Mac Anderson - Building the #1 Kimchi and Kraut Brand in the U.S.

all right welcome to Shelf help Today we're speaking with Mac Anderson Co Founder Chief Commercial Officer of Cleveland Kitchen believe number one kimchi Kraut brand think the No. 4 refrigerated pickle brand in the US as well born out of kind of an upbringing centered around the farmers market his mom started so really cool journey definitely excited to get into it Mac just first off for the listeners that that maybe aren't that familiar with with Cleveland Kitchen maybe just give us quick lay of the land in terms of kind of origin story why behind the brand core products in the lineup and then they guys are in a bunch of places and maybe throw out a few kind of core places people can get their hands on them and then we'll go from there yeah absolutely and thanks so much for having me on Adam excited to chat through our story here today um so essentially you know my brothers and I started the business at farmers markets as you know you alluded to in 2014 versus a side hustle but we like to say our story started well before that my mother actually founded the network of non profit farmers markets here in Cleveland she just actually retired after 30 years this year so she's living the good life but has built that up to now you know about 14 markets throughout the city and throughout the seasons but um you know we we very much built a passion and an understanding I think most family businesses whether you're for profit or non profit will probably kind of resonate with this but child labor laws tend to go out the window and you're very much a part of that business from the early days so for me it was basically you know four years old on my brother was seven or eight our older sister uh you know 10 10 11 or 12 and uh we were all out there slapping produce working with farmers helping set up these markets from you know the very first one all the way through you know despite having various finance internships in college we'd be managing the markets on the weekends you know that afforded us a great respect for small businesses for growers and producers I think for the local food system whether that was just consumers coming and seeking better for you natural products well before we had anything like a Whole Foods in Cleveland or just seeing that farm to table movement grow here where chefs were really able to develop menus work with those farmers forge those relationships and and bring a better food scene to Cleveland so that had a huge tremendous impact on us and of course as we were getting older and managing those markets we started to really see what made a great food product how those were being packaged you know especially with the advent of social media how these brands were engaging with consumers and building out their brand and we really took notice when a few of these brands would end up on local grocery store shelves so I think that always stuck with us and um you know as my brother was living in in the southeast in in Virginia kind of in banking after school he was missing that traditional Cleveland fare which is very Eastern European it's not necessarily our background but if you're from Cleveland the poboys kielbasa pierogi sauerkraut all those things are kind of comfort food and so he was just finding a nice respite and break from his his banking days by chopping up fresh vegetables and fermenting on the weekends and then he really loved the not only the flavor and the depth of flavor but the way it made him feel with those gut health benefits um fast forward he moved back to Cleveland to work for Key Bank met my sister's fiance Luke Visnick at the time who was an architect but was also kind of fermenting as a hobby so he you know his grandmother was always fermenting kraut when he was a kid so he kind of taken that recipe and they were just getting to know each other over a beer snacking on each other's varieties of krauts and just realized um you know they had a better product than they'd seen on the grocery store shelves theirs was fresh crunchy delicious it wasn't pasteurized so you get those gut health benefits and of course they taught me how to ferment one weekend when I was back home from school so my buddies were wondering what the heck was going on in our kitchen but you know we we again realized we had a delicious albeit strange hobby on our hands and from there you know we kind of just kept developing recipes and did what we'd seen dozens of times before and and brought our brand and those products to the farmers market to continue iterating and tweaking and get that you know direct consumer feedback I feel like there's often times pretty kind of polarizing views about building business with family yeah no absolutely I think I think any co founder relationship you're going through so many you know crest and troughs together there's gonna be challenges there's gonna be huge wins so that always needs to be a very special relationship um and can be challenging at times but you know I grew up my brother was my hero my mentor so that was kind of an easy working relationship and it is unique in the sense that like we can have a you know we're screaming argument rarely happens but it happens and then you know 20 minutes later the next day we're we're looking to grab a beer or hanging out and so I think the bounce back on that was has has been very helpful you know you're in the trenches with someone that you trust and have known your whole life I think with Luke getting to use you know my brother and I work together very well we have similar outlooks and and working styles Luke being from an architecture background you know more rigidity things like that he had to get used to our working style we had to get used to his but again you know we're all gathering around the the family dinner table on Sundays still we we get together all the time you know I look first and foremost he's a phenomenal husband and father and a great business partner so I think it adds a layer to your co founder relationship that you know means more than maybe a good friend or someone that you might have been paired with or having a similar idea so I think there is a ton of benefits but there's always going to be those challenges and those things you need to work through yeah did you guys learn feel like like looking back at any like big lessons you guys felt like you Learned about consumer behavior during all those years that kind of drove some of the decisions you guys made and continue to make at at Cleveland Kitchen yeah I think that direct consumer feedback early on is invaluable I mean obviously at a farmer's market you know you do have folks that are they're coming there with an open mind they're more willing to try new things they're probably much more conditioned to be seeking out you know healthier better for you options you know they're there to spend money and fill up their their fridge or pantry so I think that definitely helps it's also you know a time where you can truly engage get flavor profile feedback and you know it's one of a few places I think especially in those early days of of R&D where you can truly get you know great consumer feedback and they are paying for it so that was invaluable we also as I made that point earlier chefs you know Doug Cats comes to mind the team at Spice Ben Babinroth here in Cleveland like these chefs were building their restaurants on the backs of those farmers markets and that access being available so we were able to get direct feedback from James Beard award winning now chefs who know flavor profiles and we could tweak those recipes it also drove you know just in those conversations hey what are you using on this this is what I love to use it on you know what are those points in your pitch that are really kind of driving that consumption it truly it truly is I think invaluable in those early days you're in the pitch totally for just some of those kind of earlier stage operators out there that are just starting to get some real traction with something that they're building but they've got you know full time jobs as well like when did you guys pull the rip cord and and quit your day jobs to go in and did you guys have kind of like a predefined checklist like okay when we get to these certain milestones it's gonna be time to take a leap or just kind of a you guys all agreed at some point this just feels like right let's let's do it yeah I think you know for me I was working in corporate finance at Jones Day for the first year and then I had I had left to manage portfolio so that was a much more flexible job kind of building a financial planning business which allowed me to go and call on grocers and retailers so that kind of extended potentially my runway to keep working you know Luke being that architecture background you know I think that landed itself so well to build building out our first facility to putting those processes in place and then drew leaving the bank and and for a while he was actually the general manager at the initial kind of shared kitchen that we started at so that he could have some income in you know I think it was a little different for each of us that first year and a half while we were testing iterating before we launched into retail in late 2015 we leave our office jobs we get to the commercial kitchen at seven PM we'd change out of our suits and work till 2 or 3 in the morning and then sell as much as we could on the weekends and you know it definitely was a lot of hustle less sleep but it um really allowed us to I think the variety really helped so it didn't feel like so much work at the time it was fun we were on our new adventure we could keep putting cat not pulling cash out of the business and then for me I was able to move back in with my mom I didn't have a 401k to cash out um Luke and my sister ended up for six months doing that and even when we decided to quit you know I think we wanted to have our first small capital raise in place be selling in retail and devote all of our time but for those first you know year and a half we paid ourselves 200 bucks a month all of our production employees where we were often times it's not every day on the line next to them we're making far more than us so that's I think the caveat you have to and the sacrifice you have to be willing to make like it's going to be very lean times and if you can plan for that if you've kind of had an established career and you've been thinking about that you know it helps a little better more to have those savings but if you don't have them and you're young I think it makes it a lot easier in my case to just be flexible and say hey I'm gonna go crash on mom's couch for a while right back to some of those early days of formulation R&D obviously without giving any way you know too many trade secrets like what were some of the kind of key variables you got playing around with their kind of key tweaks made along the way became like the first the first versions that you kind of played around to the point maybe that that last one you said okay this is right we feel like we're confident in bringing this bringing this to market so in the initial trials Luke and drew made I think 30 different batches flavor profiles and then we kind of honed in on of course we wanna have that classic of course we wanna have you know a few flavor differentiations but again those early farmers market days were so invaluable I think also being at the shared kitchen and also having you know a lot of chef relationships where we could ask them hey what flavor profile would this go into but we were getting direct feedback from consumers on our you know early heroes skews the Nar Nar was a very spicy Narley crowd and you know we just see some consumers be like wow this is way too spicy for me while others were you know very excited about it coming back asking what we put in there to make it so addictive so we kind of had to find that middle ground well of course it's gonna have some heat and you know if you don't like spicy don't eat the spicy thing but you know specifically our beet red right that had sugar initially so it's called the sweet beet and we just noticed that healthier early adopter consumer didn't want as much added sugar in there so how can we add carrots and beets into this rather than just being red cabbage to add that natural sweetness and to really get a flavor profile that worked but also kind of met the needs of the consumer so there were a lot of little tweaks like that and still I mean we continue to develop our products you know it's naming conventions we started with a classic Careway just a year and a half ago we switched that to the classic sauerkraut and we saw a 30% increase on those velocities simply because maybe the average consumer who is new to sauerkraut and is like hey I really wanna try this for gut health or I wanna throw this on my hot dog or Reuben might not know what Caraway truly is even though it is in pretty much every traditional Bavarian style sauerkraut so it's just making those little consumer tweaks working with those consumer inputs to always be iterating and improving but I think in those early days it was truly invaluable to have both direct consumer feedback but also work with great chefs on the on the flavor profiles totally it's been is you guys have gotten to a point where you're processing I imagine you have tens of millions of pounds of cabbage and cucumbers and what not yeah so I mean that's that's definitely been a process scaling up um but making sure that we have the same quality and consistency from our product is always always been important I think you know where we typically merchandise especially in conventional grocery is produce and we're actually able to help those produce departments and those retailers over index on their e commerce sales you know I don't know about you but I still am very hesitant to have you know a Doordash shopper Instacart shopper that does they do great but you know do I want them picking out my avocados or my fresh greens are they gonna take the same amount of care but items like ours that are consistent from batch to batch and are the same every time you get them that that is something that the consumer is very comfortable with so that's of the most priority to us so it was really about you know how can we make sure the ratios are correct how can we make sure every step change we take to producing you know tens of millions of this pounds of this from you know our humble beginnings is is that same flavor profile so there's been a lot of science into that and then just the process updating what machinery are we using to you know take those first batches and that consistency and quality up in terms of forms of factor heard you say you touched on your brother in law architect he's super invaluable bringing building out the production facility and I think I've read that you guys one of the main reasons you guys decided to do that was just you didn't feel like there were any co packers out there that could really make the product to your spec I guess my question be if that had if that was different that had changed and or maybe now you discover that there were one or a few that actually could do that like do you think you guys still would have built out an in house facility if this something popped up you think you guys would make a transition now or you guys feel like that was really the right decision I mean it it was definitely a tough decision and has been challenging to build manufacturing for us we simply couldn't find the quality the texture from someone who is willing to give us line time at all and I you know obviously selfishly still don't think there's anyone matching that from us but I think it's it's proven invaluable it has definitely added value to the business we control everything from not only our quality which is Paramount but our service levels you know 99% plus is our metric and we never go below 99% on time and in full and if you're working with a third party you can't always control from that it does tend to add more complexity to your supply chain but it is a great way to get out to market fast and I think in those early days if we could have had that partner I think we we might have it would have allowed us to scale quicker and just focus on the sales and marketing but again especially you know in the post you know covid era I think what we all saw when supply chain was tight those brands that didn't have you know enough buying power were off to the wayside you know they weren't able to get runs for several months people were focused on keeping things in stock or their core items so I feel like you lose a little bit of control on on your own destiny and then in terms of enterprise value I I do firmly believe that you know we we've driven a lot but it has taken a lot of capital expenditure obviously you know we've got almost 150 employees today and you know 90 of those are on our production floor and and our team members there you know for me and us as as as Cleveland boys it's it's really rewarding to have that kind of workforce and be able to provide those jobs but it is definitely I think today we've got to a place where our asset is is phenomenal we're SKF certified we got a state of the art facility 70,000 square feet here in Cleveland and it also offers us the opportunity to only with strategic partners you know maybe look at private labeling for some retailers and we have done so in the past and we currently do and that affords us a more strategic relationship with select retailers you know we wouldn't go out and start private labeling for a competitive brand but yeah if someone were to say today we can we can do all the things that you can do would you come with us we wouldn't we wouldn't you're also giving up margin but a new product innovation we had a in when we early launched our pickles with Walmart we needed to have a co packer so we found a very quality partner uh out of New Jersey and we had a great relationship with them but as soon as we could bring all of that in house through our acquisition and build out of our facility we did so and it's the same with our sauces you know until we prove something out in retail it doesn't make sense for us to put in you know a 10 million dollar sauce packing line just yet but we still are making a considerable amount of those inputs and we've got a great partner there so it just depends I think on the product line and the life cycle I feel like fermentation is a unique process for for maybe some other operators that are in kind of very early stages of building out a CPG brand that's focused around fermentation any kind of recommendations for things that could they should keep top of mind or like pitfalls to avoid yeah no 100% I think keeping the you kind of your your facility there's so much that can affect fermentation from temperature to you know what is in the air can affect your quality we Learned that kind of the hard way early on we were in that shared kitchen and there was a kombucha producer in that same shared kitchen and we ferment at a considerably lower temperature than does kombucha so they were kind of leaving and jacking up the the overall temp of the building and that would kind of cause our like we lost several runs of our you know it was only 1,000 £2,000 at the time but for us it was very meaningful and we had to throw that away and and restart I think ensuring that your environment as much as possible is is you know very much controlled and then you know I think it offers a it's one of the most food safe processes you can run does naturally just kill off any pathogens and creates much better shelf life and a very safe product so I think that is an advantage versus a lot of other food products that you have safety kind of built in to your product and to the identity of the product but you made an earlier point about scaling you know how do you make that jump and I think that's where you know you go around the country you go to different regions of Whole Foods the Midwest is gonna have a different smaller you know premium sauerkraut provider and provider than will Florida or will SoCal and that's because you know it's certainly not easy everything is is challenging but scaling from you know zero to a million bucks is a much different animal than to you know mid mid eight figures high high nine figures whatever you're at but really scaling that is challenging to keep that quality and consistency so it's just how can you best scale that process while ensuring that those flavors and those qualities are are the same but I think it's a great space I think you know luckily and obviously the American consumer is very much more aware of what fermentation can do for your body can do for flavor and I think we're just getting started there so it's a great category for sure thinking back to when you guys are building out brand identity visual identity packaging design what works kind of some of the key variables that were top of mind for you and you're yeah building out kind of brand identity positioning voice for the brand yeah no hundred percent I think that's another thing that's ever evolving for us you know we started and the Cleveland name obviously here was was very easy for us to get and gain notoriety for us to get into those early retail stores but you know that definitely presented challenges as we scaled so early on we were lucky enough there was a a much larger business and a man who had exited an engineering firm that came out with Cleveland Whiskey and he had a very unique process where he essentially was kind of compressing the the barrel through the barrel and in very unique to really quickly create a barrel aged whiskey I can't say it's my favorite whiskey but what he did was invest significantly into market research and was very kind to share that with us actually our first whiskey deal did contain Cleveland whiskey shared that with us and you know Cleveland meant across all the major cities LA New York Chicago Miami it resonated in the sense that it kind of identified with a hard working mentality a blue collar trustworthy place I think it it stood for something certainly for us you know we're putting our city on our back it's always often overlooked it's a great place to be especially as kind of we discussed before this between may and October your best time to be in Cleveland but we took a lot of pride in that and I think it certainly helped us have that identity but we've continued to evolve on on what that means to us what our brand voice is we've always kind of had this you know fun playful but very hardworking slightly gritty edge to our brand and you know marrying that up with who our consumer truly is looking for these fresh delicious fermented foods has been you know an evolving piece but our director of marketing Amanda Schumaker has been phenomenal in that process over the last two years and you can see it reflected in our brand refresh where we've actually brought Cleveland much larger in the logo because that is ownable versus kitchen but yeah I mean like Giant Eagle's a great example we were crushing it in Ohio and Indiana and I was speaking with the buyer and he was like I'm just very hesitant to bring you into Pittsburgh you know we're sports rivals and this and that and I was like if you just give me the opportunity like authorize my excuse I will go store by store and sell it in can you let me do that he said I'll I'll let you do that and it was I don't know four months later at the Fancy Food Show he comes up to me with his hand extended he just said I'm so sorry I ever doubted you you guys are knocking it out of the park and we've just seen hey we make it in New York we make it in LA we make it in Pittsburgh we also realized when we were doing demos that nobody in Pittsburgh really cares about us as a sports team cause we're not very good but it's a fun learning from a go to market retail perspective I think you can correct me if I'm wrong but I think today the brand is sold in like roughly 15,000 ish stores what were the keys like thinking back to going scaling from 100 to 1,000 doors and then were there any like big differences in terms of scaling from 1,000 to 10,000 in terms of what your approach needed to look like yeah yeah definitely um I think even those first 24 doors being Heineken's our you know first local retail partner you know I was calling on that guy for what felt like months and months we were seeing so much success in the farmers market scene at at you know local one off independents and getting write UPS working with key chefs in Cleveland but he kind of said hey I have a local sour crowd like I don't think I need another one but I finally convinced him to take that meeting you know within 15 minutes he not only loved the quality and and the the flavor profile but I think we were also entering at not an ultra premium price point we were certainly more premium than you know your traditional bagged mushy pasteurized sauerkraut but we were still very accessible and that's always been critically important for us but you know a month or two later I was going in to sell him a couple additional skews he just told me he was like what are you guys doing I mean of course we were hustling we were spreading the word through social at every farmers market hey you can buy us at at Innes we were doing as many demos every day as we possibly could but he's like if you did if you would have told me you'd be selling this much sour crowd I wouldn't have believed you like what are you doing and he flipped his monitor around and showed me the data and we were not only beating every national competitor but we were adding so many incremental sales to the category and just being data driven as we were from our prior lives I just kind of asked him I said hey listen will you send me that screenshot right there and I think it's also critical those first retail partners that take you in do feel a lot of ownership on your brand they feel like they helped get you their start and they totally did and you can leverage that you can use them as true partners and he was willing to share that with with me and we took that data incorporated into our deck showed the incremental sales Hines and Cena luckily for us was a very well respected retailer nationally and that definitely helped us get into the wagons of the world you know get into new distributors in New York and continue to expand but I think there was a lot more scrappiness in those first you know 0 to 1,000 stores you know doing doing as many store visits as you can gowering LinkedIn to find buyers sending cold emails popping up at stores as much sampling and demoing and ride alongs with distributors as you can possibly do you know again I was lucky to sleep on friends couches in in New York and Chicago and just build the market and I try and leave the place cleaner buy some beer and you know have some fun but it was a lot more scrappy that next stage as you're starting to speak to you know the much larger retailers is really about getting data driven understanding what man what matters to both the retail partner as a whole as well as to that category manager you know they're incented on category growth margin so how can you tell that story to them of hey we're going to be adding incremental sales we're going to help your overall category grow and it's at a great margin and accessible price point we're also going to build out a robust promotional schedule so it's all those little learnings I mean we didn't know we didn't know but we were lucky enough to to learn very quickly and surround ourselves with you know great friends in the space as well as investors and advisors that and I've kind of been there done that more than willing to help advise as we can continue to scale it's it's being strategic around exactly that how are we driving basket growth that matters to the overall retailer how are we truly impacting the category and taking leadership what consumers are we helping them unlock you know Walmart's very focused on that premium shopper and that's exactly who we bring in so it's all of those pieces as you continue to scale and learn um that really level up your selling story and your approach yeah totally 1 spot for kimchi and kraut does your has your strategy started to differ at all now that you're kind of defending territory trying to make the gap between you and No. 2 No. 3 etcetera bigger versus when you guys are trying to you know break into the the top five yeah I mean the the strategy definitely has changed you know a little bit of that that I didn't necessarily mention was you know we were we were three kids from Cleveland which is not necessarily hasn't been yet a bevy of emerging brands and and food food business startups so you know we had to pay bills we had to keep this thing running I was almost like any store that's got a pulse I'm gonna go try and sell our like products into and wherever they wanna merchandise it but that has certainly evolved you know we had an early unlock of produce being a great fit for us and we were able to really build that out as a beachhead we saw same store sales double in our local Whole Foods when they ran out of space in dairy and shifted our set just to produce and we took that to Giant Eagle and built that whole produce programming and that has always been our focus especially for conventional because you get those more premium healthy shoppers whether you're shopping at a Walmart a target or a Whole Foods if you're stopping in the produce section you're cooking at home and you're seeking out the healthiest ingredients you possibly can get and that also frames up in the consumer's mind the usage so it can go on on salads and wraps and really be seen as that fresh crunchy vegetable rather than you know next to hot dogs it might be more seen as just oh I'm gonna throw this on my brother hot dog a few times a season so we built that out we're definitely seeing some followers trying to get in so we're playing a little defense there I'd say but we're you know where I see the biggest opportunity for us and and all fermented and you know I think kimchi had established itself especially kind of the heritage brands that hail directly from Korea as well as the great Asian American brands here they had landed on produce and we saw that and and built around them but what we saw was all ships rose you know we bring new consumers into that category specifically much more attuned to the American census versus simply hitting those Asian American consumers that are so used to the product and we saw them grow double digits whenever we entered so all ships are rising I think our biggest opportunity is on offense you know we have such an opportunity to educate the American consumer show them how great delicious fresh and crunchy fermented vegetables can be and that's really the the opportunity I think of course we wanna continue to be number one and and win out and we will do that but I think all ships will continue to rise as we really educate and our greater category is you know processed vegetables a 12 billion dollar category that's value added and offers convenience to the consumer who wants to still have home cooked meals and that great nutritional benefit and with ours they they literally have to do no work they open up a pouch they pop the top of one of our pickled vegetable items and and there they go you guys acquired Sonoma Winery in 2022 tell me like you know the highlights bullets like tell me a bit about that journey and kind of what LED to that and how that went yeah yeah obviously our first acquisition you know Sonoma Dave Earth was a great founder we felt that he had you know the highest quality and best flavored pickles on the market they were mostly West Coast natural but he built a healthy little business and kind of in passing tongue in cheek he'd mentioned a few years before this discussion all started hey if you guys ever want to buy a pickle manufacturer let me know you know through the pandemic and supply chain issues afterwards we had several customers just noting how while we were doing maintaining our service levels not taking cost and specifically Walmart asked us to accelerate our innovation pipeline around pickles a couple years and say hey you know competitive set in this category is not meeting you know anywhere close your service levels can you do this for us and I said you know absolutely you've been great partners give me a couple thousand doors and a couple skis and we'll go out and build it um so we initially started on that process but we knew we wanted to own manufacturing and we knew that Sonoma had a number one just a a great team great awareness and understanding I think what's also was very helpful was you know not only the science and process but the grower relationships that they had on the cucumbers was critical so we were very excited to um you know start that process um you know integrating we we've since brought that entirely back to Cleveland and we operate out of our standalone facility here in Cleveland Ohio that was not the original intent you know we we did build out a a very nice facility in Santa Rosa but you know there's some challenges there and um it just we kind of forced to do that but it's it's net net worked out extremely well for us I will say you know the integration is always going to be tough especially on a manufacturing team but kind of pushing your culture over and ensuring you're all going marching to the same drum and we were really after continuing to to support and push the Cleveland Kitchen brand so that was critical to have that strategy out of the gate totally if I came to you gave you a call tomorrow and said I've been running a CPG brand for a while I told you hey I'm about to acquire you know a a similar business kind of a similar uh scenario um any kind of recommendations you give me or things to keep top of mind yeah I I think I'd I'd make sure you know fully understanding especially when you're buying you know smaller brands are not as sophisticated like truly diving into what their sales relationships are what the data is you know are if you've got a new launch and it looks like products are are doing quite well and I'll give you an example like Trader Joe's had taken the Sonoma Manhattan which are a half sour they're an excellent half sour pickle and we felt from the data that they're doing quite well those were discontinued a year after but we had actually put a lot in place around the manufacturing of those so really understanding you know is this product truly sticking around in a key retailer you're building around also you know ensuring that there's not too much cannibalization that would come from like it fits it works with your greater portfolio now these are consumers that you might not have reached or they are the same consumer and you can even continue to grow their basket if they haven't met your brand but how can this be a 1 + 1 equals three type of deal is critical and I think you know we had a lot of learnings net net it worked out quite well for us but there's definitely things that I would go back and better understand so that we could you know maybe build that deal a little differently sure totally last question for you Mac I know you're so in ingrained in clove and kitchen but any any brands or just trends kind of in general in the CPG space overall that you've been kind of just tracking on the side for fun or things that have been kind of piquing your interest at all yeah no absolutely I think there's there's so many greater macro trends we're seeing productivity protein International flavors definitely one of my most uh one of my favorites just kind of opening up the American palette to new flavors and the American consumer really seeking that out I definitely some great selfishly that I both advise on or invest in or just love the teams but um you know magic mind it our office runs on that that stuff it's it's fantastic productivity shot and Williams a good friend um in that space but on the beverage side I really love Bowie uh Agua Fresca Victor's a a great founder and that juice is is so good I'm a iced tea fan so I love half day as well kind of getting that fix in that nostalgia flavor but not sacrificing uh too much sugar and also helping out with some fiber I really love you know brownie pasta those guys are crushing it uh we've been great friends with Aaron and the whole team there for a long time and just that story of just continued iteration and finally finding a product unlocked that really it's just on fire right now and and it's so good I actually made some of their pasta last night has been fantastic and then you know one of my favorites in the frozen aisle is Lao Ban so their dumplings are killer and those bao buns I mean when you're when you're on the run and you have one minute literally throw one of those in the microwave and you got amazing flavor and chef Tim Ma over there is phenomenal his restaurants are just unbelievable when he brings that to the frozen shelf and and Patrick Cohen the CEO is a good friend and and they've just been on a great tear kind of uplifting that whole Asian frozen set and I think uh what they're doing is pretty special so I could probably name about 500 more but it's good stuff I'm the frozen section's definitely having a moment right now for sure absolutely absolutely well yeah Mac this has been awesome what's um you got so many great insights what's the best place for people to follow along with you and then best place these days to to follow along with the brand yeah no absolutely um you know definitely to merging brands or founders you can find me on LinkedIn and then you know Cleveland Kitchen check us out on social media we're doing some fun things every day and Clement kitchen.com but you know you can find our products everywhere from you know Walmart Target Kroger Publix to Whole Foods Sprouts and every independent and great retailer in between love it awesome man awesome I appreciate the time this has been great that's the pod alright thanks Adam alright your younger years um you guys all had full time jobs what's been kind of key to minimizing batch variances now that you guys own the No.