Rashid Ali
Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Chomps. On 2 shows, 4 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveoperatorchomps.com ↗
In 2012, Ali co-founded Chomps with Pete Maldonado, bootstrapping the clean-label meat snack brand into nationwide retail distribution. Before scaling Chomps full-time, he spent over a decade as a management and operations consultant at firms including Huron Consulting Group and Alvarez & Marsal.
2shows
4appearances
26statements
5resolved
3supported
0contradicted
60%fully supported
4said about them ↓ Everything Rashid Ali said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Ali: Economies of scale automatically improving gross margins is a startup fallacy
“And there's this fallacy in that, you know, economies of scale will lead to an improved gross margin and it just doesn't happen.”
Ali: The majority of early Chomps customers were female
“Well, I think we realized was the most of our customers were female.”
Ali: Chomps is five to seven years away from a billion dollars
“We've got a good five to seven years to continue to build towards that billion dollars.”
Ali: Economies of scale do not automatically unlock higher gross margins
“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…”
Ali: Consumers will eventually experience fatigue with the protein trend
“We think, like, at some point with any trend, there will be consumer fatigue.”
Ali: Getting products into retail stores is easier than sustaining sales velocity
“Getting into the retailer is honestly the easiest part of the process. It's staying and performing.”
Ali: Chomps funded its $1 million Trader Joe's order entirely with debt
“I think we did friends and family. We did debt only.”
Ali: Chomps kept Trader Joe's as sole retailer for two years
“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.”
Ali: Chomps expects to reach $1 billion in retail sales in 2025
“So we'll do just about a billion in retail sales this year. That's nearly almost like doubling from last year.”
Ali: D2C frozen meat shipping has no path to profitability without scale
“What we figured out was shipping frozen without scale, there's no path to profitability, and because the business was like self-funded, we had to figure out a way to make it profitable”
Ali: Chomps shifted beef sourcing to Australia over US quality issues
“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…”
Ali: Chomps can grow for two years without new products
“We can grow with our existing line. We don't need to launch more products to grow, at least in the next two years.”
Ali: Over 90% of Trader Joe's products are private label
“I mean, 90% plus of the items are private labels. So they're Trader Joe's branded products. So for you to actually get a branded product within Trader Joe's, it's like, it's extremely rare.”
Ali: Chomps grew annual revenue from $400K to $4M in one year
“Yeah, so I think we had finished the prior year at about 400. We did about four million that year.”
Ali: Convenience and gas station stores account for nearly half of jerky sales
“If you think about, you know, the jerky category, nearly half of it is in what they say, C store, like convenience, right? Small format travel gas station. And so That's all white space for us.”
Ali: US protein snacking is growing three times faster than other snack subcategories
“Last year we commissioned a study cause we wanted to understand overall snacking. And what we understood is like snacking as a whole is a hundred and twenty six billion dollar category within that, in the U S yeah, in the U S within that Protein snacking is gr…”
Ali matched Maldonado's tiny $3,250 initial investment to co-found Chomps
“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.”
Ali: Uncrate feature proved Chomps had appeal beyond CrossFit and paleo
“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…”
Ali: Trader Joe's order required 150,000 lbs of meat vs. normal 10-15k monthly
“So, so 10 to 15 was our normal click. This required us to do about a 150,000 pounds.”
Rashid Ali: Every new Trader Joe's SKU nearly doubled Chomps' business
“I mean, Trader Joe's, every time we launched another SKU, the business would almost double.”
Ali: Chomps brought 40% new consumers into jerky category at one retailer
“And I think also there's one stat, like with one of our retailers, we were bringing 40% new folks to the jerky set.”
The other half of the tape: Rashid Ali's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 1 episode across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Pete Maldonado 2Guy Raz 1
Statements about Rashid Ali, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
How I Built This 3
2024 3 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Rashid's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Chomps | 3 | 16 | 100% 1/1 | full record on How I Built This → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Chomps | 1 | 10 | 50% 2/4 | full record on Masters of Scale → |