Canned whipped cream has three important days: Thanksgiving (topping pies), Christmas (more pies), and Mother’s Day (gorging on mom’s breakfast in bed). Otherwise, aerosol cylinders usually sit forlornly in the refrigerator door along with condiments.
But in 2019, Tracy Lukow ’99 and her sister Lori Gitomer ’01 decided to think bigger. That’s when they came up with her Whipnotic, a series of swirly, flavorful whipped creams from fudge brownie to peach mango, with a novel button-touch nozzle system.
Whipnotic debuted in 2022 and has now sold 150,000 cans in more than 1,000 stores in 28 states, despite challenges such as the pandemic, food inflation and lactose nastiness. Rakow will share his entrepreneurial journey April 12 at Entrepreneurship at Cornell’s Celebration, a two-day conference held each spring that brings together students, alumni, faculty, staff, and community participants. We plan to share the peaks and valleys.
Highlights include interactive panels and fireside chats with company founders, eLab Demo Day, Student Business of the Year recognition, BenDaniel Venture Challenge, and 2024 Entrepreneur of the Year recognition.
“We want all students and gala attendees to come away really energized about entrepreneurship and the people they’ve met and the connections they’ve made.” said Zach Schulman, JD ’87, JD ’90, director of entrepreneurship at Cornell University.
“When Tracy was a student here, she didn’t have a focus on entrepreneurship. She suffered from the startup bug later in life, which is not uncommon. We students “We want to show that entrepreneurship has many different facets and can be done at any point in your life,” Schulman said.
For Lukko and her sister, the key to entrepreneurial success was finding the right category to disrupt. Lady Whip has been the king of canned whipped cream since his 1948 invention, with only a handful of store brands entering the scene.
“Nothing has been challenged, there has been no innovation in this category,” Lukow said. “Meanwhile, before the pandemic, we were seeing baristas putting flavors into their coffee, and pancake restaurants were putting flavored syrups in their whipped cream. We thought, wouldn’t it be fun to bring fun to the grocery store? That led us down a big rabbit hole of invention.”
They brainstormed flavors like vanilla salted caramel, fudge brownie, strawberry swirl, and peach mango, all with colorful stripes atop a cloud of sweet cream.
They worked with the New York State Center for Food and Agriculture Excellence (COE) to perfect the button-touch nozzle, identify the manufacturer of the filling equipment, and ensure the product complies with all food safety requirements.
“It was at Cornell University that we first ‘called a friend.’ The faculty guided us through the process and helped us with how to protect our ideas. We quickly became patent attorneys. ” in Food Science. She says she could have chosen a more traditional career path as a product developer for a company.
“But my curiosity kept me asking questions,” she says, speaking to entrepreneurial students on April 12 about her background and unconventional career trajectory. He added that he aims to speak. “Many of the students in the classroom were me 25 years before her. I remember sitting in that classroom and listening to people talk,” she said.
Another key to Whipnotic’s growth, Lukow said, is what she called the “incrementality” of the product. She explained that this is due to a new marketing strategy, going beyond the existing market for the product category.
“In the case of other brands of whipped cream, it is often purchased three times a year. Without disrupting the normal flow of this category, our product is purchased at slightly different times,” she says. I did.
The deep red ribbon inside the strawberry swirl was perfect for Valentine’s Day. The fruity flavor is perfect for the summer berry and stone fruit season. Salted caramel and brownie batter also make reasonable additions to lattes and other coffee drinks.
Images of brightly colored dessert toppers on visual social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok may also have spurred sales. Lukkow says other whipped cream brands are starting to take notice, buying their products and stopping by their booths at trade shows to see the colors on their aerosol cans (buttons on the top are labeled with juice and flavorings). The canister contains plain cream (sweet cream).
Over the past year, one dramatic cultural shift has spooked many in the food industry. The rise of diabetes and its weight-loss drugs known as GLP-1 agonists has led to predictions that the market for obesity drugs will reach $77 billion by 2030. As a result, sales in categories such as fast food, savory snacks, and sweet treats will decline significantly.
Rakow sees this as a potential win for Whipnotic. At 15 calories per serving, Whipnotic says it provides the sensory experience of eating ice cream without spiking blood sugar levels.
“It’s time. This will drive change,” she said. “This will make our food system better. Challenges breed innovation.”
