This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Toronto, Canada-based couple Charlene and Vince Li, co-founders of gourmet popcorn brand EATABLE™. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What was your day job or primary occupation when you started your side hustle?
Charlene: I was a professionally trained CPA with an audit background and spent about a decade in corporate finance and accounting roles, working at Deloitte and TD Bank.
Vince: I have over 17 years of experience in technology sales and real estate asset management. I’ve worked for companies such as IBM, Brookfield, SNC-Lavalin and the Canadian restaurant franchise Pizza Pizza.
When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it?
Vince: The side hustle started in 2018 when we were living in Boston. Charlene had started a job working at a startup real estate asset management firm, and I took on the role of stay-at-home dad after we initially relocated from Toronto, taking care of our 18-month-old son at the time. With my tech background, I enjoyed tinkering in the kitchen, and I thought of kitchen appliances like tech gadgets. Cooking and experimenting were always a creative outlet for me amid the stress of parenting and my work.
Charlene: We found our inspiration when we were looking for snacks for entertaining or for our Friday night movie marathons; we were disappointed to find so many indulgent confectionery snacks on the grocery store shelves were all laced with artificial and inflammatory ingredients that make you feel lousy.
Vince: So we went home and pulled a recipe for stovetop caramel popcorn out of a chef’s cookbook, and I had the idea to add a shot of single-malt scotch. The result was the “perfect pairing” of our two loves: a good snack and a good drink, featuring happy hour-inspired flavors that have never been seen in the snack aisle.
Charlene: We launched EATABLE from our home kitchen as a celebratory snack that connected people and started conversations. It’s made with premium, all-natural, real and minimally processed ingredients. We believe clean indulgence is part of a balanced lifestyle that supports emotional well-being.
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In fact, the word “EATABLE” comes from my mom — whenever we visited, she’d cook amazing homemade meals and ask us in her Cantonese accent, “Is this eatable?” Since then, that term has become synonymous in our family with the feeling of good food and good company shared around the dinner table, where we make happy memories.
Image Credit: Courtesy of EATABLE
What were some of the first steps you took to get your side hustle off the ground?
Vince: When we were in Boston, I discovered a community called Commonwealth Kitchen, which was an incubator for food businesses. We learned the ins and outs of starting a food business and pitched one of our original popcorn flavors, “Whisky on the Pops,” in a competition judged by a panel of food professionals with grocery buyers and startup investors. That was the “eureka” moment that inspired us to leave our jobs and move back to Toronto, where our families were, and officially start the business with a toddler in tow!
After we moved back, we ended up finding a rental kitchen/cooking school nearby and spent over a year working alongside Paris-trained pastry chefs, learning the art of chocolate and candy making and infusing wines and spirits into confectionery coverings. We purchased black coffee bags and designed branding that looked like bottles in neon lights to stick onto the packaging. It looked a bit mysterious and novel to see popcorn packaged this way, but we went with it.
Charlene: When we felt confident about three initial recipes, we launched a Shopify store in 2019. My first customer was my dad! But I distinctly remember the moment we got our first order from a name I didn’t know, and it was the most exhilarating feeling — seeing the first real customer who spent money on something we created.
If you could go back in your business journey and change one process or approach, what would it be, and how do you wish you’d done it differently?
Charlene: I wish we learned how to be effective delegators much earlier on in our journey. Vince and I are both very good “do-ers” in the business. We’re scrappy and aren’t afraid to roll up our sleeves, solve problems and tackle messy tasks. This got us far in the early days, but on the flip side, that mindset held us back when we realized we needed to start growing our team to help scale up faster. We often fell into the trap of thinking, It’s faster to do this myself and avoided passing things off to others.
Eventually, we realized that we had become the bottlenecks for tasks between departments, and certain balls would drop because of internal communication breaks, or we just forgot about them. After all, there are only 24 hours in a day, and life demands so much of us as parents to little ones.
We consumed lots of books and resources on growing lean teams, hiring virtual resources and project management hacks as a way to do more. We developed a newfound appreciation for process documentation and SOPs. This made it much easier to deal with staffing issues and has allowed us to actually take an occasional vacation.
When it comes to this specific business, what is something you’ve found particularly challenging and/or surprising that people who get into this type of work should be prepared for but likely aren’t?
Vince: We knew when we first started this business that the food CPG space was incredibly challenging and competitive. Neither of us came from a professional food background — it truly started as a passion project and a happy accident. Since our business started as a side hustle, we decided to bootstrap the company so that we could learn all we could while staying lean and scrappy and learning how to do big things with limited funds.
In the early days, our search for a co-manufacturing partner proved difficult. No established manufacturing facilities we spoke with were able to duplicate our unique process of creating spirits-infused caramel and a flavor slurry, then baking in the oven for an irresistible crunch, so we decided to take the plunge and build out our own small manufacturing facility. We put a business plan together and secured a government-backed bank loan to outfit our 3,000-square-foot space and make it food-safe.
Charlene: The pandemic years created a very challenging environment as we tried to expand our operations. Our supply chain was a nightmare, with rising costs and limited availability of raw inputs. We knew we had to hire and decided to bring on a few key production employees during those years, sacrificing our own paycheck to make sure that our people were taken care of first. During that time, we also gave birth to our second baby, and it was very challenging handling the demands of a growing business and a growing family.
We leaned on our “village” to help wherever we could, whether it was childcare or at work, and I was fortunate to find a community of “mompreneurs” who made me feel less alone in my unique struggles. During those years, I learned that it was okay to delegate in various aspects of my life and that I needed to prioritize taking care of myself first before I could show up for others.
It helped us take a “family and life first” approach to building our team culture. We understand that in order for our team to show up and do their best work, they have to feel balanced in all aspects of their life.
Image Credit: Courtesy of EATABLE
Can you recall a specific instance when something went very wrong — how did you fix it?
Vince: One of the biggest challenges we faced at EATABLE was during a crucial co-manufacturing production run when a batch of our gourmet popcorn didn’t meet our quality standards. The texture and coating consistency were off, making it impossible to ship the product to our retail partners as planned. It was one of our biggest retailer orders to date, and we were under the gun. With delivery deadlines looming and customer expectations to meet, we knew we had to act fast.
Instead of rushing a subpar product to market, we worked overtime in our own facility to ensure the quality was up to our expectations. We also made sure to keep in constant communication with our retail partner in the event there were any delays; we didn’t want it to impact them. We’ve always operated under the firm belief that a win should be a win for everyone involved.
How long did it take you to see consistent monthly revenue? How much did the side hustle earn?
Charlene: We finished off our first year with $56,000 in revenue, working on it part-time. We started seeing consistent monthly revenue about six months into our business when our first major retailers found us through Instagram and started carrying our products in their retail stores.
Vince and I took the leap to full-time after the first year of launching EATABLE, and we hit $467,000 in year two (8.3x growth), then $893,000 in year three, almost doubling our year-over-year growth.
We have crossed the $1 million mark in revenue, a milestone that we hit after operating for a little over three years full-time. We’ve been experiencing more than 30% growth year-over-year since that time on bootstrapped funds and are now preparing for our first fundraise in order to keep up with the traction and momentum.
What does growth and revenue look like now?
Charlene: We’re laser-focused on profitable growth as we move forward. The CPG industry is notorious for its potential to scale rapidly through retail distribution, but oftentimes, you pay for sales velocity through heavy marketing spending and a negative bottom line.
We’re being mindful to grow in online and non-grocery retail channels that have much higher margins and enable EATABLE to maintain its premium positioning in the market.
We’re working on introducing new product lines to shift from a more seasonal business to increase revenues throughout the year. As we create an assortment of premium everyday flavors and lean into exciting collaboration projects, it will open up new opportunities for us to improve purchase frequency and generate more sales year-round.
How much time do you spend working on your business on a daily, weekly or monthly basis?
Charlene: In terms of work hours, it’s way more all-consuming than our previous corporate grind, but it feels much more motivating and meaningful. I have a hard time turning my brain off, and there’s no such thing as a 9-5. I’m working 10-plus-hour days: 9-5 during the day, then I start part two of my work day for another few hours after I put my kiddos to bed at night. Since I’m wearing multiple hats, I try to batch my time and focus on certain aspects in each “department” on certain days of the week. I have weekly and bi-weekly meetings with my teams, and I try to also have two meeting-free days a week so that I can do focused work.
What do you enjoy most about running this business?
Vince: We’ve enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with incredible global partners to bring unique, high-quality products to market. Our business has never just been about food but more about being a platform for connection and bringing people from all walks of life together through shared experiences.
We now sell in over 1,600 retail doors across Canada and the U.S. and have created custom popcorn for Disney, Netflix and even 24k edible gold popcorn for the Oscars in partnership with The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
Image Credit: Courtesy of EATABLE
Through strategic collaborations, we’ve been able to merge cultures, flavors and ideas and create products that spark joy and conversation. Seeing our snacks become part of people’s everyday moments, celebrations and traditions is what truly makes this journey rewarding.
What is your best piece of specific, actionable business advice?
The most actionable piece of advice we can give is to constantly check in with yourself and ask: Why am I doing this? Running a business is full of decisions and challenges, and your mindset will determine how you navigate them.
When things are tough, it’s easy to get caught up in the stress, setbacks and day-to-day grind, but if you have a strong “why” behind your business, it becomes your anchor. Are you doing this to create something meaningful? To bring people joy? To build a legacy to hand to your kids? Whatever your reason, keeping that front and center will help you push through obstacles with resilience and clarity.
We are constantly reminding ourselves that we are not only selling popcorn; we’re creating something that inspires not only our customers but also our children. We want to show them what’s possible when you pursue your dreams with passion and persistence.
Mindset is everything. Just like parenting, entrepreneurship isn’t about perfection: It’s about showing up, adapting and leading with purpose. When you align your business with your deeper “why,” you’ll find the strength to push through challenges and build something truly meaningful that you can be proud of.
