Whisker (0s):
Today's episode is sponsored by a whisker makers of the Litter Robot, the self cleaning litter box that helps take one more household chore off of your plate because I don't know about you, but this time of year it feels like everyone is trying to get back into a routine. Maybe older kids are heading back to school, childcare schedules might be shifting. Maybe you're just trying to figure out how to get breakfast bottles, solid food naps, dinner, all handled without completely losing your mind. And when your household routine is already packed daily litter box duty is exactly the kind of chore that can tip the whole thing over. The thing that has always stopped me about cats, it's not the cat, it's the litter, the scooping, the smell, the daily maintenance. Because when you already have a baby at home, you're touching enough questionable things. I know. And that is why I love the idea Behind Litter Robot. By Whisker, it automatically cycles after every use so you're not scooping every day and you're not handling waste like you would with a regular litter box. Litter robot handles the dirty work so no one in the house has to be assigned daily litter duty and the Whisker app can notify you about your unit, like when a clean cycle is complete, when the drawer or the litter level needs attention. And it can help you track usage and weight information without checking the litter box every day. I know that I personally love a system that quietly does its job in the background because as parents we already have enough tabs open in our brains. Right. Whisker has a full lineup of automatic litter boxes with options for single cat homes and homes with up to five cats, including the Litter Robot EVO and Litter Robot five Pro. Maintain your cat's litter while focusing on your family. Learn more about whisker litter robot models and starter kits today. To get set up for this busy season of parenting, take an additional $50 off bundles with code weaning when you shop whisker.com/weaning. That's an additional $50 off bundles with the code weaning at whisker.com/weaning.

Once Upon a Dance (2m 4s):
This episode is sponsored by Once Upon A Dance. A back to school season always makes me think about routines, not just school routines, but family routines. Like what are we doing before school, after school, before bed, or on the weekends to connect with our kids in ways that feel meaningful. And that's why I'm excited to share Once Upon a Dance With You. Once Upon a Dance offers interactive children's books that combine storytelling with movement. So instead of your child just sitting and listening, they get to step into the story moving, imagining twirling, leaping and engaging their whole body and mind. These books were created by a former dance teacher and they feature her daughter Ballerina Kay. As a gentle guide and a positive role model. I really love that mother-daughter connection because I've seen with my own girls how powerful dance can be. So I personally did not grow up dancing, but my girls did and it became such a formative part of their childhood. Once upon a dance. Stories include themes like practice, perseverance, confidence, kindness, empathy, friendship, family and self-acceptance. And with dance along adventures featuring everything from unicorns to puppies and cats and more, there's something whimsical and engaging for lots of different kids. So whether you have a baby now, a Toddler who loves to move, or older kids who just need a new way to burn energy and connect with you once upon a dance is a beautiful way to make story time active. Swap screen time for connection. Get your kids off the couch and into a story. Jump twirl and leap over to once upon a dance.com or find once upon a dance books wherever you buy books online. That's once upon a dance.com.

Puffworks (3m 50s):
You know, as your kid gets older, two years, three year olds, the advice is to continue to introduce Peanut and it's just much more sustainable to do it with a food product than it is with a supplement or a powder. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietician, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby led weaning Here on the Baby led Weaning with Katie Ferraro podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, giving you the confidence and knowledge You need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. What if one of the easiest ways to offer your baby peanut was to just pass them a puff? Now I know when you hear the word puff, you might think about those little tiny star shaped baby snacks that dissolve into nothing and have no nutritional value. But today we're talking about a very different kind of puff. This is a peanut puff that can help make introducing peanut protein early and often feel a whole lot less stressful. My guest today is Greg Murphy. He's the founder and the president of Puff Works. So Puff Works is a very small brand based out of Oregon and they make organic peanut butter puffs. And the Puff Works baby line is really unique because it's designed specifically to help families introduce peanut protein. And then they also have an almond one. So that's for tree nut protein. But today we're gonna be focusing on peanut 'cause that's the easiest one to start with and we offer that to babies when they're starting solid foods. Now I did this interview with Greg a while back, but the message is still so powerful and it resonates because parents are really confused about peanuts. It's been 10 years since the LEAP study came out and that was this Seminole landmark study that showed us it's called Learning Early about peanut allergy. But that offering peanut protein early and often is hands down the best way to lower the risk of peanut allergy. And yet 10 years on, we know that not all families are getting the message because offering your baby intact nuts or thick gloves of nut butter can be a choking hazard. But I love the Puff Works baby peanut puffs because they're the perfect size for baby led weaning. They don't have any salt like the other major brands tend to have. There's no added sugar in these things as well. And these are so soft. These are the softest puffs on the market. So they dissolve in your baby's mouth and then that means you can start 'em even before your baby has teeth. As for full disclosure, I am an affiliate for Puff Works. I use them with all seven of my own kids. I use them regularly in my infant feeding practice. They're one of my favorite ways to do peanuts for babies. There's a lot of safe ways that you can do peanuts. I think we have like 17 different peanut recipes for phase one and phase two and three in our a hundred First Foods program. But Puff Works is one of my like favorites for low stress and like literally no mess options. If you wanna check out Puff Works, the affiliate discount code Baby Lead works for 15% off And I recommend getting a combo pack. So they have Peanut and they have Baby Almond, but you can get a combo pack that's half baby Peanut and half baby almond. And just as an aside, you always wanna do the baby Peanut first. Okay. And then after you are sure your baby doesn't have a peanut allergy, then you bring in the Almond one because the Baby Almond Puff Works brand also has peanut protein in it, which is great 'cause you wanna reintroduce that peanut protein, but it has the almond in it as well. So we don't do two new potentially allergenic foods for the first time at the same time. So if your baby had never had Peanut and you gave them the almond one, how would You know what they're reacting to? Right. Tree nut or peanut. Anyway, we'll get into that in the conversation today with Greg. So with no further ado, here is the Puff Works founder and president, the Puff daddy as he refers to himself Mr. Greg Murphy talking about how to use Puff Works baby puffs. And why introduce this company? I love a good origin story and he's actually a food allergy dad too. So here's Mr. Greg Murphy from Puff Works.

Greg Murphy (7m 47s):
Hi Katie, thanks for having me.

Katie Ferraro (7m 49s):
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be the founder of the company We all know and love as Puff Works?

Greg Murphy (7m 55s):
Okay, sure. So I've been in the food industry most of my life, You know, working with craft food companies and You know, everything from specialty coffee to craft beer and tea and spices. And I was, You know, a few years ago I was looking for another opportunity in the food business and got introduced, A friend introduced to the Bomba product from Israel And I was really fascinated with the product because You know, it's, it tastes great, it's good for you. And I thought ah, You know, opportunity to make a better Bomba product and bring it to the us You know, make it with all organic ingredients, fresh roasted peanuts, that type of thing. And then a few years ago, You know, or about the same time a friend introduced, You know, a pediatrician friend of mine, You know, saw what I was thinking about doing and said, oh You know, this is great.

Greg Murphy (8m 42s):
You know, You know the new science is actually introducing penis early is key to preventing peanut allergy later in life.

Katie Ferraro (8m 49s):
Were you interested in Bomba? Like just as a food outside of the food allergy prevention piece? Okay, that's so, so interesting because as a dietician, and for those of you who don't know what Bomba is, it's a peanut puff product made out of Israel and it's very common in Israeli food culture. Children start eating the Bomba puffs early and often and then they did the LEAP study and found out, gosh, You know, these children are having much lower rates of peanut allergy and it appears to be because peanut early and often is protective. So I always thought like, why isn't there like a better version of this? But from the allergy standpoint. But you were actually interested in it like from a a taste or marketing standpoint?

Greg Murphy (9m 26s):
Yeah, for from I started with it from the snack standpoint that hey, this is just a great touch snack that's also good for you. And You know, it actually was a few months after that that I met the pediatrician and he recommended that we also make a baby product for introducing

Katie Ferraro (9m 40s):
And is this Dr. Og? 'cause my audience knows him. Yes. Inside out he does all of our episodes about food allergies. Okay, so you were originally interested in a peanut butter snack puff product and then you figured out like, oh my gosh, this is like hugely important in the world of baby food because I'm always like, oh it's the most important thing in the world of baby food and everyone knows this.

Greg Murphy (9m 59s):
Yeah, I mean you see what, at the time I was doing it, the leaf study had just come out right? So You know, I wasn't really aware of it and You know, once I met Ron and he, we sort of talked it through, it was like oh this is fantastic. You know, I have a daughter that actually has nut and seafood allergies because You know, when I was raising my kids the advice was to just avoid feeding allergens.

Katie Ferraro (10m 17s):
So your daughter has a peanut or a tree nut allergy or both? She

Greg Murphy (10m 20s):
Has a tree nut allergy.

Katie Ferraro (10m 21s):
Did she grow out of it or She still has it.

Greg Murphy (10m 23s):
She still has it. Okay. Yeah. So

Katie Ferraro (10m 25s):
Tell us a little bit about the line of Puff Works. I think my audience is pretty familiar that Puff Works makes a baby peanut butter puff that we use for safe introduction of peanut allergy to babies. But you guys have other products too, is that correct? That's, I know it's correct 'cause I love them, but you tell them about it.

Greg Murphy (10m 40s):
You know, we have the, the Baby Peanut product for Introducing Peanut and we actually just came out with an almond product and then we have what we call our kids' snacks packs, which is like a, You know, a crunchier version of the baby product. You know, that's also that we make in a peanut butter and then we make a peanut butter and jelly and we actually make a peanut butter and honey. And then for our snack line, which is You know, sort of family sized bags, we do those same products plus a dark chocolate product.

Katie Ferraro (11m 7s):
Is there, are there any plans for peanut butter and banana?

Greg Murphy (11m 9s):
Yes, when we look at expanding the kids' line, I think that'll maybe very likely be the next one that we do.

Katie Ferraro (11m 15s):
And I know we talk a lot about Puff Works, at least in my community because of the Puff Works baby product. So you guys look, it's an orange package and it has a turquoise elephant on it, that's the baby one. And we use that for introduction of peanut protein for babies when they start solid foods around six months of age. But I have kids who are age three to six And I love the snack line for kids because there is very minimal amount of added sugar and you are very hard pressed to find a snack that comes in a package that doesn't have added sugar for kids. And I really do love the products Beyond Baby because it is like one of those few packaged snack products that I can actually feel good about serving my kids.

Greg Murphy (11m 51s):
Yeah, that's what really what we try to do, do with the, with the Kid Line. I mean the original peanut butter doesn't have any added sugar at all. And then the, You know, pb and j is just three grams. It's mostly just strawberry powder.

Katie Ferraro (12m 3s):
And I think parents oftentimes will get introduced to Puff Works when they hear about Puff Works baby. But I was reminding 'em like listen, they have these other products that I think to be honest, nothing disparaging go against Puff Works babies but they taste like stale peanut butter puffs. But it's because they're not designed to be all very salty and very sugary babies love them. Like I'm sure you just like I can watch videos of babies eating all foods all days, but I love to watch them eat the Puff Works baby 'cause they love them and there is no salt and there is no sugar. They're actually learning to taste the flavor of peanut.

Greg Murphy (12m 31s):
That's right. I mean You know as an adult with a, You know, more developed palate, You know they probably taste a little bland because it's very low sodium in there. But You know, we put a little more sodium in the kid snacks and the adult snacks so,

Katie Ferraro (12m 43s):
But it's not a lot by any means. Like I'm totally like very much a stickler about reading labels for kid snacks. It's low it easy. Yeah it makes me easy for me to be like, Nope, you can, we're having that. We're not having that. And I'm not even a big peanut butter and jelly person but the peanut butter and jelly flavor again there's just a smidge of added sugar I think it's not even a teaspoon of sugar per serving, it's really flavorful but not like overwhelmingly sweet like a lot of jelly stuff is.

Greg Murphy (13m 5s):
Yeah we try to really make that balance, You know, make it really wholesome snack but You know, but but we want it to taste great. So we do add just a little bit of sugar.

Katie Ferraro (13m 12s):
We're talking a little bit about the ingredients in the Puff Works products. Could you tell us just a little bit about how you source them if the ingredient line was important to you? 'cause you mentioned you come from a background of Kraft Foods And I just wanna clarify that's not like the Kraft Food Company. You mean Kraft with a C, right? That's

Greg Murphy (13m 26s):
What craft with a c or Artisan would be the other way to say it. So You know, we are, we're really stick with about how we make our product and how we source the ingredients. So everything is a hundred percent organic and one of what's different about our product and what whatever they set out to accomplish when we, we started to make Puff Works is we make it with just a hundred percent fresh roasted nuts. So, You know, whereas a lot of other products will add oil or they'll add, You know, dehydrate the nuts and use nut flour, we just use a hundred percent dry roasted nuts, peanuts, almonds so that you really taste the the natural flavor of those ingredients. Can

Katie Ferraro (14m 2s):
We talk a little bit about the sodium, the way I always describe it to people like well then why is there salt and if it's for babies, like okay it is a packaged product so there's a smidge of sodium for preservative purposes. Is that how you would describe it or am I getting that wrong?

Greg Murphy (14m 15s):
You know, I think we, we, You know, it is not that sodium probably doesn't help preserve the product. You know, we gave it just a little touch of salt, You know, just so for the taste really. Okay. You know, because we figured like the baby's going to eat it but mom's also going to eat

Katie Ferraro (14m 27s):
It. They do, I know they love it. And then the big kids, you gotta be careful 'cause they sneak it. I'm like no, this one's for the baby. I'll get you your own. Okay. So Greg, a lot of parents will ask about there's all these products on the market now kind of flooding the market that are these stick packs that have x, y or Z amount of X, Y or Z allergen and you pour it into the bottle. I mean I personally am a dietitian so I'm an advocate of a food first approach and using foods to help prevent food allergy. And I know Dr. Sag is as well, but what would you say to parents who are like, should I be using a stick pack or should I be using Puff Works to introduce peanut to my baby? Yeah,

Greg Murphy (14m 59s):
Well so we're very much a food forward brand. I mean we're food first and You know, we really believe that, You know, to have a better relationship with food and prevent food allergies, it's really about food. It's not about supplements or powders. And then, You know, as your kid gets older, two years, three year olds and You know the, the advice is to continue to introduce peanut and it's just much more sustainable to do it with a food product than it is with a supplement or a powder.

Katie Ferraro (15m 25s):
And I know I, I do a whole hundred First Foods approach and really advocate for the use of food. Like, oh it's so ironic. We would use food to teach babies how to eat. We would use food to prevent food allergy. But it's kind of crazy that in the advent of You know, baby food and you go to Target and there's this whole aisle of pouches and to be honest you don't need any of it, right? That babies can learn how to eat food. Sometimes people gimme pushback. Well why aren't you doing peanut butter? That's a real food. Why are you, why are you recommending a packaged product? Listen, there's lots of ways that you can safely introduce peanut to your baby. One of them is a peanut puff. Yes it does come out of a package. The majority of the foods that we feed babies don't come out of a package. But I really like the very clean ingredient list for Puff Works. And so I was curious if you could share maybe a little bit about the other attributes of the package that parents might take into consideration if like, oh it's a packaged snack, I can't feed it to my baby.

Greg Murphy (16m 12s):
Okay, we strive to make a really super clean product. So it's a hundred percent organic, non GMO, kosher, gluten-free and You know, just very simple minimal ingredients. You know, the original is really just three ingredients. It's just peanuts, corn, and salt. And You know, we don't process the peanuts by separating flour and oil, anything like that.

KiwiCo (16m 34s):
Hey, we're gonna take a quick break but I'll be right back. This episode is sponsored by Kiwi Go. And one thing I always notice at the end of summer is how much my kids have learned when nobody was actually trying to teach them anything. 'cause we spent this whole summer outside building things, traveling, growing things, taking things apart, not a lot of putting things back together. But people, kids, they asked about a million trillion questions along the way. And one of the things that I loved doing this summer together were I think a million Kiwi co projects with our kids. We did the window garden where we put together these little suction cup planters. We planted green beans and squash seeds, which is literally the extent of my gardening towel. And we put them in the window. We started this as a fun little project and it turned into weeks of the kids checking on the plants like what's sprouted? What needs water? Why is that one growing faster? They were learning about how plants grow without it really ever feeling like a lesson. And that's my favorite kind of learning. The Kiwi Co Summer Adventure Series gives kids six hands on project kits over six weeks with projects that encourage them to build, experiment, get outside and explore. So there's options with Kiwi Co for kids as young as two all the way through teens. So there really is something for every age. And I love that Kiwi Co does the legwork for me. I don't have to spend an hour online searching around for like different activities and then an hour buying all the supplies. Everything we need to do is like literally right there on my doorstep. So build the best summer ever or the end of summer as the case may be with Kiwi Co. Get $10 off your summer adventure series@kiwico.com/summer promo code weaning that's $10 off your summer adventure@kiwico.com/summer promo code weaning.

Katie Ferraro (18m 26s):
So you recently added almond to the line of peanut. So there's peanut puffs that have corn and parents will ask me, You know, should I do corn before I do peanuts? And I do recommend doing one new food at a time. There's lots of safe ways to introduce baby to corn. Once you've done corn, no reaction again, very unlikely baby's gonna react to corn, then you can use the Puff Works peanut puffs to introduce your baby to peanut. Now you guys have added almond. Can you tell me a little bit about how that came to be? Why did you go with almond versus other tree nuts maybe?

Greg Murphy (18m 53s):
You know, we wanted to do a product introduce tree nuts and You know we, we select into almond, You know, basically we tasted a lot of different products and we really thought, You know, almond has a great taste, it does introduce children to tree nuts. And we put just a small amount of peanut butter in it so that You know, there's no cross-contamination risk or there may be cross-contamination risk in how we manufacture it. So wanted to make sure that people, You know, understood that there could potentially be peanut in the product.

Katie Ferraro (19m 20s):
And I know with almond coming out people are gonna be asking a lot of questions like do I do almond first? But if the almond has peanut, no, we have very, very strong data for the early introduction of peanut as a way to help prevent peanut allergy. There is less significant data about tree nuts, however there is no benefit to withholding tree nuts. And so doctors og, myself, other feeding professionals, all of the guidance is moving towards early introduction of all of the allergenic foods because there's no benefit to withholding. So I would recommend parents do peanut first and then almond. But you do have to understand like Puff Works doesn't have two entirely separate facilities, one for peanut and one for almond. And because the inherent risk of cross-contamination does exist, it just makes sense to put peanut in the product because it probably would've been exposed to it.

Katie Ferraro (20m 6s):
You can't say it's a hundred percent peanut free unless it's in a separate facility. Is that correct?

Greg Murphy (20m 10s):
That's correct. And You know, and we just wanted to make, You know, not take, have, take any risk that You know, somebody could exposed to peanuts, You know shouldn't.

Katie Ferraro (20m 18s):
Exactly. And we generally recommend introducing one new allergenic food at a time. And I always remind parents, you don't need to wait three to five days between introducing new foods. If baby's going to have an allergic reaction to a food, it will occur within minutes or up to at most two hours after that ingestion. It's not gonna be three to five days later. And so we're moving away from that recommendation and doing the foods early and often the allergenic foods you do wanna build in a pad to observe. So I wouldn't do like peanut in the morning and almond in the afternoon for the first time 'cause a baby reacts, how would You know? But a few days later it's absolutely safe. Babies can eat so many more foods than we give them credit for and they can eat them more frequently than a lot of pediatricians are recommending. So tell me, how did you get to meet Dr. Sunna? 'cause again, my audience is familiar with him.

Katie Ferraro (20m 59s):
He comes on a lot to answer questions about food allergies. We teach workshops together, have a program together. How did you like run into him and decide to kind of join forces with the baby food allergy prevention world?

Greg Murphy (21m 11s):
It was by happenstance really. It was just a mutual friend. He knew what I was working on, had met Dr. OG and knew what he was working on and it was like wow, this is just a natural fit. And so we started talking, we collaborated and launched the baby product. So Ron is a medical advisor to Puff Fors.

Katie Ferraro (21m 28s):
One thing I like about Puff Fors is that you guys use credential healthcare professionals to provide your nutrition and feeding information. And I know it sounds ironic that other outlets out there don't, but it is very important that you're getting your information about introducing new foods to your baby from credential professionals like dieticians, like pediatricians who've have additional training. 'cause the reality is the majority of doctors in the United States, 90% of them have not taken a dedicated nutrition class. So you're lucky that you join forces with Dr. Og, a doctor who has again, a special interest in actually using food to prevent food allergy. And that's the subtitle of his book is Eat the Eight, preventing Food Allergy with Food and The Imperfect Art of Medicine because there is a lot of gray area here.

Katie Ferraro (22m 11s):
And I was curious if that's been surprising to you as a serial entrepreneur with a background in food products. Does it kind of surprise you what companies try to say and get away with as far as like the health attributes of their product?

Greg Murphy (22m 25s):
Oh I think, You know, there's plenty of examples of companies that are pushing the envelope on terms of the health attributes of it. Yeah, I think our biggest attributes is we just try to keep it clean and simple and nutritious. I mean that's, that's it.

Katie Ferraro (22m 37s):
And I think Puff Works is definitely one of those brands. I mean it is word of mouth spread. People be like, oh, I saw on Instagram, what are those puffs? And I remember, so Holly from your team reached out to me. I have seven kids, I have a 6-year-old, I have five-year-old quadruplets And I have 3-year-old twins. And I did baby led weaning with my quadruplets, which was how I got into this. And I shifted the whole focus of my career to concentrate on baby led weaning after that because it had been such a transformative experience for our family. When my twins were doing baby led weaning, you guys had just launched the baby product And I was the same thing. I was like, how is there not a better product than Bomba out there? Like how are we recommending this product that has so much salt in it to baby? Like it looks like a safe way, but there's got to be a better one. And then like outta nowhere, Holly got in touch with me.

Katie Ferraro (23m 18s):
And so I've been connected with you guys I think since the beginning of the baby product. But it's been such a nice,

Greg Murphy (23m 23s):
Yeah, I think it was, I, I'm not even sure we had fully launched at that point.

Katie Ferraro (23m 26s):
No, You know what, my babies, we actually got the other product first before you came out with Baby. Some of my earliest pictures of the baby trying Puffs were the ones that's not the baby product has a smidge more sodium.

Greg Murphy (23m 36s):
They were the adult products. Nice. Yeah, I don't even remember that.

Katie Ferraro (23m 40s):
I think the baby line is spot on. I mean it is, it just takes a little bit. We say it takes the stress and the mess out of introducing peanuts to baby. And our goal is not to prevent the mess with baby led weaning, but I for one, do not feel comfortable serving peanut butter to a six month old. You can modify it to make it safer and make it less sticky, but at the end of the day we wanna introduce peanut early and often. So having a peanut butter puff, I think is a safe way to do that.

Greg Murphy (24m 5s):
Yes. And just to make it easy for them to pick up and hold and You know, have a snack.

Katie Ferraro (24m 10s):
And because sometimes parents say, well wait a minute, I thought puffs were kind of antithetical to the baby led approach. And when we're talking about puffs, I'm talking about some of the big major food brands that make those little tiny star shaped puffs, which are asinine if you think about it because they call it a first food, except a baby requires their pinch or grass to pick up a very small piece of food. We don't feed very small pieces like that early on. They're pure starch, oftentimes with added sugar and salt that could become lodged in the baby's throat. They're a huge choking hazard. People say, well then isn't Puff works a puff? And I always have to describe it. No, it's shaped more like a Cheeto or an adult pinky finger. That's a very important size that babies can use their whole hand grasp to rake and scoop up and feed themselves, which is completely in line with the baby led weaning philosophy.

Katie Ferraro (24m 53s):
So I don't know if you did it on purpose, but it's like the perfect size for babies to feed themselves.

Greg Murphy (24m 58s):
Yeah, we spent a lot of time thinking about how to make our puffs, You know, And I, You know, that was, You know, probably took us about nine months to develop the, the process in terms of how, You know, the size and how easily they dissolve. You know, we're kind of perfectionist about our puffs.

Katie Ferraro (25m 12s):
What is something that parents might be surprised about as far as like the whole manufacturing process? Like I know we go online, puff works.com, get a case of baby puffs 'cause I'm gonna be starting peanuts and it shows up at the door. Like it just seems like to run so smoothly. What sort of hiccups, if you don't mind sharing, have you guys had along the way to bring this product to market?

Greg Murphy (25m 31s):
Oh, I mean, You know, it's, it's, You know, it's, it's always more difficult than you think. You know, we had a couple of, You know, trials in the beginning that didn't work, You know, and we actually take a step back and figure out a different way to make our product. Like

Katie Ferraro (25m 43s):
What didn't work? The coding or the weight or the nutrition, like what was it,

Greg Murphy (25m 47s):
You know, what didn't work is we, we just weren't happy with the dissolvable of the puff when we first started to do it. And so we kind of had to take a step back and, and really work on how much pressure we were gonna puff behind the product when we puffed it and all those kind of things. And I think we've kind of, we've definitely zeroed in on it now.

Katie Ferraro (26m 4s):
Oh, I think it's amazing. And one thing I learned from working with Dr. Og who is a medical advisor to Puff Works is that it is the softest baby, peanut puff on the market. And I think that gives parents a sense of relief in that, okay, obviously babies don't have teeth when they start solid foods, they can munch, chew with their gums. But these are, this is a product that almost dissolves on their tongue. They're gonna, they actually learn how to chew it. And for some of babies, it's the first quote unquote crunchy food that we have. I do it in the first week of solid foods, but it's perfectly safe for babies to have and almost all other crunchy foods. We don't feed the babies. Yours is on the crunchier side, but it still dissolves. Yep.

Greg Murphy (26m 40s):
We do a dissolve test every time we make a batch and say, okay, can we dissolve? Will that dissolve in 10 less than 10 seconds?

Katie Ferraro (26m 46s):
How does a dissolve test work? And then what's the other like measures that you have to determine, okay, this is crunchy enough but not too crunchy.

Greg Murphy (26m 54s):
Oh, You know, I mean the, the dissolved test isn't very scientific, You know, we put it on our tongue and as, and count, You know, start a stopwatch.

Katie Ferraro (27m 0s):
So you, you try every batch.

Greg Murphy (27m 3s):
Yes. But they, there's a lot of more parameters to it, You know, so we monitor, You know, the pressure when we, You know, the, it's cooked under, we monitor the circumference of it, we monitor the length of it and we monitor the density of it. So how much, You know, what's the weight of, You know, 20 puffs

Katie Ferraro (27m 19s):
In the facility where you guys produce Puff Works? Is it nut and peanut only? Is that pretty hard to maintain those standards? Because obviously there's always the concern for cross-contamination when we're talking about allergenic ingredients.

Greg Murphy (27m 30s):
Yeah, You know, so we have a, we have our own production room within a SQF level three food manufacturing facility. And so we have peanuts and tree nuts in that room.

Katie Ferraro (27m 43s):
So Greg, you've got the baby line, you've got Peanut Butter and Jelly, a couple other ones for adults, bigger kids, et cetera. Anything else coming down the line after Almond? As far as being a baby specific Puff product,

Greg Murphy (27m 54s):
We're always thinking about new products, You know, specific to the baby line, I think it's, You know, there's probably a high likelihood that we'll come out with another Tree nut product like a cashew or something like that. And then we're also thinking, always thinking about products for the snack line. So You know, it's likely that in the kids' line we'll introduce, like you, you mentioned a banana product, peanut butter and banana product. I could see that we'll also probably do an almond product for our snack line.

Katie Ferraro (28m 18s):
So Greg, where can listeners go to learn more about Puff Works and the wonderful work your team is doing?

Greg Murphy (28m 23s):
Well certainly go to our website, puff works.com. It is probably the best but best place to learn more and or just reach out. Reach out to us directly at info@puffworks.com.

Katie Ferraro (28m 32s):
Well thank you so much, Greg. This has been a great conversation.

Greg Murphy (28m 35s):
Thank you very much, Katie.

Puffworks (28m 38s):
Well I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation with Greg Murphy, AKA, the Puff daddy, the president and founder of Puff Works. He was teaching us about peanut butter and safely introducing peanuts and his experience as an allergy dad and running a snack company. I told him, I've always said Puff Works. I think you should pivot and only do baby allergenic food snacks. Like you should have like a shrimp puff. And they're like, Katie, there's not in a big enough market. I was like, I think there is every day 50,000 babies in this country turns six months old and their parents have no clue how to feed them allergenic foods. But I'm grateful at least that we have Puff Works, baby Almond and Puff Works, baby Peanut puffs. Again, if you wanna check them out, that affiliate Discount Code baby led works for 15% off@puffworks.com. And I'm gonna put a link to everything Greg told us about today on the show notes. That's at blw podcast.com/ 1 3 6 and a very special thank you to our partners at Airwave Media. If you guys like podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain, check out some of the podcasts from Airwave Media. We're online@blwpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.

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