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How I Built This with Guy Raz
How I Built This with Guy Raz

Advice Line with Christina Tosi of Milk Bar

June 11, 2026 • 45m

Summary

⏱️ 8 min read

Overview

In this episode of How I Built This Lab's Advice Line, Guy Raz teams up with Milk Bar founder Christina Tosi to help three entrepreneurs tackle growth challenges. They advise Whitney from The Bow Collective on raising bridge capital for expansion, guide Chloe from Cotton Clara on identifying her core customer audience, and help Christy from Vashon Island Coffee Dust create a gifting-to-loyal-buyer flywheel. Throughout the conversation, Christina shares insights from scaling Milk Bar while emphasizing the importance of brand building, knowing your unique value, and staying curious as a founder.

Christina Tosi's Journey: From CEO to Chief Creative Officer

Christina Tosi discusses her evolution at Milk Bar, explaining how the pandemic and starting a family prompted her to step back from the CEO role. She realized she was shortchanging the business by holding onto that seat when her unique gifts lay in creative and culinary innovation. Now based in Nashville, she works from a garage kitchen developing new products while Milk Bar has expanded to thousands of retail locations including Whole Foods, Walmart, and Sprouts.

  • Christina stepped down as CEO a couple years ago to focus on the creative and culinary side of Milk Bar
  • After having two babies during the pandemic, Christina and her family moved to Nashville about a year ago
  • She now works from a garage kitchen in Nashville experimenting with new baking creations for the Milk Bar menu
  • Milk Bar products are now available at thousands of retailers including Whole Foods, Sprouts, and Walmart
" I am shortchanging the milk bar business holding on to the CEO seat. I would much rather focus on what I'm specifically and uniquely positioned to do, which is like the creative, the culinary, right? Like no one's taste buds are my taste buds or your taste buds. "
" I just feel more alive and firing on all cylinders than ever. "

The Power of Brand Building Over Revenue

Christina explains Milk Bar's strategic approach to growth, emphasizing that they've intentionally built a brand bigger than their revenue suggests. Rather than focusing solely on sales channels, they prioritize collaborations and earned media to expand brand awareness. She notes this strategy is essential in 2026 when profitability matters more than ever, and free brand exposure through partnerships like their Krispy Kreme collaboration becomes invaluable.

  • Milk Bar has intentionally built their brand to be much bigger and broader than their P&L top line revenue
  • Their biggest opportunity is to continue showing up in unexpected places through collaborations
  • The Krispy Kreme collaboration brings pennies to the bottom line but generates free earned brand and media value
  • In 2026, running a profitable business is essential, making free marketing through collaborations economically savvy
" We've intentionally built our brand in a way that's much bigger and broader than what, you know, the top line revenue of our P&L is. Because that's the challenge. It's the challenge for our sales channels to try and catch the size and reach of the brand. "
" At this point if you're not running a profitable business in 2026. I don't know, like, you know, that was different in 2019. "

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