Katlin Smith, The Woman Behind Simple Mills, Has A Plan To Democratize Real Food

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By now, you've probably at least heard of Simple Mills: the line of gluten-free and paleo-friendly cookies, crackers, baking mixes, and frostings taking over grocery aisles around the country. But I bet you didn't know the story of the brand's founder and CEO, Katlin Smith.

Smith launched the health food brand at the ripe age of 24 after seeing how cutting out dairy and gluten completely transformed her life. She first set out to, as she puts it, "raise the standards of what healthy food looks like" by cooking up a gluten-free muffin mix in an industrial kitchen on the weekends, while balancing a full-time job in consulting. Back then, she couldn't even afford a mixer, but Smith didn't let setbacks stand in the way of her goal to add more nutrition to the center aisles of grocery stores. She started off demo-ing her mixes in three Whole Foods Market stores, and the rest is history. Now, Simple Mills has 28 products sold in 12,000 stores across the country (and I'm not talking specialty health shops, either—you can find the brand in Target and Kroger).