The Ledger
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Maldonado: Most retailers make more from slotting fees than product sales
“And these, you know, retailers, most of them, they make more, more money from slotting fees than they do from actually selling products.”
Maldonado: Door-to-door selling is the best route for early food startups
“Knocking on doors is going to be your best bet. Like hands down. I mean, if I could scale that with what I do, I would do that all day long. Cause I'm going to get the sale, man, every time.”
Maldonado: Shift toward higher protein intake is permanent, not a fad
“People are changing the way they're dieting and eating, and they're educating themselves, and that's not going away, right?”
Maldonado: Co-founder Rashid Ali stayed part-time until Chomps hit $20M revenue
“I went full-time first. I think we were doing in like the four or 500,000 range, and then Rasheed didn't come on until we were doing like twenty million. So it was a big, like, big gap.”
Maldonado: Getting onto retail shelves is easy compared to post-launch execution
“You selling to the retailer and getting out on the shelf is the easy part. That's when the work starts.”
Maldonado: Single-unit owner-operator franchises have a higher chance of success
“If you're going to franchise, it should be that person's day job. I think that's probably critical to the success of any franchise. If you look at like the Chick-fil-A model where they allow, allow them to Own one unit. I think that's a really, that's a good, …”
Maldonado: Chomps is approaching $500M in retail sales in 2024
“We'll do somewhere around the, we're approaching the half a billion dollar mark in retail sales this year.”
Maldonado: CPG startups must target incremental customers, not incumbent giants
“I still would never even think about trying to compete with the big guys in the space. Right. It just, it doesn't work. And I would, we would, they would bleed us to death. Like it just wouldn't work. But the reason we've been successful is because we serve an…”
Maldonado: Chomps rejected Trader Joe's private-label deal to avoid managing two brands
“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, …”
Maldonado: Emerging premium CPG brands should not compete on retail price
“With this type of product, one of the other things when you go into retail, don't fall into the trap of trying to compete on price. You are going to be the little guy coming into the space, lean into your story, lean into the premium aspects of the products an…”
Maldonado: Trader Joe's first Chomps PO was for 1.1 million sticks
“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.”
Maldonado: Chomps exceeded $100 million in revenue
“We're going to be exceeding the, we have exceeded that, that nine figure range of revenue.”
Maldonado: CPG founders must pitch retail buyers on incrementality, not cannibalization
“One of the stories that, that Rashid and I were able to get with chomps, it was from the data that we had was incrementality, meaning we're bringing new customers to the set. You need to be able to find a way to tell that story to the buyer, because they need …”
Maldonado: Chomps once received a single purchase order for 1.1 million sticks
“1.1 million sticks. And it was larger than the previous year altogether in a single PO.”
Maldonado: Search Trends for Grass-Fed Beef and Keto Saw Hockey-Stick Growth
“So I started using these tools and looking at grass fed, like the search terms for grass fed beef delivered, any type of search term that was all related to that. So paleo, keto, all of those. And every single one of these search terms were just like an absolu…”
Maldonado: Chomps found co-packers by tracing USDA legends on competitor packaging
“Each one of these meat sticks has the USDA legend on there. So we had a whole list of people to contact. And then we found one specific one in Missouri, in this very small farm town called Green Top, Missouri”
Maldonado: Chomps still uses its original beef stick recipe today
“We landed on that original stick recipe that is the same exact recipe we use today, and it only took us a few tries.”
Maldonado: Chomps raised Trader Joe's bridge financing from eight personal investors
“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.”
Maldonado: Chomps exceeded Trader Joe's sales projections fivefold
“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.”
Maldonado decided to drop out while changing business professor's flat tire
“I made that decision literally as I was changing this guy's tire that I was done with college.”
Maldonado: Stuck with millions in loans during Florida real estate crash
“At my rock bottom, it was a couple million in loans that I ended up getting stuck with.”