Insight
Sisson: Running 100 miles a week is bad for human health
“No, no, no, it's not. I am here to tell you it's not good for you. It is something that humans can do, but it's not good for us.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Primal Kitchen sold 18 restaurant franchises before opening a single location
“We went to market and we sold 18 franchises at our first meeting in the first year. And we didn't have an operating unit.”
Insight
Endurance athletes expect sponsorships and resist buying nutritional products, says Sisson
“And I quickly found out that those Guys and girls don't like to buy product. They all want to be sponsored.”
Disclosure
Sisson personally guaranteed a $6 million credit line to fund operations
“I had a line of credit, and I was a guarantor on six million dollars worth of credit that we were using to finance the operations, finance receivables, to prepay for avocado oil that wasn't due to arrive in, until eight months down the road.”
Assertion Supported
Sisson: Kraft Heinz acquired Primal Kitchen for $200M in January 2019
“It's public knowledge, but it was for two hundred million dollars, and then we spent, you know, November hammering out the details of the deal. ... The deal almost fell apart three or four times. But we hammered something out the two days after Thanksgiving, a…”
What-if
Sisson: Primal Kitchen would have failed if launched five years earlier
“I think if I'd started Primal Kitchen five years earlier, it would have failed, because five years earlier, there wasn't the awareness of healthy fats, of avocado oil being a beneficial oil, and seed oils being as bad for you as come to find out.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sisson: Cool Licks Netted $175,000 Profit in First Year
“So we open in Early 83, I think, and it was a great success. We probably netted a 175,000 dollars on that 550 square foot location the first year.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sisson's 1980s restaurant expansion required $15,000 monthly for debt service
“That's what it was. In fact, it was 18 and a half, so we were, when I say we were thrilled to get it down to 17 and three quarters, which meant that we had to make like 15,000 dollar a month profit Out of the gate. Just to service the debt.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sisson: Primal Nutrition reached $7M to $9M in annual sales
“I got to the point where I was doing between seven and nine million a year in sales.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sisson: Invested over $1M into self-produced TV show 'Responsible Health'
“Part of it was just, I thought I could recapture this same concept that I'd done with Doug Kaufman for the prior bunch of years, and so I poured well over a million dollars into this.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sisson: Primal Blueprint self-publishing generated $2M annually in book sales
“We did, you know, we did two million a year in sales in books.”
Disclosure
Sisson funneled $2.5 million in annual supplement profits into Primal Kitchen
“I was still making two, two and a half million dollars a year on the supplement business, but I was taking the money that I would have put in my own pocket and just using it to finance. This new product line, which I hoped would become its own company, but I d…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sisson: Primal Kitchen sold 12,000 jars of mayonnaise in two weeks
“So we made the 12,000 jar run, and we sold out in two weeks.”
Disclosure
Sisson leveraged his Thrive Market investment for exclusive online launch distribution
“So coincidentally, I had been an early investor in Thrive Market, which billed itself as Costco meets Whole Foods Online, a membership organization where you could go get all the things you could find at Whole Foods, but at Costco prices, But not at Costco Qua…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sisson: Primal Kitchen did $1.7M in sales in 2015
“In 2015, we did a 1,000,007.”
Assertion Partly supported
Sisson: Primal Kitchen entered 1,700 Publix stores by late 2016
“So the next one was Publix, and we actually got into Publix, we got accepted into Publix by the end of 2016. And so we opened up and I think 1700 Publix stores, which was really fast tracking.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Primal Kitchen restaurants lost $50,000 monthly despite high customer foot traffic
“Then we started building the restaurants, and once we opened, we realized that the business plan was not a viable business plan, that we had lots of traffic, we were selling lots of meals, And losing 50,000 dollars a month.”
Disclosure
Sisson: Cool Licks Was Financed with $40,000 Across 10 Credit Cards
“We put 40,000 bucks on about 10 credit cards.”
Assertion Supported
The US mayonnaise market is $2.5 billion annually, dwarfing ketchup
“Like it has a two and a half billion dollar a year market share in the U.S., and ketchup is far behind at a billion.”
