Cody Allen & Alex Bennet - Building the Next Big Pistachio Brand via C-Stores

welcome to shelf help today we're speaking with Cody Allen and Alex Bennett co founders of June Foods the Pistachio Focus brand built around a 300 year old family recipe passed down through Alex's family that produces a pretty uniquely creamy and crunchy experience which we're going to dive into they both got some pretty rich history and food Cody grew up I'm working for his family's third generation food distribution business that I think distributes to 20,000 ish C stores around the country before some a stint in adtech before eventually coming back to food with Le June and Alex similarly you know grew up around his family's pistachio farm spent time focused on the food service channel for a bit help scale a cold press juice brand for before teaming up so definitely got a lot of great experience in CPG excited to get into it first off for the listeners that just aren't that familiar with June Alex or Cody I'll let let whichever you guys want to take this one give us just kind of quick lay the land in terms of origin story why behind the brand core products in the lineup currently and then maybe just a few places that that people can get their hands on them and then we'll go from there yeah absolutely so you know quick kind of and by the way we're coming off of a trade show we just did this seven times in 15 minute meetings alright yeah one hit after another so hopefully I still have that fresh off the mind but you know general high level so we started June as a flavored pistachio company conceptually about two and a half years ago through research and development and branding and what not but officially got the product off the ground about seven months ago here in LA Cody and myself Cody just moved out here a couple months ago I've been here for about two and a half years you know building the brand in that time with Cody but about the product itself we are as I mentioned an elevated pistachio product we have three flavors right now a salt and pepper excuse me salt and pepper original salted and then a dill pickle all of our products are have no seed oils no natural flavors no artificial flavors and tend to use you know ingredients that we all know and understand so the basis behind this company and why we started it is as you mentioned earlier my family are pistachio farmers overseas they have pistachio farms in Iran and have been pistachio farmers for three centuries so I grew up with amazing pistachios my whole life I had incredibly uh creamy crunchy tasty pistachios that my mom would smuggling I kind of say like I don't know if she was supposed to be bringing back pistachios from Iran but that's alright you know everyone's safe everyone's good and she'd bring these over I'd have them I'd indulge I'd only I'd always be like these are incredible incredible it's not what I was used to here in the States and you know about two years ago I had an opportunity to you know pitch this idea to Cody who's a friend of mine from college Cody loved the idea Cody's family was in food distribution so he had been around it as you mentioned and it's been a blast so we launched about seven months ago uh again the core product line is that Dill Pickle Salt and Pepper Original Salted and right now we're in about 18 doors across the United States our primary distributors that we work with are really in the northeast with one larger distributor in Northern California so notable grocers that you may know would be shop right happier grocer pop up grocer I think uh sendix in Wisconsin is fantastic and then buy right out in San Francisco maybe some of the ones that you might be more familiar with and then I think for anyone listening that is in the space we are available on Thrive Misfits Market Hungry Root and Purple Carrots so and go puff so the online e commerce space has been incredible for us and um maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later but it's been um it's been a really fun journey launching the company and we've had some really good early success and feedback from from consumers as a side note you talk about the the e commerce stuff I've been here I read a a tweet or two I think the past few days that someone had kind of gotten under the hood in terms of what the numbers look like at thrive and he was saying like the numbers are kind of mind blowing how big some brands have gotten just through thrive so anyways I'm sure I'll dab into some of that stuff yeah people didn't know what pistachios really taste like so let's just kind of rewind back to those early days of formulation and R&D for a minute where I assume the goal is to show consumers what pistachios really taste like did it take a while to dial things in and find a formulation and kind of process that that worked or is it pretty quick because of the core aspects the process or what your family's been doing for three centuries that's I do it's a great question and the short answer is no it took a long time it took incredible kind of uh precision from an R&D group that we ended up partnering with but to rewind it right we have this family recipe and it's been tried and true three centuries it's incredible I think it's older than that we could only really trace it back to three centuries right so the short answer there is that you cannot take that way that we cook it back in Iran and use it here in the United States for a kind of multitude of reasons um whether that be FDA compliance but really just scaling it it's not a very scalable thing we kind of joke about it it's it's a recipe that my 250 year old uncle who like has been alive for three centuries somehow he came up with this he's you know it's a really really old school style of cooking so we like to say that it's inspired by the 300 year old family recipe so what we do use are some of the ingredients which there's a specific ingredient in there that's not so trade secret because it is on the pack it's called verjus it's a sour grape juice but really getting to that point I think one of the best pieces of advice that we ever got was from Cody's father and when we had the idea of starting a company he said if you guys are gonna do this you need to make the best product possible and we partner with an R&D company out of San Francisco that had some incredible wins under their belt became highly recommended by someone in the space and they are incredible they came up with a cooking process that was unique that paid homage to the family recipe and that being said it's also something that's not it's unique to pistachios it's not unique to cooking so that for us was huge as far as we needed to create something that can scale right on operational front and um the bulk of getting this to like shelf ready on a product that is ready to rock really came down to tastings that I I don't even know how many tastings we did Cody couldn't eat pepper for like a month or two after the salt and pepper tastings cause we were eating that many listen what size of the you know Colonel what size all of that stuff matter so much in production so I would say that the process you know took half the time but the other half of the time was like which version of the of the same product that was gonna be the one that we wanted to launch with so you work with this RND group out of San Francisco assuming that's different than the actual partner co Packer you guys working with what was it hard to find a co packer that you could really trust with this family kind of family trade secret or just is this kind of really unique process and kind of what did that process look like to finally find one that was yeah yeah I think uh for us in the beginning we kind of said to ourselves like what are our key strengths and what are our key weaknesses and you know one of our weaknesses is I don't know how to cook so for us you know we could have gone the route of you know uh you know renting out you know a commercial kitchen and trying to kind of scale um in a really small way right or going out and trying to find co packers on our own when we did have some of those initial conversations there's there's so much terminology and so many things we don't know about didn't know about that space still many things we're learning as we go d group also helped source a co packer for us as well nice and you know I think for us that was like one of the best decisions that we've made as a company yeah so you know while we worked you know hand in glove with them on you know kind of flavor profiles and you know that R&D company also LED a lot of like the how long do you cook for what temperatures do you cook it for all of that they also helped us to find a co packer and you know go on site with that co packer dial in the machinery right um and we did a pretty big far and wide search you know based on what certifications do we want um and you know what what's critical to working with that co packer and I think you know like I said it was one of the more um impactful decisions that we made and that really allowed Alex and I early days while we were working with our food scientist or our R&D group and co packer on kind of getting everything up and running it freed up some extra time for Alex and I to focus on branding and retail strategy um and kind of do all of that in parallel from a a flavor standpoint when we spoke a week or two ago you talked about how you originally thought about focusing on some more unique flavors but then you like somewhat quickly Learned that consumers really just respond to familiar flavors but in kind of a an adjacent format so I guess you tell me a bit about that journey and kind of what what made you guys realize you know more familiar flavors were the way to go yeah I mean I I think in the beginning you know our original salted pistachios were the family recipe which are uh the sour grape juice lime juice and some salt um and that gives them a little bit of a unique taste in and of itself right um we say it competes with like a plain roasted salted pistachio but really it does have a little bit of flavor it's a little tangy um and taste a little different and so um you know from there we we kind of looked at data and we said you know what are the biggest selling uh pistachio flavors in the US market uh a close second was salt and pepper and so you know for us we said let's go with a couple that are kind of familiar right we know they're already big sellers in the market people love you know a simpler flavor they love salt and pepper and then let's come up with something that is entirely unique to us and also really hitting on a lot of the trends in today's market and honestly we we had tested so many things we tested spicy we tested all kinds of different flavors of sweet and salty um and our R&D group one day just kind of sent us dill pickle in the mail and said try this it's it's a hot flavor we think it tastes great and we were like huh you know and and we tried it and we loved it and that's kind of what we ended up making as our third flavor and and we kind of put put the others in our back pocket for later um you know I think through this journey part of part of the reason um that I think these three flavors have worked for us in these early days is you know the large majority of pistachio consumers and nut consumers as a whole in the US um are over the age of 45 and um they like flavors that are a little more familiar to them I think we are focused on kind of that as our foundation right of of target consumers but uh we want to get hyper focused on that kind of 18 30 year old demographic as well uh and dill pickle has been a huge standout flavor for us in that demo a lot of dill pickle things you have Grillos out there right now I think pickle flavored things was like flavor of the year on one report we read recently yeah and and so you know for us looking forward like as you mentioned before we kind of said in the beginning we wanna be flavor differentiators now we're saying we wanna be kind of flavor elevators too where it's you know create something that isn't so unique that people look at it and kind of scratch their head and say I'm not really interested I don't know what that is right but finding the balance between what people know and you know something that's a little new and I think finding that balance is is challenging and it's something we're kind of working on now for next year and hopefully we'll come out with some new flavors kind of kind of mid next year um in the in the beginning just on the on the flavor part we uh we went into the R&D groups test kitchen the first day and did a ton of sampling and over time we we did a bunch of iterations over a period of probably like six or seven months and they'd ship them out to Alex and I's you know houses and we just have friends try them and family try them and send them to people and you know that was so helpful seeing kind of just how people reacted you know it's built you know through that and just kind of so we surveyed over like 250 people sent it to everyone we possibly could flavor profiles do you want in shell out of shell right the list goes on of of the millions of questions that we asked them and it and it really helped you know that data on the internet and then just anecdotally is really what kind of helped shape all of that let's talk about brand identity and packaging design for Minute Cause I know you guys have gotten an award or two I think it's 80 like 80% of pistachios are consumed by like you guys thought that there was a big opportunity to kind of speak to that underserved 20% or being being the younger crowd assuming I got that right like considering that what were some of the and a key variables that were top of mind for you when you guys are building out the brand identity positioning and and voice for the brand yeah I mean you nailed that so listen taking great you know notes and what not when we're chatting and I I would expect nothing less from you Adam um listen huge shout out to Patty Gilligan and governor's um it's pretty it's out there right they won the dial in for this they did incredible work on the packaging we gave them incredibly hard briefs um where we said we wanna focus on a younger demographic that's being underserved however we also wanna make sure that we're not alienating 80% of the market right you don't wanna go in there so I mean at least for us I think everyone can have a different strategy of how they wanna go and attack the market we were I think I think we were very honest in saying like yeah of course we wanna go out and build the cart size but like would we love to go and have the older consumers and older like I'm approaching I'm not that close but I say older a lot of my friends are 45 years old and they're like hey let's like tone it on calling me old but you know we gave them a brief of saying we want to create something that speaks to the young consumer that doesn't alienate right so for us simplify it because we can we can go super wide on how the brand identity was built but to simplify it was create something that had a retro old nostalgic vibe to it but that felt elevated right so elevated is a word that we use a lot um in brand identity and in how we create merchandise and how we create new products right so for us what was the most important part in creating brand identity was like communicating an elevated look and then communicating what the product is um and I I give Cody a lot of credit for that having not come from the food industry prior to his family food you know being in the food business and what not but um if I had it my way about two and a half years ago I'm like very aesthetic focused right so like I would have loved like a clean bag with like a little tiny thing in the corner that just said June and through a ton of back and forth through friends and family you know giving us feedback and what not communication like we decided very early on we're we're a retail brand are we gonna have a a social strategy in 2026 use TikTok Shop to get product out there absolutely but you know we wanted to win at retail and for us the first important step of retail is making sure the consumer knows what it is so big pistachio in the middle call outs right on the front of pack you know aligning with that younger generation while using colors that are a little bit more familiar with the older consumer created something that we felt was speaking to multiple generations and that's a huge part of that brand identity I feel like is such a obviously it's such an important part but it also feels like it's a really ambiguous and and be kind of challenging process where you don't know where to go what direction to go what what did that process look like for you that ultimately landed you guys on June it was I'll I'll keep it quick it was always June it was I don't think we had any other I know when I send samples out to him I had written June out and and the reason being fairly simple if you have any Persian um consumers or or listeners or if you know anyone that's Persian or friend to friend June is like a huge part of our culture it's a word in Farsi it's a term of endearment so it it it's literal translation would be like life like to more life and what not but in Farsi when you're growing up in a household again it was always like I was Alex June Cody June Adam June it's a term of endearment it's like saying honey sweetheart my love it just it looks great on paper it it hit a lot of different areas for us it's summary with obviously we spell it j 0 o n but you know June is something that us consumers can pronounce they understand and it's it's been really fun to tell the story again like leaning in a little bit more in a family heritage to be like what's June and we are all June in a way very very corny but like we are all June love that just some other you know earlier stage founders that are a bit behind where you guys are I came to you and kind of told you hey I'm I'm launching a new CBG brand I'm about to kick off brand and packaging design and our potential pitfalls for someone that's about to kick off brand packaging design yeah absolutely I think um I'll give you one and I'm totally I'm sure you'll have a few here as well um for me one of the biggest tips that I have is is again communication people need to know what it is that's the number one most important piece that I have for any founder coming out into the market is there may be ego on aesthetic that you're like I wanna be really you know sexy and clean and fun and all these things but people need to know on front of pack like what is your product so communication of what the product is for me is absolutely by and far number one yeah and I would also I'd also add to that find an Alex because Alex has like a good eye for that stuff and you know I know but on a serious note you know beyond that I also think that you know we we kind of looked at data too right like what are the to Alex's point about communication like I don't know if this all might might get a little blurry but we put a really big pistachio right on the front of the bag so when you're walking around the grocery store aisle you can't miss it right you don't need to read a thing but if you do want to read and you are more curious then you know it says right on the front no seed oils 6 grams of protein no artificial flavors non GMO right so we have that but we tried to not put too many words at the same time uh to not overwhelm because I think when there's kind of data overload sometimes people just move on so I think that was part of it and then you know we looked also like a lot of just kind of other brands that we thought were awesome right and incorporated a lot of what they had going on we looked at fashion brands we were looking at old advertisements from non consumables all kinds of stuff and it helped between a mix between kind of data we had a big Pinterest inspiration board um and mostly Alex and and Patty and Governess's brains and not much of mine cause it's a it's not my jam we ended up coming up with something that that we loved from a go to market standpoint what did your strategy and and our process look like that helped you guys ultimately nail down your your go to market price yeah yeah pricing was such a like we went back and forth on pricing for probably nine months trying to figure it out and you know we're fortunate that one of our good friends he serves as our fractional CFO and you know he helped us kind of sort through it and that that's another thing I'd kind of recommend um you know like find find a fractional CFO someone um you know who can help with the numbers too in the early days and and help make sense of it it was not my strong suit um you know and and so it was just super helpful having somebody there to to kind of figure out the unit economics behind all of it but um you know it's so hard early days like before launch trying to figure out and and and price like how much do I think packaging is gonna cost or pistachios or raw ingredients or shipping and you know through just reaching out to every single person in our network and probably annoying them a thousand times and bothering them and ask them a million questions we just you know kind of kept refining that unit economic model of all of those costs um rejected costs at the time and then we started to kind of get a little further with our command search right and get some real pricing back and we've met some freight brokers and ran some kind of scenarios for how much freight might cost and and things like that and so over the course of kind of nine months we just compiled everything together um you know for us we didn't want to have an extremely expensive product right we wanted something that was obtainable we say premium but inviting right something that we we we're very transparent like we won't beat some of the other brands on price every single time but where we try to make up for that is value with clean ingredients bigger pistachios because of the way we cook they're super super crunchy and flavor of course right it is number one and so you know I think trying to kind of figure out you know how high can we go how high is too high right or or or how low can we go you know while still making this efficient margin was tough and ultimately it kind of got to a point where we just said okay we think this number is right let's try it um and you know we we ended up you know it it gets adjusted by market too right like some retailers in New York City are gonna sell it for a different price than a retailer in you know a state in the Midwest it's not in a city um and so um you know that kind of shifts things to and so I I think you know for us we just wanted to kind of make sure that this product especially in these early days as we're trying to kind of gain customers not that we're gonna hike the price on everybody uh for anyone listening but especially in these early days it's like you know you want something that people are willing to trial right it's new um and you know it needs to be at a price point people are willing to kind of test it out at um so so yeah yep just based on all you've Learned internalized over the years at your family's distribution business as you guys launched into the market yeah so so a little bit more context on the family distribution business my my great grandfather started it in 1910 Dad was third generation growing up they exclusively sold to or to used to exclusively sell to C store now a lot of like college and university food service but not grocery growing up from when I was like 13 until I was 20 and got my first internship out of college I worked in the warehouse loading trucks you know I always kind of saw things from from the back end like logistics side of the house but until this you know working on June with Alex hadn't seen the retail side much at all um unfortunately Alex had been in the space for a number of years before we get going and and you know knows a ton about about the retail space which is super helpful for me as I kind of got caught up to speed and still getting caught up to speed um in in this journey but I think probably like the biggest lesson I Learned is just seeing brands come through the warehouse and how much like logistical effort and movement of packaging which comes with shipping costs and understanding kind of how distributors charge brands uh was super helpful whether it's temporary price reduction everyday low prices they want you know marketing and merchandising spend and then the store also wants that as well too and so keeping that in mind and your question about pricing is is we we tried to kind of come up with a number of like okay you know every channel kind of has its own cost of doing business right some distributors and retailers want you know TPR's four times a year others don't and they might just want you to go into their marketing calendar for $500,000 for the holidays whatever it may be and it's really hard early days kind of preparing for all of that when we don't even know exactly where our brand is going to land and so we kind of just came up with a number that we thought was conservative to kind of put in our unit economics and it just says like merchandising and promo spend to kind of capture all of that and we embedded that into our cost model to account for it yep so I think being able to see all of that was just really helpful at a young age and like being able to hear my dad and family always talking about the distribution space was was was tremendously helpful too because of that obviously unique access to your family distribution business your guys'gun market strategy was somewhat unconventional I guess in this day and age or I think I believe like C stores were kind of your your beachhead then you hit grocery then you launch DTC how has this approach been you know looking back now I guess in the you know the the first whatever months in the market how is how this approach to be more advantageous for the brand than maybe more conventional pads yeah yeah no for sure I mean I think the more time we spend in the space you know a lot of people are like huh you went to the sea store first that's kind of backwards right look we we had you know an opportunity of course to kind of launch into my family business and we took it um I think one thing that Alex and I always made sure to keep top of mind is that this business was not built just for C store right and so everything we did was with grocery in mind and more of the natural channel as well but also with C store and so you you know for us from our packaging size C store like single serve right uh we have a multi serve pack so you know they're not really selling you know 5 6 serving size bags at C Store but groceries so we tried to kind of find like a package that worked for both and that's our two and a half serving four and a half ounce bags to your question though you know I think for us what's what's been really interesting about entering the C store space is you can get a lot of door count um quickly it is a very expensive space to play in and a little bit it can be a little bit lower margins you know you're not necessarily getting into those really you know sexy trendy grocers that everyone's talking about and and knows and is posting on Instagram but I think the most kind of interesting thing for us was um you know you sit down in this space when we go to these buying shows Alex and I were just at you know a C store show last week and we talk to a lot of store owners directly right you get a lot of Facetime with uh folks who might own one store they might own 20 c stores and they really understand their buyers so so well uh uh cause their owners operators they're behind the cashier register a lot of them too and we talk to them and you know I think kind of an aha moment for for Alex and I and c stores it it kind of actually happened last week when we were at this show is you know kind of them believing in in what we're doing and seeing this and saying I think my customers are gonna love this in an industry where they don't have as much shelf space as a grocery store right sometimes they're a little less willing to take those risks it was kind of like an aha moment for us and and and we were super excited to kind of see all of the interest but but the kind of beyond C store is uh grocery and grocery delivery for us so you know we kind of had C store kind of setting the foundation we were able to get a couple production runs under our belt get some product out there get some feedback and then from there we said okay let's start talking to some grocery stores and for us the best way to do that was fair.com direct to retail huge recommendation for any kind of brands that are starting out fair has just been an absolutely incredible platform for us it's allowed for us to get our brand and product on shelf with hundreds of kind of mom and pop and specialty stores across the country and some chains as well so we kind of that was like outside of C store first entry into grocery and specialty and then from there we use that data story from C Store from fair.com and the velocities and to get into a couple other regional distributors in grocery and just kind of build from there you know so far it's it's been really well received and it's been a lot of fun for us and the grocery the grocery delivery thing kind of just came about a friend had a had a contact at a at a grocery delivery company so do you want me to make an intro and we started kind of looking at the space and we're like wow like a ton of our target consumers right in these grocery delivery companies like they want healthier products they're willing to try all new stuff they're also shopping in conventional stores like C stores and grocery stores too and it allowed for us to kind of have a little bit of an omnichannel approach uh with our consumers and so and you can sell indirect to a lot of the gross delivery companies too and make make some different margins um that's kind of what we've been you know we're seven and a half months in now we're still sorting through all of it but yeah it's it's been a it's been a kind of fun journey and we're we're really excited for 2026 cause we just finished a lot of the planograms with a lot of the C store retailers and setting up kind of a lot of our merchandising calendar and plan there we go you know with Thrive Misfits Hungry Root Purple Carrot a lot of the grocery delivery players um and and we're just really excited for a really big push in 2026 you got into a lot of doors pretty quickly what were in those especially in those I mean it's still early days you know seven months and what's been kind of the key to you know getting in that many doors that quickly while still maintaining and maximizing velocity hitting the numbers that you you wanna hit in order to stand the shelf grow within those doors and not have any have any risk of having those numbers drop too low yeah definitely it's a good question and Alex and I talk about it often it's like we always talk about we wanna put our foot on the gas as hard as we can without breaking the machine right of the company and not biting off more than we can chew because you know you get on a retail shelf you go out of stock right away as a new brand it's it's it's not gonna be easy to get back on sometimes and so you know for us we we kind of treat every channel a little differently in terms of how we strategize about it in terms of how we look at unit economics in terms of how we operationalize behind it and try to kind of balance all of that at the same time you know it's we took an approach that while we're in 2,000 stores you know those 2,000 stores are distributed to by three distributors and we've kind of taken an approach of baby steps as we go where we said let's work with some smaller regional distributors as I was kind of mentioning before that are um you know more manageable to work with where we can get out on the street and do ride alongs with their sales teams and you know kind of chip away at it over time before we kind of go for a really big push into like a national chain so that's kind of been just just how how we've kind of thought about it and and approached it and I think trying to kind of balance out also from like a production standpoint balance out you know not going out of stock with make you know with also trying to scale with making sure we're kind of putting our merchandising dollars in the right buckets with each distribution channel uh huh you know we've made some mistakes of course um and and we're kind of learning as we go you know it it's it's a really big upfront investment right when you turn on you know activate with a new distributor or a new grocery delivery company uh you know you're spending thousands of dollars to do buy two get ones and price reductions and things like that to get on shelf in the beginning you know we just try to make sure we're kind of doing a mix between what feels right and what we think makes sense and then also you know what what the numbers tell us is possible and you know I think I think that balance is something you know we talk about it every day of like making sure like are you know are do we have the right balance here like can we spend more over here should we spend less there and you know we're figuring it out as we go but it's been a so far it it it seems to be uh it seems to be working so far what have you guys have is found as kind of key to success and winning in these channels I think um first and foremost we we talked about it right when we started right is that like the velocity on these channels are definitely mind blowing out of control out of control don't even make sense to me it's crazy cause you can talk to some you might talk to 10 people that in California that have never heard of Hungry Root right and they're just dominating it right where and then a lot of people thrive as one of the big you know bigger more well known ones but these companies are doing such a fantastic job of getting product out there I think the key to success within these platforms almost much like anything is to like kind of just shut up and listen when you're when you're sitting in meetings with them because they know their platforms better than anyone else and you know Jesse from misfits for example who is a legend and unbelievable and and I think everyone knows her I know you're smiling cause you probably have met her at at trade shows and if not definitely you know happy to make an introduction there but she literally told us like this is how you're gonna succeed on platform and this is how much money you're gonna spend and Cody and I were like holy shit that's a lot of money but we realize quickly like oh that's the type of money that it's gonna take to succeed here's how much you can expect back on that they're very their you know your return on spend in platform is pretty dialed in to the to the t like they're pretty much like yeah if you do this you're gonna see an uplift of this amount to this amount and if you do this autoship program so you know much of that go to market strategy that Cody was talking about earlier is um we tried to stay true to it is like just invest in your partners invest in your platforms invest in the stuff that might be quote unquote boring like it might not be the big influencer package which hopefully in 2026 we're gonna start to work with affiliates and what not but in platform investing in those TPRs bundles autoship programs all of these things are just fantastic um and they are cash intensive like there's no way around it but Cody mentioned it earlier like these channels also have a little bit of a different margin strategy if you are going direct with them you may have a little bit more to to you know work with because you have a direct relationship that is also one thing I know as we talk about all of this for anyone that might be listening that's a new founder is currently and and and is and is working through any of their you know kind of business aches is like building enough cushion in your pricing for those type of market spend that type of market spend as like a line item like just being like yeah no we're going to spend 15% a year on this so I might as well just put that into my cost of goods because it's it's a must have at least it's it helps you plan ahead if you know what that number is gonna be I guess at least yeah and then you double and then you double the number whatever you think it's gonna be pass it to the next person just keep going you mentioned so you you mentioned fair a bit we talked about we were talking about fair a bit we were chatting and it seemed like it had a really big impact and what's more specifically what's what kind of impact has fair had in the business so far brand builder first and foremost um puts you in those cute sexy shops Cody Cody was first to kind of pick up on this I managed a lot of the fair business relationship with the team at fair and Cody was the first one to really kind of notice that um these are shops that are well known well beloved in their communities that have a third 15,000 followers 20,000 followers 5,000 followers whatever it may be but they're the ones out there creating awesome content letting people know like hey back in stock just released whatever it may be and it's an incredible avenue for brand exploration right like people finding new brands and us allowing to like build within those communities that was the first piece now it's just genuine like it's a business driver for us we're doing awesome numbers on fair um a lot of that has to do with leveraging the platform as you would leverage a website I think I think you know not to get too in the weeds about it but like treating it like you know SEOs updating pictures all of that that's how you can succeed on platform and we've seen it as an awesome opportunity for us to build direct relationships candidly between us and anyone who listens to this so it's not very secretive but like we use them as a payment processor sometimes right if we have a direct relationship with someone and um it creates an opportunity for us to just say you know what we want to just start getting product off the ground get product in your store use our fair direct link and you know that allows us to work off of 0% commissions that they offer yeah it's been awesome and again I I definitely always come back like I didn't have this mindset years or or years ago I was always really on brand and marketing and sales and now working as closely as possibly as I can with Cody on the operational side despite him handling the majority of this is you do have the operational mindset on productions in which you think to yourself what happens if this partner I don't want you anymore what happen if this partner what if all five of your major partners come up to you and say I don't wanna care anymore I just decided like listen crazier shit has happened right to brands that that's tough for us fair is a moment for us on production planning where we're like you know what I'm gonna sell this amount on fair in the next six months I know it so if all else fails like that's Cody and I will always think to ourselves like do we have a direct relationship with all of these companies through the platform are we servicing them correctly are they reordering you know what's your reorder rate how much are we doing to sell through what's your sell through rate on people visiting great if you have all of those you're keeping Top Shop you're keeping up with all of their automations that they offer then yeah you know what this massive truck load that we just you know a produce last week like we'll sell that in the next couple of months if all else burns you know so it's think think finding that fine line of how much time and money do you invest in this platform I would say invest more than than people anticipate and you know we've had some pretty awesome brands approach us that are way bigger than us that friends of you know founders of like friends of the brand right that have incredible companies and they're like hey we've been hearing you guys love fair and I'm always sitting there coaching them up as much as possible like you guys will rip on this and then they double our sales in a month and I'm like fuck like damn I shouldn't have maybe given all that all that hype but no it it we all win you know when these platforms all all the all the ships rise for sure and I would just add to that like there are so many opportunities now you know Alex and I have just tried to be as scrappy as we possibly can with you know there's the traditional route of traditional brick and mortar distribution that's where you're getting a ton of volume right um and you know it takes time there's a long lead time to get into distributors to get into some of those bigger retailers uh it's more expensive there's more kind of t's and C's essentially it's just more complex there are so many platforms fair you know the grocery delivery platforms and so many kind of in between now that give brand new companies like us the ability to immediately and directly connect with retailers and I think that that for for Alex and I has been um has been kind of one of the biggest uh like impacts to the business is just leveraging um as many of those platforms as we possibly can uh manage it one time from from the gecko totally any kind of brands or just trends in general in the space that you guys have been kind of just tracking for fun or things that have been kind of picking your interest personally at all yeah I mean there's a couple brands off the top of my mind that I like just really admire it's you know what's funny is like as you go into the space it becomes like envy of like I wanna be like that brand becomes more into admiration I think because you just get a concept of like what it takes to do what they're doing right when they launch in forty five hundred targets or whatever it may be it's just like your your head in the background you're just like that is crazy you know and then you find out that it's two people doing it or two people and an operator so as far as like brands that I really admire what they're doing I think um good Girl snacks right uh pickles like they're just like they're getting brand of the year like they're just across the board crazy specifically the fact that they're creating content one piece a day for 365 days grew their platform from zero to 100,000 followers in that time like I'll be honest Cody and I have been saying that for six months you know like hey let's do it and then we don't do it because we have all this other shit and I know that they're doing all the other stuff so that's like super impressive we will do it soon I got it I got a little plan but then Mercado I think does a Iberico ham and I just love their brand it's super impressive mezcal is obviously awesome bar company doing some incredible stuff love their branding love their flavors newer brand that I think is really dope is Haiku his name is escaping me right now which I'm very embarrassed about but they're doing like a you know electrolyte hydration play spin off of like a healthier version of Gatorade tastes incredible he was at liquid I or he was at Liquid Death for a minute and then companies like cadence and Leisure Hydration the hydration space actually as we're saying that is really interesting it's really interesting like are we it's like evolving the way that we think about hydration right at first it was just water and now I've always thought and I'll I'll let Cody cause I know Cody may have a couple of like insights on this too and I love this cause you know active and training and do whatever it is but ten years ago the idea of having this much sodium was like that's like yo like and now everybody and their mother is like yeah did you have electrolytes today you know and it's it's crazy how we evolve our consumer habits and like whether what's the good what's the bad from it I think these companies are doing a great job of it because they're not going listen cadence is like crazy they're like they're literally cadence drinks are like don't drink us unless you are actually working out like it's not good for you unless you are a legit athlete um but they're rolling out into target you know so they're gonna be adjusting I'm sure formulations and what not to be incredible and and yeah so the the hydration space is really really you know it takes us out of a moment in the snack space and I think my beverage background I'm always kind of also their volumes always crazy so I'm always looking at them like that's cool totally you never thought they never knew hydration space should be this big and this many brands that are all doing well it's kind of wild yeah awesome Cody any any things that jump out at you at all yeah I mean I I think one of the one of the brands from like our earliest days that we got connected to were uh Troy and Winston were the co founders of Sauz uh pasta sauce and they're just crushing it and in thousands and thousands and thousands of doors and they're just great human beings but I I you know beyond that I remember we got we got connected through through a mutual and we were kind of talking to them and they were kind of telling us about saws they were maybe a year year and a half in at that point I had just an idea this was like two and a half two two and a half years ago we got connected um and I just loved what they were doing in the space they were just kind of disrupting a traditionally stale category and as we kind of got talking we were like that's also what we're trying to do too right with with different more relevant branding and flavors and all of that and so you know it's always just kind of stuck with me and kind of watching their journey and how much they've grown is just so damn impressive and so they're one that that massively sticks out to me fishwife too kind of similar idea in in the respect that you know sardines canned fish right it's not it's not a net new um you know idea similar to pistachios they've been around right but they're doing it in a different way in a way that's kind of resonating with consumers and they have awesome branding as well super fun brand so I I think for us we we look at them a lot um and and kind of just pay attention to what they're doing um because we think it's super inspiring and and super cool totally yep and really appreciate the time you got a lot of really valuable insights here what's um what's the best place to follow along with with you guys personally and then what's the the best place you want to direct people to follow along with the brand these days as well I think uh right now for for us personally listen LinkedIn is fantastic we post on there um if you want to follow the socials you can find us through our Instagram page um both public on there but best is e June foods dot uh e june foods.com for our website at Eat June Foods on Instagram and TikTok TikTok is is empty for us at the moment as we're building out the entire strategy of it Cody and I are just too old we're just too old and we want to we want we have incredible people in our network that are like this is how you're doing it so we're building this content bucket and it's gonna be great and I know it's gonna resonate but you know I see companies like Prind if you ever seen them they're a parmesan like wine snack really new and then is is someone I've talked to over at dirty gut these kids are in college and they're just ripping and I'm just like damn you know what for age old generations and generations to to come it'll be after us and before us it used to always be you know the young people they don't wanna work they don't wanna work no let me tell you people these people are hustlers they're grinding out and they're really really impressive anyways side rant eat June foods.com at Eat June Foods Place to follow and um we look forward to connecting with you guys you know hopefully if you if you gave us a listen yeah yeah for sure awesome guys appreciate it I would just also add to that like feel free to drop us an email to uh hello at Eat June Foods June is spelled J o o n for anybody listening perfect awesome guys appreciate the time think that's the pod 45 people that are 45+ and I think fight that what lessons were type of mind for you oh cool that's been great um