Founder of $100 million company says she quit her day job to rebuild her father's Cape Cod chip empire—and there 'wasn't time' to worry about nepotism

Late July and Nixie founder Nicole Bernard Dawes (Credit: Courtesy of Nixie)

Serial entrepreneur Nicole Bernard Dawes seemed destined to build million-dollar food brands. As a kid, she grew up working the counter of her mother’s health-food store and roaming the floors of her father’s burgeoning snack empire, Cape Cod chips. She would eventually follow in their footsteps as a founder, but Dawes’ first job was a management consultant for food and beverage clients. It was a short-lived career that Dawes tells Fortune she didn’t enjoy. Then, in what felt like perfect timing, she was pulled back to Cape Cod chips when her dad, the late Steve Bernard, bought back his $4.87 billion business from Anheuser-Busch in 1996.

“I left the consulting firm to go work with him when he bought Cape Cod chips back. So it just kind of all timed out,” Dawes says. “But I’m glad I did [consulting], because it was really a wonderful experience to work for somebody that I wasn’t related to, have a real boss, and have co-workers that I wasn’t related to.”