Pete Maldonado, co-founder of Chomps, discusses the brand's initial sales velocity upon entering Trader Joe's compared to typical health food retail performance.
“So like a good retailer would do, you know, like now, like you know, like a health food store, like a whole foods or whoever might do like 15, 20, 30 units per store per week. We came out of the gates doing 360 units per store per week of this product. That's massive. Like you, I don't know where you replicate that type of like, and these are, it's one stick at a time, not selling multipacks. It's single sticks. And so that never slowed down and it still hasn't slowed down.”
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More from Pete Maldonado
Insight
Maldonado: Building a DTC community first drives downstream retail velocity
“That's also why we're so successful in retail is all of that foundation that we laid in the DTC world, building that community, building a loyal following, and it was just, you know, it's brick by brick, right? It's one person at a time.”
Pete MaldonadoOct 3, 2025▶ 10:02How a side hustle became an industry leader (with Chomps co-founders) | Masters of Scale
Disclosure
Maldonado: Chomps raised under $700,000 in primary capital before 2021 PE deal
“A total of less than 700,000. And over the course of like the two year period that we were, Working with them. ... So we, you know, even to this day, we've only, that's all the primary, primary capital's ever taken. Even aside from, we did a private equity rai…”
Pete MaldonadoOct 3, 2025▶ 22:50How a side hustle became an industry leader (with Chomps co-founders) | Masters of Scale
Insight
Maldonado: The most crucial PE diligence step is meeting operating partners
“The biggest thing you could do with a private equity partner is meeting the operating partners that are going to be the ones that are supposed to be helping drive value.”
Pete MaldonadoOct 3, 2025▶ 26:11How a side hustle became an industry leader (with Chomps co-founders) | Masters of Scale
AssertionPartly supported
Maldonado: Chomps and Western Smokehouse are building a 300,000-square-foot joint facility
“And then we've stumbled on Kevin Western from Western Smokehouse, which is you know, one of, is our first co-packer, but now we've, we have, was it four plants now with them? And we're doing the big JV in Mexico, Missouri on a pretty massive plant, a 300,000 s…”
Pete MaldonadoOct 3, 2025▶ 6:03How a side hustle became an industry leader (with Chomps co-founders) | Masters of Scale
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Maldonado: Trader Joe's placed an initial order of 1.1 million Chomps sticks
“It was a 1.1 million sticks, I believe.”
Pete MaldonadoOct 3, 2025▶ 12:30How a side hustle became an industry leader (with Chomps co-founders) | Masters of Scale
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