taking notes: angela vranich

Welcome to our eleventh installment of “taking notes” where I pester both internet and IRL friends about what makes them tick, their creative process, and how the hell they got so cool. In this edition: Angela Vranich, Founder and Chief Product Officer of Little Spoon.

Feeding my kid has been one of the biggest challenges in this whole parenting project. I went in, perhaps naively, assuming that she would eat what I put in front of her. Reader, that’s not how it works. These kids are picky, finicky, and unpredictable. Some days corn is their favorite, the next they’ll scream for an hour when you try to feed them corn. You can’t win!

But besides the perpetual guessing over what they may or may not want to eat that there, there’s also the time. So. Much. Time. Between meal prepping and planning and chopping and portioning and pivoting, there hours that go into feeding her are endless, and I’ll admit: draining. It’s always one of the top things me and my mom friends say we wish we could change about parenting, the thing we hate doing.

Enter: Little Spoon. If you’re the parent of littles you’ve probably seen Little Spoon somewhere along the way. They’re the makers of fun snacks, frozen meals, and little treats crafted specifically with certain age groups in mind, and they ship right to your doorstep. Easy.

Founder Angela Vranich is with us today to talk about her inspiration behind launching a kids food brand, founders as influencers, and the challenges of running a $150+ million business.

Enjoy!

What’s your name? Angela Vranich

What do you do? I’m Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Little Spoon

Where did you grow up, and where do you live now? I grew up in Pittsburgh and now live in New York City

What does your family look like - kids? Partner? Pets? My husband, Ben, is also my co-founder at Little Spoon, so we truly do life and work together. We have a sheepadoodle named Gus, who comes into the office with us every day and is definitely one of the most popular members of the team.

What does your day to day look like? No two days are exactly the same, which is one of the things I love most about my role! As Chief Product Officer, I spend my time thinking about everything from consumer insights and product innovation to packaging, manufacturing, and long-term product strategy. One hour I might be tasting new recipes with our R&D team, and the next I’m reviewing packaging proofs, meeting with suppliers, or taste testing with the team. Building products that solve real problems for parents is what energizes me, so I try to stay as close to the consumer as possible.

Where can we find you on the weekends? Weekends are all about slowing down. Ben and I love taking long walks with Gus, trying new restaurants, cooking at home, or having friends over. You’ll usually find me outside whenever possible, whether that’s walking around Tribeca or escaping the city for a long weekend. After a busy week, I really value simple, unstructured time.

Walk me through a typical morning at your house. Ben and I wake up around 6:30 each morning. I like to ease into the day with a quiet cup of espresso while I look over what’s on my calendar and knock out a few items on my to-do list before emails and meetings begin. I live next door to Barry’s, so I usually make it to the 7:20 class three mornings a week. After that, I take my time getting ready for work, and then Ben, Gus, and I walk to the office together. It’s one of my favorite parts of the day.

What’s your favorite thing about living where you live? Least favorite? I love living in New York because it feels like there’s an endless source of inspiration. Whether it’s discovering a great new restaurant, walking through a neighborhood I haven’t explored in a while, or simply people-watching on the way to work, there’s an energy and creativity that’s hard to replicate anywhere else. The downside is that it’s not always the easiest place to slow down, which is why we try to sneak in little weekend trips whenever we can to change up our scenery and reset.

I am the mother to a two (almost three) year old, and food is the bane of my existence. When you started Little Spoon you didn’t have kids (and still don’t). I love an ally that thinks about mothers and children, and tries to address our needs, but I know that when I was in my 20s, innovating children’s food would not have been remotely on my radar. How did you come to the idea, and what drew you to this category?

I was working in the food industry in my twenties, and one day I found myself walking the grocery aisles thinking about how every category had evolved. Coffee had changed. Juice had changed. Pet food had changed. But baby food looked almost exactly the same as it had when we were kids.

That felt backwards to me. The people we care most about were eating some of the oldest products in the grocery store.

I wasn’t a parent, but I also don’t think you have to be one to recognize when a category is overdue for change. We became obsessed with understanding what parents actually needed, and that curiosity has never really gone away. We started by making fresh baby food in a tamale factory (when we couldn’t find anyone else who would manufacture for us!) Eight years later we still build products the same way—by listening first and then working backwards from there, although our tamale factory days are long behind us.

Running a $150M+ business is no joke. What have been the biggest challenges in not just getting it off the ground, but ensuring continued innovation and success?

The early days were brutal in the way only the early days are– no manufacturer wanted the liability of baby food, so we ended up producing in a tamale factory, and then the retail deal we were counting on fell apart. Looking back, that was one of the best things that ever happened to us because it pushed us to take the leap to direct-to-consumer, which taught us the value of control, agility, and actually listening to and growing with our real customers. But I will tell you, it did not feel like a gift at the time!

The less obvious challenge is that the hard part never really ends…it just changes. Early on it was “will this work at all,” and now it’s “how do we keep innovating quickly & at the same best-in-class standard we always have while running an operationally complex business.” The most underestimated part of running any consumer brand is operations — supply chain, sourcing, forecasting, logistics. None of that makes the Instagram grid, but those are the things that determine whether the business actually functions.

On the innovation side, what keeps us motivated and nimble is that we build for a person, not a category. Being DTC means that we hear from parents every single day, so the next product we make is always something they told us they needed. That will always be our North Star.

I’ve heard through the grapevine that you have an acute attention to detail. First, tell me your secrets, and second, how has this impacted the role you play in the company and the success of the brand?

First, I’ll take the compliment :) But unfortunately, I don’t have any glamorous secrets– I am just a very curious person by nature. I’m always nosy about how things work, whether it’s an ingredient, a package, a supply chain, or why a customer did the thing they did. That curiosity is what makes me want to dig into the nitty-gritty, and it’s usually where I find quality ideas and solutions.

As Chief Product Officer, attention to detail shows up everywhere — I’m close to product development, branding and marketing, and packaging, and it’s important to me to stay very hands-on even as we scale. From a product standpoint, one concrete example is our commitment to the highest safety standards. We test every ingredient and finished product for 500+ contaminants against EU-level standards and publish the results online, which is an enormous, detail-heavy effort most brands don’t take on. But that’s exactly the kind of detail that earns a parent’s trust, and trust is our entire business.

Food trends seem to be moving a million miles a minute. This is less so with kids, but there are a lot of differing opinions out there on what and how we should be feeding ourselves and our children. How do you go about navigating these shifts, and how do you tune out the noise?

I tune out the noise by going straight to the source (parents!). There’s a lot of chatter out there– from butter for babies to protein-maxxing and whatever the next big thing is. If you chase all of that, you’ll ultimately lose sight of your identity, mission, and goals. Because we’re DTC, we have direct access to real parents every single day, and listening to their needs is a much better signal than any internet trend.

One thing we hear consistently is that parents don’t need more judgment or another thing to feel anxious or guilty about. They need honesty, clarity, and a little less decision fatigue. A lot of our content, like our “Spoon Fed” platform, is informed by real conversations with families trying to figure out what’s typical and what isn’t. When you anchor product and content to what parents actually need instead of what’s trending, the noise gets a lot quieter.

Beauty and wellness is a rapidly evolving industry as well, and one I know you’re personally pretty invested in. Tell me more about where that interest was sparked, how it shows up in your daily life, and what your routine looks like.

I think it stems from the same curiosity that’s shaped so much of my career. I love understanding how things work, whether that’s a food ingredient, a skincare ingredient, a new treatment, or why one product performs differently than another. I’m the person who is researching everything before deciding if something is actually worth trying.

That said, my daily routine is surprisingly simple. Exercise is a non-negotiable for me because it’s less about fitness and more about how it makes me feel for the rest of the day. I also love taking long walks with my dog, Gus. It’s one of the few times I’m not looking at a screen, and I always come back with a clearer head.

I’ve also become much more appreciative of small rituals. Making an espresso before work, cooking dinner at home, doing my skincare at night, reading before bed. Those moments signal the beginning or end of my day and help me slow down. They’re not glamorous, but they’re the habits that make me feel the most grounded.

More than anything, I’ve learned that wellness isn’t about chasing every trend. It’s about finding the handful of things that genuinely make you feel better and being consistent with them.

There is a lot of chatter on my side of the internet about how much founders should be telling their story and making themselves the face of the brand. You’re a founder with a pretty robust social media presence, so tell me how you decided to embark on that journey, and what you think it means for both your success personally and that of the company.

My social journey actually started organically– I shared bits of our founding story on TikTok and it went pretty viral. I attribute this to the fact that it was very real, raw, and unpolished, making it a story people could actually connect with. From there, I just really grew to love the community social media gave me. It also serves as a fun creative outlet for my passions outside of work like fashion and home design.

I think that people are craving transparency from founders right now. Seeing the journey from Little Spoon’s scrappy beginning to where we are now eight years later gives people a sense of what’s possible and it builds a real relationship with our community. For the brand, that trust is everything, and for me personally, it’s made the work more connected and more fun. I still make silly TikToks in my office with my colleagues. I don’t take it too seriously, and I think that’s the point.

Do you think that all founders should have a public facing and social media presence?

I don’t think it’s a one-size-fits-all approach. It works for me because it feels natural, I genuinely enjoy it and it’s a nice way to connect with others. People are savvier than ever, and they can tell right away when something feels forced. For me, the minute it becomes tedious or another to-do on my list I’m not going to do it. I also go through periods of time where I’m not motivated to post at all. It ebbs and flows.

I think that the days of faceless brands are mostly over. I don’t necessarily think that the founder needs to be that face, especially if it doesn’t feel right, but having a real, honest voice be a part of brand somewhere sparks connection and curiosity with the people that support your brand.

If you were advising a 20-something with an idea and a dream, what are the three things you would make sure they knew?

I think the biggest one is to stay curious. I’ve built my entire career by asking a lot of questions and not being embarrassed to admit when I don’t know something. Curiosity will get you much farther than pretending to have all the answers.

I’d also tell them to get close to the details. It’s tempting to focus on the exciting parts of starting a company, but understanding the operational side of the business is what gives you real leverage. I probably spend as much time thinking about manufacturing and supply chains as I do product ideas.

And lastly, don’t over-romanticize having it all figured out. Everyone is making decisions with incomplete information. Keep learning, keep adjusting, and not let the fear of being wrong stop you from getting started!

What Little Spoon product would you snack on yourself?

So many! Our Purple Carrot Acai Bowl Smoothie is refreshing and a nice little sweet treat. I can eat an entire bag of our new Peanut Butter Puffs in one sitting. And you really can’t go wrong with a tried and true Little Spoon Super Chicken Dipper made with hidden veggies!

Favorite restaurant: Scalini Fedeli in Tribeca. It’s old school and understated in the best way.

Most worn item in your closet: My large Bottega Hop bag. It was a birthday gift from my MIL and it’s like my Mary Poppins bag.

Can’t live without product: Any type of lip balm or gloss. I have several with me at all times.

Dream vacation spot: Nantucket. I go every summer and have the best memories there.

Favorite place for creative inspiration: There’s no place like NYC. I feel so lucky to live there!

Currently reading: Theo of Golden (ed note: me too!!)

Currently watching: The Michael Jackson documentary on Netflix… I’m shook

Can’t miss podcast: Maggie Sellers Reum has some great guests on Hot Smart Rich!

Song/album/artist you have on repeat? I’ve been enjoying some country music lately which is pretty unusual for me. I love Ella Langley.

We have so many fun things coming up later this year in the Little Spoon universe– new products, new places to find us, so stay tuned for all of that!

Ultimately though, I want your community to know they’re not alone, and they’re doing great. We hear from parents over and over that they carry so much guilt and shame, especially when it comes to feeding their families. If we can take even a small weight off their shoulders by making mealtime a little easier, then we’re living out exactly what we set out to do every day.

Little Spoon: littlespoon.com / @littlespoon. Me: @angelavran on Instagram and TikTok.

ok that’s it from me! see you soon!

xx

jen