Alejandro Velez, co-founder of Back to the Roots, speaks at Hustle Con 2015 about the retail footprint and distribution scale of their indoor farming and organic food products.
Assertion Partly supported
Back to the Roots reached every US Whole Foods in three months
“We put this in, in one Berkeley Whole Foods store. Within three months, we were nationwide with Whole Foods, every single store in the country”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Back to the Roots raised $500k in pre-orders before manufacturing Water Garden
“We had a 100,000 dollar goal, ended up doing 250,000 dollars in 30 days of pre-orders. We took that momentum, took it over to our website, another quarter million dollars. So this is half a million dollars of pre-orders without even creating the damn thing.”
Assertion Supported
Whole Foods, Petco, and Nordstrom launched Water Garden nationwide together
“So we took that buzz and went back to Petco, went back to Whole Foods, went back to Nordstrom, and for the first time ever, those three retailers took this product on nationwide. So we had a national launch with Whole Foods, national launch with Petco, Nationa…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Velez: Back to the Roots is Costco's #1 organic cereal
“We're the number one selling organic cereal in Costco nationwide.”
Assertion Partly supported
Velez: Post, Kellogg's, and GM own 90% of $10B cereal market
“Three Goliaths, Post, Kellogg's GM, running the show. They own 90% of this ten billion dollar industry”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Velez: Whole Foods was the only grocer to respond to early pitches
“We took that same bucket, walked it into every single grocery store in like a 50 mile radius from Andronico's, every Andronico's in Berkeley and Oakland. We went to Farmer Joe's. We went to Berkeley Bowl. At the time, there was only one Berkeley Bowl. We walke…”