Meet Robert Petrarca of Maxine’s Heavenly

Today we’d like to introduce you to Robert Petrarca.

Robert, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My co-founder and I loved eating cookies. But we didn’t love the ingredients. So we made reinventing the cookie kind of a game. We switched out the butter, eggs, refined flours and sugars for healthier versions until we landed on a recipe that tasted amazing and used the healthiest ingredients possible.

Has it been a smooth road?
Ha, I wish! Building a business is hard. I could talk for hours about these challenges and the stamina it takes to get through them. Every day there is a new bump in the road, but that’s also part of the fun. I think the biggest struggle has been trying to build an authentic product and brand with limited resources. We want the best product possible at the most digestible price for our family of customers, but resources (money, time, and people) can often stand in the way and that’s when creativity becomes king.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Maxine’s Heavenly story. Tell us more about the business.
We’re really proud to be taking the natural foods industry to the next level. For a long time, having a natural product meant ingredients first, taste and experience second. Certain food products became “good for a healthy product” and not just plain “good.” We wanted to do better than that. So we have recreated the decadent taste and complex flavor of traditional homemade cookies, with better-for-you ingredients. There’s no other cookie quite like ours on the market.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Consumers are asking for more. They want products that taste good, but that are also made with wholesome, sustainable, cruelty-free ingredients. And they want the companies that make those products to be real with them. I think we’ll see more transparency from brands, as well as an increased focus on a triple bottom line (financial, social, and environmental). As far as products go, I think we’ll continue to see healthier options on the grocery shelves. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the junk food items we think of as iconic today end up being retired in favor of better-for-you snacks.

And then of course there’s the whole clean meat revolution. More and more people are beginning to understand the benefits of a plant-based or at least reduced-meat diet, but don’t want to give up the taste and experience of meat. I am interested to see where that trend ends up.

Pricing:

• Bag of cookies MSRP $6.99

Contact Info:

• Website: maxinesheavenly.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: instagram.com/MaxinesHeavenly
• Facebook: facebook.com/MaxinesHeavenly
• Twitter: twitter.com/MaxinesHeavenly

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