Rym Selmi grew up in France, eating the delicious Tunisian cuisine of her parents' homeland. But a stint as an investment banker - doing work she didn't love and wasn't temperamentally suited for - also came with a side helping of sugar addiction.
Seeking to reclaim her life and her health, Selmi took a break and began exploring different diets.
Interestingly, the first thing she cut wasn't sugar, but dairy. And she quickly became enamored of the creativity required when creating substitutes for those familiar foods - including cheese.
After discovering the joys of dairy-free living, Selmi reasoned, "Hey, why not try full vegan?" And in a story we've all heard many times before, that shift solved a lot of her health problems, from exhaustion to poor sleep hygiene to hair loss.
Once a vegan, Selmi began seeing other justifications for the lifestyle: environmental and ethical, chiefly.
And despite not loving investment banking, Selmi's exposure to that world positioned her well to create something new in the market that would hopefully make veganism just a little bit easier and more attractive for people.
And those strengths, combined with her love of sweets and culinary expertise, led Selmi to create Miiro.
Miiro produces chocolate products and baking ingredients that are both vegan and keto friendly, with very little sugar and a proprietary blend of sweeteners that don't spike glucose and don't deliver a gross aftertaste. (I got a short tutorial on sugar alcohols, monkfruit, allulose, and chicory root fiber.)
We talked about her journey, and the challenges she's overcome (and still working on) to create a successful brand.
And we spoke about the food market in general. I learned terms like "mass premium" to describe a luxury product that still could fit into many people's budgets on a regular basis.
Coming from the hard-nosed, "show me the money" world of investment banking, Selmi was able to avoid many of the "mistakes of the passionate and the converted" - including the assumption that because you love your product and the world "needs" it, you'll be able to get it funded and people will actually buy it.
If you're interested in how a vegan idea becomes a vegan company, you'll get a lot of useful info from our conversation.
Enjoy!
Links
Miiro.co