Trader Joe's

“Trader Joe's was an amazing company to do business with. They paid On time or early. And because of that, we were able to not take on equity.”

“And somehow they managed to become contract manufacturers of for Trader Joe's, which was really the bread and butter for the business before I got out.”

“She put in an order for 25 trucks. That was What, four or 500,000 dollars worth. It was crazy.”

“At the time, we really didn't have any customers for the sparkling water. The soda was doing well in those food service accounts, but the sparkling water, the unsweetened version was really not anywhere, and they Yeah, they just were incredibly brave and took …”

“Walmart wanted us in year seven, eight, you know, Trader Joe's wanted us in year two, Target wanted us when we were young, and we kind of said, oh, we're not ready for them yet.”

“And at that point, you know, everything just went back into the business, but we were just about to give up a piece of the company, and we never ended up actually doing that because we got Trader Joe's, and they were ordering by the truckload.”

“Trader Joe's also came out with a coconut chip around the same time we did, which I thought was bad because I was like, I thought we were going to be the first. But it turned out later that it was actually a good thing because Trader Joe's stays in Trader Joe'…”

“She put in an order for 25 trucks... That was What, four or 500,000 dollars worth.”

“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 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.”

“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.”

“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, …”

“So they put Barefoot in their three stores, and they expanded rapidly. I mean, within a year, they had like, 27 stores or something in California. It was just amazing, and they put Barefoot in all of them.”