Building a brand from scratch and shaking up the baking aisle

Some of the best business ideas are born not in boardrooms but in kitchens. Ava Lichauco, Co-Founder and CEO of Oh So Easy, built her brand on exactly that premise. Lichauco joins us on this episode of Business Trends Today to share how she’s turning her passion for baking into a growing consumer brand.

Before founding Oh So Easy, Lichauco built a career spanning investment banking at Wells Fargo, operations and finance in tech, and a stint as Chief of Staff at Experiment Beauty, where she helped support fundraising and major retail launches across TikTok Shop, Amazon, and Sephora. That experience in the consumer packaged goods space laid the groundwork for what she would eventually build.

Cooking up a big idea

Oh So Easy traces its roots to Lichauco’s childhood kitchen. She recalls baking with her mother from boxed mixes. They rarely stuck to the recipe, opting instead to experiment with different ingredients and flavors.

Lichauco was born in the Philippines and lived in Singapore, Hawaii, and New Jersey. Her multicultural upbringing, she says, shaped how she thinks about food.

"The inspiration for Oh So Easy really came just from my experience living a very multicultural life."

She says she noticed more diverse flavors and innovative products at the grocery store, except not in the baking aisle. That’s when she decided to spice things up.

“You know, there’s been a lot of innovation, or adding globally inspired flares to a lot of other aisles in the grocery stores. But it seems like the baking aisle has been, or is, the last frontier. So yeah, that’s kind of how I came up with the concept,” Lichauco said.

Lichauco officially launched Oh So Easy in November 2024 after working on it nights and weekends for more than a year while still serving as Chief of Staff at Experiment Beauty.

Sticking to your values

Lichauco’s career path gave her a well-rounded background before starting her company. A path she describes as deliberate.

“I was very intentional in taking jobs in operations, finance, and strategy to just get super close to founders and really learn about their journeys,” she said.

Investment banking at Wells Fargo sharpened her financial instincts. Operations and strategy roles in tech showed her what it was like to build something from scratch. Her role as Chief of Staff at Experiment Beauty taught her how to stick to your mission, even when the market pushes back.

“It was at the height of clean beauty. And Experiment is notoriously anti-clean beauty. They’re a very science-forward brand,” Lichauco said. “Investors kept pushing back at us, saying that the trend right now is clean beauty, all natural, all organic.” 

Despite the pressure from potential investors, Lichauco says the founders kept their values, focusing on clinical trials and the science behind it, and were able to raise the capital they needed.

Lichauco says that lesson stuck with her when she started Oh So Easy While other food products are pushing protein, fiber content, and better-for-you options, she says her brand isn’t about that.

"What we bring to the table is that this is just some damn delicious dessert that you can't find anywhere else. It doesn't need to be optimized for anything."

“We’re not trying to give you the healthiest desserts ever. We’re trying to just give you something really, really delicious,” she said.

It’s not just a decision based on taste. Lichauco says her research backs up her position. Customers aren’t looking for healthy options in the dessert category. They are looking for a treat.

“We went unapologetically flavor forward,” Lichauco said. “And we seem to be breaking through.”

From pop-ups to retail

Six months before the official November 2024 launch, Lichauco ran pop-ups across New York City to build an email waitlist. When the brand went live, she already had an audience.

She also treated the first production run as marketing spend. Oh So Easy has sent more than 600 PR boxes to influencers and editors since launching.

“We just needed to get as many people as possible to know about Oh So Easy,” Lichauco said. “If you look on TikTok or Instagram and search Oh So Easy, we pretty much own the page.”

Oh So Easy began as a direct-to-consumer product, but now it’s expanding into retail. The brand entered its first stores in March, starting with small independents on the coasts. Lichauco says she’s in early talks with some regional chains for expansion next year.

“We didn’t rush to retail, unlike a lot of other food brands out there,” she said. “We’re entering retail really slowly and sustainably.”

The D2C business, she says, remains strong and she plans to keep building it alongside the retail push.

Building a business the DIY way

Oh So Easy is a one-woman operation in terms of full-time staff. Lichauco runs the business, but she employs a team of freelancers to help with graphic design, influencer coordination, operations, web development and more.

“It might be just me full-time, but I cannot do this without a team,” she said.

Keeping the operation lean keeps costs down. For now, Lichauco fulfills orders from her basement and her products are stored in a storage unit. She says a transition to a third-party logistics provider is underway.

Lichauco approached fundraising the same way. She raised a small round of friends and family before launch and has supplemented it with personal savings from her banking and tech career. She is currently raising a pre-seed round.

What’s next for Oh So Easy

For now, Lichauco is working on scaling up distribution. Her goal is to see her brand on shelves at major big-box retailers, right next to the boxed baking kits that inspired her in her mother’s kitchen.

“I want to be a mass brand,” Lichauco said. “I want to sit right next to Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker because our products are just as American as chocolate cake and red velvet cake.”