This Founder Wanted to Infuse a Marshmallow With Chocolate, for a Better S'More. He Had No Idea How Hard That Would Be. Michael Tierney, the founder of Stuffed Puffs, learned that sometimes the simplest problems are the most complicated ones to solve.

Michael Tierney was roasting s'mores when his million-dollar idea struck. "The cold piece of chocolate was just sliding around the graham cracker like a hockey puck on ice," he says. Annoyed, he shoved the chocolate directly into a marshmallow, where it melted harmoniously over the heat. Bingo.

Why hasn't someone commercialized this? he wondered. The answer would turn out to be far more complex than he had imagined.

At the time, Tierney was still in college at The Culinary Institute of America. He went on to work the kitchens of top-tier restaurants like Eleven Madison Park, but he couldn't shake his s'mores idea. "It was bugging me," he says, "every day." So three years later, he pursued it — and now, after a decade-long, winding path, his Stuffed Puffs are on pace to bring in $80 million in revenue.

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Step 1: Uncover the problem.

In 2012, Tierney holed up in his mother's Long Island basement and cobbled together a hodgepodge machine that would stuff marshmallows. Then he set out to find a partner who could create a full-scale version. "The common response was, "Son, do you think we haven't thought of this already? We've tried it; it's impossible,'" he says. Still, he thought, the opportunity remained: He just needed to be the first to pull it off.

Step 2: Sidestep the problem.

While Tierney figured out how to fund his own marshmallow manufacturing, he started a catering business to pay the bills. A client showed him a "45 calorie" vegan chocolate mousse she'd bought for five dollars a cup at a health food store, but he was suspicious — so he made his own version, then tested the two at a lab. "Mine was 88 calories," he says, "and hers came back at like 380." After that, he started making healthy products for the store and decided to launch Mikey's, a fully gluten-free brand, in 2013. His first product, paleo English muffins, sold like crazy.

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Step 3: Build a Trojan horse.

"Out of the blue, I got a call from a buyer at Walmart who invited me to pitch Mikey's in Bentonville," Tierney says. So he went — but with bigger goals. After the meeting (which went very well), he unpacked a butane camping stove, lit the fire, and stood in the Walmart HQ hallway inviting people to sample his homemade Stuffed Puffs. All they had to do was tell the baking goods buyer he was there. "Eventually that buyer came down," he says, "and three hours later I had a near eight-figure commitment to bring Stuffed Puffs to life at Walmart." (Walmart did not comment by press time.)

Step 4: Expand the Trojan horse.

Tierney still had no way to make stuffed marshmallows, but he now had a plan: Once a door opened for Mikey's, he could keep it open for Stuffed Puffs. Three years later, a new fund called Factory invested in Mikey's — so he told them about "my other crazy idea." With Walmart in hand, they also agreed to fund his stuffed marshmallow facility.

Step 5: Grow!

Stuffed Puffs launched at Walmart in April 2019. By November, they were on the way to outgrowing their first factory and started building a 165,000-square-foot facility in Pennsylvania. Now the brand is in more than 30,000 stores and last year's revenue of $40 million is set to double in 2022. "Although our plant kicks out a couple thousand marshmallows a minute," says Tierney, "it's still basically the machine I built in my mom's basement."

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