Chrisi Hammer - The Interior Designer Scaling Cinnamon Buns Into 4500+ Doors

On this episode, we're joined by Chrisi Hammer, Co-founder and CEO of Sunshine Buns, the frozen cinnamon roll brand built upon a family recipe her mom started perfecting in the late 1970s. Chrisi brings an interior design background to CPG, and it shows up in everything from the packaging to the trade show booths. We get into how Sunshine Buns went from home deliveries out of Chrisi's kitchen to thousands of doors in under two years, and why owning a commercial kitchen and storefront first gave them hundreds of hours to perfect the product. Chrisi breaks down the packaging journey, how she rebuilt the entire pack into a box that fits the frozen breakfast set while keeping the hero image consistent after being told at ExpoWest they were a breakfast product not a bread. We dig into the retail strategy putting them on track for roughly 4,500 doors by year end how their broker at Critical Mass Group reverse-engineered a mass-market price so the product could actually move, and hiring fractional operators from bigger brands early. --------------- Episode Highlights: 🌅 The family recipe born from a 1970s cinnamon roll 🚪 From 750 doors to 4,500 by year end 🏠 Home kitchen to commercial to co-packer 🧪 Why cinnamon roll dough is so finicky 🎨 Bringing an interior design eye to the brand 📦 The rebrand from bread bags to breakfast box 🛒 Owning one spot on the shelf before expanding 💰 Pricing for volume instead of chasing margin 🏬 Using the retail store as live R&D 🧊 Why frozen is hard and worth it 🎪 The Expo West booth that stopped traffic 👀 The brands reinventing the frozen aisle --------------- Table of Contents: 00:00 – Intro 00:59 – Origin story: Mema's recipe 03:33 – The parking lot decision to start the business 04:48 – From 750 doors to 4,500 by year end 05:45 – Home kitchen to co-packer and the science of the dough 09:39 – Building the brand with an interior design eye 11:40 – Bags to boxes: the packaging rebrand 14:20 – Keeping the pack simple: no oven, ready fast 15:51 – Advice: own one spot on the shelf first 17:51 – Pricing strategy for the frozen set 19:36 – Reverse-engineering price with their broker 21:52 – The Orem storefront as R&D 24:56 – The corporate store playbook 26:22 – Convenience as the differentiator 28:31 – Why frozen is hard and worth it 30:09 – LinkedIn, influencers, and Hummingbirds 32:57 – The Expo West booth that stopped traffic 37:19 – Building the team and fractional hires --------------- Links: Sunshine Buns – https://www.sunshinebuns.com/ Follow Chrisi on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisi-hammer-b7b954326/ Sunshine Buns on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/sunshine-buns/ Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/ For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out KitPrint. Shout out to my friends over at Glimpse, the go-to partner for automating retail-related back-office operations and unlocking margin trapped in invalid fees and manual processes. Are you in the market for a new flexible packaging partner? Check out HD Packaging. Third-generation, family-owned and built for the needs of category leaders like Newman’s Own and A Dozen Cousins. Faster launches, lower costs, and no artwork fees.