We recently connected with Lily Bond and have shared our conversation below.

Lily, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

Spyce Girlz was a business that was started out of need. I was 13 at the time that I started. I was being raised by a single mom and I needed money to buy a laptop for school as I was about to enter high school. I was too young to legally work at the time but I needed a solution, I figured out that nobody could stop me from starting my own business so I started Spyce Girlz! I realized that the Taco Seasoning that my family bought from the grocery store and that I grew up using was full of additives and preservatives and had way too much salt. In fact, I noticed this about all the spice blends in the spice aisle – they were all too salty and bland tasting. It was a month of R&D of testing different Taco Seasoning recipes before I came up with my final formulation (there were a lot of taco nights involved in this process!!) I signed up for a few local farmer’s markets in my community, pitched my tent, and started selling Spyce Girlz first product, a better-for-you, better-tasting Taco Seasoning. For the first few months of running my business, I only sold Taco Seasoning. I was adamant on doing one thing right and really figuring out the business before I expanded my line. Very quickly, my customer base grew beyond my mom’s friends, and I started having complete strangers coming up to me at the market telling me about how much they loved our product, how they used it on everything (not just tacos) and were inspired by my story of starting the business so young. Within 3 months, we had local grocery stores across town calling me up asking to carry my products, our line expanded to 10 blends and my customer base started to grow even more to across Ontario once we started selling our spice blends online. Last year, we struck up a deal with Farm Boy, one of Ontario’s largest grocery chains where our products are flying off the shelves. We currently have a few more grocery chain deals in the works to help bring our products across Canada.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I founded Spyce Girlz as I was on a mission for better-tasting, better-for-you spice blends. I found that the current blends in grocery stores were all full of additives and preservatives, had way too much salt and were not easy or exciting for customers to use. All our spice blends are extremely versatile and we’re helping people get excited about using spice blends and experimenting in the kitchen. In addition to making the world of spices a better place, at Spyce Girlz, we’re super passionate about encouraging and supporting young entrepreneurs. Aside from my business, I am a mentor to numerous youth-run businesses, speak at schools across Canada about my journey as a young entrepreneur and am the Student Entrepreneur in Residence at The University of Ottawa.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

Because I started my business selling our spice blends at farmer’s markets, I instantly had access to customer data and feedback. This was also important for customers feeling connected to the brand and story – they knew exactly who was behind the product they were consuming. An important part of fostering brand loyalty is storytelling. I always say that customers are initially drawn to Spyce Girlz from our fun packaging and interesting brand story and become lifetime users because they are truly some of the most balanced, best-tasting spice blends out there.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

The business originally started as a side project while I was in high school. I would fulfill small grocery orders and work farmer’s markets in the summer and on weekends. After graduating high school, I decided to take some time off to focus solely on the business and see what happens when I took it full time. This was when I turned into an official “business” – started getting into major grocery chains, incorporated my business, started increasing my online sales and scaling our operations.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.spycegirlz.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spycegirlzseasonings
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spycegirlzseasonings
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilyjbond/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfmYhU9HbTnJulWkLznA9Bw
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@spycegirlz

Image Credits

Credits to Lily Bond/ Spyce Girlz