00:14:21 · Pete Maldonado
[00:14:21] S0: Well, the the interesting thing interesting thing is to this day, we still only have one product line. So we make meat sticks. That's all we do. So we never dabbled in any other format of of meat snacks. So you'll see a lot of the the smaller competitors that we... We've competed with, they start in jerky, and then they move over to sticks. So they do bars and stick... Like, it's there's usually just some diversification there. But the way we felt about it and especially early on was like, we need to keep this business as simple as possible. And so it was always this thought process of delete complexity every step of the way. That started with the product. Right? And so we launched initially with just two beef skews. It was original beef and our jalapeno beef, and that was it. Then we added a third, just like a spicier... People were asking for more spicy versions, so we had like a habanero version that came out. And... But we were just so... We we were not trying to go wide. It was about going deep. We wanted high, high volume, great... Know, find a a handful of great products. And by the way, if we could have a single SKU, we would have done that. Like, especially back back then, we just wanted to keep things as simple as possible. And also we were building the business because because both Rashid, my my cofounder, and I, we both had full time jobs. I was still doing the real estate. He was a operations consultant. He's great with the ops and finance side of things. I was more of the sales and marketing guy. So we really complimented each other. But what we were doing was like, okay. How could we build this as a side hustle? So nights and weekends, we're gonna work on this thing. Let's keep it as simple as possible. And that, like... We got so lucky because you never could've, you know, have the foresight to understand that, like, the... Those decisions that we made so early are the reason why we are so successful now. Because we went so deep on just a handful of products, and we did one thing really, really well, and we became known for it. And because of that, it's like, that's why we're here. And now we're able to have some extensions. Right? So now we've got other proteins. So we've got, you know, we have beef, we have turkey. We just launched chicken about a month ago, and we also have venison that we...
00:16:30 · Pete Maldonado, Guillaume Moubeche
We have a single skew of venison. And even to this day, we've got, I think, 12 separate recipes total, and we're approaching a billion dollars in revenue this year. So it's Congrats. [00:16:40] S1: Yeah. Thanks. And how exactly, like, do you stay so focused? Because the truth is, I think most entrepreneurs when they get started and they get to a point where they have product market fit, they believe, you know, that they have a loyal audience and that essentially they could sell pretty much anything they want to that audience. So they have to go like broad. So what what was, like, your your thinking? Are you just, like, wired like this naturally, or was it also something a constraint that's for the business?
00:17:13 · Pete Maldonado
[00:17:13] S0: No. I'm absolutely not. I I have, like, probably the worst ADD ever, and so I'm I'm always excited about the next shiny thing. I would say Rashid is much more level headed, but I I would say that the two of us both have that insight. We understood what... You know, why we needed to do that. He's much more disciplined in terms of, like, setting a strategy than sticking with it. I'm... I was always trying to, like, convince him, like, well, what about this? What about that? And then... But then at the same time, he'd be like, no, Pete. Look. This is working. Why are we gonna do anything else? We... There's so much more room to grow. There's so much more white space. We haven't even scratched the surface yet. And so, like, these are the conversations very early. And so, yeah, I I would say if I didn't have a more level headed partner like him, which is, by the way, why I partnered with him in the first place because I knew that was was a big issue that I had with Frozen Fitness. I just didn't have expertise on the ops and, you know, finance side, but also I also have a certain type of personality. And then he's a he's a perfect counterbalance. We cannot be more opposite. And and, like, it's actually funny. The analogy that I... That we always use is, like, if we were... If Chomps is a truck barreling down the road, I'm the guy with my foot pinned on the gas. Rashid's the guy steering, and he also set up the guardrails to make sure that truck doesn't fall off the off the road. And that truck's getting bigger and bigger and going faster and faster, and it's not slowing down. So
00:18:36 · Guillaume Moubeche
[00:18:36] S1: Yeah. And, I mean, that's that's really, like, impressive, especially with, I think, the competition around you. So how exactly do you navigate, you know, like, the the different, like, competitive landscape over the years? Because I assume that to the size you get, you've also, like, received acquisition offers along the way. So can you maybe, like, walk us through, you know, like, the the different phases of the business and why, you know, like, you decided that this is the business you want to focus on and where you wanna stay and not just sell it and do something else?
00:19:13 · Pete Maldonado
[00:19:13] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I'll start off, like, like, phases of the business. Obviously, it started as direct to consumer for four years. And then in in twenty twenty sixteen, we'd still had no ambition whatsoever to go into retail. And then Trader Joe's reached out to us, and they wanted to put the product in because we were a Whole30 approved product. Right? And they were trying to... And, anyway, so they they put us in as a branded item. Incredibly fortunate. Trader Joe's is still to this day one of our favorite retailers to ever work with. I mean, they gave us a shot when no one never heard of us. Right? But they they also... Their buyers are so incredibly smart, and they saw the writing on the wall where this trend was going even even more so than we did, and it was our own product. Right? Wasn't that... That's crazy just to to see that. But going from there, we... What we did from there is, like, the opposite of what most brands would do and also opposite of what... Even we had some advisers early on that we used to work with. We don't talk to them anymore because they had nothing but bad advice, but they... But the advice they were giving us was you need to use this. Yeah. You have millions of people trying the product. You need to use this momentum to springboard and launch into other retailers and other channels. But Rashid and I were looking at this and we're like, we are also so fortunate to be brought into Trader Joe's one. That's like a that's a like a holy grail, you know, retailer. They brought us in as a branded item. Why would we even risk that? Why do we we would not just try to build that relationship and be the best possible Trader Joe's vendor we ever could be? And so we did that for over a year and focused a 100% of our time. We were two guys, by the way. Two people running this business who were using and leveraging third parties, but but this was... It was us. And so we didn't even have the bandwidth to do anything else after this. So that was for the next year. And then we started after that thinking about, okay, how can we, you know, test and get into other retailers? We found from there, it was the obvious next step would be, like, to find people at... Yeah. Our product would resonate with, and they're already buying our product usually through our website.
00:21:28 · Pete Maldonado
And so that was like, you know, the Whole Foods and Sprouts of the world and really the natural channel. And... But we... But every step of the way, we've been very slow and methodical, and we always think about going deep, and we wanna own that relationship. And before we allowed ourselves to go and approach the next retailer, we wanna make sure we became number one in the retailers we were at. And so, yeah, that's been the strategy, and it's still the strategy to this day. And if you think about it, like, we're in over 50... We have 50,000 TDPs or or points of of distribution. Right? And we're... Or... And we're still not in convenience stores. So if you think about, like, the the incumbents in this space that we we compete with, like the Jack Link's and Slim Jim's of the world, about half of their revenue comes from convenience stores. We are just now getting into them. And so we have a ton of white space. We also know, like, we're still little guys compared to them. Quickly approaching them, though. We're about the same size. They're very close to Slim Jim's now. But we also know, like, those guys have very deep pockets. They're... You know, especially ConAgra's got, like, they're a big multibillion dollar publicly traded company. They could spend a lot of money on marketing and buying shelf space and all those things. And, like, we just don't wanna compete and don't wanna go head to head with those guys. So, yeah, we're we're right now still working on building up brand awareness to a point where we feel incredibly comfortable going into the convenience stores. And we know velocities are gonna be second to none. We don't wanna go in and be number number two. We just won't do it. We wanna go in and make sure we have a strategy to be number one, and it's gotta happen very quickly.