Jason Wright - Scaling WILDE Into a $100M+ and 20,000+ Door Brand

Speaker: 00:00
All right. Welcome to Shelf Help. Today we're speaking with Jason Wright, founder and CEO of Wild, a brand that figured out how to turn chicken breast into a thin crispy chip. Um prior to Wild, Jason started feed granola, I think, in New in New York City back in the early 2000s, scaled it up a bit as kind of probably his first uh kind of foray into CBG to a certain extent. Eventually moved out to Boulder, started tinkering with some meat-based snacks that I think at the Colorado State Meat Science Department, which I want to dive into a bit. And then eventually had kind of a Eureka moment that I think ultimately led to the Wild product. And I think since I think about five years or so, grown to mid-eight figure business across 20,000 plus doors in the process of building out a really big facility, which we're going to touch on. Yeah, really great journey. Really excited to dive into it. Um yeah, Jason, maybe just first off, just for maybe the listeners that aren't as familiar with Wild, I'd love it to just get a quick lay of the land, just in terms of kind of the origin story, why behind the brand, core products in the lineup, and then uh we'll take it from there.

Speaker 1: 01:10
Yeah, man. Adam, listen, first, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah. Um, so where do we start? Wild. So you touched on a little bit of my my background with Feed Granola, launched that granola company 2005 in New York City. Was really the first time I'd been introduced to health food, was when I lived there. And I kind of just got fascinated with how health food and clean eating made you feel good. So I launched granola, I learned a lot, didn't have a lot to show for it. Um, but it really is what led me to Wild. And just at a you know, high level, Wilde was born at the bottom of a potato chip bag. I was eating a bag of potato chips one night. I love potatoes, I love French fries, but I hated the way they made me feel afterwards. And it wasn't from like a physical, like or from a from a, you know, it wasn't how you looked. It was more about it literally made me feel, and all carbs made me feel like this, like I'm on some type of drug, like I just don't have a clear head. And so I wanted to replace the potato with chicken breast, and I kind of made that my mission because I've always done well on a high protein, low carb diet. Uh, I should really say a lifestyle. I've been doing this for, I don't know, 30 years now. And so that was that was the birth of Wild, the idea. Um, I started tinkering around with like ways of how I thought I could do it in my kitchen. Um, and then I got introduced to Colorado State University there in Fort Collins. And uh and JBS had built them a big meat science kind of lab. And I started going up. I made a connection there with the um the dean and some of the professors, and I started going up and paying to use the lab. Some of the students would help. And we just started um working on how we would bring wild from an idea to a reality. And and we can go deep as you want to go, and there's a lot of twists and turns, and but that's really at the high level of how we got started.

Speaker: 03:17
Diving into the formulation and RD stuff uh a bit more. I think like the original product actually wasn't a chip at all. It was like a jerky grain seed protein bar-ish that didn't quite hit the mark. Assuming I got that right, like how long did you give the bar before you decided to scrap it? And like, how did you know it was time? Yeah, no, listen, I um I'm glad you brought it up.

Speaker 1: 03:40
I don't I don't always tell the story if I'm just telling it, you know, off the top of my head. But yeah, if we back up, uh so out after New York, uh, I moved to Austin, Texas, and that was really the idea of Wilde was in Austin. And there um I was training for a marathon, and I got to taking uh jerky on my run because as you ramp up in miles, like I needed something to eat. And I still had a love for granola. And so on a you know, on a run one day, I thought jerky is very hard to eat. You know, you got a package. I wanted something in a bar format. Some people would say, well, that existed, Jay. That that's called a stick. But I don't know. I didn't want a stick. I wanted something in my head that looked like a combination of jerky and kind bar. Yeah. That was a lot harder than than than I thought. Fast forward, we launched Wild as a meat-based protein bar. Epic had had hit the market. It's funny because I worked out at a local, um, now I think it's called Lifetime Fitness, but back then it was pure fitness, and it was right beside of Whole Foods headquarters on Lamar. And I was leaving there one day, and I'd started working on the bar idea, and I was leaving there, and they had a little juice bar and they had a bar, they had protein bars in there, and there was an animal on a package. And I kind of knew exactly what it was. I was like, holy heck, somebody's already far, you know, they're they're already way down the road on what I'm thinking. And uh little did I know I was gonna package over and see Austin, Texas. And so my wife and I went right home and I said, hey, we uh we gotta leave. Like I got bad news. Like there's a bar that's in town already ahead of us. And so we packed up and we went to Boulder, but we launched uh we launched um the bar in 2016, and there was like Mighty Bar, there was Crave Bar, there was there was other bars, Tonka Bar, and to be honest, the bar category as a meat-based protein owned it, and it was very small. No, none of the other brands were getting traction, including Wild. And and we went the avenue of trying to bake it, and that really, I mean, tell talking about not knowing what you didn't know, it did not make for a great product, taste-wise, texture-wise. And I remember after the first board meeting, I knew I was in trouble, and and I was thinking, how in the hell am I going to pivot outside of this? And and to be quite honest, if we really want to go deep in the story, I was in a depressed state and I was crushing potato chips and French fries, and I had turned, I was no longer the J of high protein, low carb. I was in a funk, and I was eating comfort. And at the bottom of that potato chip bag, I said, I can't do this anymore. Like there's got to be a better way. And that's when I thought about could I replace the potato with chicken breast? So the bar didn't last long. I think, you know, revenue-wise, we only got to bar to about 2 million in revenue, not a lot.

Speaker: 06:55
Fast forward a little bit, you're at you're working at Colorado State, working on RD stuff. Like, how long did it actually take from I guess get to a product you felt was ready to go to market? And like what did you start with? And like, you know, what are the kind of key, I don't know, iterations look like along the way?

Speaker 1: 07:12
Yeah, man, listen, it's uh it's a hell of a journey. So buckle up. You know, wild is two phases. So there's a I bring fresh chicken breast in, and you got bone broth, and you got egg white, and you, and you do what I call, you know, we we we uh craft it in what I call a wild potato, because then on the other side I got a slice, I got to crisp it, I got to season it, and I got a bag it. So early on, I kind of had an idea that we were gonna find um, you know, a USDA facility that could help us with bringing, taking fresh chicken breast, bone broth, egg white, tapioca flour, turning into what I call the wild potato. Then we were gonna partner with a pork rind facility and we were gonna finish it there. Okay. And I went down that path in 2017. We raised some capital, you know, which was a big story because I had to tell the current A investors, hey, we're gonna transition and pivot to this other product because we don't believe the current product that we went to market with is gonna be the winner. So anyway, we raise money. We we tell everybody we're gonna manufacture in a pork rind facility. We go down and test in a large pork rind facility that produces probably all of your pork rinds you might find in Whole Foods, you know, you might find in in sprouts and other places, uh premium pork rind, and we tested and it was a disaster. We learned very quick that how they do it, we were never gonna be able to do it that way. We made a big mess and uh we had some upset people that ran that manufacturing facility. We we basically shut down one of their uh cookers, and because we shut it down, meaning that our product just got stuck inside and we couldn't get it out. The one thing that we came away with is one of the guys down there named, and I won't name it, but they named a manufacturer of cookers that we should go call ASAP. And so we did that, and I had to go back to the investors and say, guys, listen, we we we're not gonna be able to do what I thought we were gonna be able to do. We're gonna have to do this ourselves. And so we uh luckily I had a group that was bleathing me, bleathing the idea, right? And so we go to uh the name of the manufacturer, we sit down with them out in California, outside of Oakland, and we uh we go through what you know I wanted to accomplish. We also I go there with a prototype working with a machine shop, and I tell this story, and I'll tell it here. I'm fine sharing it. So when I go back to Boulder from the pork rind facility, I got a German short hair pointer, and she and I always would go out to to uh Fritz farm and we would go out to uh she would run out there. And um, and anyway, we were going out, and this was about 30, maybe 20 minutes outside of Boulder. And long story short, we stopped at a stoplight. There happened to be construction going on beside me. There was bulldozers going up and down, they were going to expand the highway. And as I was watching that track, I had an idea. So I go to a machine shop, I ask them to create something, I take it out to this manufacturer, and I said, I'm trying to do this inside of one of your cookers. And that led me to building our first piece of equipment, which today we have a patent.

Speaker: 10:39
So that's awesome. That's very cool. You just built, are in the process of building, or maybe about to finish up now building a hundred thousand plus square foot facility, you're gonna be making a whole lot of wild chips. A lot of CPG founders and operators and investors or whatnot would probably tell brands to not vertically integrate this early, probably try to lean on Copacker as long as possible, not you know, invest a lot of your capital in the CapEx, that kind of stuff. Obviously, you're decided to go a different route. Obviously, it seems to be working really well for you guys. So for like what's um, I guess what were the key factors that push you to build versus go the Copacker route at the current stage of the business?

Speaker 1: 11:23
Well, you know, you bring up a lot of great points. I'm gonna take us back to after the uh the uh port Ryan facility. So we're we're we do go into a command. So we uh we build our first piece of equipment, and exactly what you just brought up, we were not ready to go do it ourselves. We did not have that on our radar. We we said, hey, we better go find somebody with some space and we can put this, you know, in and and install it in their building. And we found that. We found that in Martinsville, Virginia, which happens to be iconic or known for a racetrack. And back in the old days, it was known for, I think, furniture. And so, long story short, this big jerky manufacturer there had space. We installed our equipment, and that was our plan. That was our plan. We were gonna get them to scale, you know, phase two of wild. In phase one of wild, we were working with a manufacturer in Chicago. So we were gonna do, you know, wild potato in Chicago, we're gonna ship it to Virginia and and cook it off and and uh and and season it and bag it. Um it it was so much technology and stuff that we were learning and and new ways of doing something that we were showing everybody. And they were working with Conagar, they were working with Tyson, they were working with Crave, who was owned by Hershey at the time, and our secrets were getting out very fast. Okay, and and and and we this was all new new you know, ways of doing this. And what we found ourselves doing is we were actually doing it, me and my business partner, Philippe, and and we were living in Virginia in a hotel. Two restaurants you want to go to, that's it. And we were being charged a lot. I mean, with the toll fees, like it was a very, you know, we we were not it was not survivable. We were we were going to go under if we'd stayed there. So we had enough proof of concept in 2019 that our investors said, if we're gonna really do this, guys, we're gonna have to go do it ourselves. And uh and so in 2019 we made the decision of let's go find a building, let's bring both to one place. We knew we ran the model, we knew we'd save a lot, we could do it ourselves, we can control quality. Um, and back in those days, like we had so much to learn. Product was not great, you know. Uh early days, I apologize to anybody listening that that that hide wild in the early days, like, you know, it was this a huge learning curve. But 2019, we start looking, in 2020, we find uh, well, I'll back up. I will I do I think there's an important piece of the story. The reason we looked in the Midwest is because if you looked at like Ohio, Kentucky, and even Indiana, you would start to see that if you're gonna do one building and you need to get to like East Coast, West Coast, Northeast, you know, you really kind of need to be centrally located. And if you think about it, Kentucky's super centrally located. One of our board members had done a study, he he's the CFO of another big brand, and they had done a large study on where they should build their manufacturing facility, and they landed in Ohio, which is about an hour from me, state line, and they were very close to picking Kentucky. And so we got some piggyback off that, and so we started looking in Kentucky. Fast forward, we find the right situation here. We started building in 2020. We opened our facility in 21, we brought all the equipment in, and then we were off to the races. Now, I will tell you, yes, your question was about how did we make the decision to go and do it ourselves? We did not have a choice, Adam. Right. We were either going to meet up, bleed out, or we had to like we had to bite the bullet and go do it. And so that was what led us to opening that facility. And that was a 55,000 square foot facility, and today we're opening that 130,000 square foot.

Speaker: 15:35
What did financing uh structure look like?

Speaker 1: 15:38
Yeah, so the first one we had no credit. We had to go do it all ourselves. I had to raise equity. Yeah. And the first one's a 50,000 square foot facility. And I'll tell you something that that I didn't think about on this one, but on that one, um we so the guys that built the building for us are are now investors of ours, and they built all of our buildings, and they were well um they worked close with the um the governor and they worked close with the state. They built a lot of buildings for the bourbon industry, uh but the beauty of doing it in 2020 was we were in COVID and no one was coming around. Uh inspectors were not coming around, uh inspectors, uh so what I'm saying is that we we built the building, we got everything up to code, you know, we worked with major mechanical and electricians, but we didn't have any like ropes. We just built it quickly, we were in it, and I think the building inspector finally came over. We were actually running product when he gave us all of the necessary documents, the occupancy and stuff. And so, fast forward to this time around, we had to go through the whole nine yards, submit drawings, you know, and it's a much more sophisticated build-out. But we had a huge learning and we had some roadblocks and some redoes, and that just cost us time. But back to your question on the finances, this time around, we had some credit, you know, wild's north of 100 million. And so we were able to go out and get a lot of finances, you know, equipment financing, equipment lease. So we had to raise less. Now you still have to raise money to pay the payment, right? But but we had to raise less or we had to take less equity this time around to build out the facility. We were able to work with store capital, which is a great partner of ours, that does a lot of what we call fit up. They end up buying the real estate from the guys that we knew that built it. And then with that, they were able to roll in a lot of our installation cost. So that was the difference between this time around. But if you just take in and not talk high numbers, but what we built the uh first building for and and and what we did is probably text to 12x the cost a big building.

Speaker: 18:08
Wow. From a brand identity packaging design standpoint, Wild's definitely one of the more say visually distinct brands and the the better for you snack aisle, let's say. Like thinking back to those early days when you're building out and gonna get the brand identity voice tone and everything, how the brand presents itself and looks on the shelf. What was kind of top of top of mind for you?

Speaker 1: 18:29
You know, I'll tell you that uh I'm glad you asked that. This was what we went to market with. Okay. And I did not know what I was doing. And and I'll tell you that we uh, you know, we we we went to Whole Foods and and we went to Sprouts and we did a lot of demos and we listened to the customer, and um and what I learned quickly is people really responded to protein chips, not chicken chips. Yeah. Uh especially with my accent, it probably sounded like I was saying something else. Uh and then people were really curious about how you made it, and they were also curious about um what part of the chicken you were using. And that was something I overlooked. In 2019, we decided, or 20, I guess, we decided to uh to come out with this bag. You know, there's been some iterations, but we started talking about uh chicken breast, egg white, bone broth. And so really, you know, a lot of people think about protein, and a lot of people when we're in a protein craze, they add powder to it. But Wilde's foundation is we're built from chicken breast. You know, that's what we start with. And really the idea for Wilde is we uh and the marketing behind it is um we're just trying to take real food and turn it into a snack that we can all crave and feel good about eating. Um we're not trying to take Pop Tarts or Doritos and just sprinkle protein in it. Uh that's not that's not what we're what we're what we're after. And so um, yeah, that's that's that's kind of the like you know the key behind. I think transparency is just behind the package.

Speaker: 20:07
Naming is such an important but generally fairly ambiguous and more challenging process than I think people know or really think about. What what did that process look like for you coming up with the name Wild?

Speaker 1: 20:19
You know, I wanted a one-syllable word that was important because we were doing something that was wild, like no pun intending, but like uh you hear people say, like, that's wild, you know, what a wild ride, what a wild time. And I thought, like, what a wild idea, like to do chip or chicken breast. Yeah. And and so I played around with trying to figure out ways, unique ways to spell wild. Doing that through the internet, it led me to Oscar Wilde. If you know who Oscar Wilde is. So Oscar Wilde, um, you know, very, very uh witty, really didn't give, you know, two cents about what anybody thought, was very clever in his uh in his ways of of uh just how he looked at things, and I thought, man, I love it. And uh, and so the name Wild came from the spelling of his surname. And uh, and I gotta tell you, it took a while to uh to get that trademark. When I first showed up um and started talking to trademark attorneys, they were like, you can't trademark a surname. And so we took our time and we had to show proof of concept, proof of use in the market that that was actually attached to a product and not just a surname. We were not trying to trademark a surname. Anybody from a last name of Wild can open a restaurant, you know. We do get a little bit, or there are other brands out there I've seen that uh one is called Wild Terra, where they've completely ripped off our name. They're owned by General Mills, and uh they came out with a Wild Terra, and they have to spell it with an E. And so that's a whole separate conversation. But I just wanted to be able to own it and uh light Oscar Wilde. And some of our language, some of the ways we say things, there's a little bit of his wittiness in there. Yeah. He was the brand book for sure.

Speaker: 22:16
I love that. From a pricing standpoint, that's early days when you when you went to market. What did your strategy process look like for nailing down your go-to-market price? And then, you know, a few years later, has your approach to pricing changed at all?

Speaker 1: 22:30
Yeah, it's a great question. We launched in a 2.25 ounce. So if you remember back in those days, I think two and a half ounce was the pork rinds. Um, so you had Epic and you had 4505 and 2.5 ounce. And that allowed those guys to hit $5.99. So I couldn't do that. I had to go 2.25 ounce, and we hit $5.99 at Whole Foods Sprouts, and that was our strategy. We wanted you, we didn't think you could be over six bucks. And as people got into the brand and fast forward, we came out with a four-ounce, which sets at $7.99. We also came out with um small bags and multi-packs or four-pack at like $9.99. But in the early days, we really relied on that $2.25, and you can still find that $2.25 today at all um airports. So that's our airport uh strategy. And I think they sell that for like $9.99 or $8.99 in airports. But um, but our strategy early on, matter of fact, that was the $2.2.5. So if you look it up, like that says 2-2. I know it's backwards, but it's $2.2.5. And that was it. Now I changed this and went to a pillow bag because when we left the uh manufacturer down in uh Virginia, we lost that was not part of our equipment. We didn't own that. Okay. They had a piece of equipment that we were using, but we went to a pillow bag, and then that that uh but that was our strategy early on.

Speaker: 24:02
You mentioned Whole Foods and Sprouts. I think you landed on the shelf there pretty early on. I think I've heard you say, you know, Whole Foods kind of pioneered the protein based, protein-based snack set. Yeah, walk through that journey in terms of getting that first Whole Foods buyer meeting, getting on the shelf, like how that first meeting come together, the keys to actually getting on shelf.

Speaker 1: 24:27
Yeah, you know, it goes back. Um, so there's a guy, David Woods, Dave Woods, and he's moved on from Whole Foods now. He's over at uh CrossFit. He lives in Boulder. Actually, he lives outside. He lives, I think, outside of Denver. But uh he was a friend of mine. Um, I knew him. He was the uh he started out as the regional buyer for Whole Foods Rocky Mountain region, and he actually brought in the meat-based protein bar. And then he got promoted to snacks and he moved to Austin. And so he called and he was like, hey Jay, we're gonna create this. He was big into CrossFit, he saw the trend before anyone else saw it. He said, We're gonna we're gonna create this, he's gonna call it alternative snacks, but it's really gonna be protein. He said, and I'm gonna have pork rinds, and I'm gonna have, I'm gonna put you in there, and I'm gonna put a four-foot set within salty snacks, and we were all for it. And and it was just luckily I knew him. He was the timing was right, he saw it, he wanted to create this set, and um, and I cannot tell you how many times we tried to convince other buyers to do the same set. And um, and and it took a while for people to catch on. But that set was doing, it did really well for him. Uh, we eventually got Sprouts to sign up and do that set, you know, kind of move all those products near each other. Um, and then it took forever to get the grocery people um to start doing that, but like we would show them slides on what set we thought it should look like. And I never forget, we would get laughed out of the room. And you know, if you go to Kroger today, there's an actual four or five foot set, whereas Quest, Wild, Protein Doritos now, you know, there's uh simply protein. So there's five or six items that are that are now part of this protein set, but this guy, David Woods, kind of saw it, you know, before anybody.

Speaker: 26:27
What have you found has been some of the keys to driving velocity at Whole Foods? And I guess let's just say the broader natural channel, and then any big differences that you've seen in terms of the things that have the most impact from a velocity standpoint between the natural channel and let's just say conventional, you know, bigger, you know, the the Krogers of the world and you know the Walmarts of the world, let's say.

Speaker 1: 26:48
Yeah, man, listen, I so demos has been key for us. I know that's old school marketing thinking. Yeah, and I'm full I'm fully aware of that. And uh, but but there was an education piece of wild that people have to get around. And I think in marketing that we have done or we're doing and and internally what we've come up with in the positioning that will be brought to life here this summer, I think we finally have figured out how to do this. But before we, you know, have that figured out, the best way to do it was to just put a product in someone's hand and let them try it for themselves. Listen, we do we do well at Costco, and and and the reason is is because Costco has trained their consumer to go in and try a product. Whole Foods the same way, sprouts, you know, uh very similar. So um that has been uh you know the big the big driver of velocity has really been demos. Now we're starting to cross over where we've got a lot of influencers starting to talk about the brand. We've got um TikTok, we're starting to scale a bunch of creators on TikTok, and really they're driving disbelief. They're driving disbelief to their audience that you won't believe a product made of chicken breast is gonna eat like a cheese it, or you won't believe a product made of chicken breast can eat like a potato chip. And it's all about disbelief. I mean, listen, I know it sounds weird, but man, it tastes wild, and we got to get that message across. And I always tell our our our our and I know they get tired of me saying this, but I'm like, listen, guys, let's peel something back. If I can't believe it's not butter, did not say, I can't believe it's not butter. And they took the approach of telling you it was an alternative spread to butter crafted from I don't know, sunflower oil and whatever else, there's no chance it gets. But when you tell somebody you can't believe it's something, they automatically want to try to see if that statement's true. Yep. And I think for a while I've seen time and time again where people will be taken back because you say it's made of chicken. And I don't think they're, you know, they've never had anything made of chicken and a snack. And so by default, your brain just cannot connect, and you just like wonder, but then they try it and they are blown away. And uh, especially on this cracker Adam, I gotta get you samples. The cracker is is unreal.

Speaker: 29:21
I'll I'll I'll I'll take all the samples I can get. Expanding to door count beyond natural channel, getting more conventional distributors are obviously an important piece of that. What's been the distributor? What does the distributor journey look like for a while that as the brand has grown 20,000 plus plus borers?

Speaker 1: 29:37
Yeah, so in the early days, you would, you know, traditional UNFI, K He, you know, route to market. As we started to make a name for ourselves, we were uh starting to um, you know, I think maybe our first direct customer, I think, was uh I think was Target. We're now direct and you know, Costco and Sam's were direct at Kroger. A lot of the accounts have now gone direct. We still work with UNFI and Kahee in a big way. They feed Sprouts, they feed Whole Foods. Actually, on the West Coast, most of our business in Kroger is serviced through distributors, where on the East Coast it's direct. There's different warehouses they have, you know, East versus West. But, you know, we have we have a our commercial team now is about 50. Of that, I would say that 15 is our sales team. And we've started to build a really great team. The whole team's great, but we've like, you know, you continue to build out. You know, I remember when it was just me and Philippe and my wife, and we were trying to uh she would go in and and and be making boxes that we were gonna ship to Amazon, and and Philippe and I'd be running the product and um and now to grow and have you know 180 people at the facility, close to 200 now, and then 50 on the sales or the commercial team.

Speaker: 30:57
It's uh what is your approach to product roadmap strategy look like? And what does the journey or process look like that leads to the decision to ultimately bring a new SKU to market?

Speaker 1: 31:08
Hey man, you you you did your homework. I like that. Uh listen, I uh I learned a valuable lesson on that pork chip. So we launched a pork chip in 2021 when we made the commitment. What was it? Was it 20? Was it March of 20 when COVID really like took effect? And I think that's when they canceled expo. Yeah, pretty much March. Yeah. I made the commitment to launch the pork chip prior to that, Whole Foods. And and then we were supposed to launch the summer of 20, and then we had COVID, and so we we kicked a can down the highway. But long story short, by the time we got to launch, the chip was going to be made of uh pork loin. And when COVID hit all the NAE pork loin, like you couldn't get it. And so the other piece that we could use, this is going deep, but wild our process calls for a really lean cut of meat. So chicken breast, check the box, pork loin, check the box, turkey breast, check the box. Well, the other piece that you could use is the ham. And the ham on the pork is super lean, but when you say the word ham, people think deli. So I couldn't say great point. You know, I couldn't say, you know, craft it from from ham chip. Right. Yeah. So we were in a bad situation, so we ended up at the last minute calling it premium cuts of pork, and I think people just thought it was some type of pork rind. So the lesson I learned there was chicken, when you think about it, chicken is one of the most consumed proteins, if not the most consumed in the world. 99% digestibility, so it's one of the most healthy, if not the healthiest. Um, and no matter what religion you open up or what belief system you open up, everybody seems to check the box on chicken. They're pretty good with chicken. So I made the decision that day. We we disco'd pork, and I said, you know, chicken is what I started. That's the foundation of wild. Like, let's focus on forms, let's focus on cracker, and and we can talk about other things that we're focused on. But we made that decision after we discoed the pork chips, and we never intend, I never intend for us going back. Now we're focused on formats, eating occasions. And one thing I liked about the cracker was if you looked at the cracker aisle, I thought there was a huge opportunity in white space, and no one had really done a cracker right, and I felt we could, and and I, and I believe that with all my heart that we have launched a special, special product. Um and early readings on it are like bigger than I could ever imagine. We've only been at market two weeks, but I've got data. And uh, and and post that um we're focused on launching a tortilla chip at the end of the year built from chicken breast. Wow. And then and then we could come back and launch pita chip built from chicken breast. But when I think about all these products, like I would love to be the um snack that you turn to. We always say here, don't settle, don't give up. And I think right now, if you look at the cracker aisle, we don't want you to settle for empty snacking. So we're gonna bring something where taste is not a trade-off, but you feel good about it after you eat. And that's really what I want. So if you look at that, if you looked at, you know, go back to that triangle, you know, that everybody snacks on in the chip aisle, go over to the deli section and that pita chip that everybody snacks on, you know, I got my eye on that. And if you go over to the flat pretzel category and that flat pretzel that everybody snacks on, I got my eye on that. So that's really, we have all those capabilities now with this new plant. And with the what we learn all the years of the cracker, sorry, the chip, we applied the knowledge to the cracker. The cracker, we learned something there that now allows me to to concentrate on dough forms. So, you know, you start with a dough on cracker, you start with dough on pretzel, you start with dough on pita chip. And listen, it you know, if if I could go over with today, I mean maybe I would have started with uh knowing what I know now. I mean, maybe maybe that the product looks more like a Pringle. So we just have opened up another level of knowledge now that allows us to really come strong with some great snack um that you know can compete with the legacy product.

Speaker: 35:48
What have you found are the keys to a successful new product launch in just in terms of one hitting your budget and then two actually launching on time?

Speaker 1: 35:59
Yeah, so budget-wise, that's tough, man, because I don't know how many times I've had to go back and say, hey, you know, this line that we're building, I'm gonna need a little bit more. We're not quite done. Budget-wise, I think some of this stuff is so new technology, you don't know what you don't know is you're putting this together, you're installing it. And and you know, I'll give you an example uh with the cracker. Well, you don't you won't know this until we get there. I didn't know it until we actually ran it in real time. But we have some timing issues, and what I mean by that is you know, the cracker coming out of the oven, trying to go into a slurry, the way we flavor it, um, which is olive oil and seasoning, by the way, it was a big deal for us to not do uh to do something with olive oil. But if you have any stoppage downstream, you know, maybe they're not sheeting right or something's going on, what you learn is you need an accumulation area, kind of like a dam. You need to build up a big quantity. So when you let the dam open, you can just start a steady flow feeding through the seasoner and feeding through the baggers, and all this can be steady eddy. And we did not think through that well, and so that was something that you know kind of bit us and we're working through right now. But uh, what was the second part of that question?

Speaker: 37:23
Oh, just in terms of that um other than budget, it's like the keys to actually launching on time because it seems like oftentimes that doesn't happen.

Speaker 1: 37:31
Yeah, and then and that didn't happen this time. So basically we were we were going to be in market. We had told everybody we'd be in market right after expo, and uh we were the last piece of equipment coming from Europe was a little bit late. And then there was uh we we we thought this was gonna be the easiest piece of equipment to one install and then two get up and running. And it turned out that that was the hardest piece. And we had some uh PLC problems, like out of our control, where I don't know if something got damaged in shipping from Europe, but we had some PLC problems, and it was not this is not like equipment that's off the shelf, and so uh manufacturer had to scramble, get us up and going. That went through like four weeks of back and forth. Finally, we started running, but we learned that um, you know, we we we have a we have a dough that has chicken breast and bone broth in it, four cheeses. We had sticking issues. So, long story short, we end up launching in May. You know, we're uh we're a month and a half late. We're working with all the retailers trying to explain our problems, but you know, I get it, those guys are got a hole in the shelf. So it it's that's been that's been a challenge. Everybody's working with us. I would tell you, once we get it on shelf, trial is being driven a lot by demo right now. Uh-huh. There's a big campaign coming in the summer with a lot of influencers that'll hopefully drive it, you know. But right now in the early days, the quickest we could do is demo. So you'll see demos at Costco, uh, you'll see demos at Sam's, you'll see demos at uh Whole Foods and Sprouts.

Speaker: 39:06
Yep. Last question for you. I think um 2018 raised 1.3-ish million in seed, another like one and a half, I think, in Series A, two years later, and then you did a bigger round, I think 20 million or so of Series A uh in 2024. Just for some founders that are on a similar journey, they're getting some traction, they've raised, seem like they're on track to raise some money, probably have the chance to raise a large rounds in the future, just from a the founder's point of view, in terms of kind of tips and tricks you might give them in terms of how they should be thinking about structuring structuring their pitch, what's in their pitch in terms of the in the difference between raising at that more of the you know, the the seed stage versus raising at more of that growth stage at Series A where you just raise that 20 million bucks. You've obviously obviously got some more historical numbers that are part of the story. Like what you feel like are kind of some of the key differences between the two to be successful at both stages, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 40:02
Yeah, for sure, man. I think in stage in early stages, proof of concept, if you can have it in one or two stores, oh man, it validates it so much, right? I think that's so important. And I'll tell you one way to get there is we opened up a note, and um because we didn't get the valuation we wanted, we opened up a note with a cap, and we had early people invest in it, and then that converted into the big round. But what it did is allowed us to get some proof of concept. Now, listen, that was on the bar, and I look back and I don't know how we raised money on the bar. I I think Epic was hot at the time, meat sticks was hot, people were coming with meat bars, there was a lot of talk about it, energy behind it, and I think people just believed that you know this is gonna be a big, big idea, big category. It didn't happen. Things like that happened, you know, and then uh and then we went through um, you know, some some down rounds as we were getting the chip to market just because investors pay for sales, and we were going through a lot of uh a lot of uh you know early capex and early equipment. Once you can get proof of concept, right, people can see that that you know it it's it's it's being pulled from the shelf. That's a that's an easier sale. Then if you really need to raise a large amount, I think you need to really think about the TAM, the total addressable market. I think you need to really think through, we think about this all the time. One reason it's leading us to each drive drive the launch of innovation that we're coming with is what is the TAM on the product? And you start to look at like tortilla and you start to look at cracker and something that is closer to the form that people are already eating. But but I would I would really do some um modeling on you know your velocities and then and then what the potential TAM could be. A lot of these investors are interested in how big it can be one day, right? I mean, that's what we're interested in. We know the early days are gonna be struggle and we're gonna have bumps on the road, and that's part of it. But how big can it really be? And I think when you can try to tell that story through proof or data, that's gonna go a long way.

Speaker: 42:14
Totally. That's really helpful. Really helpful. Well, yeah, Jason, it's been great. I appreciate the time. What's the best place for people to follow along with you and all the expertise you've got? And then where what's the best place you want to direct people to follow along with the brand these days? Yeah, man.

Speaker 1: 42:27
So LinkedIn, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. I haven't been as active lately just because I'm buried in a manufacturing facility, but uh you can always get in touch with me on LinkedIn and then the the brand. Um, I would, you know, Instagram, follow us there. Most of our announcements, almost all of our announcements, are always on Instagram. I think that's probably our best outlet of information. We are refreshing the website, but you know, a lot of people don't visit websites anymore. You know, a lot of people, it's all about social TikTok, but for me, you know, LinkedIn, the brand has a LinkedIn as well. And uh yeah, we'll have uh some more announcements coming soon. And uh, we look to have a great summer and um you got to try that cracker, and I'm gonna send you the cracker because you're gonna learn. Perfect. I'll take it. It eats like the cracker we grew up on. That sounds perfect.

Speaker: 43:16
Well, awesome, Jason. I really appreciate the time. I think uh I think that's the pod.