Chomps

“The guys that, that created that brand were really targeting, you know, men who were going to the gym who wanted to, like, hit a protein. The majority of their customers are moms, on-the-go moms, and that's what they started to see very rapidly.”

“Economies of scale don't necessarily unlock incremental gross margin. You need to challenge your bill of materials, challenge the way it's being produced, challenge everything to figure out, okay, Do I want an artisanal one-off product because of the price po…”

“One of the stories that, that Rashid and I were able to get with chomps, it was from the data that we had was incrementality, meaning we're bringing new customers to the set. You need to be able to find a way to tell that story to the buyer, because they need …”

“Getting into the retailer is honestly the easiest part of the process. It's staying and performing.”

“I went full-time first. I think we were doing in like the four or 500,000 range, and then Rasheed didn't come on until we were doing like twenty million. So it was a big, like, big gap.”

“1.1 million sticks. And it was larger than the previous year altogether in a single PO.”

“Pete and I met through mutual friends. We were all playing cards and he had mentioned that he had started a company To compete with Omaha Steaks, right? To offer grass fed, grass finished, like a healthier version.”

“And then we've stumbled on Kevin Western from Western Smokehouse, which is you know, one of, is our first co-packer, but now we've, we have, was it four plants now with them? And we're doing the big JV in Mexico, Missouri on a pretty massive plant, a 300,000 s…”

“That's also why we're so successful in retail is all of that foundation that we laid in the DTC world, building that community, building a loyal following, and it was just, you know, it's brick by brick, right? It's one person at a time.”

“It was a 1.1 million sticks, I believe.”

“Yeah, so I think we had finished the prior year at about 400. We did about four million that year.”

“I think we did friends and family. We did debt only.”

“So like a good retailer would do, you know, like now, like you know, like a health food store, like a whole foods or whoever might do like 15, 20, 30 units per store per week. We came out of the gates doing 360 units per store per week of this product. That's …”

“We were going to be the best Trader Joe's partner possible for two years. What did that mean? That meant that was our only retailer. We focused on e-commerce. We focused on scaling. We focused on like branding and packaging and who our consumer was.”

“Well, I think we realized was the most of our customers were female.”

“A total of less than 700,000. And over the course of like the two year period that we were, Working with them. ... So we, you know, even to this day, we've only, that's all the primary, primary capital's ever taken. Even aside from, we did a private equity rai…”

“So we'll do just about a billion in retail sales this year. That's nearly almost like doubling from last year.”

“We'll do somewhere around the, we're approaching the half a billion dollar mark in retail sales this year.”

“I still would never even think about trying to compete with the big guys in the space. Right. It just, it doesn't work. And I would, we would, they would bleed us to death. Like it just wouldn't work. But the reason we've been successful is because we serve an…”

“The specific ask, you know, they wanted us to do a private label product line firm, which would have been a huge undertaking for a small team like ours. It was just me and Rashid working full time, and it was hard enough to manage one brand, and as a private, …”

“I mentioned how much had he invested and he was like, it was at 32 53,250 dollars, I think is what he had put up. So I cut a check and match that.”

“Each one of these meat sticks has the USDA legend on there. So we had a whole list of people to contact. And then we found one specific one in Missouri, in this very small farm town called Green Top, Missouri”

“We landed on that original stick recipe that is the same exact recipe we use today, and it only took us a few tries.”

“It was a handful, right? Like, 10, 20.”

“Our consumer prior to that was, Primarily CrossFit, paleo, whole 30, like very focused. And uncrate is just like your general guy, right? Where it's like your 20 or 30 something that was just interested in it, and it showed, oh, wow, the product has a lot more…”

“We were, we had a few domestic partners, but we actually started having some quality challenges because I think the way that they process it and measure the lean point, it's a, they call it core drilling where they'll, they'll drill and measure and get an aver…”

“A lot of the tension was around when we both would go full-time.”

“It was. 1.1 million sticks. And you know, when we saw that first PO, like that's where I was like, this is it. This is what's going to put us on the radar. It's going to change everything. And it was larger than the previous year altogether in a single PO.”

“So, so 10 to 15 was our normal click. This required us to do about a 150,000 pounds.”

“And we raised money from probably eight different investors that put up between a hundred to 200, a little more. Some of them had a little more.”

“And Trader Joe's, they gave us some projections. They thought that we were going to do, and they kind of let us know their forecast. And we far exceeded the projections, I think by five times.”

“I mean, Trader Joe's, every time we launched another SKU, the business would almost double.”

“We're going to be exceeding the, we have exceeded that, that nine figure range of revenue.”

“Our core consumer is over 70% female.”

“And I think also there's one stat, like with one of our retailers, we were bringing 40% new folks to the jerky set.”

“No, I mean, we've, we have now three separate manufacturing facilities and three packaging lines running simultaneously, and we went ahead and ordered six more.”

“We're just under 40 right now.”

“About 200.”

“We've got a good five to seven years to continue to build towards that billion dollars.”

“We can grow with our existing line. We don't need to launch more products to grow, at least in the next two years.”