If I told you to name three spices off the top of your head, what would you say? Salt, pepper, and a maybe a third, less ubiquitous option. Cinnamon, perhaps. But if I asked you to describe the origins of each of these household staples—how they were collected, prepared, and who handled them—most people couldn’t get past the grocery store. Michael Laniak and Roy Chan, founders of Milly, are out to challenge our relationship with spice, more specifically with pepper, by imbuing their product with the same care and attention that is typically reserved for fine wine or coffee.
Michael, for those who don’t know you, tell us a bit about yourself.
I’m an avid cook and an outdoorsman. I live in Brooklyn and over the last 8 years have been building a cabin in Andes, in the Catskills, where I spend as much time as I can get away with, mostly building or working with my hands. I have a real appreciation for small things and the stories behind them. That’s a big part of why I’ve spent 15+ years working with brands like Away, Best Made Company, Sabah, and Taylor Stitch. Every one of them has its own personality, story, customer, and set of problems to solve. I like going after those and building something worth sharing.
You speak with such passion about something that most people rarely even think about: Pepper. How did Milly come into being?
Milly was born out of curiosity. I moonlighted as a line cook in a past life, which is where I came to appreciate ingredients and understand their unique role in what we were making. Over the years, I’ve curated my kitchen carefully: olive oil from Frankies down the street, sea salt from Newfoundland, Japanese knives, dried oregano from a seasonal market in Italy. Then I finally got to pepper and stopped. I realized I knew nothing about it. Where does it come from? How is it grown? Does it matter? The answer was obviously yes.
Milly has a philosophy centered around Curiosity, Care, Conviction, and Connection. Why these core tenets?
I knew early on that I wanted Milly to be as human as possible in a category with essentially zero brand presence. Pepper has been commoditized, and along the way we stopped asking anything about it.
Curiosity got us here and we’re still learning every day. We’re not spice experts, we’re students. Care is about everything we put out into the world. It takes me a full day to write a marketing email, but it’s worth it. Conviction is the answer to the question I kept asking myself, “why has no one else done this?” And connection, because the farmers, chefs, shop owners, and customers are the ones actually teaching us how to do this.
Are there any hurdles that come to mind while trying to get this product into the market?
All of them. This was a long, winding, challenging path that we chose to follow. It’s been beautiful and difficult. Setting aside the obvious parts of starting any business, the real one is getting people to think twice about their pepper, the same way they now do with olive oil or salt. That’s an ongoing effort. But a few months in, we’re seeing that when we get the chance to share the story behind our pepper, people grab hold of it.
What plans do you have, if any, for expansion?
Right now we’re focused on brand awareness, which ties directly into shifting that mindset. The big surprise was how quickly retail wanted pepper on their shelves, which makes sense in hindsight, because they’re closest to the adjacent products and can see the gap clearly. So we’ve been developing those relationships, since in-person is ultimately how people shop pepper. We launch in Nordstrom’s new pantry section this month, which I’m excited about, and we have some larger conversations going for 2027.
Your company works with producers in Ecuador, specifically a fourth-generation family farm in the Andean foothills. How did this relationship begin?
When I first went down the rabbit hole, I reached out to farms all over the world: India, Vietnam, Cambodia. Those felt worlds apart and transactional. Most of the farms I spoke to had pepper, but it was a secondary or tertiary crop. “Oh yeah, we have some pepper.” I wanted to work with people who lived and breathed it. That’s the farm we found. It’s all they’ve ever known, and it’s become a lovely relationship that’s taught me an enormous amount.Our communications are lengthy and heartfelt, I enjoy it.
Pepper grows all over the world in tropical and sub-tropical environments; why did you land on Ecuador?
Two reasons, one practical and one not. Practically, Ecuador is close enough that we can air freight, so the pepper arrives fast instead of spending weeks in a container losing everything that makes it special. It also means I can get on a plane and be at the farm. The other reason is the region itself. After college I spent a month in Peru hiking through the Andes, and there was an immediate connection. I love what South America has to offer, the people, culture, history, language, and food. I went with my gut.
Pepper has such a unique history, not only as a spice and flavor enhancer, but as a commodity. What is one fact that stands out to you from the history of pepper?
That it used to be worth its weight in gold. Trade routes were built around it, and people paid rents and ransoms in peppercorns, counted out by hand. And then it fell so far it became an afterthought. Why was it so coveted, and what happened? It got industrialized. But just as we think about fine wine and its terroir and vintage, I’d like to believe we can restore some of that allure to the spice we use most.
Can you think of any interesting applications for pepper that consumers may not be aware of?
Definitely, and we’re celebrating those on our new blog, Milly Eats. We launched with three pepper types, black, white, and green, and once you have all three in front of you it stops being a shaker on the table and starts being an ingredient you actually cook with. Green is the one that surprises people most. We have a jungle curry recipe built around it that tastes nothing like what people expect from pepper. And there’s a growing appreciation for pepper in cocktails and desserts. We just published a Black Pepper Strawberry Ice Cream that was exceptional.
What frustrates you the most about other pepper products on the market?
Honestly, it’s how little you’re told. Pull your pepper out of the cupboard and there’s no harvest date, no origin, no indication of how it was processed. Most of what’s on shelves is a blend from many harvests and many farms, and whatever character that pepper had is long gone by the time it reaches you. We ask for that information with our coffee, our olive oil, our chocolate. Pepper somehow got a pass. We tell you the farm, the harvest, and when it was packed, because once you know those details, pepper gets a lot more interesting.
