In 2011, a burnt-out Charles Coristine left his Wall Street job and bought a 'flatlining' snack company. Here's how he turned LesserEvil around.
. He loved the pace, even waking up in the middle of the night to trade in the Tokyo and London stock markets.
In November 2011, Coristine bought LesserEvil for $250,000 from his savings, plus a future payment of $100,000, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The risk was impulsive and ill-researched, he says: LesserEvil, which aimed to offer consumers healthier popcorn and snack alternatives, was losing money and bringing in less than $1 million in annual revenue at the time, the company estimates.
"I didn't know anyone in food ... to ask whether I was crazy or not, but that's probably good," says Coristine, 52. "If I had done a lot of research and looked into it, I would have realized that the probability of success was pretty low."When he bought LesserEvil, Coristine was working at TD Bank and pursuing an MBA at Cornell University Graduate School.
The team made "friends with welders down the street," who could weld wheels and popcorn shoots onto the machinery, Strife says. They painted factory's exterior black and plastering a yellow "LesserEvil" logo to the side of the building themselves.
The rebrand, and added products, helped push the brand into profitability. Coristine started paying himself a salary from LesserEvil that year, the company says.LesserEvil's goal has always been to differentiate itself from competitors with non-standard ingredients like extra-virgin coconut oil and avocado oil, says Coristine., and tells Make It that it's relaunching the puffs — free of the cassava flour that previously contained lead — later this year.
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