00:11:53 · Guillaume Moubeche
[00:11:53] S1: And how did you, like, find these influencers? Were they, like, blog posts you were reading or... And and also, like, maybe walk us through the process of finding a relevant audience, you know, and and people who will actually buy?
00:12:08 · Pete Maldonado
[00:12:08] S0: Yeah. That's a really good question. So I think for us, we were so niche at the time. So grass fed beef was becoming incredibly pop... Popular within the CrossFit audience. And then if you drill down deeper into there, most CrossFitters were paleo dieting. And then drill down even into the paleo dieters, and there was, like, a really small community called Whole30, which has gotten huge as well. So I think all of these small niche, I guess you call it diet tribes or fitness tribes, over time just continued building and this blew up. And that that gave us enough of a platform to continue building. But for us, it was niche enough where we could do it for very little cost. Right? So we were able to go in and really make a name for us... Ourselves, own that community, and we were the meat stick for that community. And and then as they grew, we were able to grow with them. And by the way, we couldn't have timed it better with all these trends. Right? So, we were very early with CrossFit, early with Paleo, early with Whole30, and then the the big one after that was keto. Everybody was keto dieting. And so the... We were very fortunate that our product, because we made it as clean as we possibly could with the best ingredients we could... And by the way, we focused on taste, taste, taste. Doesn't matter how healthy the product is going to be, if it doesn't taste good, it will not sell. We understood that from day one. And so that's why we've been winning. But the the great thing is that all of these diet tribes or these trending diets, we check the boxes for all of them. Right? And we'll check the box for the next one. And we happen to be... We were like heavy protein before the protein wave kicked off. And then now it's like GLP one. So like we've we've been very fortunate to have wave after wave to fought... To to really surf, and we've been we've been taking advantage of all of them.
00:14:05 · Guillaume Moubeche
[00:14:05] S1: And, like, when did you start, like, doing different product line? Did you, like, just focus on one for, like, many years before you actually start thinking of different days, different angle, different strategies?
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