail space,” Quintard said.

In addition to its co-founders, the brand is also supported by CPG vet Jason Dorfman who joined as CCO late last year; Dorfman previously worked in sales at RxBar, Lenny and Larry’s, Clorox and Nestle throughout his career. The Toto team is also looking to hire a director of operations as it continues to scale.

“One of the strategies that’s really helped us grow fast is setting up operational systems with a focus on being able to move quickly, and not trying to over optimize for every cent, instead optimizing for product quality, speed, reliability.” said Quintard. “That’s helped us to make a lot of headway quickly. We know that we can always go back and find the small cost savings that might slow us down as a very small team later on when we have more resources.”