Why I left Wall Street for a struggling snack company

Charles Coristin used to enjoy working for Morgan Stanley. He loved the pace of the work, even waking up in the middle of the night to trade on the Tokyo or London stock markets.

In 2011, after nearly 20 years working on Wall Street, Koristin was burned out. He tried a variety of remedies, including switching to a vegetarian diet, meditating, and enrolling in an MBA program, but nothing worked.

At the barbecue, Coristin met the owner of snack food company Lesser Evil, who said he wanted to sell his “flatlining” business. Though Coristin had no experience in the food industry, he was intrigued by the idea of ​​a fresh start. He also liked how the company’s name “synced up” with a healthy, mindful lifestyle.

Coristin bought Lesser Evil in November 2011 with $250,000 of his own savings, plus another $100,000 in future payments, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. He says it was an impulsive, poorly researched risk. Lesser Evil, which aimed to offer consumers a healthier alternative to popcorn and snacks, was losing money at the time and had annual sales of less than $1 million, the company estimates.

But the Danbury, Connecticut-based company has grown significantly under his stewardship: As CEO and president, Coristin has grown annual gross sales to $103.3 million in 2023, with net sales of $82.9 million, delivering products to major retailers and corner stores across the United States.

The company, which sells popcorn and Cheetos-like air-popped puffs and curls, has been profitable since 2021, according to company estimates. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) was $14.4 million last year.

“I didn’t know anyone in the food industry so people asked me if I was crazy, which was fine,” said Coristine, 52. “If I had done more research and looked into it, I would have realised the chances of success were pretty slim.”

Here’s how Coristine is putting LesserEvil on the map.

At the time of the LesserEvil acquisition, Coristine was working at TD Bank and pursuing an MBA at Cornell University Graduate School.

In 2012, he got his MBA and started working full time as CEO of LesserEvil, and one of his first acts was to hire a friend from grad school, Andrew Streiff, as COO and CFO, and a wakeboard instructor as head of marketing.

A small team worked with an accountant from the previous administration to revamp Lesser Evil’s brand and create its own production line in an office in Wilton, Connecticut. The old branding hadn’t attracted customers, and the company was paying about 20% of sales to co-packers who helped make and ship the snacks, Mr. Coristin said.

Collistin’s savings were nearly depleted, so the team raised an undisclosed amount from friends and family, plus secured funding through Collistin’s banking connections, Streiff said. They moved into a 5,000-square-foot factory in Danbury in 2012 and filled it with used equipment purchased at auctions.

The team “made friends with the welders down the street,” Streiff says. They could weld wheels and popcorn chutes onto the machines. They painted the factory’s exterior black and plastered the side of the building with their own yellow “Lesser Evil” logo. Drivers, Coristin recalls, would pull up on the side of the road, come into the factory and start asking, “Is this a strip club?”

“Everything was piecemeal and had to be reworked as we went along,” Streiff said.

When a nearby carpet factory moved out in 2014, LesserEvil knocked down a wall and added 2,000 square feet and a production line to its operation.

That year, Collins’ personal nutritionist offered a health-focused suggestion: Use coconut oil to pop your popcorn. Collins wondered whether coconut oil in a snack bag would stay fresh, so she shelf-tested it, literally. “We put it on top of the fridge, let it get really hot, and left it there for three months.”

The oil stayed fresh, and Mr. Coristin liked the surprisingly buttery taste so much that in 2014 Lesser Evil launched an improved version, with a new Laughing Buddha logo and called it the Buddha Bowl. The product brought in about $2 million in sales that year, accounting for a third of Lesser Evil’s annual revenue, according to the company.

Kroger, the first major retailer to sell Lesser Evil, began carrying the company’s products in 2015. The partnership helped Lesser Evil secure financing to move again in 2017, this time into a 20,000-square-foot facility, Streiff said.

A year later, the company said it secured about $3 million in outside funding from InvestEco, a sustainable food and agriculture investment firm. Coristin and his team used the money to add production lines in a new factory and to update LesserEvil’s packaging again, so each product now features its own “guru,” from the ancient Greek poet Homer to Henry David Thoreau.

The rebranding and addition of products made the brand more profitable, and Coristin began receiving a salary from Lesser Evil that year, according to the company.

LesserEvil’s goal has always been to differentiate itself from competitors by using non-standard ingredients such as extra virgin coconut oil and avocado oil, Kolistin said.

Sometimes, using unconventional ingredients has consequences: A Consumer Reports investigation in June found that two varieties of Lesser Evil’s Lil’ Puffs kids’ snacks contained “concerning levels of lead.” The company apologized and told Make It it would relaunch the puffs later this year without the cassava flour that previously contained lead.

The company projected net sales of $62 million in the first half of 2024. The company used another $19 million funding round led by investment firm Aria Growth Partners to buy out equity from previous investors and open a new factory in New Milford, about 15 miles from the Danbury plant, Lesser Evil said.

The company currently employs 280 people. Coristin’s short-term goal is to continue growing and launching new products. In the long term, he said he wants the company to “become a long-lasting brand.”

He added that LesserEvil has already been successful in solving a more personal problem for Coristin: Since leaving Wall Street, Coristin says he’s been working fewer hours, from 7:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and feeling happier.

“It’s so much fun, it doesn’t feel like work,” Coristin said.

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