Better Food Choices with With Julia Putzeys of Trash Panda App

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You want tech and tacos? Tacos in tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos El gordo the taco standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean Watch the sunset la Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the moon SD Tecos with your host, Neil Bloom.

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Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, and I'm thrilled to have you here on the Tacos and Tech podcast. We interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities, and we do it weekly, so thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday, a new interview and on Fridays we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbroodtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode. I'm thrilled to have on Julia Putsis from Trash Panda App general manager here and co founder, which we're going to get into. Julia, thanks for being on the pod.

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's. I'm so glad you reached out through the Naturally San Diego network. We love to meet new companies, new people here on the podcast. Do you want to give us a quick overview of what Trash Panda is?

Sure. So, Trash Panda launched in May of 2021, so we've been live for about a year now. And it's an app that help helps people find quality food. So you can essentially use it to scan any food product that you're looking at when you're shopping at the grocery store or going through your pantry. And we flag certain ingredients as either potentially harmful or questionable. So it kind of gives you a heads up if there's ingredients in the food that you're looking at that you might want to be aware of because that ingredient has been linked to poor health outcomes or because you might just want to be aware of it in terms of total consumption. So the goal of Trash Panda is just to make reading ingredients labels a little bit easier and help you kind of decode those labels as you're making a choice for what you want to buy or eat and allow you to make a more educated decision in that moment.

Super interesting. I'm excited to dive into that aspect. Not just dive into what's in our food, but what's in the app as well, because I'm sure there's a lot of intelligence that goes into that and what is good for some people is not good for others as well too. So interested to hear about that. But I want to get to know your background a little bit because, you know, it hasn't been that for that long that people were actually caring as much about food as it is today. And I think you have a bit more of a tech and digital background, correct?

Yep, that's right. So I started my career at the NFL actually. So I basically I went to college in New York and got an internship with the NFL the summer between my junior and senior year in college and their business development group and then from there got hired into a rotational program that they have after I graduated from college. So it's kind of their way of hiring entry level people right out of college to this rotational program. And it's two years long and essentially you rotate to different departments within the league every six months. So you get to try out four different business units within the league. And it was through that that I basically got moved from New York to LA to work in their tech group with NFL.com and NFL Network being based out of the NFL's LA office. So I had my last rotation in the program in digital media, basically working as a product manager and got hired full time as a product manager out of that program. So I worked at the NFL for a couple of years as a product manager on the NFL mobile app and some of their new connected TV apps as those were coming out. And then I left there and went to a stealth mode startup in la. It was a. I don't think it ever really got off the ground, to be honest. I was there in the really early stages and the concept was essentially like Kickstarter for television. So trying to get People to crowdfund television shows getting made. So it wasn't just, you know, big corporations that were choosing what content made it onto tv, but that consumers would have a voice in getting different TV shows created. So we were building out that platform. And then after I got married, my husband got a job here in San Diego with Fitbit, and we moved down to San Diego, and I ultimately got a job working at a local San Diego startup called Blast Motion. They do, like, a sports sensor for golf and baseball that measures your swing. So I worked on their mobile app and their kind of desktop portal for that. And while I was at Blast, my mentor at the NFL called me and said, you know, hey, look, I am working for this company called Slide Trunk now. He had become the CEO and had left the NFL to do that and, you know, knew that I had moved to San Diego and we had worked together. And he said, would you like to come be a product manager for Sly Trunk? And I said, yes. So Slide Trunk is a small software development company. We mostly build apps and websites for other clients. So the NFL is a client of ours. That's kind of how Corey got in the loop with them. SLYTRUNK built the NFL's fantasy app, and we continue to manage that today. And we do some other projects with the NFL as well. But, yeah, so we have some clients that are bigger, like the NFL, World Surf League Cinema, few. And then we have a bunch of other startups that we partner with to build their products as well. So I've been at Sideshrunk for the past five years. Years. And it was a couple years ago that Sly Trunk decided to build a product that we would own and manage in house. So in addition to all of our client work, we decided we should build something. We have a great team of, you know, product design and engineers, and we felt like if anybody could make a product successful, it was our team. So we kind of got together to figure out what that product would be. And that's where the idea for Trash Panda was born.

Really cool to hear. Just kind of that incubation process. When you've got great talent. Sure, why not Think about the, you know, what could you incubate? I guess some call it venture studio style. Incubate and accelerate. Yeah. Take us through how you decided what to build, because Trash Panda doesn't sound. It sounds like an agency that focus a lot on sports, but not necessarily where the first product came out of.

Yeah, for sure. And so the Trash Panda was an idea that I had kind of come up with. I During this time was getting certified as a nutritionist. Just on the side, I did a year long program through the Nutritional Therapy foundation to become a nutritional therapy practitioner because I just was starting to get really interested in health and wellness. I was starting to realize how much I didn't know about the importance of ingredients quality. And I had kind of made a friend here in San Diego that was opening my eyes to how much I didn't know about, you know, what it means to eat, like poor quality seed oils and all of that and how that affects your health. My mindset kind of up until that point had been and more focused around like, I don't know, I guess growing up as a kid in the 90s, like low fat and counting calories and that side of things. And I played a sport in college and you know, felt like I generally knew a good amount about health and nutrition. And it just frustrated me to realize how much I didn't know and that whole side of things. So as I learned more, I decided to get educated as a nutritionist just to kind of teach myself and have that knowledge. Even if I only used it for my family, I felt like it was worth doing. But as I was going through that program, it got me thinking, you know, I could basically quit my job in tech and become a nutritionist and help people learn how to eat healthier. But what really frustrated me is that the people that need access to this information the most generally have the least amount of access to it. Right? So people who don't have the kind of resources that I have that might be living in a food desert or I might be buying their groceries at the 99 cent store, they don't have the money to, you know, to pay a nutritionist to tell them what to eat. And I just felt like it's those people that are generally being targeted with fast food and with packaged foods. And I think our food system does a really good job of trying to make food accessible for everyone by making it cheaper. But unfortunately that tends to also mean that it is of poor quality and not as great for our health as well. So I really wanted to build a product using my whole career in software development and product management that was accessible to anybody. So I wanted to make something that was free, you know, an app anybody can download on their smartphone. And if they wanted access to this information, they could get access to this information. And even if that just means checking out products at the store and you're buying a slightly better chip than you would otherwise buy and you're just Leveling up in those tiny ways, I think that matters and that can make an impact on your health long term.

Absolutely. I think we've seen a lot of examples of that now, and obviously it's completely created so many new product lines as well, too. But bringing the technology piece in, where people are obviously, especially on their phone all the time, it's kind of smart to marry those as well, too. Right. Because people will. It seems like they'll say, is this work or not? Right. Does it take a lot of work to eat differently, live differently, and what's convenient versus what's not versus how important is this to my health? So that's really cool to see. Did everyone pitch a bunch of ideas and did you vote? Or, like, how. How did this one win out?

Yeah, we get together once a year for a retreat with our team. So at the retreat, during that time, we all got together and there were a bunch of ideas pitched. And then I think ultimately there was. I don't know if there was a really official voting process, but I think that the team knew that, you know, whoever was going to lead the project needed to be really bought in, because we needed someone that was essentially going to be kind of a founder and an advocate for the product within the company. And so it kind of had to be a product person that was really going to evangelize the product within the team. So I think that some of the ideas that were pitched, they were all great ideas. But as you well know, I think it takes a lot more than a great idea to actually make it happen. So I think the team recognized that even though they didn't all really understand this space and didn't really understand the health and wellness space or weren't necessarily passionate about it the way that I was passionate about it, they understood that it would take a product person who was going to really kind of build out that idea and evangelize it and be passionate about it in order for it to be successful? So I think they trusted me and trusted my passion and the idea, and I kind of, after that point when we decided, you know, okay, let's move forward with figuring out if there's something here that, you know, Julia's idea might have legs. We did a lot of research and discovery work interviewing dietitians and other nutritionists to ask them, like, what's the hard part about your job? Like, why do people come to you? What do they need help with? Like, would this app that we could create to help people learn about ingredients, Would that be helpful to you to Give your clients. So we did a lot of interviewing to kind of get insight on that and did a lot of discovery work. Just thinking about, like, is this the right product? Is there another product that we should be building in this space? So I would say we did about a year's worth of discovery after that initial pitch to validate the idea to do research in the market and to continue to kind of pitch to our founders at slytrunk that this space was worth getting into and this product was of value.

Got it. Okay, so that's really cool. Interesting piece. Where is it now? And I'm kind of curious to see some. I'm curious to hear maybe some interesting use cases or success stories that maybe you've heard of people using this out in the field.

Yeah, definitely. So after that year of kind of discovery, we landed on the core functionality of the app and the mvp, which would be you could scan any product and it would pop up the information about that product's ingredients. Again, just trying to help make that process easier and bring forward those ingredients that you should look out for. So we had to figure out a way to make that work, but also make sure that the user didn't hit a dead end. There's other products in the space that are trying to do the same thing where if you scan a product and they don't have the product in the database for the app, then you just like, don't get any information about the product. And we wanted to make sure that didn't happen because we know that if you hit like three products and you don't get a result right away, like, you're not going to continue using the app. So what we did is we implemented the barcode scan as the initial check. So if you scan a product, we have it in our database. Great. We show you all the information about the product, but if we don't have the product in our database, you can actually take a picture of the ingredients text on the product. And we will use Google Image recognition to detect all the same information from that product and show you the result immediately so you don't have to like, submit the product to us and give it and give us the information, and then we'll let you know maybe a couple weeks later if your product was added to the database. And here's the insight on it. You just take a picture of the ingredients, text, submit it, and right away you get the insight about the ingredients in that product. So that was kind of core to that mvp. And we got that launched in a beta phase. Where we tested with about 100 people, made a couple tweaks to that initial MVP, and then launched it live in May of 2021. So that continues to be the core experience of the app, where you scan a product, you get the ingredients, information about it, and you make that more educated choice. You can also search products in the app as well, just by keyword search. And then since then, we've also just started to finish figure out, you know, frankly, how do we make money on this app that we built? Because we launched the mvp, the goal was to just get it out there again, validate the idea, make sure this product was something that people actually wanted, and then from there, hopefully build a large enough audience that we felt like we could monetize. So it was only a few months ago that we started working on, you know, what should the revenue streams of Trash Panda be? And we've started to implement those now.

Very interesting. So I'm excited to go scan just the products in my own house and be like, you know, what's. What am I eating in that regard as well. Yeah. So super interesting. What have you found from building this? Well, one within San Diego? Like, have you found a community of other people committed and interested in this space? That's one piece. And then about the brands themselves, how do you make sure that. I'm guessing you're making money from brands now? How does that not bias the information you're giving to the audience in that regard?

Definitely. So one of the things, one of the reasons we held off on generating revenue initially was because we did want to learn from our users, like, what would be valuable enough that they would want to pay for it and what would the, you know, appetite be for additional information? So the feedback that we got from our users was that they love the scanning functionality, but really they just wanted us to tell them what to buy. They're like, the scanning is great, but please don't make me scan 10 ice creams at the grocery store to figure out which one to buy. Like, just tell me what ice cream I should go buy at Trader Joe's or at Aldi or I'm dairy free, what kind of ice cream should I get? So that ended up being the kind of content that we started putting out on things like social. And our email newsletter is like, if you're going to Trader Joe's, just buy these 10 things. They're trash Panda approved and we still do that today. And none of that is really brand sponsored. It's just like, authentically, these are the products that we recommend. And then as we were doing more of that, it just started to make sense that we would start to talk to brands about featuring their products within the app because we would recommend them, right? We have to be super careful about who we partner with because their products have to check out in the app. We can't recommend and wouldn't recommend any products that aren't authentically, you know, Trash Panda approved is what we would call it. But because we were already essentially recommending products, we started reaching out to brands. I went to Expo west this past year and just would drive up every day and try to hit as many booths as I could, talking to brands about the app and kind of sharing it with them and getting their sense of like, is this something you'd be interested in, you know, getting involved with? And then I started following up with all the brands via email. So we have started working with a couple of brands doing brand partnerships and we've started creating that as a revenue stream within the app. And essentially the brands partner with us. We. And we feature them in very specific placements. So we can feature them within a blog post and speak about the brand in like an article describing something that's important to the brand. Like we partnered with Maxine's Heavenly Cookies and we talked about the difference between date sugar and coconut sugar and high fructose corn syrup. Stuff that like, we can't get into as much depth about in the app experience, but is interesting to our audience. And it's very clear within that, you know, brand sponsored blog post that is brand content. And the second way we've done that is within shopping lists in the app. So we've created an additional section of the app for curated shopping lists. And this actually works in two ways. So one is that a brand can be sponsoring a shopping list and we feature their products within that shopping list in the app. But we're also using those same shopping lists as a way for users to subscribe to get a premium experience experience. So again, we're curating a bunch of shopping lists that we recommend products for, not involving brands at all, just authentically recommending those products. And users subscribe to get access to those like curated shopping lists or experiences. And then there's free lists which we offer up to the brands and to other content creators to curate those products as well. So if you're a free user, you can access the brand sponsored list and a few other ones that we've selected. And then if you're a paid subscriber, you get access to unlimited Shopping lists and all the ones created by us.

Really cool.

Yeah. I mean, and then to answer your question about, like, local San Diego, when I started talking to brands, that's how I found out about Naturally San Diego. I think I joined the startup CPG Group, which is a larger group, and then there was like a San Diego group within that. And then someone within the San Diego group said, hey, you should join the Naturally San Diego group. So I joined that a couple weeks ago, and that's been so much fun. Like, I went to a founders talk with Ari Raz from Coconut Cult at Garania, and it's just been really fun to get to be around other people in the health and wellness and food space, because the people that I generally work with day to day at Sly Trunk are, you know, more from the tech space, and we are working on other projects that are in other fields. So specific to Trash Panda, it's been nice to connect with other people that are passionate about health and wellness and start to talk to people from those emerging brands that could get interested in partnering with us and us promoting their products.

Totally. Yeah. I think what's. I think that's actually maybe where you and I saw each other first also in that startup CPG Slack Group. And what's interesting about San Diego, and maybe you detect this as well, is that obviously everyone talks a lot about the biotech scene, which is really starting to fill over into other worlds like the digital health and now wellness. And now with you, you're really actually merging wellness and consumer packaged goods, which is kind of interesting to see two areas that two different industries kind of blur the lines. In San Diego, obviously we've got our own CBGs here that have made mainstream prominence, like Suja and Kashi. Right. Which always have seemed to have a wellness focus to it. Yes. We've got Jack in the box here too. So that's a different thing. But the wellness brands, or at least brands that have a is this good for you? Component seem to stand out here locally, but you've lived elsewhere. Is that something special that you think uniquely San Diego or Southern California, or is that just a trend in general?

I think there is something unique to San Diego and the number of people who are tapped into health and wellness to that degree. And we definitely see, like, in terms of users in the Trashpan app, it tends to be very coastal and like larger cities, you know, cities you would expect, like San Diego and Austin and LA and New York and Chicago, like, where I feel like a lot of those trends tend to Start and then spread. But I definitely think, I mean, I grew up in Virginia and I was there recently and was using Trash Panda in the grocery store, and you do see different options on the shelves there. I mean, it's just not quite the same. I think it all depends on the consumers and that place and what their appetite is for spending money on those products. Of course, like a lot of these emerging brands that are making products what I would say, like the right way, with quality ingredients and real food, they're more expensive and it's harder for, you know, people in certain areas to afford those products. And that's part of what we hope to change with Trash Panda is that by making more people aware and educated about the ingredients in our food, that will start to spread and, you know, the more people that can afford those products will buy them and that will ultimately make them more accessible to everyone. Right. And drive the price down if consumers are demanding those better quality options.

Totally agree. Yeah, the awareness is huge. Is key. You buy what you know. So that's pretty interesting to see how you guys are attacking that. I like the content you're putting out in the app as well, too. College essentials and that kind of stuff, like making it really, you know, listicle digestible in that regard, too. A few interesting companies you might want to meet here in town. Vessel Health. I don't know if you know the Vessel team that takes some. Does some at home diagnostics through urine to detect certain levels in you, both hormones, vitamins, and other things, and then say, hey. And then give you a direct access to a dietitian nutritionist through their subscription. And they've got an Amazon cart where you can literally just add stuff based on trend lines. You're seeing, oh, I'm low in folic acid. Boom. Add some spinach to my cart. So it might be an interesting partnership in that regard in terms of awareness for people who want. Who are learning things about themselves. And then the Visor app. I don't know if you've met the Advisor team already, but obviously they're showcasing brands from people who have an interest in active lifestyle. So glad you're connected to Dylan and Sam.

Yeah, I met with Dylan. I also met him through the Naturally San Diego group, and he was great. I mean, we had an awesome session, just kind of brainstorming ideas for Trash Panda. And yeah, it's very similar to Pfizer, but, you know, fitness versus health or nutrition. I mean, so, yeah, it was awesome to connect with him and talk through some ideas.

That's Great. Well, where is Trash Panda handed? Do you think it'll always be an internalized product within the bigger company, or is this a spin out at some point like, and then where do you think this goes eventually?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think we're just starting to reach the point where we figure that out because we've just started creating these revenue streams. We don't quite know yet, you know, how those are going to net out. So we're going to see how that goes and see kind of what our conversion to premium is over the next couple of months and how the brand partnerships play out, and then hopefully kind of take that and start to focus more on growth once we have a solid revenue plan set up. So I think once we finalize that in the next couple of months, we'll be figuring out, okay, in order to grow and really get off the ground, do we need outside investment? Should we continue to invest within Sly Trunk? And do we need to add more people to the Trash Panda team to. To accomplish what we need to accomplish? So I think the next six months will be really pivotal for Josh Panda while we figure some of that out.

That's great. Those are fun crossroads to be at for sure. Kind of the future of growing a company. Well, you know, San Diego, obviously, health and wellness, maybe one of the capitals of the US which flows into the way we eat our tacos as well too. Just as much healthy tacos and exact opposite tacos. Where do you find that you're eating your tacos right from?

So I always love trying different places, but I gotta give a shout out to Hagos Tacos and Leucadia. They're making organic tacos and obviously we would consider that Trash Panda approved. So they're one of my favorite spots for sure.

That's a great one. I actually was only turned on to them in the last six months. Another podcast guest, Sandra from evofem, mentioned them and it was more their theme of the restaurant that got interesting to me because of Wes Anderson. So not only are they making good tacos, but. But they have good movie taste as well too. How do you. How does Trash Panda work in an environment in a place like that? Like, when it's there, you can't scan barcode or anything like that. Do you have listings of restaurants?

We don't have restaurant support, but anywhere that there's a list of ingredients, Trash Panda can scan it. So it kind of puts you into the barcode scanning experience. But if there is no barcode, for example, on a restaurant menu, you can skip that and just take a picture of the ingredients tag and it'll let you know if there's anything in there that's weird. So as long as you have a list of ingredients, you can check it with Trash Panda.

Okay, that's good to know. Awesome. Well, Julia, this was great. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast and for what you're building to just make us more aware of what's going on in our bodies. Sounds like we need to meet up for some tacos sometime soon, but thanks so much for being on the pod.

Yeah, thank you.

Cheers. Thanks for tuning in to the Tacos and Tech podcast. You can find all of our episodes on Fresh Food tech podcasts as well as on Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod. Also follow Fresh Brew Tech on all of our social platforms and make sure to share and give a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Play. Thanks again.

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