Reinventing Snack Time

If you’ve spent any time scrolling through the appetizing corner of Instagram over the past decade, you likely know Rachel Mansfield. She is the culinary fairy godmother for anyone who wants to eat delicious food but whose body politely declines gluten, dairy, or anything that causes inflammation. 

Mansfield’s origin story is the stuff of entrepreneurial dreams: laid off from a corporate job, she pivoted to a blog (rachlmansfield.com) and built a digital empire on the back of almond flour and enthusiasm. She authored the hit cookbook Just the Good Stuff, amassed a dedicated following, and became a trusted voice in the better-for-you food space.

However, running a venture capital fund (grt sht ventures) alongside her husband, Jordan Carpenter, writing books, and raising three boys apparently wasn’t quite enough chaos. Mansfield is now taking on the titans of the grocery aisle with her new kids’ snack brand, cadootz!

What’s in a Name?

Complete with an exclamation point, cadootz! is the snack brand Mansfield and her husband spent three years developing. But more than anything, it’s the result of being parents to three young sons and struggling to find snacks that met their standards. Mansfield is the first to admit that launching a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company was never in the cards. Having invested in and advised other brands alongside her husband, she knew exactly how grueling the industry could be.

“To be honest, I had zero intention or plan to start a food CPG company,” Mansfield says. “We know enough from investing to know this isn’t an easy path. But we looked endlessly for a brand doing what we are doing with cadootz! and failed at finding one. So, in 2023, we decided to roll up our sleeves and create the snack brand we had been in search of for years.”

The catalyst for cadootz! was the realization that feeding three growing boys is a full-contact sport. “It’s no secret that for kids, snack time isn’t just a time of day—it’s truly a way of life,” she says. “But so often it feels like snacks (especially kids’ snacks) have to come with a compromise.”

Naming a brand is a notoriously treacherous endeavor, but for Mansfield, the answer was sitting right in her living room. “Nobody warned me about how crazy it is to name a brand, but I am so happy we went down the name journey,” she says. “I’m sure all parents can relate to having dozens of nicknames for their kids, as we do, and cadootz! is a variation of one we’ve always called our youngest son, Cooper—who absolutely loves to snack.”

The name stuck because it captured a specific feeling of pure joy. “Over time, for our family, the word cadootz has come to represent the infectious childlike excitement that all kids display,” Mansfield explains.

Bite-Sized Bliss

Creating the product, however, was less “childlike joy” and more “rigorous science.” Mansfield didn’t just want a cracker; she wanted something the grocery aisle had convinced her didn’t exist. It took three years to develop the debut lineup of savory crackers because Mansfield refused to lower the bar.

“Our team laughed at me with the list of brand standards I dreamt of for cadootz!” she says. “It was really important to us to create a snack that had absolutely nothing to hide.”

The result is a refreshing spec sheet of ingredients: organic; gluten-free; kosher; non-GMO; and a “no” list that includes no seed oils, nuts, glyphosate residue, or added flavoring. “We are also really proud of the fact we don’t use natural flavors to enhance the flavor in our crackers,” Mansfield notes, pointing out a common industry loophole. “Most are just now learning that natural flavors aren’t as natural as you think. There can be dozens of hidden ingredients to make up that one ‘natural flavor.’”

Crunch Time

The decision to go gluten-free was more a personal choice than a marketing ploy to capture the wellness crowd. Mansfield’s husband has celiac disease. “We knew from the beginning that we wanted cadootz! to be gluten-free,” she says. However, she was adamant about avoiding the texture profile common in the genre, which often ranges from “chalk” to “damp cardboard.” She adds, “cadootz! is one of those snacks where you are eating it and say, ‘Oh wow, this is gluten-free? I had no idea!’”

While nutritional statistics impress parents, they don’t mean much to a 5-year-old. If a snack doesn’t taste good, it stays in the lunchbox. Mansfield used her own children as the ultimate focus group to test the crackers. “Kids don’t fake it around food, and seeing ours love cadootz! is the most amazing and surreal feeling,” she says. “When we came back home with our very first benchtop samples and saw how much our kids were obsessed, we were so proud.”

Working with her husband to build this legacy has been the cherry on top. “You can actually have fun if you make it fun,” she says of working with Jordan. “It’s not glamorous being together 24/7, but it is so incredibly special to be running three businesses together and showing our kids that you can be your own boss and follow an unconventional path.”

Cadootz! isn’t just about crackers; it’s about solving a problem Mansfield faced daily. “Our ultimate goal is to take the stress and guilt out of snack time for parents,” she says. “And fingers crossed, they come to buy it again and again … and again.”

As cadootz! launches nationwide, if the empty boxes in her own pantry are any indication, she won’t need to cross her fingers for long.

Photograph by Lauren Volo