00:26:39 · Guillaume Moubeche, Pete Maldonado
[00:26:39] S1: What were people asking the the most about, like, in customer service? [00:26:46] S0: A lot of people were were learning then about grass fed, grass finished beef. Right? How are how are the animals raised? What farms what what farms are these coming from? And so I was like, so glad you asked. And, like, I just rattle off, and I'd had all, you know, all the great answers. And then it was also about maybe specific ingredients in the product. It went on. It was like the list goes on. It's like people are now now suddenly becoming really interested in not just the macros and... Or the nutrition facts panel. It's also about the ingredients, but then seeing an ingredient isn't isn't enough. People wanna know how is it sourced. And so, again, like, that's we thrived on this stuff because I I... We built the product for... It was something that we wanted for ourselves. Right? And so we knew, like, we checked the boxes. And so we loved it. When people would grill us and ask questions, I'm like, yeah, again, so glad you asked. So glad you asked. And just give them the info, and they're like, wow. So rare to find this type of thing. Yeah. And so in the early days... Like, nothing has changed, by the way. We had not changed the product once. You know, same ingredients, same everything, and it's just... Now we're just making more of it. So... [00:27:55] S1: Oh, that's so cool. And what would you sell? Why is the biggest challenge growing to almost a billion dollar in sales?
00:28:06 · Pete Maldonado
[00:28:06] S0: Capacity and forecasting. Forecasting demand for us has been incredibly difficult. Let's put it that way. So we would... We were basically doubling year over year. So we went from 10 to 20 to 40 to somewhere around 75. Then we went to... We had, like, a weird year. It was, like, coming out of COVID, and then we got to about a little over a 100. And then things, like, ramped right back out back out of that. Then we went to two hundred, then went to four thirty, then we went to seven seven, like, a 100 something like that. And now we'll do, like, oh, next... Close to a billion. Right? Like, each year for us, when when we're do... Putting these... Setting up the the forecast and the annual contract for the year, we look at ourselves and we're like, how irresponsible of us to to, like, to think that we're gonna add a 100,000,000, 200,000,000 of top line revenue in a single year when it took us ten years to get to a 100,000,000. Right? Like, that doesn't make sense. Like, how? But, again, like, the the way that the... These these are not trends anymore. These are, cultural shifts that we're dealing with. People... Everybody is eating protein now. Protein is in every product you could possibly imagine. It's in your cereal. It's in your pretzels. It's in your... It's like, you name it. It's in your... It's in everywhere. I think where we win is that Chomps is a natural source of protein. It's where protein comes from. Like, it's like, you know, animal, you know, animal based protein. So for us, I think that we're gonna continue winning there. As people... I think there's gonna be, like, this, like what's the word? A little bit of, like, proteinification fatigue. Right? There's just too much protein and everything, and people is like, get it out get it out of my cereal. I don't want it anymore. Like, it's just... You know? So I don't know. I think when that happens, people aren't gonna stop eating protein. I think they're gonna they're gonna be really selective on the sources. And so I think that's... We will win there. But but I would say, you know, understanding those dynamics and and how incredibly powerful they are and how big these waves of demand are, we way undershot them for the couple years in a row. We've trying to... We're trying to get better about... Trying to, like, guess where demand is going to be. It's still impossible, man.
00:30:30 · Pete Maldonado, Guillaume Moubeche
Still impossible. Or, like, last year, we undershot it by nine figures, which is a terrible feeling because we actually cut nine figures of POs, and that is terrible. Because it's not just the lost revenue. It's also what... How many customers have we lost to because now we're out of stock. We didn't build the production plan to support that type of demand. And so people are going to stores to find the product, and it's not there. So where are they going? They're gonna buy some other competitor? And so that's [00:31:02] S1: How much inventory can actually... Like, can you actually get ahead of time? Like... Or do you keep, like... Because I'm wondering, like, how stressed is kind of, like, the whole supply chain from someone's ordering, and is there a product in the background or not?
00:31:19 · Pete Maldonado
[00:31:19] S0: Yeah. There's... Well, nowadays, there's always a product in the background. Back in the day, it was like, I would take the orders and then produce against it, and I'd be like, sorry. It's gonna be, like, four weeks before you get your sticks. Like, that just doesn't... That... That's not gonna fly anymore. So we... We're... Our our operations team is incredibly sophisticated in terms of, like, building up inventory and making sure they've got the right product mix too because, obviously, people are gonna buy more of some flavor or skew than another. So that's... But, yeah, these people are so much smarter than me on that end. I don't even... I don't get involved. But I would say, like, you know, we went from one production facility. So one one command partner in one facility back in 2021 to now we have seven different facilities making our product. And a couple... Few of those actually are dedicated to making just Chomps product. And, yeah, again, like you mentioned earlier earlier, we're making over 2,000,000 sticks a day right now. And and it's not not slowing down. Like, we're we're just still trying to trying to keep up. But I would say, like, the, you know, managing all that, like, the seven different facilities and all... Like, now these different SKUs, and now we have, like... We have to have, like, multiple warehouses packing out different types of... Like, it's just a lot of management. And the team is, again, super sophisticated around it. But despite how... I I... There there is a lot of complexity at this stage that has gotten a little bit away away from us because we scaled so fast, especially in the last three or four years. It's either you support the growth or you focus on, you know, keeping things simplified. And it's like, we need to support the growth right now, and we'll come back later and kinda, you know, consolidate, you know, facilities and that type of thing. But it's... Yeah. So that's that's kinda where we're at right now.
00:33:10 · Guillaume Moubeche
[00:33:10] S1: And I think, like, at some point, because you bootstrapped the business, I think at some point you you took some cash out. Can you maybe, like, walk us through of how exactly did you decide to take some cash out? What was the reasoning behind it? And maybe also the expectation of of a fund when they come in and what they expect in the future?
00:33:30 · Pete Maldonado
[00:33:30] S0: Absolutely. So... Okay. So we went through COVID. That was a scary time because we were kinda flying high all the way up into COVID and just kinda... We didn't think we're invincible. We knew we were smarter than that, but I think we were... We also... We thought we built a a very... Like, we always use this word durable. We thought we built a very durable company, and, you know, we can survive the the highs and lows and all of that. Right? And then COVID just kinda changed that. We didn't... Who could have ever, you know, forecasted that? But I think for us, it was a it was a tough one because it it came out... We came out of the gates, and I don't know if you remember, like, in the early days of of COVID, people are like, well, all the stores getting shut down. There's a meat shortage. So now you've got everyone pantry loading. So now velocities and demand went through the roof. So this was not just on our website and Amazon, but it was in our retailers. And so like a Trader Joe's, they are doubling their PO sizes. They're giving us more... Like, so we had millions and millions and millions of sticks that we were making against each of these channels. And then for instance, like a Trader Joe's, they decided that they had, like, a corporate policy. They're gonna limit the foot traffic in a store, to 10 people per store. So it went from doors wide open, product flying, to 10 people in the store at a time. And then on top of it, we were always at the cash registers, but they also wanted to protect their cashiers. So now they put up a plexiglass wall. So Chomps were behind the plexiglass wall. So it was like a like a Chomps museum. Right? So even if you wanted the product, you couldn't get it. So our sales there just went to next to zero overnight. And then so we... They, you know, went... List lasted for a few weeks, and they're trying to they're trying to gauge to see how long this is gonna last and all that. And finally, they were like, this is gonna be longer than we thought. We don't need that product anymore, so we're canceling all of those open POs. It's just like, what a gut punch. Like, oh my god. What are we gonna do? Because we already produced so much to fill all the demand in every other channel. We had no home for that.