Fresh startup Cinny offers single-serve healthier sugar alternative
Hot yoga may seem like a strange start for a story about cinnamon. But the intense, body-dehydrating classes are exactly where one of the more distinctive and sought-after products to hit the market recently got its inception.
It was after one of these intense hip-hop hot yoga workouts at Y7 Studio in New York City that the trio of Whitney Richardson, Margaret Burns and Rosemary Carter went to get lattes at local shop Sadelle’s in early 2022.
However, instead of sitting back under the sun to talk about their lives, the pressures of their careers or the grueling hot yoga class, their conversation took a different turn: When they each asked for cinnamon for their drinks, they were rebuffed. The shop didn’t carry the spice.
“It’s kind of like the trendy thing here in New York: You get a cinnamon latte, and our waiter never brought us any cinnamon,” Richardson explains. “He only brought us sugar packets, and we thought, ‘We need to have cinnamon packets.’”
The three friends could have just gone to another coffee shop until they found what they were looking for. NYC is littered with them. Instead, they did what any rational business-minded millennials would do. They started their own company, Cinny, with the intention of not just finding a home in every coffee shop in New York for cinnamon, but having it replace sugar altogether.
“I think that a goal of ours is definitely to be in more coffee shops and hotels so people do have more access,” Carter says. “It’s one thing to have cinnamon, it’s just another benefit to people to have the healthier option always.”
“That’s something I would like to see, is just more people focused on cutting sugar from their diet and opting for something that’s going to reduce inflammation, boost metabolism, regulate your blood glucose,” Richardson adds. “Because ultimately that’s how you have better longevity and decrease your risk of disease and diabetes.”
Those may seem like grandiose ambitions for a startup that is less than three years old. But that is the faith the three Oklahoma natives have in Cinny, which is single-service packets of 100% premium, ethically sourced Indonesian cinnamon.
“Our brand is rooted in a dedication to wellness,” says Burns, who hails from Tulsa. “The intention of making the little cinnamon packets was to have something to sweeten your snacks, coffee, something on the go, with no added calories or chemicals. It’s a convenient and mindful sweetness. We sell them to hotels, coffee shops, directly to consumers on Amazon. We’re trying to get in some of the smaller grocery stores around town, like the pop-up groceries in New York, and in Austin as well.”
According to Richardson, who grew up in Moore, the trio specifically chose Indonesian cinnamon because it provided a sweeter taste than other varieties.
“The Chinese cinnamon has a really sharp spiciness to it, as does the Vietnamese,” says Richardson. “But the Indonesian cinnamon naturally has a really soft but strong sweetness. So it matches the sugar taste a little bit and it gives you that sweetness. It also has the same good quality and health benefits as other cinnamon.”
Each of the founders has put a heavy emphasis on just how good cinnamon is for personal health. Despite its long history, it’s more known as a cooking ingredient for pastries rather than something that can increase quality of life.
“I feel like along this journey there’s a lot of eye-opening moments of learning about all the different studies that have been done on what sugar can do for your blood glucose levels and what cinnamon can do in comparison,” Richardson says. “It’s something I want to open everybody’s eyes to.”
Cinny is a unicorn on the Amazon marketplace—it is currently the only company offering single-serve cinnamon packets at either bulk or wholesale pricing. The fact it took their core group to come up with a concept that works is not lost on them. Even though they didn’t meet each other until after moving to the Big Apple in 2015, Burns, Carter and Richardson said their backgrounds and similar passions made them the ideal crew to take on such a grand venture together.
“We each have a very unique skill set,” Richardson explains. “Margaret comes from an accounting and finance background. She is a big-time consultant at Deloitte and she helps us run numbers and do forecasting and financial modeling. I have a legal background. I’m an attorney at a hedge fund (Sculptor Capital Management), so I have a unique perspective on creating, forming our business entity and filing anything that we need. Rosemary works at Sony Music Group doing marketing and artist partnerships. And it is kind of just a synergy of diverse skillsets among the three of us. And we all share the same passion toward wellness. And we all really love cinnamon.”
In creating Cinny, instead of using companies in New York, the group came back to their Oklahoma roots to get the company off the ground. Cinny partnered with the likes of Tulsa’s Nicolle Pollacia at cōllē studio to design the company logo and packaging, and Jacob Mann and Cash Wheeler from Seaworthy Strategy in Oklahoma City.
Along with a mention on TikTok by Clara Pierce to her 1 million followers, the most important help may have been the feedback that came from the Oklahoma community when the founders brought the Cinny product back to their hometowns for the first time.
“We go to all the different coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, et cetera. And the people there, since they’re so nice, I think that they’ve been able to give us direct feedback as well as get us into some of the local places,” says Burns. “There’s a gym in Tulsa, for example, that said, ‘We’ll put this in our coffee bar if you want to leave some for us to try.’ They’re a lot more open and supportive, I would say, and wanting to help somebody that’s from Oklahoma who’s trying to start their own business. Sometimes in Austin or New York City, we’re strangers to them. There is a community feeling behind it. But I think Oklahoma also has been very supportive once we’ve been ready to launch.”
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:
Cinny founders Whitney Richardson, Rosemary Carter and Margaret Burns
“Cinnamon lattes are the trend here in New York. Our waiter never brought us any cinnamon; he only brought us sugar packets. It was then we thought, ‘We need to have cinnamon packets.’”
The trio no longer take the same hot yoga classes together and grab lattes afterward. Carter now lives in Austin and most of their communication is done over Zoom, phone calls or emails.
Burns, Carter and Richardson still have the same aspirations of growing Cinny to the point that they can leave their current full-time jobs one day and focus on the company they created. However, it wasn’t until they sat down for a conversation in early 2024 that the trio actually settled whether Cinny was going to be more than a fun side gig.
“I think we all knew we wanted to be all in, but we were wanting to make sure that the other two wanted it,” Burns says. “Because as we’ve said multiple times, we all bring a different set of skills to the Cinny team and, ‘If we’re going to do this, us three need to do it together and we’re going to be all in.’ We all got excited and agreed and we were like, ‘Let’s do this.’”
Burns admitted that if someone had told her while growing up that creating something as ambitious as Cinny was in her future, she doesn’t know if she would have believed them.
“I would say that coming from Oklahoma, I wouldn’t have felt like it was possible,” Burns says. “I come from a very traditional background where my parents were accountants, which is why I got an accounting degree and then I got an accounting job, and I didn’t really think that you could do things outside the box. But I probably tell my younger self, ‘You can build whatever you want to build. You just try. We don’t have to be in a big place to do big things.’” •