The Ledger
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Vincent Kitirattragarn claims no keto bars existed on the market in 2019
“At the time, there were no keto bars on the market. We're like, wow, this is such a big opportunity.”
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.”
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.”
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'…”
Dang Foods halted inventory orders in 2022 to pay off creditors
“What we decided to do is, with the board's permission, we stopped ordering inventory. Because we didn't see a path forward and that the supply chain at that time was not being alleviated. So we decided that we were going to sell off our assets and have this ti…”
Safe Catch's founder acquired Dang Foods' assets to keep it alive
“It ended up working out where he took over the operations, he bought the assets and he's able to keep the brand going.”
Dang Foods held acquisition talks with nearly 100 brands
“And, you know, we had talked with probably another, you know, close to a hundred brands.”
Dang Foods' freight costs jumped from 5% to 30% of COGS
“Because two of our three product lines are imported from Thailand. And so when your cost of goods, the freight, you know, goes from five percent to 30% that's a big increase.”
Dang Foods raised over $10 million before its distress sale
“Yeah, so the, you know, we had raised a little above ten million, and the goal was, you know, to try to make them whole, or have that Equity roll over into another entity.”
Dang Foods pitched up to 72 potential investors during financial distress
“We went to, I want to say five or six dozen potential investors.”
Dang Foods' container costs surged from $5,000 to $22,000 in one month
“So with the container prices going up from five K to 22 K in one month, you can't increase your price on shelf by 400%.”
Dang Foods' average port times spiked from 50 to 100 days
“The average time in port also spiked during that time from 50 days to a hundred days, or seven weeks to 14 weeks.”
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.”
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.”
Dang Foods' early success was mostly luck, but maturity demanded execution
“I'd say, seventy-thirty luck to effort in the early years, and more recently, it's been seventy-thirty effort to luck.”
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…”
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'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 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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”