We were lucky to catch up with Morgan Lerner recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Morgan, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Annie Slabotsky and I started GoNanas at the University of Michigan out of a lack of healthy baked good options on campus. There really weren’t any better-for-you sweet treat options for us on-the-go students, so we decided to change that. We spent 3 years combining familial banana bread recipes with an allergen free twist, to make the best banana bread in the game. It’s a timeliness dessert that can be eaten for truly all occasions of the day, unlike a brownie or cookies. After selling our banana bread to foodservice, we decided to pivot and launch at-home mixes during the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020, when banana bread was really blowing up. The mixes quickly went viral on social media, and by the end of their first year of business in 2021, we had exceeded $1.2M in sales, allowing us to quit our jobs and focus on the business full-time. We really knew we were onto something then, will the crazy response to our pivot. We like to say we’ve “cracked the code to making baked goods taste homemade from a mix” and are really shaking up the sleepy category with our vegan, gluten free, and allergen friendly flavored banana bread mixes.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Throughout my life, I’ve always been a curious, passionate and driven person, which I feel are all essential to entrepreneurship. While I went into school pre-med, I was spending most of my time on a food club on campus (where I met Annie) growing that community and fostering my love for food, people and organizational growth. Shortly after meeting, we started GoNanas on campus, and since then, I’ve really gotten to apply those passions to GoNanas. I run more of the marketing, people, and product development side of our business, collaborating with the other co-founder Annie on overall strategy. I’m very proud to say we now have a loyal community of 2500+ influencer ambassadors online that allow us to reach 10M people monthly.

On a product level, we are the only truly allergen free baking mix that delivers on taste. Baking with bananas instead of eggs allows us to be allergen free, and also gives our bread a moist texture and decadent flavor that other gluten free products lack, appealing to all eaters, allergen free or not. We are also the only banana bread with a variety of innovative flavors to meet the desire of consumers for healthy alternatives to the classic, nostalgic flavors and desserts they know and love. Lastly, with our single-serve instant banana bread packets, we’ve created the first ever banana bread ready in minutes, requiring only 1 banana, a GoNanas packet, and a mug.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

I love this question. First I like to caveat and say I think this can be very hard as you grow and scale, since it’s all about personalization and authentic connection. As you scale, it’s helpful to templatize marketing communications for example and do more, faster. The tricky part is you can lose the personal touch in marketing / customer interactions when you do this. So, I like to always ensure we’re finding that balance. Templatize with mandatory personal touch – talk like you would a best friend. Ignore selling, and focus on how you can build a relationship. Keep the conversation going, even if it’s via dm / email.

In regards to overall brand loyalty, we’re always trying to focus on this, but I would say get them involved. Don’t just be a product / service /etc, but be a story they’re part of. Let them into the behind the scenes, the highs, the lows, and all that goes into your business. It’s easy to ignore this piece because it’s hard to directly correlate to revenue, BUT you’ll see it in the retention numbers / LTV.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think our product is number 1. We have a rule that we don’t sell a new flavor unless “we can’t stop eating it.” We don’t sacrifice quality to meet a deadline or revenue number, and our customers know us first as the best tasting banana bread (and second, as the one that happens to be vegan, gluten free, and nut free, etc.) On that note, our product innovation has absolutely set us apart. We’ve made over 35 flavors to date, breaking the standard of the traditionally “sleepy” baking category. Lastly, our vibrant, community-oriented, and authentic brand online has really allowed us to make a name for ourselves beyond just being a banana bread company.

Contact Info:

• Website: eatgonanas.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/go_nanas/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgan-lerner/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@gonanas?lang=en