At SuiteConnect 2026 in New York, I caught up with Craig Dubitsky—Founder and CEO of happy®—for a wide-ranging conversation about what it really takes to scale a fast-growing consumer brand. While happy is known for its cold brew lattes, pods, and whole bean coffee, Craig’s story goes far beyond the product lineup. He’s built high-growth brands before, and he shares a memorable (and painful) lesson from his previous company, Hello: when your systems can’t keep up with rapid expansion, the business can grind to a halt.
In this interview, Craig explains why he chose to build happy on NetSuite from day one, how real-time visibility helps his team make faster decisions, and what operational pressure points show up first when you expand to tens of thousands of retail locations. We also dig into practical topics every growing business faces—inventory complexity, supply chain surprises, deductions and chargebacks, and using data to decide which products to push (and which to stop chasing). And as the conversation closes, Craig shares the deeper mission behind happy’s name: a serious commitment to supporting mental health and helping remove stigma through its partnership with NAMI.
Here is a transcript of the interview:
Leland McFarland
All right, I am here at SuiteConnect 2026 in New York with Craig Dibbsky.
Craig Dubitsky
Dubitsky. Dubitsky. Yes, it’s like, don’t, don’t, no, no, it’s good. You haven’t had enough coffee yet.
That’s okay either was I and now I’m in it.
Leland McFarland
I’ve got to try yours. do have to try yours. you know, it’s free out there.
Craig Dubitsky
So.
Yeah, we have a happy camper out there.
Leland McFarland
All right, he is the founder and CEO of Happy, a coffee cold brewed, is it cold brewed?
Craig Dubitsky
Cold brew lattes dry coffee. We have ground coffee whole bean coffee Pods aka k cups for those who celebrate. Yeah
Leland McFarland
All right, so in the press release, it was said that elevating the everyday requires a system that can keep up. What was the moment that you realized your old system just kind of keep
Craig Dubitsky
Well, true story. Prior to happy, I was the founder of another company called Hello. It’s an oral care brand and oral care and some personal care as well. And we were on another system that shall remain nameless. And basically it didn’t it didn’t just implode. We grew so quickly and ferociously in a friendly way.
that the system completely crashed. We broke it. And when I say we broke it, you know how there things that to like Defcon 5, like internal tech companies will have like a SWAT team that’s, know, like, they’ve never seen this before. We gotta bring in the SEALs, you know? We had that level of attention and they hadn’t seen anything like we had inadvertently caused to their system before. So we realized in a very painful way
we had to make a move. And frankly, because someone asked me like, well, didn’t you know that? like, no one would plan for that. Like no one plans for like, let’s totally decimate a technology platform. Like, no, that was not the idea. And it was not, by the way, sold to us. Like, by the way, this stuff is great until you get to this magic moment where your business hits an incredible reflection point and then it’s going to shut down. It was really this unforeseen thing. So we had made this move over a weekend. went.
the old business that I’m referring to, which is an amazing brand, and I hope you try it. It’s called Hello, in oral care products. And we have this moment where we went from 18,000 doors of retail distribution to 55,000 doors in just a couple of months. And it went wild. Now, with that growth, with great growth comes great responsibility. With great growth comes a whole bunch of other things that just happen. Systems.
need to change, your team might need to grow. There are a lot of things that come with growth. And we had to literally migrate from this other system to another system over a weekend because our entire business was paralyzed. supply chain, inventory, all the componentry, all the retailers, ERP, everything, ARAP, every acronym you could think of.
And we added in this other acronym, was WTF. So we were in dire straits. We made the move to NetSuite over a weekend, a full migration over a weekend, which was incredible. Talk about a Herculean task. It was a big deal. And it worked and we just never looked back. So when we got to a point where, you know, going to start another company, try to build another brand from day zero,
we started with NetSuite because we’d had this incredible experience and the platform grew with us. It wasn’t just like, it’s one and done, like here it is and it works. like, no, was more like, instead of just fixing a problem, it’s going to help us see other solutions. We’re going to be able to see around other corners and we didn’t even know what corners. So it was incredible given our growth of Hello, but also incredible when you’re starting a new business, you’re able to tap into the fact that you have a platform that’s going to
Move and grow with you not limit you as you grow nice And by the way, just sorry for the record. I’m not a spade a paid I don’t think I’m spade either I’m not a paid spokesperson just on the record I’m not a paid spokesperson for NetSuite. I I’m a super fan
Leland McFarland
Well, they haven’t bought you yet.
Craig Dubitsky
No, but you know, they can buy some coffee.
Leland McFarland
Well, they have, in terms, of bought your glowing reviews by just doing this.
Craig Dubitsky
Yeah, well, they do a great job. So I thank them on the daily.
Leland McFarland
So Happy grew fast across 70,000 distribution points. What operational challenges showed up first?
Craig Dubitsky
The four touch touch touch wood The biggest operational challenges have not really been around how are we managing our ERP Again, I can throw every acronym right every financial acronym. It’s been about how do we get additional awareness? Because we have a lot of distribution. So our awareness is growing. We just started doing some
Leland McFarland
if you had any.
Craig Dubitsky
really, really exciting marketing. There’s a lot more coming. And after this little bit of testing that we did in about seven states, our sales at a certain retailer went up 28%, a certain online retailer, 32 % physical, 28 % online with two different players. And our awareness amongst women nationally doubled.
So for us, the biggest challenge has been, all we have this great product, how do we get people to know that? Because operationally, we’re in good shape. The products are great, they’re winning awards, which is great. Great reviews, great being able to ship on time and in full. Great being able to manage our inventory because we’re dealing with product that has shelf life in many cases, right? So when you’re dealing with freshness and componentry,
and manufacturing schedules and a lot of retailers, and being able to integrate into EDI systems and manage payroll and do everything else we have to do. The challenge has just been keeping our heads down. Just the signal-to-noise ratio, we try to keep that in check because the operational bits are rock solid. It’s a combination of the platform and the team we have.
because we’ve been through this, we built another business together and watching it really accelerate on NetSuite has given us this leg up from day zero with this thing.
Leland McFarland
So the release also says that NetSuite helped maximize visibility across the business. What does that look like in practice? What can you see now that you couldn’t before?
Craig Dubitsky
Short answer everything Everything so we see where every every moving part now is visible and when we start to play around with the AI Functionality bits which may be another question you have in there. I don’t know. I might be combining questions We can see around corners that we didn’t even know we’re there to look at and we’re getting we’re getting information Proactively as opposed to always having a search for it, you know, it’s this idea. I think of moving from
Just using AI and getting the intelligence part to getting to a deeper level of understanding and I think understanding is I think a higher order versus intelligence in a lot of ways So we use the platform or using AI to help us analyze things in real time Like what’s working? my god. Look at that I didn’t know that retail was blowing it out. Like how did we miss that so fast? You know, there’s there’s positive things that we see and then we have to react differently
to the positive things, which is a good problem to have. And sometimes it’s things that need a little more attention. So being able to have things highlighted for you as opposed to just having, you know, there’s some dashboard, I have to look at it interpret everything. It’s like having a freaking genius with you all the time who’s minding all your numbers for you is way more evolved than just, yeah, I simplified my tasks. Tasks are great. Understanding and figuring out things that you didn’t even know you needed.
help figuring out before you know you need to figure it out. That’s miraculous. That’s incredible. It’s just incredible.
Leland McFarland
So what’s one decision that you made faster because NetSuite gave you the numbers and records?
Craig Dubitsky
Let’s see. There are probably a couple of things. One is figuring out which areas of the country to market in when we were going to spend marketing dollars. Because obviously, any time you’re about to spend money on something, there’s ROI. You’re thinking about, how is this thing going to pay off? So you want to make sure you’re mindful about where you’re putting your dollars. So we use NetSuite to figure out where are we seeing the largest bump and where are we seeing the valleys where we wanted to see them.
And we wanted to fine tune our marketing to see what worked in different regions of the country and what worked in different states of play in those regions, given retailer penetration, promotional activities we might have been working with and leveraging. So the first thing that comes to mind is that, like where are the parts of the country where we wanna apply marketing dollars based on performance in the marketplace, good and less optimized, it’s a nice way of putting it. So that was great to have.
insight into where we should play. That to me was probably number one. Yeah, let’s go with that. That was a biggie. The other thing is kind of an obvious one, which is what’s working, what isn’t working? Which products are running? I used to be in a prior life, I was a futures trader, a derivatives trader. just in old adages, you want to let your winners run and your losers, you want to take care of those quickly.
Not everything’s gonna work all the time. That’s just life. And as a founder and as someone who’s had a couple of trips around the sun, you can’t fall in love with your own stuff and you can’t fall in love with your inventory. So being, I think, informed enough and hopefully emotionally secure enough to know that not everything’s gonna work and use tools like NetSuite has to figure out where the winners are and where the ones that aren’t quite.
living up to your fantasies are and knowing how to sort of like decrease your exposure on the ones that aren’t working and increase your spend and your profitability on the ones that are working. That’s amazing. It’s great. Because intuition can only take you so far, right? Intuition can get you started, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to sustain you. So having tools that will take your intuition and back it up with data that will let you win, that’s a magical math, if you can pull that off.
Leland McFarland
I like that idea of letting go of products because so many people are attached to the products that they make. sometimes letting go of something that just isn’t working is going to be one of the hardest things. But being able to see data that says, no, the rest of the country doesn’t like your product. It’s niche.
Craig Dubitsky
Right and you know, there’s there’s riches in the niches as they say And all that stuff is great right if it rhymes it’s right it’s true I I applaud anyone who has an idea and works hard to make it into something real. That’s great. I think the challenge is How do you go from being? An entrepreneur people like oh you have an idea to like a good entrepreneur someone has an idea and they make it real But they also make it real and profitable and able to grow
Like that’s really important and having the right tools in terms of platform, yes, and in terms of people and partners is everything. Because at the end of the day, we only have so much time as humans. I hope we have a lot of it, right? But we have to make really sound decisions and we have to be emotional because that’s what got us to start things in the first place as entrepreneurs. And as part of our team, I say like everyone’s a fan.
Robert Tangi and I are the co-founders. Everybody on our team is a founder because everyone’s touched it and made it better. So we set it up that way. We want people to help us make it better. And if we are mature about it, we can say, well, that worked and that didn’t work and why didn’t it work and how do we make it better? We have the tools that help us isolate and analyze the stuff that’s working or not. That is how you get better. That’s how you get to a place where you can be profitable and where you can grow and where you can scale. So all these things are
It’s like the professor is legally giving you the answers to the Sure, but they’re teaching you so much. It’s not like I just got the cheat code, know I can get a good grade. It’s multiple choice and I know what all the You know, I know what all the answers are ready. They gave me a copy of the test. No, it’s much more than that It’s kind of like you’re getting all the all the knowledge all the intellect all the magical thinking behind why the decisions could be made better That’s
That’s unbelievable. We didn’t have tools like that. There was a lot of trial and error before. There still is. But now, again, you can let your trials accelerate, and you can extrapolate really quickly and figure out what’s working in a small way so that you can scale the good stuff and nuke the bad stuff. data is really helpful with that.
Leland McFarland
Definitely is so the release mentioned improving the speed and accuracy of financial reporting What’s? specifically changed in your clothes
Craig Dubitsky
Well, Adam, our finance guy, if he were here, I’d probably make him blush. It’s also part of my job. I have to make Adam blush. Adam is a machine. And for him to have tools to let him close out the month, like quickly, I cannot under-appreciate. No, I can’t over-appreciate. No, what’s the best way to put it? Overstate. I can’t overstate. can’t oversimplify. I can’t express.
Just in words, I’ll have to do it in song How invaluable it has been to get people more time back in their life That’s a big deal so to give Adam the ability to close out the month and share that with our team Share that with our we have investors by the way most of the team everybody at happy is an equity stakeholder and a whole bunch of our team
Myself included we’re investors in the business as well. So to be able to have visibility Yes, but also have a very concise clear tight beautiful by the way looking Instead of of of Metrics and data points that can tell us like here’s where the month closed. Here’s you know, here’s what we have Here’s what we don’t have. Here’s what we need like that’s important because you can’t run a business just on hope you have to have you know
You have to have the data. have to know what’s going on in your business. So to be able to do that quickly and give people time back in their life, by the way, which then gives them the ability to think and read what the hell happened. What do we do? What’s working? What isn’t working? Now, how do we use some of the AI tools that are embedded in these systems to help us make better choices and do it quicker? Quicker is better because it gives you more time to then think about other aspects of your business. It’s amazing.
I’m trying to think if I’ve really answered your question sort of like, you know being able to close out the month on time Is great, but it’s not just about finishing it on time. It’s finishing it on time with really accurate and pertinent and Like intellectually robust information. It’s not just like here’s the books Yeah, we close you made this much you didn’t make this much. There’s how much we have in the bank There’s so much we have an inventory the end like
That’s okay. That’s a snapshot in time. That doesn’t tell you what’s working, what isn’t working. That then leaves that to you to interpret. This helps provide a much clearer picture on a monthly basis at speed with a lot more information. And that’s really cool. It’s really helpful. It’s really helpful. And also, because I’m an investor person, there’s nowhere to hide. I don’t want to, I don’t, you we’re not looking to hide. We’re looking to learn and grow and move fast. So yeah.
Those are the big wins for us. It’s like no pride of authorship, pride of ownership and in sharing and being able to make good decisions again at pace with the best information we can get. That’s the magic of this stuff.
Leland McFarland
All right, so where did errors or delays usually come before channel data or deductions or chargebacks?
Craig Dubitsky
Don’t get me started on charge backs and deductions and you know, look these I don’t want to sound untoward, but we know Some of those areas For some are profit centers, right? You know, so Having again a clear picture as to what you have when you shipped When you shipped it how it’s sold through is very helpful because sometimes look mistakes happen I don’t want to cast aspersions on anyone’s intent, but we’ve had we’ve had
know retailers before that’ll tell us about a certain thing that requires a deduction will be like no actually we we did what we said we did and we actually sent you all the stuff and arrived when it was supposed to and we have all the information that’s sorry Mistake, I mean mistakes happen. I don’t want to again paint a picture that there was any You know negative intent on everybody’s part Accurate information helps you avoid some of these things. It’s part of it’s part of life when you’re operating at scale. It’s a lot of moving
so things can happen. So being able again to have accurate reporting is extremely helpful, extremely helpful.
Leland McFarland
So distribution and logistics can be quite brutal. What was the hardest part of your scaling up to like that 70,000?
Craig Dubitsky
It’s a great question. What was the hardest part? Hardest part? Well, at one point, it was very, very difficult to get cans, believe it or not. Cans were in very short supply. that was tricky. Managing componentry was tricky. We were making these. These are custom containers. this whole thing is curbside recyclable. Even the label is a custom substrate. You don’t have to peel this off. Sometimes you get something that’s like,
Remove the label. No, it’s custom label. Even this could be recycled as the curb. Well, this was being made. And by the way, coffee, and this dates the story, but there were these things called tariffs that were going on. So talk about an interesting wrinkle. So all of a sudden, you had components made in certain parts of the world. had coffee grown. And we were sourcing from seven countries and every other.
pick a point in time, there was a new tariff or not a tariff and a tariff and a different tariff. there were a lot of moving financial parts as well as moving parts. So where cans were coming from, where they were going, getting filled, where componentry for primary packaging was coming from, how that was getting filled, how that was getting sealed, how cans in the beginning before they were printed aluminum cans, they were sleeved cans. So there was just logistics involved with everything.
because you had to get your hands on the cans. You had to fill the product. You had to bring the product back to get it sleeved in a different place because the same place I was filling it didn’t have a sleeving mechanism. Oh, you got a Costco order. That’s great. We don’t palletize product like that. We don’t create case packs. There’s so many moving pieces. I could talk to you and you for hours at end. Yeah, this stuff, it’s not for the faint of heart.
So again, having tools that can help you keep track of all this stuff and having a team of people that are very comfortable using those tools, that’s some secret sauce. Yeah. I don’t know if I’m really answering your question, but. All right, thank you. Yeah, it’s tough. So supply chain logistics, moving stuff from point A to point B, when you have a lot of point Bs and a lot of A, lowercase a, uppercase A,
Leland McFarland
That was good answer.
Craig Dubitsky
A.1, A.2, A.3. Having a platform that lets you keep track of all that stuff in the process is really great. Really great. Because again, there are a lot of components. We’ve called these blends. There are multiple beams. This stuff comes out of the ground. Like, you know, working to make sure you’re creating something that’s consistent. Because, that’s right. It goes in people’s mouths. It has to taste great. It has to be consistent. managing all the aspects of your manufacturing.
with your partners to make sure that your product quality is ACES. All these things are dependent on a whole bunch of factors coming together. So again, it’s Herculean task management, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus. And if you have the right tools, you can do it.
Leland McFarland
All right, so that’s what I got for you today. So why don’t you tell everyone where they could learn more about your drink and where maybe they could buy it.
Craig Dubitsky
Sure. Well, you can learn more at happyproducts.com. So please come by. If you’re not near a Walmart, a Target, a Kroger, an Albertsons, a CVS, an HEB, a Meyer, probably leaving a whole bunch out and I apologize, a Sheetz, you can certainly find us at amazon.com slash happy. There’s some fun videos up there as well you can check out. And obviously on our website, you can come and
and see everything we have and order everything. And I thank you for listening. I hope that you give our products a try, that you love them as much as we love bringing them to life. And the thing that I want to point out is we’re called happy because coffee makes people happy and now happy is going to make their coffee. But the bigger point of this, as big as that is, is that we know not everybody’s happy. So we…
wanted to reimagine the relationship between entrepreneurship and philanthropy. And we want to help people. We want to do our best to remove stigma from mental health, which is at epidemic levels here and abroad. Mental health doesn’t care how much you do or do not have in your bank account, what your native tongue is, where you’re from. It plays no favorites. It impacts everybody. depending on which study you look at, one in four or one in five people in this country have some form of mental illness. How can we remove stigma from that?
Suicide rates have gone up 30 % in the past 20 years Number one killer teens used to be car accidents all by leukemia now number one is handguns and number two is death by suicide often one and two are Connected so we want to remove stigma. We partnered with NAMI the National Alliance on mental illness we have a QR code on every product we make toll-free number there’s free professional help and Call somebody, you know
Call somebody you haven’t spoken to in a long time. Just tell them you’re thinking about it. Text them. Tell them I said to give them a call. You can call me if you want. My cell is 917-392-1000. If you need help, there’s 988. NAMI helped create 988, which is the 911 for mental health. And we gave NAMI a piece of the company. So NAMI’s on our cap table. This isn’t a performative thing. you know, let’s do a thing with mental health. No, this is a serious thing that we’re involved with as humans.
And we want to try to remove stigma. So that’s the important thing. Supply chain. Got it. Making sure our balance sheet is tight as a drum. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. NetSuite for all of that. I mean that sincerely. You know, we’re in the happy business as much as the coffee business. So give some a try. The coffee’s epic. I promise. You know, two to five acre small grower farms, 40 % of them are run by women.
pretty amazing and they represent less than half of 1 % of all available commercial coffee growers. So really picky about the coffee. Coffee is amazing, chefs kiss stuff. But do something kind for somebody, say hello to somebody and that’s it. That’s what I got. Be in the happy business.
Leland McFarland
All right, well thank you for coming on and sharing happy and also all about NAMI and mental health.
Craig Dubitsky
Thanks for having me.
Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks. Good to meet you.
Leland McFarland
Thanks. Bye.
Craig’s story is a reminder that growth is exciting—but it can also expose every weak link in your operations. From packaging constraints and shifting supply chain realities to the constant need for accurate reporting and clean data, scaling isn’t just about selling more—it’s about staying in control as complexity multiplies. What stood out most was Craig’s focus on visibility: not just seeing the numbers, but using better tools (and increasingly AI-driven insights) to spot what’s working faster, react sooner, and make decisions with confidence instead of guesswork.
Just as important, Craig makes it clear that happy is building more than a coffee brand. The company’s partnership with NAMI and its push to normalize mental health conversations reflect a bigger goal: connecting entrepreneurship with real-world impact in a way that isn’t performative, but embedded into the business itself.
To learn more about happy or to find where to buy it, visit happyproducts.com or look for happy in major retailers and online marketplaces mentioned in the interview.
