Aliza has spent her career in some of the most intense rooms a person can be in. Delivery suites at 3am, holding a stranger’s hand through what might be simultaneously the worst and best moment of her life. These days, she spends a fair amount of time thinking about biscuits.
Not as a step down. As the same job, really. Just with fewer stirrups.
Aliza is a registered midwife and perinatal mental health specialist. Someone who has, by profession, sat with thousands of new mothers at their most exposed. She knew from age 15 that this was the work she wanted to do. What she didn’t know was that it would eventually lead her to running a lactation biscuit company.
How Franjo’s Kitchen began
Franjo’s Kitchen started in 2012, when its founders Fran and Jo (a lawyer and a naturopath) met pushing prams at the traffic lights and decided, within the hour, to build an all-natural biscuit for breastfeeding mums.
Aliza came to the brand sideways. As the owner of her own business, Bumpnbub, she’d heard new mums rave about these biscuits for years before she actually looked at what was in them. “Impressed to obsessed” is how she describes the shift once she did.
In 2021, Bumpnbub collaborated with Franjo’s on a hydration powder, and the response made it clear to everyone involved: Aliza wasn’t just a fan of the brand. She was the person who should be steering it. She took over as CEO in July 2023.
Becoming a mum and a CEO at once
The timing was a lot. Aliza became a mother herself that same year, learning to run a growing food business and a newborn’s sleep schedule at once.
“Becoming a mum in 2023 taught me to trust my intuition,” she says. “That intuition brought me here.”
What she inherited was a brand with a loyal following and a fairly small footprint, around 200 early orders that have since grown into a business recommended by health professionals Australia wide. What she’s building on top of it is closer to her original calling: food developed with a naturopath, nutritionist and midwife on the formulation team, aimed at the physical and mental load of pregnancy, breastfeeding and early motherhood.
Why this work matters
Aliza’s clinical background means she’s seen firsthand how much of early motherhood gets written off as something you just push through. The exhaustion. The under-eating. The anxiety that doesn’t always get named.
That understanding shapes everything about how Franjo’s Kitchen approaches its products. This isn’t about wellness trends or marketing buzzwords. It’s about giving depleted mums something practical they can actually get into their bodies without a production.
The Franjo’s Kitchen range
The lactation cookies remain the anchor product. Plant-based, made without artificial additives, and designed to support milk supply without tasting like a compromise. Chocolate Chip and Raspberry & White Choc are the current bestsellers.
Alongside them sits a line of Motherhood Hydration Powders, formulated around the specific fluid and electrolyte needs of pregnancy and breastfeeding rather than repurposed from a general sports drink. There’s also a tea range for different stages from pregnancy through postpartum.
Gift bundles for new mums
For mums who don’t want to pick just one thing, Franjo’s bundles products together. Options include:
- Make Milk Biscuits and Hydration pack
- Triple Choc Chip bundle
- Complete Mama Essentials
- Calm Before the Baby box
The gift sets are aimed at the friend or family member who’s never quite sure what to buy a new mum. A small, practical piece of the puzzle Aliza cares about.
The same work, different desk
Ask Aliza what the job actually is, day to day, and she’ll tell you it’s not really about biscuits. It’s the same thing she signed up for at 15: helping women get through motherhood feeling seen rather than just survived.
She’s simply doing it now from behind a CEO’s desk instead of a delivery suite.
Franjo’s Kitchen ships nationally.
Find the full range:
Follow KIDDO on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter