We recently connected with Scott Campbell and have shared our conversation below.
Scott, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
In 2012 I had a 3x CABG, triple bypass. In 2017 I was diagnosed with benign thyroid nodules. At that time I saw a naturopath who started me on an anti-inflammatory way of eating. That meant the sugary sweets had to leave the house. I was craving chocolate one night and had cocoa powder but needed something to eat it with. All I could come up with was some leftover sweet potato and a VitaMix. Viola! Chocolate Fudge Pudding was born.
The desserts and sweets on the market taste like chemicals and fake sugars. They are really disgusting. Eating anti-inflammatory also requires cooking most everything I eat. Don’t get me wrong, I stray at the farmers markets, the pastries and cookies are amazing but again, I can’t have that in the house. I will eat it! So, I have learned to be creative with sweet potato and whole food ingredients to satisfy cravings at home. I have also lived and worked in 16 countries and have always enjoyed working at recreating dishes I have eaten there. Cooking is kind of meditative for me too.
I started sharing the pudding with friends when they came over, some of them diabetic. They told me they saw no blood sugar spikes. Otthers, like my neighbor, have food allergies and said they had no reactions. All of them insisted I needed to start selling the pudding so in 2020 I said, why not? So I formed the LLC, Love in My Tummy Foods. The name comes from the thought that when I eat well, it’s like putting love in my tummy.
Look, I have had hell finding snacks and desserts that are sugar-free or at least low sugar myself. When you have eaten real food all your life it’s very difficult to eat the crap that’s out there because it doesn’t taste like food. “Vegan” cheese isn’t cheese. Some of it is flat out disgusting and are major brands in the stores. Coconut yogurt was like eating snot. Some of the alternative ice cream has rapeseed oil in it? Why would a company put an industrial lubricant, basically motor oil made from seeds, in ice cream? That’s crazy!
So I knew this could be something that would help others like me with dietary restrictions eat pudding that tastes like pudding and is no sugar added and hypoallergenic.
September 2020 was right as the pandemic was in full force. Everything was shut down and we were all on lockdown but it gave me the opportunity to start playing with formulations and ingredients.
I tried stevia but that was terrible to work with. The aftertaste was not appealing.
I tried Monk Fruit but a) the aftertaste didn’t mix with the sweet potato, and b) pure Monk Fruit powder is extremely expensive.
Next I tried Xylitol and erythritol and even small formulation batches were gastronomically horrendous.
One night I was looking on the internet for a plant-based, sugar-free caramel sauce recipe and stumbled on this stuff called Allulose the guy was using. He said it browns like sugar and has zero aftertaste. Keto and diabetic friendly sounded like a perfect option for the pudding. It is! No change to the pudding flavor. Zero glycemic index. it works perfectly and has little to no gastric effect like sugar alcohols (Xylitol and erythritol).
Scott, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My dad died in 1973 when I was 8 years old. He was 45. He had a heart attack refereeing an little league soccer game. My grandfather died at 51 years old and my brother at 41 years old. I was 37 years old when I buried my brother and knew I would be dead by 40 with those odds. I turn 60 in April! 90% of that is food choices.
I have worked in high tech most all of my career. I never dreamed of doing something like this. It just kind of fell in my lap. I had been on YouTube watching an ATHLEAN-X video of Jeff Cavaliere showing us what he eats everyday. In the morning he was adding a can of pumpkin puree to his oatmeal as part of his breakfast.
I was trying to decide what to do with about 10lbs of sweet potatoes before they started sprouting. I thought, I could steam and blend them, and then bag and freeze for later use in stuff. That’s how I had the idea of using that with the cocoa powder. Thanks for the idea, Jeff!
The pudding started branded “Dee’lites” in 4oz plastic clamshell containers. They were terrible. Pudding went all over you and everywhere else if you didn’t know how to properly open them. Many customers wouldn’t buy plastic even though it was fantastic. However, it was what I could find and afford at the time.
I have bootstrapped Love in My Tummy Foods from $10k in savings, paychecks, and credit cards. I was able to get a $7k line if credit which helped. It is a testament to my Faith in God and the pudding itself that I am still in business but here I am! No stopping me, there are too many people to help!
I brought Dee’lites to the public at the Wednesday’s in Willamette Summer Street Market on St. Patrick’s Day 2022. I was late, my printer was on the fritz trying to print out info sheets for customers but I got there and Dee’lites was a hit! I think I sold @20-25 containers that day and had started a small following. I got into a Saturday and Sunday Farmers Market and had a good 1st season run!
The clamshells weren’t working, I was trying to keep actual puddings on ice on my display table during the summer months which was a mess as the ice melted and was expensive buying ice 3x a week. The stores I was trying to get into weren’t interested in that container either.
In 2023 I changed the Brand name and logo to GoodPūD, it was a game changer! I also started looking for a new container, something I could freeze easily. I had found I could keep the puddings frozen up to 6mos and not change the product when thawed. It also refreezes perfectly after thawing so something easy to open and reclose had to happen. I was competitive shopping one afternoon and looking at the pudding and yogurt and saw a 3.5oz paper container with cookie dough in it. Looked like a miniature ice cream container. I was hooked!
I bought one and contacted the manufacturer. They were great but wanted a minimum order of 50,000 cups and lids, per flavor! That would have been 600,000 cups and lids! No way I could afford these much less the space to store them. The company referred me to a smaller manufacturer, Visstun Cups, in Reno, NV. They were the ticket and have been my cup maker since. Fantastic people and a perfect product for GoodPūD.
2023 saw 170% growth and 2024 168% growth. I moved ecommerce to Shopify in March of 2024 and launch www.goodpudhs.com. In Oct. 2024 I got into my 1st store chain, Market of Choice. A chain of local to Oregon “Whole Foods” like markets. Also in Oct., a representative of the American Cancer Society was walking through the Saturday farmers market and came to the booth without my knowing it. The next day she DM’d me on Instagram to see if I wanted to be a vendor at their Making Strides for Breast cancer Walk on the 20th, that they loved the minimal whole food ingredients and felt the cancer survivors would as well. I was elated! Yes! I’ll be there, this is exactly why I started Love in My Tummy Foods! While there Miss Oregon, Abigail Hoppe, was with her mom, doing her Miss Oregon thing and stopped at the booth. Abigail is T1 Diabetic and fell in love with Raspberry Truffle flavor. She has been a great influencer and constant customer ever since.
January of 2025 I began a journey with Portland State University with Love in My Tummy Foods as a case study for their undergraduate business school capstone class. The team’s work helped influence a debt investor and has given Love in My Tummy Foods a loan to help with Cost of Goods and daily expenses while he works through some thoughts about long-term investment himself and some others in his circle. Cross your fingers.
Let me be clear. GoodPūD is not another “supplement” or “meal replacement”. GoodPūD is a starting, dessert snack that is healthy and tastes like “real” desserts and snacks. GoodPūD is clean, whole food ingredients: Gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free, nut-free, gum-free, oil-free, chemical-free, and no added sugar. GoodPūD is helping infants to seniors with diabetes, digestive diseases, food allergies, cancer, palette issues, and a slew of other issues, plus people looking for truly healthy choices for themselves and their families. It’s crazy how many people are looking for a product like GoodPūD and they just don’t exist.
All of GoodPūD’s ingredients are non_GMO and Organic wherever I can find them. All but three are sourced in the PNW creating sustainability with small companies making culinary quality ingredients. Stahlbush Island Farms in Corvallis, OR provides the Organic sweet potato puree. ICON Foods in Portland provides the non-GMO Allulose. Seely Mint Farm, a 3rd generation mint farm in Clatskanie, OR provides the pure peppermint oil. Singing Dog Vanilla in Eugene, OR provides the alcohol free pure vanilla flavor (it’s an “extract” when alcohol is used.) The Organic berry and acai comes from NW Wild Foods in Burlington, WA.
Cocoa powder comes from Cacao Barry, a Swiss company that’s been in business since 1842. Extra Brute is the best tasting cocoa I can find! The Organic freeze dried lemon juice comes from Micro Ingredients out of CA, Organic Pumpkin Pie Spice from Starwest Botanicals, and the Organic Arrowroot powder from Anthony’s Organic in NJ. I have worked very hard to find true culinary quality ingredients because that is the point! I’ve spared nothing for quality, quality is everything.
The kitchen space I rent is a certified vegan/gluten-free kitchen in Portland, OR and I make every cup, myself, by hand. I design all the labels, the website, do all the social media posts, sales, distribution, farmers markets, ingredient sourcing, testing, R&D, everything is done by me. I am praying 2025 is the year that scaling capital happens and I can concentrate on sales channels and expansion to create more and more awareness.
I see the chronic disease every Saturday and from May to October, 3x a week. When RFK Jr stated that 60% of Americans have chronic diseases I can attest to that in my own experience. I am with these people, face to face. Infants with food allergies and parents desperate to find something their child will eat that they can eat. People with digestive diseases that can hardly eat anything without devastating pain and sweets are just off the list. People that had to stop eating ice cream or have never eaten ice cream that now can. People on chemotherapy that find GoodPūD tastes good when they don’t want to eat and doesn’t upset their stomach. People with palette issues that cannot chew and have an extremely difficult time swallowing that are stuck with bad tasting or tasteless baby food-like goo. It’s crazy how GoodPūD is changing their lives! It’s not about fixing their problem, GoodPūD isn’t about that, GoodPūD gives them a real food, healthy choice for the first time.
This is why I started Love in My Tummy Foods. I just in the last week, had an RD and fitness trainer do a review of Thin Mint Cookie on Instagram and she was shocked that “something this healthy tasted so good.” I love it! My first actual influencer that came to me, out of the blue, asking if she and I could collaborate, that she would love to try GoodPūD and do reviews online. I am starting to make some noise!!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I had a mom at the Milwaukie Farmers Market desperate to find something he infant son would and could eat. He Husband stopped at the booth and after a couple of spoonfuls said we had to stop and get his wife and son over here. He took a spoonful of Raspberry Truffle with him and in a few minutes mom is running over pushing her son in the stroller. She was obviously upset, it seemed, and spouted out, “what did you give my husband?!” I was a little scared at first that we made he son sick or something but she said, no no, he loved it, what was that?” I pointed the the display cup and told her what GoodPūD is. She said, “lets try another flavor, please.” We gave him a spoonful of Blueberry-Acai and he sucked it down, pointing at the spoon and the display cups on the table, screaming for me like he was starving. I looked up at her and she had tears of joy rolling down her cheeks. The most amazing gift to me I could ever as for, that something my hands made gave them that moment, unbelievable!
This is just one of many stories I have. I had a T2 diabetic show me his monitor, 95, ate a Thin Mint Cookie pudding, walked the market for on hour and came back. Showed me his monitor and he was shocked it was only 102. A 7 point spike in blood sugar on an empty stomach and this is the highest reported blood sugar spike from the hundreds if T2 diabetics eating GoodPūD.
I have always know that personal bankruptcy could be an option and we are close. I am in debt up to my gills. I was laid off March of 2024 after the company I was with for 10 years, and was the last Senior Technical Writer in the company, globally, decided it was less expensive to bring an employee on an H1B visa from India than it was to renew my contract. Unemployment ran out in October 2024 and I have been looking since for another job. My credit was perfect, in the high 700s and now is destroyed.
It’s ok! I will pay them when I can. All that matters is that my customers have GoodPūD and the company stays open. My Faith in God is my strength and my customers like those above are my fortitude. Everyone will get paid, I just can’t promise when.
Before all this, I have been turned down on every SBA loan I have tried to get. Turned down by banks and investors, but every time things get almost to a breaking point, God comes through to keep me going. The universe wants this to happen!
There are 240M people combined with diagnosed diabetes, digestive diseases, and food allergies according to the CDC. That is 60% of the American people at 335M. The numbers increase by the second, every day. GoodPūD is getting more and more awareness of these folks and more and more influencers, medical professionals, fitness experts, and other people of influence are coming ouut of the woodwork, without me soliciting them.
Resilience! Oh yah, there is no stopping me!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I am 21 years clean of drugs and 11 years sober. My childhood was not charming with a “Leave it to Beaver” family. I have basically been on my own since 8 years old. When my dad died, the family nucleus exploded, and there was no time for me. God was kicked out of the house, and I made many many mistakes and poor decisions along the way. Life was lived on trial and error. However, I am a testament that the original 12 Step Program works. I have found God and Jesus again, we were very involved in the church, my dad was a devout Lutheran and my mom’s parents were staunch Southern Baptists, so God was around in force when I was little.
I wouldn’t trade a minute of the past. It has made me who I am and I like me today. A big part of Love in My Tummy Foods is living the spiritual principles of the 12 Step Program by being of Service to my customers in giving them a new shot at life with healthy desserts and snacks. I am helping people and not the selfish, self centered person I was. It is the greatest feeling I have ever known.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.goodpudhs.com
- Instagram: @goodpud_hs
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/goodpud.hs
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/73851270/admin/dashboard/
- Twitter: @GoodPudHS
- Youtube: working on it
- Yelp: https://biz.yelp.com/biz_info/U00MeXRFxsJANyStsyyb3A
