Christian Karim Khalil - Selling a Unit Every 30 Seconds at Costco

Speaker 1: 00:00
Welcome to Shelf Help. Today we're speaking with Kareem Khalil, founder of Yaza, which I believe is the first brand to bring really authentic Lebanese-style lobna to the U.S. market. Just over a year. I think Yaza's expanded it over to 100 independent stores, I think over a thousand stores nationwide, including some of the big names, Whole Foods, Arawan, Snelto Market, HEV, recently Costco, I believe. Before Yaza, Kareem spent a lot of years uh running another consumer goods business. Well, that was a family business, I believe, in Nigeria. Um, definitely got a really unique experience in the CPG world, especially on the global perspective. Really excited to dive into it. Um just yeah, first off, for the listeners that aren't that familiar with Yaza, love to just kind of start with a quick lay of the land in terms of the origin story, behind the brand, kind of core products in the lineup, and then uh we'll go from there.

Speaker: 00:54
So Alan, first of all, thank you for having me. Um I'm a big listener of the podcast, so I'm happy to be on it. Kind of growing up, so I was born in Geneva, raised in France, went to high school in Lebanon, went to college in the UK and worked in Nigeria. And I I the year of seven, I was diagnosed with a disease called Hashimoto, which is an autoimmune thyroid disease, where I had to worry about taking care of my food and what I eat all my life because otherwise, you know, I would gain much weight and would I'm tired all the time. And I had to learn how to eat healthy and how to eat well. At the same time, being originally Lebanese, I'm tied to the nation and tied to my culture. And Lebni is and was and will always be part of my diet. So everywhere I go, I was finding a way to either make Lebni at home or even import it in Nigeria. I was bringing it in on the plane every time there was someone coming on the flight and put in the fridge. So all my life I've I worked at CPG with my family. We're a family of founders, of entrepreneurs, and I've always had a dream of launching a food company, a Better For You food company. And Lebni was always the forefront of that mission. I had the American dream, 2020, it was COVID. I was fed up with things. We had solar business in Nigeria. I was home the whole time. Like, what do I do next? What do I do next? Let me move to the US and kind of figure it out. So this is the first second the US Embassy in Paris opened. I flew to Paris, got a stamp on my visa, flew to the US, and I'm like, let me figure it out, let me see what's going on, let me understand the Lebanese market. Iaza is Lebney, Lebni is Iza. That's kind of how we started. And the reason behind that is when I when I got here, and I used to travel a lot to the US and kind of watch the market understand the space. When I got here, Lebney was only available in the ethnic stores and was only made using thickeners and milk powders and different preservatives to make because it's cheaper and it was nothing, no one else was making it that way. And I didn't know anything about Lebney. We can kind of jump in, I think, later, of how Lebney is supposed to be made and why were people not making it the way it's supposed to be made. But that's kind of how the the origin of the story and why the story started.

Speaker 1: 02:53
Cool. That makes total sense. Uh that's that's great background. But yeah, let's rewind back to those like early days. I I think if I got it right, you started playing around with different recipes in your kitchen after you moved to Atlanta, I think in 2020 or so, without giving it away too many, too many trade secrets. I'm just kind of curious what were some of the kind of you know key variables and factors that you were playing around with or kind of key tweaks you made along the way between that first version you made to that final version, and you said, okay, this is right, I feel like this is good, you know, I'm ready to take this to market or to go find a co-packer to make this.

Speaker: 03:24
So very interesting question. Uh for those who know me, I'm very, very picky with food. And for those who know me as well, and know my family, my son Kayan is even pickier than me. So we would get him leaving from the ethnic store and be like, you know, come and have it, and he would not accept to eat it. He was four years old at the time, and you know, that he's like, that's not levenne, I don't want to eat it. And he would like push it away. You know, he he barely spoke at the time. And so we started making leven at home. Lebne is basically strained Greek yogurt with salt. That's how you would make it at home if you were the easy way. Obviously, you can start with the milk and make the yogurt and then strain it further. But basically, we would buy yogurt, strain it, and just add the salt and make it at home. And everyone that would come home to my house, all the people we met, would try the leven and be like, this is so good, where can we find it? Or where can we buy it? And I'm like, you know, I kind of that was a good trial for me to kind of understand the reaction of people. But because Lebni is never is always sold plain, or it's like just milk, salt, and cultures, that's how it's made and that's how it's sold back in Lebanon. No one eats it that way. You always add it, it's a kind of an ingredient. People add stuff to it. The the way we like to eat it the most is adding Zatar, which is like an oregano uh blended spice, and olive oil. Uh that's kind of the one of the most authentic ways. That's the the, in my opinion, the best way to eat it. And I would add this to it, and people are like, My God, this is amazing. So, this is where the idea came from. I would spend days and days just on the Whole Foods, and my dream was how do I get left into Whole Foods? And I would spend days on the aisle of Whole Foods stalking people, understanding what those guys are looking for, talking to consumers, kind of sitting in the back of the aisle. My marketing manager would get upset at me if I if I tell the story of how I stalk people, but that's that's how I I kind of understood the market. I had to. And that's kind of how the idea was born, making it the authentic way. So that's step one. But then where do you start? January of 2022. I took a co-working space, a space in a industrious, it's like a we work kind of an office. It's a one-person office, and I'm like Googling, because Traje GPT was not that popular at the time. How do I make Levne? How do I get, you know, find me a Greek yogurt factory, find me this, find me that. Like, where do I start? I didn't know where to start. I have consumer goods experience, but I didn't know anything about the US market. I didn't know geography in the US. There's so many states I had to kind of figure out how this works, distribution networks, etc. And I was looking for a Greek yogurt factory for sale. I'm like, you know what? Let me produce it. It's it's it's supposed to be obvious. It's supposed to be simple. In Lebanon, I went to a few factories. You just make Greek yogurt and then you strain it extra. So let me find a Greek yogurt factory and then strain it extra. So I found this person, he's one of our uh he's a founder of the Yaza as well. He joined as early on. And I called his name is Ron. I was like, I called him on the phone, like, Ron, I heard you have your factory up for sale. Can we talk? And he's like, he was angry at the time that he had closed down his factory, he sold it off, and he's like, buddy, you don't want to get into it. Just don't worry about it. I called him again. I'm like, Ron, let's just meet and let's talk. So he came to the office. It was around March of 2022, and we sat down and like, Ron, I want to make lebni. And I explained to him how I make it at home. He's like, you don't want to do that. Forget about it. Just do something else. No one, you don't want to do leven. It's it's hard. No one knows what it is, it's not gonna work. Forget about it. And I'm like, you know what? Let me hire you, you know, for six months. Let's let's try and make it together. So for those six months, we would bring in leven from Lebanon. We would have family and friends kind of smuggling in because you're not allowed to really bring dairy into the country. And just sending it to the labs to kind of understand how it's made. We hired a food scientist in Lebanon to help us understand the process. But for those who know how Lebanese is traditionally made, and this I didn't know compared to the US, is you have they back strain it. So they let you literally take a cheeseclot, which I'm you know, I'm sure Adam, you know you're familiar with that process. They just take a cheeseclot and that's how they do it. Yeah. But that process is not allowed in the US. You're not allowed to make it, you can make it at home, but you can't make it and sell it nationally. So I'm like, crap, what do they do now? The food scientists we had hired in Lebanon. I'm like, you know what? Just leave us a note that's figure it out here. And I had Ron and I in the kitchen trying to figure out first how to make it here and how to get the gold standards. So, how do we get to match the top sellers in Lebanon to the US flavor? And we tried, it took us probably nine months to get to an acceptable where we wanted to be. Then we start adding flavors, and we had like 12 flavors to start with. Also, yeah, you always start with three, that's kind of the rule of thumb. But we had 12 flavors to start with. We chose the top three that we wanted to, and we're like, okay, now we have a prototype. We had to look for someone to produce it for us. And this was like the biggest, I think the biggest challenge that we had to do. Because it's a startup, it's dairy, which is really like scarce in the country, and no one wants to work with a startup because they you know it's a risk working with a startup. So there's for those familiar with dairy products, there's something called the IMS certificate, which kind of lets you ship milk across different states. So I went to the FDI website and printed, it's a few hundred pages, a list of every company registered under that IMS certificate. I had six or seven binders, and I spent months just going to the office in the morning, taking the phone, calling one after the other, whoever doesn't answer, put in an email, made a spreadsheet for everyone that okay, this one answered, said no, this one ignored. That's why it's phone number's not working, or this one's a private company who does, you know, a grocery store like Optics. They don't work for other people. And it took me, I would say, six months to get a call back. So funny enough, we had a lot of people answering the phone and be like, we don't do startups. We know we almost gave up. I we started with kind of the East Coast. And I started with like New York, because that's kind of our core market for demographics. And we kind of went down, we finished the East Coast, we're like, okay, this is how I learned the US geography, by the way. I went into the Midwest, I went down to Texas, and I'm like, I'm in California. I'm like, you know, it's not gonna work. We went to Canada. I I went in to a co-packer in Canada and then realized how how much duty and quotas there are between the US and Canada on dairy. And we almost gave up many times. And Ron's like, you know, I told you, it's not gonna work. And we get a call. The phone rings, and it's a co-packer that we had called that had an answer email or for couple and said, Oh, I got a call three months ago. Uh I guess someone left me a voicemail about something with Lepni. Let's talk. And I'm like, you know, let's I was this, you know, I was so happy. We scheduled a call, and luckily, one of the companies they used to produce for got sold. So they had a lot of empty space and they had to find someone. So timing worked, and it was the perfect co-packer. They're amazing partners to have, they're they're they're growing with us, and uh, they've been super helpful. So that's kind of how we got to the co-packer. Now, how did we perfect the formulation, which is which was the biggest challenge? And we are still working on always improving and improving and improving as we scale up and as we grow. Because when we started and we the first production run we had was September of 2023, and those were small batches. Small batches are easier to produce. And then we got, and I don't know if you want to jump into it right now, we got in Whole Foods Nationwide. Nice. We got uh we got an approval in August. We met with Home Foods in August before we had the first production successful. Okay. We got into Whole Foods Nationwide, and they're like, you have to launch in June. We want the products we delivered first week of June. And we're gonna pick it up, I think it was May 23 or May 24 uh of that of 2024. So we we produced, we kept producing, we had like six or seven batches that we had to throw to garbage because you know, as we scaled up, it just was not working. And as a as the time we were producing for Whole Foods, we thought you know, we had to figure it out, it was gonna work. I spent a lot of time in upstate New York. And every time I try the product a day before that the traffic starting to pick it up, and I'm like, that's not it. And everyone's like, but it's very close and it's almost perfect. I'm like, if it's not perfect, we're not selling it to Whole Foods because you have one chance in life. If you don't do it right, that's it, you lose it. So I email Whole Foods and I said, sorry, due to you know memorial weekend, uh, we had a delay, just give us three days extra. And then we produce it again. Fingers, you know, we we did the exact opposite of the theory, and it works. And we shipped to Whole Foods, and it's been a success so far. That's that's kind of how we got to where we are.

Speaker 1: 11:35
Talking about kind of visual identity and and packaging design, I think you did a bit of a rebrand recently in last year. Um thinking about like the initial version, let's say three rebrand. What were like when you're building out the brand identity, visual identity, maybe think about the context of when you're building out kind of the the brief for whatever you know, agency or designer you work with that can actually kind of build that out. But what do you remember were some of the kind of key variables that were top of mind for you in terms of what was important to you from like a you know brand voice, brand positioning, how you wanted the brand and you know look and feel?

Speaker: 12:05
So that's a very good question. And I think that's that's the biggest, the biggest challenge for startup companies to be a company who's trying to create a new category that that didn't exist at the time. We were trying to do, and I think it was a mistake, and we made a lot of mistakes along the way. I think that was one of the mistakes we did, but we didn't understand what we were selling. We didn't understand our consumer very well. And we did a lot of research. Sorry, we did a market research where we got people into a room, we gave them Lebney without any labels on it, we gave them different tools, peanut chips, a piece of bread, a bagel, uh, a spoon, knife, sandwich, just to see how they react, when they see it and what they think it is. And we didn't know who our consumer was exactly. We didn't know how we're gonna tell the story and how we're gonna explain leven. So I think we what we did, and because Yaza wasn't big at the time, and no one knew what Yaza was, we put a lot of information on that packaging. So, although I still think it's a beautiful packaging, when you look at it up front, one of the mistakes we do, and I think that's one of the things I always recommend to new founders launching a new brand or rebranding is print the packaging, take it to the store, put it on shelf, walk the aisle. You know, there's a rule that says, you know, six feet, six seconds, that's how fast you have to people make decisions on what they buy. And if they don't find it, there's a problem. So our packaging I thought was beautiful. Uh the problem we had is we couldn't figure out, or people couldn't figure out the difference between flavors. Even I would make those mistakes when I was in stores. People couldn't find it on shelf. So I knew we were in all foods they show. I was walking, I was in, I think in Dallas for a trade show, and I was looking for my product on shelf, and it took me like five, ten minutes to find it. And that's my old product. I knew it was in that store, and I couldn't find it. And that's like, I was like, okay, there's a there are some problems we need to solve. And once you want to, I think, do a rebrand. I've had a lot of discussion with friends, community friends, and and founder friends over the last few months about the rebrand. The rebrand has to solve a problem. And the best way to approach it is just let's make a list of the problems we have and how can a rebrand solve them. And if it doesn't solve the problems, there's no point of investing. Because the rebrand is really expensive. And people are like, a lot of people are asking me, why did you do a rebrand so early? And I'm like, I had these problems, and we can talk about them if you want. Uh, and I had to solve them quickly. Because the brand's not as big as it's gonna be, we're growing very fast. The earlier you solve it, the better. And that's why we did the rebrand. And I think the rebrand, I'm sure you agree, it's it's beautiful. And we've already seen a lot of positive feedback. It's really early to tell on the sales side of things, but it tells the Yaza story better. You know, we because we are the only authentic Lebanese Lebanese in the market, the only one we're the highest protein, three times more protein than than the other Lebanese. We're half the calories, quarter of the fat, and we have a lot of probiotics for your gut health. Which is these meet a lot of trends that are going on these days. But that message was not clear in the first packaging. And I think that's what's coming now. Because we're you know, a brand found that our team is very young and fun, and we were having a lot of fun at uh working on Yasa, we had to translate that into the packaging. New packaging is more fun, it's more lively. It talks more to the category has changed so much, where companies like Sabra have been there for so long and haven't changed much over the last decade. The new the new brands in the category have have forced that new trend to make it more fun, more cool. It's fun to eat better for new foods. We're not on a diet, it's a lifestyle. And it's a fun lifestyle. And that's kind of what we wanted to show the consumer.

Speaker 1: 15:28
That makes total sense. Do you think back to when you, I guess somebody started, decided yes, we are going to do this rebrand, and it's worth it, we need to do it. Going through that process, thinking back, were there any decision points along the way that were you remember most kind of contentious or the ones that required the most debate around, yeah, we should make a look this way or that way? Or yes, kind of curious because this process is always a very, you know, complicated, in-depth process. And I guess it's always good to hear how things actually work behind the scenes and you're going through it.

Speaker: 15:53
So we've we've talked a lot about Lebni, and this is kind of where this is our core product line, and this is where this is what makes Yaza is our Lebni line. But as we grew and as we met with more retailers, some of them are scared to take Lebni off. So yeah, yeah, the more conventional ones are like, okay, I don't know what it is. I don't know if my consumers gonna know what it is. Help us build a brand block around Lebni, and we're willing to bring it in. So with the demand of retailers, we added two more SKUs. Baba Ganoj, which is an excellent dip and very popular, people know it. And Mohamra, which is red pepper and walnut dip, which I think I believe is our best dip ever. Whoever hasn't tried it has to try it because it's amazing. And we so we built that brand block as we were designing those packaging, because we had we had in the back of our mind our packaging is not good enough, we need to do something about it. The when and how was not unknown to us. When we started designing that Baba Ganuja Mohamra, again it got more complex. Where initially we couldn't figure out how to differentiate different flavors of leaven that we have. We had three flavors, we were adding a fourth one with garlic. Like, what color do I make mohamra? And how do people know this one has leavened and this one has non-leven, and this one is dairy, non-dairy. You know, it was kind of so complicated and it was so ugly to designs we did at the time. We're like, we have to do something. So we went and we hired a really big design firm. Uh, and we we kind of explained the problem. Like, listen, help us, help us design those two SKUs. And they were very smart uh on how they approached it because they knew we we need to change the design. And we and they asked us, are you guys uh ready for a refresh? And we said yes. I said, you know, initially I was against it. I was like, okay, I'll do a refresh. Then they asked us, you will you guys change your logo? And I said, no. They're like, okay, let's show you what we can do. They were very, they took it slowly. And when they they gave us the options, they was like, okay, we're changing, and we kind of ran with it. So they were very good at convincing us. And I think in turning on the team, we were all convinced that something needed to change. But then working with a big design firm really helped us confirm that. And it's obviously if you change, you have to change for the best. If it's not going to be better, don't do it. You know, don't waste time, don't waste your money on it.

Speaker 1: 17:59
This may not really have been applicable to you guys because you said you did the rebrand, you know, fairly early in the business. But oftentimes when I'm talking to other brands that go through rebrand, it's it's often the thing that's kind of a delicate, you know, decision process is how do you kind of balance? Obviously, you're you're doing a rebrand for a reason. There's obviously a desire for some level of of a of a fresh look in some way or there or another, but you also don't want to make things look so unfamiliar in the rebrand that for those loyal customers, those power users that haven't buyed the product that get it to the point where they don't really feel like they resonate with it or recognize it anymore. I guess worst case scenario, it changes so much that they go in the store to look for it the next week and then they can't find it. I'm not sure if that was relevant to you because you were did it so early, but I'm curious, if so, did you kind of think about that and how you kind of balance the two?

Speaker: 18:44
So we thought about it, and that's kind of what pushed us to do it early on. That was kind of the factor for us. Okay, do we wait more or do we just do it now? And because we were launching Baba Belusion, Wahmer we have early on. So I I agree, you know, that's that's a problem, that's a worry for bigger brands.

Speaker 1: 18:59
Yeah.

Speaker: 19:00
Uh and I'm sure we're gonna do refreshes and more rebrands as we as we grow, as we learn more and more. Um, but I think that the timing worked well for us. And the fact that Eaza is more visible and that flavors are more visible on the new packaging, but for people who have not seen the packaging, you know, we can share some links after that for them to go and see it. But because it was more visible, I think it's a non-issue for Yaza in particular.

Speaker 1: 19:23
Yeah. If you had another friend approach you, uh, they're in the process of they're considering doing like a packaging refresh or summing up a rebrand. I guess one is like what kind of questions might you ask them to like help them decide yes, this is the right decision to do or not. And then just in general, any other kind of recommendations, assuming they said, yeah, we're gonna do this, like learning about it. I have, and I don't know if I'm I guess or don't do.

Speaker: 19:46
I I I have a couple of friends. They're CPG founders. We and and that I recommend everyone in the CPG industry to build that community around them of different CPG founders where you can talk and help. Both of them, we share the same buyers, we're in the same category. We compete in a certain aspect, but we uh we talk almost every week and we share a lot of information, we help each other. And all three of us were talking about rebrand. Um one of us, Hamas Goodness, which you know, shout out to them. They do great hummus. They did a rebrand, and I think it's fantastic, it's amazing. And she shared, you know, along the way, she was sharing with me her progress, and I think she did a really good job. And the other person I don't want to mention her name just because I don't know if she wants to share that. She's doing a rebrand, but she called me up, she said, You guys are doing rebrand. I want to do a rebrand too. I feel I'm missing out. And I sat with her and I'm like, listen, let's and we talk almost every week about the rebrand. And she hasn't done it yet, she's kind of deciding. The rebrand has to solve problems, it has to be better, but also solve problems. If it's just a rebrand to look better, that doesn't help.

unknown: 20:46
Yeah.

Speaker: 20:47
So in our case, and our problem is we couldn't differentiate the flavors. People didn't know how much protein. We have three times more protein. We should let consumers know that because people care about protein. They're paying for a premium product, it's a more expensive product. They should understand why they should pay more. Our packaging, we're the only in the category that uses the K3 patented packaging, which is recyclable, good for an environment, sustainable. We should also make that visible and pairing to the two consumers. We didn't do all of those. And I think that these were the problems. At the same time, we couldn't see the brand name, we couldn't see the product name or the flavor. It was so much information on the packaging, which is why we needed a refresh. So going back to my friend, I'm like, what is your problem? What are the things? Write down, make a list. Take a piece of paper and just write down the top five priorities you want to do. And sometimes just going back to basics really helps understand. And, you know, I always say nothing is hard in life. You just have to dissect it, cut into different stages or different phases, and you just make it the decision easier. Because if you think about a rebrand, the rebrand, oh my God, it's so much so many things to do. But if you sit down, write down what's the process, every step by step, what needs to be done, you just simplify things. Totally. And that was my recommendation to her.

Speaker 1: 22:00
You mentioned the Whole Foods launch. I think that you launched in I think it was August 2023, a hundred or so stores in the Northeast. And I think less than a year later you were did you're launching nationally. What have you found now that you're in other retailers? What have you found is unique about working with Whole Foods and and the keys to succeeding in Whole Foods compared to other retailers?

Speaker: 22:19
So I think I mentioned that earlier, but when I started Yaza, my dream was to get into Whole Foods. That was kind of my ultimate dream. And uh funny story, I have a friend who or someone I met and she became a friend. She owns a juice store and she is in two Whole Foods stores in Atlanta. And the first thing I did, I got connected with her. Like, can I sell my lab mate in your juice store? And she's like, it's great quality. Our brand of juices, it's called Detox, is about, you know, better for you, healthy, your product is amazing. It is great, it's healthy. I'll set it there. And that was that made me so happy. Like I'm selling in Whole Foods, or at least it's a different cashier. You pay differently, but geography-wise, it's in the same store as where Whole Foods is. And I it felt so good being in Whole Food, that was kind of the dream. So I met with Whole Foods in August of 23. We didn't have production yet. We didn't have product in the market. We were at a trade show. And for those who know the process for Whole Foods, usually submit for a regional placement. You start local, regional. No one goes national, especially for a brand that's that's not even in the market. And our Whole Food buyer at the time, she's amazing. She's like, What's your capacity? And because our co-backer had the capacity, I said, you know, sky's the limit. You tell me what you want, we will make it. And she's like, Can you make it nationwide? And I said, Yes. And I went back to the team and I said, She asked me that question. I said, Yes. The team's like, You're crazy. It's not gonna work. Tell her we can't do it. We can only do regional. So we spent time waiting for that Whole Foods email. Because for those who know it's a really long process, we meet in August. We didn't get that email until February, March. We get that email and they tell us we're in 86% of stores. And I got upset. I'm like, I you know, I set up a call with her, like, can we be in 100% of stores? And she looks at me and she's like, you know, and I want to go to a third skew. And she's like, listen, no one, I've never given anyone that chance. Hard work starts now. I didn't understand it until that call was over. And I realized, you know, I hadn't slept, but I have still haven't slept since then. It's been a very tough, very long journey because it's you get one chance, but you can be the heater and you can go down very, very quickly if you fail. So that's kind of where that's my experience with Whole Foods. They are great to work with. I think it's for me, it's it's where I shop every day. It's it's my personal favorite retailer with my dream for Yazad. I'm like, where do I where do I go from now? And obviously there's more dreams and we're growing and things are going great. But Whole Food is a different, for us, it's our best performing grocery store because the consumer that goes to Whole Food is more well traveled. They understand Levni better and they care more about, you know, our plain Levni has three ingredients milk, cultures, and salt. That's how it's supposed to be. Consumers know that, and that's why people, you know, go for Yaza Levni. Uh Whole Foods.

Speaker 1: 24:53
Cool. That makes sense. Mid-last year-ish, you launched in uh in Costco as well. Like thinking about um, I mean, Costco is definitely kind of its own beast, but thinking about Costco compared to Whole Foods and some of the other retailers you're in, what's what has you found is like really unique about Costco and in terms of what it what it takes to win there?

Speaker: 25:10
Yeah, so Costco is a different, you know, uh they say different animal. Um I don't know you know if that's uh a good thing to say, but it is. So Costco, and then we'll kind of talk about how Costco works for those for the emerging brands that want to get to Costco. Costco requires you to do something called a road show, which is basically a four-day, five-day weekend. You start Wednesday to Sunday, and you spend, and they want the founders and the team, the actual Gaza team to be in stores. You go from store to store the whole weekend, where from open to close, you're sampling, selling, sampling, selling the product in store. And you sample different flavors, they come and see how the feedback, which flavor people like the most. And according to that, they start ordering on a rotational basis. So they order for a six-week period. If it does win, then after a few months, they give you another rotation. And then after a few months, another rotation, and then you can expand to other geographies. So last year, I didn't know much about Costco. I had met with different Costco buyers, and they gave me the opportunity, the chance to do those roadshows. So we did nine weekends. It's physically draining, it's the hardest thing you can do. It's really, really hard, but it's a lot of fun. And before I kind of talked about Costco, that's what gave me the confidence. And Kelsey, my marketing manager, asked me, we were driving that a going to a meeting, and she's like, I want to know when did you realize that Yaza was gonna make it, Yaza was gonna be a brand. Like, what was the moment that you felt that you know you're you're looking for, you're talking to VCs, going, you're taking it to the next level. What gave you that confidence? And I don't know why it's Costco. Because Costco has a big spectrum of different demographics, and it's it's the average consumer. Whereas Whole Foods is not, Whole Food is 3% of the market. Costco is everyone. There's so much cross-shopping between the Whole Food consumer goes to Costco, the Walmart consumer goes to Costco, and everything in between, everyone goes to Costco. Yeah, they have over a hundred million members. And spending time at the store, listening to people, having tried them try the product, and then buying. And there's one road show we sold every 31 to 32 seconds, a unit from open to close consistently over the weekend. Wow. And it's levening. We're not selling potato chips, we're not selling popcorn. We're saying something they you know they had never heard of. Most people didn't hear about it. People will buy because it says metrian diet, people will buy it because it tastes good, people will buy it because they like a flavor, they heard about a flavor when they saw it on social media. Seeing that gave me that confidence that yes, Yaza is a product people like. Obviously, we need to do much more marketing, we need to create more awareness. And we can talk about how that's done. But Costco helped me get there. And our rotation, so we got a rotation in the Northeast, which is you know, everything from Boston down to North Carolina. And we did really well. Like we sold out very quickly, we did excellent, and we're gonna do more business, we're doing more stuff with Costco. I can't really disclose details, but other regions that we did well with are taking Yaza as well. So a lot of exciting stuff coming up for this year.

Speaker 1: 28:02
Very exciting. Educating consumers about a new product category, just educating in consumer education in general, is from my experience, it's it's generally a not a cheap thing to do. You have to kind of figure out ways to you know do efficiently, especially as an earlier stage brand. And to your point, I think there's probably a good amount of Americans that don't don't know what LobNe is compared to probably some other types of products. What is it you found really works in in terms of kind of consumer education strategy standpoint?

Speaker: 28:26
So let me step back on when we created Yaz. I think that's really important because that was part of our concern. How do I educate how to the challenges? So one of the mistakes we did is we we put so much stuff on the packaging, and we thought that writing a lot on the package is gonna help. The problem is consumers have a few seconds, they don't have time to read, they don't have time, okay, I've never heard of this, and we keep going. You know, whereas for us, Yaza's everything for consumers, there's a hundred eyes in the store, Yazda is one skew out of the hundred skews, and that's one of the hundred shelves on the store. So that's one of the mistakes we did. One thing I think we did really well when understanding that consumer, the market research we did, is because the first reaction of every consumer was tipping it, is we decided to put it in the dip section. Because we're creating a category. Technically, you can put in the cheese section, petroti cheese, yogurt section, because it's made, you know, psychic yogurt, but it's also cheese. And we're like, okay, let's put it where the hummus lives. Because it's the same similar applications, same consumer, consumer who's wants to try something Mediterranean, international flavors, global flavors. And that was one of the that helped, one of the things that helped us get that trial is putting it in the right place. Obviously, demos is where we've been focused on with whole food, especially. We do a lot of demos in every city in the country, or we try at least to do as many as we can, where we have strong brand ambassadors, having people try the product. The more people try it, the better. And you would hope for word of mouth. I met a person over the weekend, she bought it, she's in Atlanta, her daughter's in California. She's like, Where can I buy it in California? Because my daughter lives there. I told her where to buy it. And you know, we're we're hoping that that effect will happen. That works for natural space, that works for Whole Foods, but that's not going to work for going, you know, in the big box conventional. You can't do a demo at every Costco store in the country or in every corgo store in the country, etc. And this is where the packaging changed, where any information, explaining exactly what it is, very short and sweet, really helps consumer. And that's kind of what one of the reasoning behind our packaging changed. And the other thing we did is with the new items like Babla Ganouj Mohamra and the launch of a new SKU, we're launching another situation to complete that everything but Hamma set. We believe that this will help get trial. Because if someone knows Babla Ganuj, they will try it and then they will like it. They'll be like, okay, I like what he has us done. Then you go see the other products they've done. Similar to people know Mohamra or that new item. I think that new item is more popular and will help us get it off trial. So that's kind of the reasoning behind it. Obviously, there's no perfect way. We've tried different things, we've tried PR. I don't think it worked. Uh, we try to do a lot of social media. It's really hard because people see it on social media, but then they're like, where do I find it? And it's hard to kind of link that to it. One thing that helped us add in a lot is a lot of restaurants, especially the Mishnah Star, the high-end restaurants, have now lebni on their menu. And that's the trend we've seen in the last few years, which I think is exciting to see. You know, I had Octopus on a bed of Levni the other day. I'm like, wow. Like I never thought about that. And it's good to see because that creates awareness, and then they go to the store. You're like, okay, what's the best Levni? They look at the ingredients and they go for Yaza, they try it, and then hopefully they help customers for life.

Speaker 1: 31:30
That's awesome. Other than demos, not talking about Costco, Whole Foods specifically, just all the retailers that you're in. Uh, what have you and the team found has had the most impact um in terms of just, you know, driving velocity? And that could be, you know, I don't know, shelf talkers, I violators, you know, well-crafted promotional strategy.

Speaker: 31:49
Promotionals, try promotion is has been the easiest way uh to get velocities up. Obviously, it's a good way to get trial, and we've seen we kind of try for promotions, and we see that after we do we do four or five promotions a year, we don't want to do too many promotions because we don't want people then to get used to buying it for cheaper, and then they won't buy it when it's when it's at uh a fair price. So we've seen a lot, and that's how we've we've been growing. We've grown over 200% of Whole Foods in the last year. And that's because you know we do promotion, and after the promotion, we see the numbers keep going up versus kind of going down, and which is a great sign that people have more people have tried it, your consumers have tried it, and it's growing up. So I think promotion is the best. Shelf talker is more difficult, and it's only like independent stores. We take those to trade shows where we when I go to go to a lot of you know, door to the door when you visit series of a few Indies where we give them those shelf talkers, but it's really tough to make sure they stay on shelf. It's it's really tough to make sure that people see them. But promotion has been our best. Social media is another way to get people, drive people to the store and build that loyalty fan base which we're trying to build as a brand that cares about better for you, you know, no seed oils. There's no compromise on quality and and ingredients we choose. And I know consumers have a difficulty finding those brands. So once they find us, we hope for them to stay to stay there.

Speaker 1: 33:05
Totally. Right before we re-press the chord, that's n years, yeah. We're not going to Expo West, and I'm happy to like share, you know, our thought process around why or not. So, yeah, curious what your what your guys' thoughts process was there.

Speaker: 33:14
So we did Xbox in our first year just before we got that Whole Foods announcement. Xbox is, for those who don't know, Xbox is a trade show. And they called it the Super Bowl of trade shows. It's really the Super Bowl. Like it is the busiest, super the busiest show you will ever go to. It's crap. The problem we have for Xbox is becoming more and more expensive. And the retailers we want to meet, or at least we want to target, we've targeted in a way through either brokers or through relationships, or we find ways to find them. And we see no value of spending, you know, $100 plus thousand dollars on the booth to hopefully meet one of the buyers. Because the thing with buyers is every retailer has 20 or 30 buyers. So not only you have to find the retailer you're looking for, but you have to find the one buyer that you're looking for, and you have to hope he passes by your booth. And when he's passing by your booth, you're not busy talking to someone else trying to sell your service. And that's kind of why we decided, you know, we want to we're very careful, we're still a startup, we're still a small company, and we want to make sure that every dollar spent is spent in the right place and the right way. So we don't want to compromise on quantity or marketing policies or anything else. But you know, one day we'll have the funds and hopefully we'll we'll party at Expo S together. For sure. One of these days soon.

Speaker 1: 34:28
Yeah, it's been great. Uh last question for you, Kareem. Uh you're obviously got your hand on the your your hand in the pulse of what's happening in the CPG world in a lot of ways. Just um, curious, outside of Yaza, any any particular brands or just general kind of trends in the space in general that have been piquing your interest lately?

Speaker: 34:44
So I'm a I I'm very loyal to the brands I I eat, or you know, even clothing-wise, I'm very, very loyal. I have a go-to chocolate brand. I think Hugh is my is my favorite. I have I have it almost every day. Yerba Mate uh is a is a drink I have almost every day as well. There's a lot of particular brands I love. When talking about food trends, one thing that that upsets me is oh, fiber is trending, or protein is trending. And I kind of get upset. Why is it trending? It's not supposed to be trending, it's supposed to be there every day. Like fiber is not supposed to be, oh, this is a year of protein, next year is a year of fiber. Every year should be the year of protein. And every year should be the year of fiber. It should have fiber every single day and every single year. It doesn't matter. It's still not supposed to be a trend. To buy chocolate is a cool trend, but protein and fiber should not be trans. Totally. Health should not be trans. Those are things you have to incorporate as part of your lifestyle. Food can be a trend, but not a macro. And it's a kind of upsetting in a way that the people are like, oh, it's no longer protein these days. People care about fiber. No, people should care about protein as well and fiber. And we try to stay on what they call trend, but what are good for people. We're working on a protein and fiber dip for the end of this year because I think that's kind of what people need, not what people only want. They need it.

Speaker 1: 35:58
Yep, I respect that. Yeah, Karina, this has been awesome. What's the best place for you definitely have a lot of knowledge in the space, what's the best place for people to follow along with you? And then what's the best place these days to follow along with Yaza as well?

Speaker: 36:09
So, Adam, I I like it, and I always post that on LinkedIn that I love when new founders, and I have I have a few that, you know, we we have regular calls because I have it as well with people that the companies are bigger than me, where I learn from them. I'm happy to, anyone who who's in the space who has questions of where to start, there's a lot of free resources like Startup CPG, like Shelfmade, a shout out to Ashley who's built an amazing platform. And I'm happy to help, and I'm happy to connect, and I'm happy to do what it takes. Because I get help, I like to give them help. So LinkedIn is the best way if you want to, if you have any questions on a personal basis, you want to talk about anything, I'm happy to talk. Christian Kareem Khalil is my LinkedIn profile. I think we can put the link. But if you want to catch up with Yaza, yaza.foods on Instagram is our best channel. We have a TikTok, which we're trying to keep up with, but our Instagram is our best channel to kind of keep up with where we're going. Cool. Perfect. Awesome. Isn't it great, Kareem?

Speaker 1: 37:01
Really appreciate the time. I think that's the pod.

Speaker: 37:03
Thank you, Alan. Appreciate it.

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