Jan 24, 2022 · 1h 7m · how-i-built-this
Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, brothers Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn recount how they transformed a home-toasted coconut recipe into Dang Foods, a pioneering Asian-American snack brand distributed across ten thousand stores nationwide. The founders share their journey through guerrilla trade show marketing, supply chain hurdles, multi-million dollar product failures, and the personal growth that solidified their co-founder partnership.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 36.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 2.8 Guest teaching 2.2 Guest disagreement 0.4 Guy pushing back 0.3
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 37:05 Vincent reframes Andrew's equity fight recollection
Vincent directly interrupts Andrew's dramatic recollection of their equity dispute to insist there was a fundamental miscommunication rather than pure greed or hostility.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 20:31 Guy challenges Vincent's audacious trade show crashingGuy stops Vincent mid-story to express bewilderment that someone with zero food industry background would boldly crash a national trade show with unlabelled samples in plastic souffle cups.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 45:23 Andrew educates Guy on margin compression and tariffsAndrew corrects standard assumptions about product failure by walking Guy through raw margin realities, Vietnamese import tariffs, and why hoping for scale velocity doomed the onion chips.
Guy holds their own ▶ 27:00 Guy analyzes the macro rise of coconut oil and paleo dietsGuy connects Dang's early timing directly to the wider macroeconomic dietary shifts of 2010-2012, demonstrating his broad familiarity with CPG sector trends.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Childhood, Cultural Roots, and Cooking for Family | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy establishes a relaxed biographical atmosphere, inquiring about family background and Thai-Chinese heritage. The brothers share nostalgic memories of cooking together as latchkey kids in New York. | |
| Early Careers and Gaining Restaurant Realities | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy demonstrates knowledge of the acclaimed DC restaurant Thai Crossing where Vincent staged. Vincent explains why demanding restaurant kitchen realities steered him toward packaged goods. | |
| The San Francisco Underground Market Experience | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Vincent recounts how he tested food at the SF Underground Market using chicken satay burgers. Guy facilitates the storytelling with curious, open-ended prompts. | |
| The Toasted Coconut Epiphany | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy clarifies the distinction between sweetened shredded coconut and shaved crispy toasted coconut flakes. Vincent explains how roommates devoured his toasted coconut batches, prompting the product epiphany. | |
| Crashing the Fancy Food Show as Dang | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Guy pushes back gently, questioning how Vincent had the audacity to crash the Fancy Food Show without any industry experience. Vincent explains that attending gift shows with his importer parents gave him baseline familiarity. | |
| Supply Sourcing and Early Market Testing | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy connects the brand's early traction to macroeconomic food trends like the keto diet and coconut water craze. Vincent notes how Trader Joe's launching a coconut chip validated consumer interest rather than killing their startup. | |
| Expo West Breakthrough and Going All-In | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Vincent details building a human wall around a tiny two-foot booth at Expo West to force attendees to sample chips. Guy tracks the timeline leading to Vincent's layoff and full-time leap. | |
| Securing Safeway and Partnering with Andrew | 2 | 2 | 3 | 1 | The brothers display mild historical tension as Andrew describes cussing Vincent out during equity negotiations. Vincent intervenes to offer a different framing of their communication breakdown. | |
| Packaging Strategy and the Kardashian Effect | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Vincent contrasts the viral surge from Kourtney Kardashian's airport snack Instagram post with traditional press from Florence Fabricant. He elaborates on the packaging design choices that educate retail shoppers without a clear window. | |
| The Onion Chip Experiment and Flop | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy and the founders discuss their ambitious effort to create an upscale, vacuum-fried onion chip to rival Funyuns. The founders openly admit the product crashed immediately after launch. | |
| Post-Mortem of the Multi-Million Dollar Failure | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Andrew and Vincent educate Guy on the hidden operational reasons behind the failure, including margin constraints and consumer fears of onion breath. Andrew discloses that the failure burned through nearly two million dollars in venture capital. | |
| Strategic Investment and Asian-American Brand Identity | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks about fundraising dilemmas and brand positioning. Vincent explains how a strategic corporate investor provided consumer insights on stomach share and Asian-American demographics. | |
| Expanding with Thai Sticky Rice Crackers | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Andrew details spotting Thai sticky rice crackers at Bangkok airport and partnering with local manufacturers. Vincent explains the culinary necessity of watermelon juice for binding the puffed rice. | |
| Pioneering Asian-Flavored Keto Energy Bars | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | The brothers discuss launching keto bars with Asian flavor profiles which became top-sellers before pandemic corporate pantry closures devastated sales. Andrew explains cutting the monthly burn from $400k down to break-even. | |
| Navigating Sibling Dynamics Through Therapy | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Guy sensitively probes the brothers' decision to seek therapy to untangle sibling dynamics. Vincent and Andrew reflect on childhood coping mechanisms and establishing psychological safety. | |
| Evaluating the Roles of Luck and Effort | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks his standard closing question regarding the division of luck versus effort. Both founders reflect on transitioning from 70% luck in early years to 70% deliberate effort today. |
Statements from this episode (22)
Food persists longer than other cultural traditions during immigrant assimilation
“When you move to a new country, you lose a lot of stuff, so you might change your name, and you might change the way you dress, and you might change the way you talk, because you have to learn a new language, but I think food is that one thing that sticks with…”
San Francisco Underground Market bypassed regulations using attendee liability waivers
“And it was a group that got together at a nightclub and created a night market. And they got around your food safety regulations by having people sign a waiver at the front saying,
If I get sick, it's not your fault.”
Pre-toasted coconut was not commercially available in the US before Dang
“Now, you can't buy toasted coconut in the U.S., but what you can do is go buy shredded coconut And toast it yourself.”
Trader Joe's private-label coconut chips actually helped educate Dang Foods' consumers
“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'…”
Vincent Kitirattragarn spent $23,000 in personal savings for Dang's first container
“I used 23,000 dollars of savings to buy the first twenty-foot container in July.”
Safeway placed Dang coconut chips across 1,000 stores in produce sections
“So they quickly put us into about a thousand Safeway stores with like large displays in the produce section, which is the front of the store.”
Vincent Kitirattragarn initially gave co-founder Andrew Kitirattragarn a 20 percent equity stake
“I'll give you. 20%. And you're gonna earn over three years. And then later that got modified even higher later, as I, I've been with the company longer and whatnot.”
Dang Foods' website traffic spiked 100x after a Kourtney Kardashian Instagram post
“After the Kourtney Kardashian post, our website traffic spiked like a hundred times.”
In retail grocery, a brand's packaging is effectively the product itself
“When you're in the store, you have less than a second to grab someone's attention. I think the best way to do that is to create a good package. And there's a saying that your package is your product. It's not what you sell in the bag, it's the bag itself, beca…”
Dang's onion chips failed because consumers were afraid of getting onion breath
“One thing that we didn't anticipate was that people would be worried about onion breath, about getting onion on their breath, and they didn't want to walk around smelling like they just ate onions. That's something that nobody ever told us when we were testing…”
Dang Foods launched onion chips with 20 percent margins, anticipating scale
“I think when we first launched, I think we were looking at something like 20% margins and we're like, listen, we can do this because if this is going to get as big as Funyuns, like when we sell up to ten million and we get to scale to the next level, those mar…”
Dang Foods lost up to $2 million launching a failed onion chip
“We had just gotten venture funded, and so for about four million dollars, and about one and a half to two of the million dollars went to the onion chips.”
Dang co-founders Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn took no salary for three years
“We weren't paying ourselves for the first three years, so we had to get outside funding to make a living. You know, up until then, we put every penny of profit back into the company because we wanted it to grow because we believed it would be worth something s…”
A packaged food brand needs $500,000 in sales per field representative
“I think, you know, hiring a field team, first off, people are expensive, right? So each person maybe 70,000 dollars, right, in salary. And that's in, you know, that payroll, you have to basically sell half a million in order to get that 70 K contribution that …”
Snack consumers prefer unadulterated coconut products over complex flavored varieties
“We kind of learned that people kind of want a less adulterated coconut. Kind of similar with coconut water, like, they don't want flavored coconut water, they just want coconut water.”
Dang Foods' keto bar was Whole Foods' best-selling bar in 2019
“We were the best-selling bar at Whole Foods in 2019. Wow. In terms of, like, unit velocity, so units sold per store per week.”
Snack and energy bar category sales dropped 50 percent during COVID-19
“I think the data was about 50% drop in bar category sales pre and post-COVID.”
Dang Foods' corporate tech pantry sales dropped 90 percent during the pandemic
“Because of stay at home, they, those sales dropped about 90% pre and post-COVID, and even now they're not fully back.”
Dang Foods burned $400,000 per month at the start of the pandemic
“Our burn rate was like 400,000 dollars per month in the beginning, and we had to get to positive.”
Dang experienced seven-week ocean freight delays due to supply chain disruptions
“We haven't exhaled, because right after that, we had these supply chain issues, whereby our ocean freight containers have been delayed about seven weeks on average.”
Andrew Kitirattragarn used therapy to resolve co-founder conflict with his brother
“I think for my specific situation with Vincent, like, it was important for me to get a therapist because what would happen was that a lot of tension would come up with my brother, like, I remember getting really, really angry at him, When he wasn't being defen…”