Nicole Bernard Dawes

Overview

Nicole Bernard Dawes is the founder of Late July Snacks and later Nixie, profiled in Late July Snacks: Nicole Bernard Dawes. Crackers and Cookies were Failing… Tortilla Chips Saved Them. Her episode frames her as a second-generation natural-food entrepreneur whose taste standards, category judgment, and willingness to survive a 2009 financing crisis shaped Late July’s eventual tortilla-chip breakthrough.

Current Profile

Nicole grew up around Cape Cod Chips, where her father Steve Bernard proved that better ingredients and better taste could create a mainstream snack business. She carried that worldview into Late July, but the company had to move through slow crackers, unprofitable cookies, debt pressure, and allergy constraints before tortilla chips gave the brand a scalable category. After the Snyder’s-Lance and Campbell Soup Company ownership sequence, she redirected the same taste-first organic mission into Nixie beverages.

Key Characteristics

• Second-generation CPG founder shaped by family exposure to natural foods and potato chips.
• Taste-first operator who treats mission as a loyalty layer rather than a substitute for repeat purchase.
• Crisis-tested founder who kept Late July alive through grief, a loan default, and product-strategy pressure.
• Category-sensitive builder who moved from crackers and cookies into tortilla chips after seeing velocity and margin limits.
• Post-exit founder who carried the same organic positioning into beverages through Nixie.

Evidence

• Family and product worldview - Late July Snacks: Nicole Bernard Dawes. Crackers and Cookies were Failing… Tortilla Chips Saved Them ties Nicole’s childhood around Cape Cod Chips and Steve Bernard to her belief in better-tasting natural snacks.
• Crisis and persistence - Late July Snacks: Nicole Bernard Dawes. Crackers and Cookies were Failing… Tortilla Chips Saved Them describes the 2009 collision of bereavement, debt default, discontinued cookie sales, and family allergy risk.
• Category judgment - Late July Snacks: Nicole Bernard Dawes. Crackers and Cookies were Failing… Tortilla Chips Saved Them presents tortilla chips as the product that matched Late July’s values while improving repeat-purchase and channel fit.
• Founder identity after ownership change - Late July Snacks: Nicole Bernard Dawes. Crackers and Cookies were Failing… Tortilla Chips Saved Them connects the Campbell/Snyder’s Lance transaction to Nicole’s heavy emotional separation from Late July and her later Nixie work.

Qualifications

The profile is episode-scoped. It does not independently verify revenue, loan, deal, or current Nixie scale details, and it preserves the distinction between Nicole’s retrospective interpretation and external financial analysis.

What Changed

• Initial profile establishes Nicole as a taste-first organic CPG founder whose defining operating move was category pivot discipline under financing stress.

Relationships

• Late July Snacks - company Nicole founded and scaled.
• Nixie - later beverage company Nicole founded after Late July.
• Steve Bernard - father and Cape Cod Chips founder who shaped Nicole’s product worldview.
• Peter Dawes - spouse and operating partner in Late July’s tortilla-chip pivot.
• Taste-First CPG Positioning - operating principle most directly associated with Nicole’s repeated brand-building pattern.