This Married Couple Tracked Down Grocery Buyers for a Year to Build a Category Defining Healthy Cereal Brand 🥣 | Ian & Margaret Wishingrad, Co-Founders of Three Wishes
In this episode of WellBuilt, Jon sat down with Ian and Margaret Wishingrad, the husband-and-wife co-founders of Three Wishes: the grain-free, low-sugar cereal that's become one of the most interesting better-for-you brands in the grocery aisle. Ian spent years in advertising before starting his own agency. Margaret came from real estate. When their first son was born, they stood in the cereal aisle of Whole Foods and realized nothing there was actually healthy. Two years of R&D, a food scientist, and dozens of cold calls later, Three Wishes launched in late 2019. They covered: 🥣 Why cereal was broken and why grain-free, minimal-ingredient, high-protein was the obvious answer that nobody had actually built yet. 📞 The shameless, old-school grind behind retail distribution: tracking down the Northeast Whole Foods buyer at Fancy Food with a Ziploc bag of samples, calling Wegmans for nearly a year straight before landing the account. 💸 The early fundraising reality: why investor rejections were less about the product and more about two first-time product founders who hadn't yet earned the credibility to match their conviction. 🧠 What it's actually like to run a company together as a married couple. 🌍 Margaret's origin story: growing up as an immigrant, being sent solo to China at 19 by her father to source product, and how that forged the "figure it out" mentality she brings to every operational crisis. 🌱 How Three Wishes thinks about the next chapter: evolving the brand from homemade to "big boy," new packaging, and threading the needle between fun and functional without looking like a kids' only product or a diet food.
