How We Built Chomps Into a $1B Snack Brand - Co-Founder & CEO Rashid Ali

You couldn't bootstrap a frozen shipping business without having a ton of cash. Like, and the other thing we realized is our moms were our best customer.

You realize like, oh wow, like our core customer is actually different than who we thought.

Like the Chomps brand you see today couldn't be further from when it was launched. As we started getting more consumer data and we could kind of understand who that core demographic was, we realized that like we had— Wow.

We have Rashida Ali, the co-founder and CEO of one of the fastest growing food companies in the world. Chomps.

We started doing influencer strategy before it was really influencer strategy. Uncrate featured Chomps and it just blew up. And in one day I had like a few thousand orders, but it was the first time where like, oh wow, now Chomps is appealing to like more than general broader consumer. And it was like 5 times any volume we'd ever done. Like capacity. Couldn't handle it. Dude, this is, we're gonna need like a million dollars to even fund this. And I, I was like, Kevin signed off on a certain volume. He didn't sign off on this. So.

Yeah, the overnight success story, like 8 years in the making before like major traction, right? Talk to me about like the decision to remain bootstrapped, why that was the right one for you guys.

Running a business is super stressful. If we bring in investors, it would just bring even more stress, right? And the other thing I realized early on, both Pete and I share the mentality. It's like,

welcome everybody to episode 6 of the Zeitgeist Podcast. I am your host, Steven Galanis, and I'm really, really excited about today's episode where we have Rashida Ali. the co-founder and CEO of one of the fastest-growing food companies in the world, Chomps. Rashid, welcome to the pod.

Steven, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

All right, so let's start from the top. For those that don't know about Chomps, I know that's hard to believe at this point. Tell us a little bit about what you guys were trying to do. How'd the idea come

about?

Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, Chomps is the classic story of entrepreneurs pivoting to find their way. Most people don't realize this, but Chomps was originally a company called Logic Meat Locker, and it was something that my partner—

Much better name now.

Well, Logic even had a— there was a reason it was called that, but like, I know Chomps is a lot more catchy. But my partner Pete Maldonado, he originally had this idea when he was first getting into CrossFit. Like, if you see Pete, he's like this really jacked dude, not like me, but he's like the pillar of health and fitness, and he learned about CrossFit. He was formerly a personal trainer in early days, and he got this idea. He went to the CrossFit Games. It's when it used to be in California, and he would see these CrossFitters walking around with their shirts off with these 8-packs, and he knew the amount of work required to like build that physique. And then he went to the vendor village and he saw He saw these CrossFitters in a line to get this meatball, this grass-fed meatball, and they were paying like $15 for this meatball. And in his mind, he realized, he's like, this CrossFit community, like if I brought some sort of product that really aligned with them, like could we build some momentum off of it? And so the original company, Logic Meat Locker, was to compete with Omaha Steaks but offer a grass-fed beef version. So it was a frozen steak company. Think about like ButcherBox.

Yeah.

And so I met Pete randomly through some college friends, and he kind of told me about this business he started. So like, the company started as this frozen steak business. We did that for 6 months. We realized 2 things, that we wanted to bootstrap the business, and you couldn't bootstrap a frozen shipping business without having a ton of cash. Like, it just, we couldn't figure out a way to make economics work. And the other thing we realized is our moms were our best customer. We just weren't building traction. And Pete was like, well, I used to eat meat sticks growing up, those gas station brands that we all know, but I won't eat them anymore because it's just, it's crap ingredients. Right. So the original idea was like, can we make a shelf-stable meat stick? There was nothing really done like that in the market. And that's how the Chomps brand was originally born. This is in like 2012, so 13 years ago. And the goal was like, we wanted grass-fed, we wanted non-GMO, we wanted no antibiotics, we wanted sugar-free, we wanted just a simple clean ingredient meat stick because there was nothing like it on the market. And that's really how the idea came to—

And on top of the CrossFit movement coming in, some of the things that happened alongside of that were the rise of these specialized diets— keto, Whole30, paleo. Talk about like what a tailwind that was at the time and when you guys A, when Pete was like either had his clients or he's trying to adhere to those diets, like what was, what were some of the big struggles? Like I read that his jaw was getting sore from like how much jerky he was having to have. What, like what cool stories do you have from like that time period?

What was interesting, 'cause in the jerky category encompasses traditional jerky and meat sticks and some companies launched meat bars, but we really liked the stick format. Like you said, Pete always said, like, when we're eating jerky, if you've had like really dry jerky, it's hard and it's hard to chew. So we're like, the snack sticks were just easier to eat. We thought it was a better experience. We could use trim, which is like the best parts of the animal, where it's like with jerky, you could only use certain cuts and it limited your ability to scale. So like, for us, sticks was like the perfect avenue. And you're right in that, CrossFit was one community that we really gravitated toward, but at the same time paleo was really gaining momentum and then keto came. In early days we realized that the Chomps brand carried really no weight. Nobody knew what Chomps was, but they knew what CrossFit was, they knew what paleo was, they knew what whole30 was. And so what we would do is we would align with these trending diet tribes and find folks that were influential within those communities and real brand advocates and a lover of the product. And so that's kind of, we started doing influencer strategy before it was really influencer strategy. And the other thing we realized within the CrossFit community, we all had friends that did CrossFit. And typically it was, that was the friend that you would look to for advice, right? If they were eating something, and you didn't necessarily have to follow that lifestyle, but you're like, Right. Well, if Joe's doing it, he's jacked, right? And like, he must be doing something right. And he really likes this brand Chomps, and so like, Again, it was really that like nano influencer where like within your friend group you had the one guy that was, or female, that was like really fit and I'm gonna look to see what she's doing because it clearly is working. And so we started learning a lot of these tactics early on and it helped kind of build a good foundation of really like dedicated consumers.

Yeah, and that period I remember it like very vividly, that 2012 period. You also have like Instagram really kind of becoming a thing. Like we had been, you know, we're of the age that like Got to have Facebook through its rise and everything. Yeah. And seeing the power of social media when we were in college, having all those people that you went to college with connected and, you know, seeing pictures of what they're doing and knowing their birthdays, et cetera, was all really big. The thing that I distinctly remember about that period, 2012, I remember me and my 4 roommates at the time, we decided to go paleo for like 90 days and we did P90X. Yeah. Like we, at the same time. So we didn't, we never did the CrossFit stuff, but we actually did that. And, you know, I went from like 230 to 185 in that period. And, you know, it was kinda like the best shape I'd been in since high school. And it was so much of that was the diet. And when you're talking about, you know, having this meat stick, that was like super easy. You know, my cousin who was doing it with us was still probably like a 5 Slim Jim a day type of guy, go downstairs to the 7-Eleven. It's so cool. One thing that I thought was really interesting, you said earlier you realized your moms were your best customers. And then fast forward to when you really start unpacking this brand, it ended up being that women were like the majority of the consumers. Talk about that, like, especially because, you know, you're 2 guys, the brand has kind of a masculine name originally. You know, I know the original packing like was like literally in like cowhide. Exactly. So tell me about like, that realization when you realize like, oh wow, like our core customer is actually different than who we thought?

Yeah. So, you know, we launched the company and it was really just like 2 guys. It was a side hustle, right? We wanted to figure out like, could we build some momentum? And in 2016, right, there was a big opportunity where we got our first retail shot. And so we started getting more eyes on the brand. But originally, like the Chomps brand you see today couldn't be further from what it was launched as. The original logo was like a cow branding, right? It was Chomps. And it was like, imagine when you, when you see that brand. Yeah. And like you said, the, the carton was this cowhide and it was very masculine, like every other jerky brand. And so as we started getting more consumer data and we could kind of understand who that core demographic was, we realized that like our packaging and brand ethos wasn't serving that consumer. And so we wanted to think hard around like Let's lean in more to the brand personality. And we never— when we realized, oh, it's 70% female, like it was eye-opening, but we never wanted the product to come off as feminine, right? And so when we did the brand work, we realized that like we wanted it to be fun, we wanted it to be approachable, we wanted it to be something that stood up on shelf, but really truly reflected what the brand was. And it was a— we went through a few iterations of the refresh, but it wasn't until like 2018 that we worked with She was the ex-creative director of Chipotle, and she came and helped us kind of on the side. It was one of her first projects since she left Chipotle. She kind of helped bring to life this personality that we wanted. And it's really the brand, the way it stands today. And it's pretty— there's a lot of little things that some people don't even realize. Like, obviously the colors are bold and bright, but when you open a Chompstick, there's a Chompspiration, or there's like an inspirational statement within each one, kind of like a fortune cookie. Right. And each stick is different. other things that we wanted to bring out that brand personality. And to this day, we're realizing that, yes, we serve a female consumer, but there's a lot of men that eat it. There's a lot of kids that eat it. And we think that this, this kind of new brand image that we stumbled upon actually serves all of the consumers, especially as it, as it's continued to evolve.

Yeah. So number one, I love that branding work, not just that you did, but like even when we went through it at Cameo and, and to be like a front-facing consumer brand, you have to nail it because being that cool packaging or you think about Peter, what he did with Protein Bar, RXBAR, and what he's doing now with David. It's like he's got the macros right up front. You know what the ingredients are. When you're looking at the shelf and there's all these things to pick up, people are judging the book by the COVID Absolutely. Tell me some more of the little Easter eggs that you guys have put into the brand and Taking it one step further, do you remember distinctly any of the questions that got asked during the branding exercise that really stood out? And I'll give you an example. Yeah. When we were getting ready to— when Cameo was just an idea, we hired a branding firm out of Miami, out of Wynwood. This is back in 2017 to come up with some names. At the time, we were just calling it Project Power Move because we just needed a filler name. And they came up with like four or five names. It was Hero Hub. It was Wamio. It was Hyped H Y P D. So we have all these names, whatever. And then I go and download my whole LinkedIn list. I send it out there, and nobody basically all the choices like were less popular than Power Move what it was. So we're thinking a lot about it, and then eventually my little brother is like, "Hey, I think it should be called Cameo." Cameo is like that's what they're doing. These people are making cameo in your life. So as we're talking to the branding firm with this new name, one thing they asked me was like, Steven, what would— what actually would, um, if your, if your brand was a person at a party, if Cameo is a person at a party, who is it? And a story that I gave at that time is still like one that we talk about a lot at Cameo. And I go, imagine it's the NBA All-Star Weekend in Chicago and you hear about Michael Jordan's private party. It's gonna be like the best party of all time. You know, there's no way, you're not invited, you're not on the list. It is like gonna be the hardest ticket of all time. You find out where it is and you and your friend decide to like show up at the party. The line is around the block 2 times. There's security, like there's no chance you're getting in. All of a sudden you see like an Escalade open up and there's a bunch of like really famous people. But like you realize, you see somebody that you hadn't seen since college. You played beer pong against them like one night, like 10 years ago. You had a great night with them. You follow them on Instagram. They don't follow you, but like, you know that they're plugged in. Right. And you make eye contact and all of a sudden that person like waves you in. So suddenly like now you're in the party. It's the best party you've ever seen. The best food, the best booze. Like the crowd is unbelievable. And then within the party, there's like an inner sanctum. There's a red velvet rope. Right. And behind the red velvet rope is everyone you've ever wanted to meet. It's like Obama and Oprah and like Michael Jordan. Like they're smoking cigars. You just can't even believe this group of people is there. And suddenly like that person comes, opens the red velvet rope, waves you in, and introduces you to every single person there like you're their best friend ever. And I'm like, that's Cameo. So to this day, when you walked into the Cameo office, you saw that red velvet rope on the side, you see that red carpet. Right. Like our first core values, roll out the red carpet. So I love those branding firms and those branding exercises for that identity 'cause it's such a key part of category creation. Do you have any stories like that that you really remember from that time?

I mean, that was a pretty cool story. I wish I could have one with such detail. But I would say, like, when we were doing the branding work, it always starts with the consumer work, right, to figure out, like, who your core consumer is. And we talked a second ago about CrossFit, and we realized, like, our core consumer wasn't that hardcore CrossFitter. It was really what we call an active achiever. It's someone that wants to live a healthier lifestyle. They want to eat a little bit better. They want to be a little bit more active, but it doesn't necessarily be that diehard that's doing it 24/7. And so first we understand like it's this active achiever, and we wanted to make sure that the brand ethos kind of spoke to them. So you'll see like when we went through the brand work, there was like maybe they give you 12 options and you whittle it down, and a lot of times it may have looked cool, But it didn't necessarily accomplish what we wanted to. We wanted clean, straightforward, simple, exactly like the ingredients that Chomps offers. Right. And so one of the, one of the big unlocks we realized was several brands had like 2 or 3 colors and it was very distracting. And so like the one thing we wanted is like we wanted a single color flow. And so if you think about it, our sticker packaging, it's the bold red and then you have the Chomps logo and the logo is front and center because we wanted to make sure people really connected with the brand. Right. And now if you look on the shelf, like you mentioned Peter at RX, they took the similar approach. What was that single color, and the color spoke to the flavor that you're doing. And there's some brands that are starting to get it and bring that to the table. I think Goodles is another one, right, where they're doing those pop colors. I think, you know, we did this brand work similar time that RX did, and we actually started the companies at the same time. So I think it really spoke to the consumer. They gravitated toward the brand. And again, it helped tell the message. And so that's where, again, the work was always, okay, our current consumer is this female consumer, but we also wanted to make sure that we knew that the brand could speak to a number of other consumers. So we had to figure out what's next. And it's tough, right? We did the refresh in 2018, right? Or what, 6 years later? And I think that the branding is still relevant and it's still working. Yeah. While we make tweaks here and there, like the foundation hasn't changed, which is tough. Like a lot of— I sit on the board in some other brands. It's like every couple of years they're talking about a brand refresh. And in my mind I'm like, what's it going to accomplish? It's just so much work. Like to change your brand and packaging is an absolute nightmare. So you really need to make sure that it's going to drive value and it's needed.

Well, I think the versatility of it is what really like sticks out to me of your branding. And it's not surprising that now, like, the kids vertical. So you started with women doing really well. And, you know, it's like the colors, the patterns, it's just like, it's accessible.

Yeah.

Which I think is super cool.

So we always talk about, you know, people talk about in business is seasonality, right? For the longest time, our Super Bowl was January. New year, new you, right? It's when everyone starts, health is on the mind, they want to eat right. And to do that, you need something—

It's the opposite of my busy season.

But it's just crazy, it was always January. In our minds, we're like, well, we're going to own January, but why can't we own back-to-school? And that's the new one we're really going after. We did the first experiential pop-up a couple months back in Austin. It was called the Protein Pop-Up. And we wanted to really lean into that back-to-school season and own it as the preferred snack. So we— the team came up with this crazy idea to refurb an old gas station, and we were going to— Clean the inside of cars and get them ready for school drop-off and put this organization stuff in the back. And you go in and spin a wheel and win swag and get your favorite Chomps stick and make these keychains. And it was this— if you haven't seen it, you got to check it out online. It was a pretty amazing activation, but it was really to like start connecting Chomps with that back-to-school season. And it's pretty exciting now. Like, you know, the team has grown. Like, we have over 155 folks and we have a lot of depth in each of the functions, but the marketing team and the creative team, and they're really starting to bring to life these new experiences to help connect to the evolving customer as we continue to grow.

So obviously that CrossFit community was huge from the beginning. Getting the Pope's blessing on Whole30 and a lot of these diets were big. You mentioned earlier that you guys were doing influencer marketing before anybody was doing influencer marketing. Talk to me about how you found those kind of, whether it was the nano influencer, the micro influencer, or the person that's like literally creating, you know, the diet and is kind of the Pied Piper of the movement. Tell me some of those early stories of like how you got in touch with them, like what those conversations were like, what the value prop was.

Yeah, so I think early on, like when Paley was building traction, you know, it's simply doing research and understanding like, are there certain events or or activities where a lot of these folks are going. So for paleo in Austin, they had Paleo FX, and it was this cool trade show. It was a little small where we would exhibit, and that's where all the major paleo influencers would come. Folks like—

They're speaking.

Yeah, like Sarah Ballantyne was like the paleo mom, very influential in the States. You had, there's one like Dave Asprey, right, the Bulletproof Executive, right, when it was just like biohacking was becoming popular. It's where all these guys would go, And it was just a great way to get in front of them, to talk to them and connect to them and build a real— because the worst thing you can do is have an influencer back your product but not really weave it into their lifestyle. And that was not the case here, right? All these folks, they were diehard Chomps fans. And it was at this stage, it was still that old branding, right? Where it was really the product. They're like, you check the boxes, the macros are right, the ingredients are right. So you have this winning product. And so we really, at that point, started to build these personal connections with them. And I say it was like influencer strategy before it really had a name. It wasn't about just having them post online. Like, we would— one of the best tactics we realized were these like dedicated emails. So we would pay them, say, a few thousand dollars to like send a dedicated email about Chomps. And we knew that that email would generate $20K or $30K in And so, like, we would do some that would work really well, and we'd say, okay, that's in our toolkit now. We would do, like, 'cause sometimes we'd do, like, blog posts, or we'd pay for, like, banner ads, and we realized it didn't do anything. Like, it didn't really drive any traffic, 'cause it really wasn't getting the attention of the consumer. Yeah. And so, like, those dedicated emails were amazing. We found, like, really obscure ones. There was one guy that had this crazy paleo-keto following, and for whatever reason, it would hit, like, 100,000 or 200,000 users, And it would, it was like the best performing one ever. It was Paleo Hacks was what it was called. And this guy just knew how to write emails. He knew how to connect with his community. So that was pretty awesome. But I would say one of the bigger unlocks where we proved that Chomps could win beyond these trending tribes was, I don't know if you are familiar with this site called Uncrate.

Yeah.

So Uncrate, for folks that don't know, It's kind of like Maxim magazine. Like, it's an app where every day it just shows cool stuff.

Super cool.

It could be cars.

I remember years ago on Crate, I bought this like saw that could saw through brick. I don't know why I needed it, but Crate sent it. And I used to love that email.

And it was like, it was originally an email. Now there's like an app. It serves a very primarily male demographic. A buddy of mine was an investor in MeUndies. Like, in one— yeah, so they put me in touch with this, the company that does Uncrate. And the way it works is you would send the editor samples of the product, and if they like it, they would feature it. If not, you know, it would just— nothing would happen. And so I sent samples to Choms. This is like, I don't know, 2018. No, no, this would have been like 2016, 2017. And nothing happened. And I was like, they must not have liked the product. And so I'm then in Bali on my honeymoon, and Pete is moving from Chicago to Naples, Florida. And so when you're in Bali, like, my phone was in the hotel because the service was crapping. I check it, I go into the hotel room and I check. And at the time we were using Shopify, and when you would get an order, you would get like a text message. And I go to my phone and I had like 1,000 messages. At this point we were doing maybe a few hundred orders a week. Yeah. And in one day I had like a few thousand orders. And so Uncrate featured Chomps. They didn't tell us they were going to do this, and they just posted this little blurb about it and it just blew up. And so it showed— it was the first time we're like, oh wow, now Chomps is appealing to like more the general broader consumer. And well, first we had to email all the customers and say like we didn't have enough orders. And it was almost like one of those GoFundMes where we're like, It's gonna take us a few months to fill the orders. But we got you. And I would say like 99% of them were like, cool, we'll wait. Yeah. And so we ended up, me and Pete, and it's like we had to manually fill all of these orders and it was just overnight we're like, oh, we're really, we're really onto something. Again, it was the old branding, but it was just a phenomenal product. So it showed that, you know, the consumers wanted something like this. And that was, again, it was, it was one of the bigger unlocks in the early days of the company.

Now, not the first time you got an order that you couldn't fulfill or was so game-changing. The famous story, for those that haven't heard it, I'd love you to tell the story about Trader Joe's.

Yeah, it's funny because Trader Joe's, first of all, one of the best retailers out there. Not only do they curate amazing products, they know how to price it, they know their consumer. So Pete gets a call From someone pretty senior at Trader Joe's, and they wanted to bring in a snack stick. You know, Trader Joe's—

Because they kind of had their own, but—

They had one version. It was performing fine. For whatever reason, they wanted to bring in kind of the zero sugar, grass-fed. It was around the time that, right, Whole30 was getting very popular.

And they wanted like a Whole30 certified, I think I read.

Yeah. And so they call my partner Pete, and he kind of gives— he calls me back. He's like, Trader Joe's just called. They want product. And I'm like, Yeah, I'm like, Trader Joe's is calling you? Because at the time, like, we're doing about like $400K in top line. And when Trader Joe's calls, you know, majority of the products are private label. So they're like, we want to bring a Trader Joe's branded product. And at the time, like, we had limited capacity, we had limited capital.

And you really want to get that brand out there.

Yeah, and so we convinced them that, you know, if you want to bring in a Whole30 product, you want to bring in Chomps because that's what resonates with the Whole30 consumer. You know, we talked about RXBAR. They brought RXBAR at the same time. There was a few products that they were bringing in that were Whole30 approved at the time. And so we were able to go back and forth. We were able to convince them, no, no, Chomps is what we wanted to bring, a branded product. We were able to work on kind of economics that made sense. And then they gave us estimates of what an order would be. And it was like, you know, 5 times any order we've— any volume we'd ever done with our co-man. And, you know, we worked with them to say like, we would need some pretty crazy lead times to be able to execute, and they agreed to it. And so first step was to get them to agree to the lead times. Then we had to go and convince my manufacturer, hey, by the way, you know, we're gonna produce more than you've ever produced in like a 3-month period.

So question on that, just 'cause I've never had to deal with like physical product in that way. The producer, like, is the reason they wouldn't say hell yeah to that, is it just like a bandwidth capacity issue or? Because there shouldn't be— if you've got like a big PO from Trader Joe's, they're not worried about like out-trade risk, right?

No, no, no. It's really just capacity. Like, can we handle it? Right. Because at the end of the day, it's like, think about like you're running this machine, right? And you're asking to run it 5 or 10 times harder than you've ever done. It can break, right? For any manufacturing facility, you want to typically run it at 80%. Because if you run it at 100%, like, It's too hard on the equipment, it's too hard on the infrastructure, it's too hard on the labor, right? Like, you know, you talk about, are they running a first shift and a second shift? Do you now have to work weekends? And it's like, it just puts so much pressure on the business. And the question is, is it worth it, right? Because it was an initial PO.

Yeah.

An initial PO doesn't necessarily dictate that it's going to lead to a reorder. Right. And so you have to make the call.

And if you ramp up people on that, you allocate new machines or whatever, and then that follow-up order doesn't happen, That sets something else back.

Yeah, and you're jeopardizing your core business, right? And so we had one manufacturer at the time, Kevin Westerns in Greentop, Missouri, awesome guy, and he told me no like 12 times, but I asked the same question a little bit differently. Finally, I got him to agree to it. And so we had the capacity lined up, then we had to figure out like, how are we gonna line up all this beef? How are we gonna make sure we get the packaging? How are we gonna get— and so When I'm building the model, I realize, well, shit, we're gonna need like $1 million, like, if this comes— no, the original number was like half a million. So like, we started figuring out, well, first let's get the PO, and then we can figure out how we're gonna solve it. And so I remember, my parents happened to be in town, and we're playing spades at the table, and at the time when POs came through, they were faxed, but then we had this app that converted to a text message. Yeah. So like, my phone's going off, 1 fax, 2 fax, 3, then 8. 8 for each of the Trader Joe's DCs. And I'm adding them up, and then I get on the phone with Pete, and I'm like— he's stoked. He's like, did you see this? I was like, Pete, this is more than we discussed. Like, this is—

Well, the sales guy versus the ops guy.

Well, it was like, it was double what the original forecast was. I was like, dude, this is— we're gonna need like $1 million to even fund this. And I was like, Kevin signed off on a certain volume. He didn't sign off on this. So I'm like, I'm updating my model, I'm figuring it out. And so like, this was like on a Thursday, and we had to let Trader Joe's know by like Monday if we accept the order.

Yeah.

And so over the weekend, we were fortunate to raise this million dollars through friends and family. It was debt only, so we didn't have to give up any equity.

Yeah.

Um, you know, my brother really came to the table. He actually also made me sign a personal guarantee.

Yeah.

Um, but as a result, I didn't have to give up equity at the time. But yeah, so we were able to raise the money, we were able to work with our manufacturer and suppliers to produce the product. But even when we were telling the folks that lent us the money, we're like, we were going to do everything we can to make sure that this is a successful launch. It's backed by Trader Joe's. But like, at the end of the day, we're like, we're producing a food product.

Right.

And we've all cooked a steak and we've all overcooked it, right? At the end of the day, like, it is not a perfect process. And so like, there is some inherent risk. You know, we gave them a really attractive interest rate at the time and You know, we spent a lot of time during the production and were able to execute flawlessly. And the crazy thing is, you know, Trader Joe's gave us some really aggressive projections to support this order. And within, I want to say, like 2 months, we got another set of PO orders, like larger than before.

And is that because you guys just blew those aggressive projections out of the water?

Out of the water. We like, we, I want to say like 10x like any product they had previously. had that. And originally you launch, when you launch at Trader Joe's, you're on like this new item end cap. And so we were on the item end cap, we were in line, and eventually like you'll realize at Trader Joe's, Chomps is typically at front end. And because everyone realizes how well it performs and it doesn't take up a lot of space and it can generate a lot of revenue. Put it right there. We just, the velocity just kept growing and kept growing, kept growing. So it was, it was pretty crazy. So like that year we 10x'd the business. You know, we put a lot of pressure on our co-man, but the volume continued to come. And so it allowed him to continue to grow this facility. I mean, when we first were there, he had like a single truck oven. Now it's this 30,000, 40,000 square foot commercial facility, like producing significant volume as a result. But it put a lot of pressure on. Kevin jokes to me after time, he's like, I don't know how you got me to agree to this, Rashid, because 'Cause it put so much pressure on the business. But it was a pretty fun time. And a lot of times, like, when you get an opportunity like that, we had a lot of people in our ears saying, now that you're in Trader Joe's, you have so many eyes on the product, right? You need to get aggressive, go into the next market.

Yeah, I was literally just gonna ask that question, right? Because Trader Joe's, for those that have been there, actually kind of the perfect place to launch this. Yeah, but it is not, you know, the scale of an Albertsons or a Costco or anything like that. Jewel, Dominick's in Chicago back in that time. What's— how does it— how does like loyalty work like with the retailer? Because I would assume part of the reason they went so big was like they had this thing, they were riding a wave, and they basically saw like, hey, This whole 30 things becoming a thing, paleo is becoming a thing. We want to be the place where you're shopping for that. But it is a limited footprint compared to a lot of the other retailers that we've talked about or Whole Foods. So how does that work when you have this great partnership with one, but a product like yours, it does need to get everywhere?

Well, we made a very tough decision and we decided You know, we launched in 2016. We didn't launch in any other retailers in 2018. We were gonna be the best Trader Joe's partner possible for 2 years because we were figuring out how do you scale the business, how do you grow awareness. So we did e-commerce, right? We had Chomps.com and we had Amazon and we had Trader Joe's.

And at that time, what was the split between e-com versus Trader Joe's?

The daily conversation was like Trader Joe's concentration. Like at one point it was probably like 90%, then 80%. And you just continue to grow the business around. But the problem was like Trader Joe's was still growing too. So it was really challenging to kind of reduce that concentration. I mean, it's risky to have like one single customer making up such a big piece of your business.

Well, also when you're selling through a store, especially at that time, like obviously retail media, and we can go talk about that next, like has kind of been a game changer, I would assume, for a brand like yours. But at that time, like you don't have the same data about your customer, you know, when somebody's going to Trader Joe's and buying, especially if they don't have the loyalty program, versus like what you get on Amazon or chops.com.

Yeah, so like Trader Joe's is like, for most retailers, they will rapport, meaning like you can buy cash register data. Like Trader Joe's is one that doesn't, so it's kind of like a black box, right? So even when you're talking about like, how do you go into retail, typically you need to Say, like, you know, you look at my syndicated data and it tells a story. And we could tell the Trader Joe's story, but no one would believe it. Our velocities there were just— I mean, it didn't make any rhyme or reason. Right. And like, but you also have to think about in Trader Joe's, we were the only snack stick there. A lot of times we were front end. It was priced right. The consumer got it. So like, our retail strategy has always been brand awareness needs to be ahead of distribution. And so when we think about, okay, after Trader Joe's, okay, now it's time to get into additional retailers because we have to address concentration. Right. The natural channel made perfect sense because it's like the natural consumer understands what grass-fed is. They see the orange butterfly and they know that's Non-GMO Project verified, right? They know about no antibiotics or no hormones. So like they kind of understood everything because if they don't, you have to overinvest in trade or marketing. Right? You have to try to convince the consumer why they should grab that product. Right. So in the natural channel, they got it. And so obviously, naturally, you think about Whole Foods, you think about Sprouts, you think about Fresh Thyme, a local Illinois retailer. But so like, those were the ones that we really focused on initially. So like, our retail strategy was very thoughtful around like, first natural, then you dip your toes in conventional, then you go to mass, then you go to club. And so like, Little by little, we grew. But if you look at a traditional jerky brand, most jerky sales is done in convenience and C-store. And we're still, even to this day, we're barely in any C-store. It's because we really wanted to focus on where's our consumer, where are they shopping, and will it make sense? So yeah, 2018 is when we first started going after the natural channel. We partnered with Whole Foods. From there, we just kind of built brick by brick after that. But it's interesting because you mentioned like, yes, Trader Joe's brought us in, but we continue to service them amazingly well. Right. And so as we grew our retail footprint, there's no animosity, right? At the end of the day, like a Trader Joe's consumer is very loyal. They're going there for certain items. And a lot of times most people still say, oh yeah, I buy it at Trader Joe's, right? Or like I discovered it there because of the first one. But no, I mean, as long as you're still delivering, you're still performing, The retailers get it, right?

As you started getting out of the natural retailers and into conventional and then to the clubs, did they get it? Did they like under— like, obviously I understand, you know, the like why Whole Foods or Sprout would like get what you're doing. But when you were talking to Sam's Club or Costco, right? Like, did they at that time, were the trends so obvious that Because they're almost like laggards at that point.

Right. Well, so I would like Sam's and Costco. I'd set it aside. When I think of conventional, I think of like Albertsons, Albertsons, Kroger. Yeah, right. Like Jewel, like more your conventional grocery. Like I grew up in Des Moines. I was like Hy-Vee, right? That's going to be a conventional one. And so I would say several years ago, it's not that the buyers got it right. They knew that there was something there, but some retailers would be a little bit They would want to really see that there's traction. So like there's certain retailers that have said no to us for 10 years, right? And it wasn't in the last couple years that finally they said yes, and maybe they brought in one item, and now we have a full shelf. And it's so like, I think right now there's a window where everyone understands what we're doing. Protein is all anybody's talking about, right? But like 3 to 5 years ago, no, it was an uphill battle. Like launching in those big big conventional grocers like an Albertsons or Kroger, I mean, it's tough because like you are competing against these 2 strong legacy brands that own so much real estate and really invest in trade. And so like a big portion of these buyers' marketing fund is coming from these big legacy brands. Like Chomps is not a big brand. Like we have to really control how we're investing our dollars, right? We were bootstrapped all the way till end of '21. And so we had to be profitable since day one because our cash flow was funding the business. And so it was, it was an uphill battle. A lot of times, like when I'm talking to other brands, like people get so excited when they get on shelf and I'm like, dude, getting on shelf is easy. It's getting the reorder, right? Yeah. It's not about, it's not about that initial purchase. Like the most important metric that we, we follow is your repeat rate, right? That second purchase or the third purchase or that brand loyalist that's purchased 5 times. Like you need to understand like what's, why is that happening and what item are they gravitating to? The other challenge we realized is, I think the metric now, it changes, but like say 60 to 70% of our consumer has never shopped the jerky set. So they're not even walking by where your product is. Right. Right. And so like that's inherently another challenge. Like most of our consumers are shopping the perimeter. Yeah. And we're in line. And so like there's all these challenges that we're continuing to navigate even at the scale we are today, that it's like once you were in the conventional grocer and the the club at Mass, like these new challenges that we're being confronted with.

Let's talk about the, uh, the butterfly. You know, you've gone all over the world to try to find the right supply to go in because again, you know, for this community, like input in, like quality in is quality out as far as like you're getting your 8-pack that way with the right stuff, you know, coming into your mouth. Uh, talk about some of the crazy places you've gone to source meat. And where— we were talking about this before off camera, but like, what's the, what's the mecca that you found for raising grass-fed cattle? So

it's that, yeah, me and Pete have truly traveled the world trying to find the best beef providers. And, you know, we found some, some good domestic partners. We've, we've been to New Zealand, has a lot of grass-fed beef. We've looked at South America cautiously to look We know Europe, but honestly, like, we met a producer in Australia, primarily like Southern Australia. So think like Melbourne and then Tasmania, which is an island off of Australia. And we realized like, not only do they have a ton of grass-fed, but from our perspective, like Tasmania specifically, its geography is so perfect for growing cattle year-round. You see the grass and like the— it's so dense, almost like moss. And you see how big these cattle get and you're like, they're just eating grass. And it's because it's so nutrient dense. But not only is there a ton of grass year-round, you know, there's no GMOs in Australia. So it's non-GMO and it goes even further to Non-GMO Project verification, which is a very strict program to really validate that no GMOs are making it in the product. Right. On top of that, It's not only— there's programs that'll say like no antibiotics or no hormones. It means that like during a certain period of their life that they haven't been. But we were what's called NAE, no antibiotics ever. So like they cannot be— they cannot receive any antibiotics during its entire life. So if an animal gets sick, they're going to treat them, but then it falls outside the program. Right. And so like such strict standards around what it's fed, how it's treated. And then also it goes as far as The humane treatment of the animal, right? A good portion of our beef is certified humane, where it's like really dictates how the animal can be treated from all the way birth all the way through harvesting, like to make sure that there's no stress in the animal's life. It's, you know, there's also due to the quality of the meat. If the animal is very stressed, it impacts the lactic acid and it actually leads to a lower quality meat. So like an animal that lives an amazing life actually yields far higher quality. So We've really anchored on the Australian region. A significant portion of our product continues to proudly be sourced from there. We do continue to look at domestic options because there are really good pockets. But the problem now is like, I would need to build a program of thousands of farms because they're just, they're so small producers. Right.

Or even, you know, even if they're producing it right, like, is all the feed Like there's just so much that goes into like truly to get it non-GMO.

Yeah. To get at our scale, like to get all non-GMO is very tough. And that's the one thing to think about is like not all grass-fed is created equal. Like you'll go out there and you'll see a lot of products that are saying grass-fed, but if you double-click to say like, is it Non-GMO Project verified? Is it antibiotic-free or no antibiotics ever? you know, humane treatment claims on the product. Like, at the end of the day, people will do what Pete and I refer to as like greenwashing, where they're trying to give the consumer what they think they want, but they're taking shortcuts to be able to improve their margins. Like, Chomps just hasn't— it's not in our ethos to do that.

So earlier this summer, I got to see the Starbucks CEO talk, which was an incredible conversation. And he's on the board of one of the major retailers. And one of the things he was saying about the grocery aisle is basically like everything like on the outside, which were the chips, like the Mondelēz-type products, have really just gotten crushed. And then everything on the inside, like that protein-rich, is doing exceptionally well because of GLP-1s. Talk about like the GLP-1 trend and like how that is. Is that the next CrossFit for you guys? Is that the next big tailwind propelling the business forward?

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because GLP-1s is all anybody's talking about. And there's a lot of products now that are kind of engineered to serve that community. And our perspective is we're trying to deliver an amazing snack that can work for several lifestyles, right? And it happens to be one that's really good for the GLP-1 diet. There's a lot of studies. Cornell did this study, and I think I just read another report from NIQ where it's showing like the most categories, especially salty snacks, there's a significant reduction in consumption for folks that are on the GLP-1s. And it measures it from like the first 30 days they're on it to 60 to 90. And as they get deeper into it, like they're consuming less and less. The 2 categories that they saw growth are meat snacks, and it really magnifies as they continue to grow because they're trying to get protein. And the other one is, it's like cottage cheese and yogurt, like both are having booms. Like kefir would fall into that too. I know you had Julie on previously. Yeah. And so it's ironic where like historically meat snacks is viewed as like not necessarily like a health food, but the problem is like if you're on GLP-1s, it's almost like conscious calories. Every calorie you eat has to count because you can only eat so much because your appetite is so suppressed.

Thanksgiving full.

Exactly. And so you should be getting majority of your calories from fresh foods, but we all live very busy lifestyles, right? And so what Chomps is doing, it's convenient, it's tasty, and it's a macro that's going to help you. And as a result, yeah, it's really, really resonating strongly with the community, unlike a lot of the other

So all these tailwinds are happening. And through this time, you guys remained bootstrapped, which I think is, you know, for a lot of that period.

Yeah.

Talk about the pressure that you guys ever had at different points to raise capital, especially— and again, like, I'm sure when you guys started, like, you couldn't— like, it's almost impossible to raise for that category. And then all of a sudden you have like things like the RXBAR exit and now everybody's looking for like the next health, you know, the next health food that they could come and invest. Talk to me about like the decision to remain bootstrapped, like why that was the right one for you guys. And, you know, the different points where like you guys were at a fork in the road if that ever happened, like raising capital versus not.

Yeah. So I would say like Some businesses require capital, right? So I think Chomps was very fortunate in that we were able to find an operating structure that allowed us to build it profitably, generate cash flow to fund the business. But like, and that's all I know now, right? And the other thing I realized early on, both Pete and I share the mentality, it's like running a business is super stressful. And if we bring in investors, to me, it was like it would just bring even more stress because again, like I value my reputation and my word and I want to win. And me and Peter are so fiercely competitive where it's like if we took on that money, then it's like not only do we want to like represent the brand, then we also have to make sure that the investors are happy. And for us, it was like it could almost bring competing goals. Right. And so we found we really understood our unit economics. We really understand how to control investments in the right area, and we were able to build a business brick by brick all the way through the end of '21. You know, there were some early folks that we had talked to. We brought in a little money here and there, but nothing— it was never about like raising money. Right. Like maybe we had someone in our ear and they were giving us advice, but it wasn't until the end of '21 where we took a serious look to say like maybe it's time to de-risk a little bit. And the catalyst for that was was COVID. Right. Like, when the lockdown first started, we saw like, we had, so we were digitally native, e-commerce for the first 4 years. So we had like a huge head start on e-commerce. If you guys recall, like once COVID happened, everybody was pivoting to online because foot traffic was almost— Zero. Went to zero. And so we saw this huge influx and we're like, we thought we were bulletproof. Flying high, like at first there was that there was a huge spike in retail traffic because people were buying because they were concerned what was going to happen. And so like we got these huge POs from our partners and we're like riding high. And then all of a sudden the lockdown happened and our retailers called us and they're like, "Hey, by the way, those POs like we have to cancel them." And we're like, "What do you mean you have to?" Like there was I think we had four million in in POs that we were producing against, and they you have to be a good good partner. Like your largest retail partner is saying, like, we can't fill the order. They're not doing it 'cause they're terrible people. They can't. There's no foot traffic. Yeah. So we're like, okay, we have to figure this out. So we're sitting on tons of inventory. Like, our e-commerce kind of sales kind of went back to normal levels. We had zero traffic on the retail side, and we're sitting there like, what are we supposed to do? You know, the team really got creative. We realized that, okay, well, most of our sales were impulse, right? Grab and go snacks. So we like came up with this, like how do we get more chomps in the pantry? We did this whole recipe campaign, and we started showing how chomps can be used as a pizza topper or in a salad, or we're just trying to be. And so like it started working little by little. We're burning through the inventory, but it was such a hard time where it's like you know there were challenges throughout the business, but it wasn't to that point where like shit, like we may not be able to keep the lights on because. 'Cause we're not, you know, we're just like, we had all this inventory and we're fortunate to have like a 12-month shelf life. Yeah. So we had a little bit of time. And so it was kind of coming outta COVID when Pete and I were like, we have personal guarantees on everything. Like the bit, like this is our entire life. So should we take a look to see, is there a way to de-risk? And really just to de-risk me and Pete personally and our families. 'Cause, you know, we start the company, we're just 2 dudes and it's a side hustle. Fast forward, now Pete and I both are, We both have kids, and we have these families, and we're kind of the sole breadwinner. Right. And it was like, okay, it's time. And so, we wanted to make sure, like, one, we wanted to de-risk. Two is we wanted to align with a partner that understood what we were trying to do, but also be like what we call smart money, right? An advisor that thinks a little bit differently about the business. Because I think, you know, if you think about Pete and I, we both approach the world very differently, and we bring varying perspectives. And I think it's valuable. The way we think about it is if you think the same way, you're gonna run into the wall together. But if you can challenge each other, it may not be fun 'cause you're always kind of like thinking about things differently. Yeah. But it's the— you need it, right? You need the tension sometimes 'cause it allows you to challenge in the right way. And so, yeah, end of '21, we ran a process. We aligned with an investor who had just kind of broke off from a smaller fund. It was their— we were their first food investment. It was a pretty significant check for them, but they really believed in the brand. And it was the first time we took any significant outside money. But the important thing about the transaction was Pete and I wanted to retain majority. We wanted to retain control. We still wanted to build the brand the way that we thought was necessary, but also kind of help Dearest, us personally.

Yeah, it's amazing. One thing that really sticks out is like the founder-market fit that I think you guys had. An underrated element of entrepreneurship, especially for a business like yours, right? You know, everybody sees the headlines, fastest growing food company in the world, you know, last few years, but it was a slog for many, many, many years to get through that. It was, you know, the overnight success story, like 8 years in the making before like major traction, right? So talk about the, especially for like young entrepreneurs that are listening and are thinking about starting a business and like trying to pick the right co-founder, what is it about like you and Pete's relationship that has been able to be so enduring? Like, how do you guys complement each other? You mentioned, you know, you guys have different perspectives and that, you know, that iron sharpens iron mentality has been huge. But talk about like, you know, what it's taken to keep that relationship going.

Yeah, I would say, um, like any partnership, is hard. Like, I honestly, more often than not, you feel like they don't go the right way. Right. And I think mine and Pete's wasn't any different. I think in early days, like, we— so Pete and I are very different in the way we think about business in the world. We're very Type A, very competitive, and we want to win. And but on the flip side, like, it's interesting because me and Pete are both kind of come from immigrant backgrounds. We both have a bit of a chip on our shoulder, like, You know, I went to a public school. I wasn't the best. I wasn't the most studious. I was always kind of scrappy. I could always do really well in school, but it was me just trying to figure out like the least amount of work that was required to still get A's. But then I look at myself and my brothers. My two brothers went to phenomenal schools. My dad always gave me crap because I don't have a graduate degree. So like I have this sort of chip. Pete kind of struggled through school too. He kind of was this personal trainer. He never really had a 9 to 5. So like we share this kind of like hunger where it's like we're gonna work harder than anybody else, but we do so in different ways. So Pete is kind of that visionary, big idea creative. Like he'll call me with all these ideas all the time, and I'm like, originally I would kind of just shoot them down because I'm so distracted, you know, in the weeds on the business. And but now I've learned that like Pete needs to kind of be fostered and ask the right questions. So like he can, he'll even tell you like he can't brainstorm better than with anyone else but me. And it's kind of ironic, 'cause in early days it wasn't the way, 'cause we would always butt heads. Right. But I can, I'm trying to always envision, like, what is he trying to accomplish? Where's he trying to go with this idea? And like, maybe this doesn't work, but what about this? And so like, whatever he calls me with, it's typically not what we end up with, but we both are jointly excited about whatever that may be. And so I think that's the way, is you kind of have to feed off each other's strengths, and You know, we eventually hired like this leadership coach. We joke around and say it was like a career counseling or marriage counseling, and we got big into like personality profiles and Disc Hogan.

I love, I love all those.

But we realized like at the end of the day, like when, when I'm trying to process information, I ask questions. And Pete sometimes perceived it as like I didn't trust him or I needed— and so like, no, he's like, he knows that Rashid is just going to ask questions until he gets enough information, right, to be able to think through it. And sometimes, like, Pete is wired where for him to learn, he has to do. Like, he's hard execution. Like me, I have a balance between execution and analyze. So I do need a degree of information to be able to process it, but I am able to run when I feel comfortable. Pete needs to run to be able to feel comfortable. And so for me, I'm like, oh, he's like— he's— he's no patience. He just wants to run and do this. And now, like, we found this balance on how do we work together and take the best of both worlds. The other thing is he's very sales and marketing focused. I obviously have a strength on the quant side, operations, finance, accounting. And so the balance was really good where it's like he could come with a great idea and I could figure out how do you scale it? How do you make sure that it's profitable? How do you think not only about if we're doing single units How do you think about getting to the scale to a million? And being able to ask the right question to say, like, hey, I wanna launch this really obscure ingredient. I'm like, dude, like, I don't think we can necessarily, like, yeah, this would be cool if it's like some niche thing and we only wanna serve this tiny consumer, but what if we wanna make it bigger? Like, is it gonna work? And so we've been able to, like, figure out a way to work through any crazy idea he has and make sure that it has massive appeal. So

I'm guessing the venison came out of his—

Well, venison is interesting. Like, venison, if you guys haven't tried it, it's one of— it's got like this cult following. But venison was one where, I mean, when we spent time in New Zealand, like there's a ton of amazing venison. And, you know, that's one where it's, it's not one of our top SKUs, but it's probably one of our best tasting ones. And some retailers don't get it. Venison also came— there's another brand out there that got really into game meat. General Mills ended up acquiring them. And so like there was others like, oh, there's like this this following that venison could be popular. It never really took off, but yeah, that's kind of one. I mean, we, we early days, uh, we were doing alligator, we were doing like water buffalo, we were doing like— we tested a bunch of these. And again, it was really like, okay, venison I can scale because at least I knew where to find it. Like, where are the other ones from? Yeah, exactly. So we, we did some crazy ideas, then, you know, we, we brought test sticks to market, but nothing, nothing where we could, we could really truly scale it.

Talk about the current, like, SKU lineup. Like, what, what's the full roster? And then one thing I'm always interested— Julie and I spent a lot of time talking about this on her interview— tell me about, like, the products that maybe you wanted to launch that you didn't, and how do you guys stay disciplined? Because I can imagine just you know, even the kids offering, right? I'm sure that's something you guys have been thinking about for a long time, but then eventually, you know, decided to make this push for back to school. What— how do you guys think about product expansion?

Yeah, so I'd say unlike Julie— and by the way, Lifeway is a fantastic product, and I think there's certain categories where you have to have multiple SKUs, right? Like, our business is Really simple. Like, we only do sticks. Yeah. 90% of my sales are in 3 recipes.

Were there other things that you thought about doing, or were sticks always like an obvious format for whatever reason?

We love the stick format. You know, a lot of folks, they do a jerky, they do a stick, they do a bar, maybe they try like pork rinds. But for us, like, we know how to make sticks really well, and we wanted to like, The way I describe it is like, you know, there's one Snickers bar, right? There's one Coca-Cola. Like, we really, we really are good at making sticks and we really stay focused. And my favorite type of innovation, whether you say innovation through simplification, like one of the largest unlocks, 'cause you talked about like in the last 3 to 4 years, like Chomps has really started to grow. And one of the biggest unlocks came out of COVID right? When I was talking about like, how do we get more Chomps How do we start using that as an ingredient? Because Chomps historically was a grab-and-go. And what we realized is like, we now have these like 8-count pantry packs. And what we realized was, if we get more Chomps in the household, like the whole family will consume it, but it never impacted our single-stick sales because that impulse grab-and-go was serving that use case. And the pantry brought in this whole new wave of consumers. And so, one of the biggest innovations we've done was just put more sticks in a bag. And like, it doesn't sound like that much, but if you think about the economics of it, like, my historical ring was like $2 for a single stick. Yeah. Now the ring goes to like $18 to $20, and my single stick hasn't been impacted, and we're adding this. And so like—

Sean from Dude Wipes had a very similar story. So John Mayer, was like, ended up being like a huge fan of Dude Wipes. And he ends up DMing them on Instagram and he said, yo, hey dude, love your product, but gotta tell you, we live in a 2-wipe world, right? So they now have a 2-wipe pack where there's 2 wipes in the packaging. It cut their costs down. They sell it for more. It's been like a massive inflection. Yeah.

But it's like those, like, it's the simplest ideas where, like, there you're saying you're, like, effectively doubling the opportunity to get the product in a consumer's hand. Right. And so, like, that was one huge unlock is these pantry packs. And now if you shop the jerky aisle, you're gonna see a lot of pantry packs, right? And it's like a lot of folks have followed suit to realize that that's the way to go. And the other thing, the innovation, is we have these minis we call Chomplings, where it's like some folks don't want to eat— our full stick is 1.15 ounces. Chompling is A half ounce. Some people want to have quick, quick, right? Maybe it's like the, the stick is, is quite long. Maybe it doesn't fit into the, the purse well or the lunchbox well. So like the Chomplings fit a different use case too. And so that's the, the, the next avenue is like, how do we get more of these minis? But at the end of the day, it's, it's the same thing. I'm cutting it longer, I'm cutting it shorter, I'm putting more in a pouch or less in a pouch. So like my core business on how we're making the product hasn't changed, but we're realizing the versatility. Of the product. So that's not to say, like, you know, I'm biased, but I believe the Chomps brand has a lot of brand power, and we do have permission to expand within category. We have permission to expand out of category. We are doing a lot of work to figure out what could be next. But honestly, in the next 3 years, you're going to see some cool flavors. Maybe you're going to see different, different proteins, but At the end of the day, like the core lineup is the core lineup, and it doesn't need to change. Like our success is because we've been so disciplined and so focused, and haven't been distracted by that next shiny thing. Like our growth comes through depth in accounts, right? I want to be able to sell more chomps in each door. Like I think about how much revenue potential per door because that's how you build a profitable business. And so we talked about like chomps grows through. Incrementality, right? When I talk to a buyer, we're not saying, well, you know, we're going to cannibalize your existing business. No, no, we're going to bring a new consumer to your set. And so like, that's what a buyer wants is someone that's going to grow through incrementality. Like if you don't bring enough chomps in the store, you may lose share in the category because other retailers may lean in heavier. And so that's what we're trying to think about is how do we get maybe outside of the jerky set, right? How do we get like maybe this pack in the lunchbox aisle? Like, why not? Why can't we be next to those protein bars? Because instead of putting a Z-Bar in your kid's lunchbox, why can't you put a Chomplings in there? And so that's where, again, when we think about innovation, it's just how do we get more Chomps in the household? How do we get more product in the pantry? How do we get different points of distribution without the store? And so that's where we believe there's a huge opportunity to just continue to grow our core base.

So speaking of innovation in retail, retail media has become Really big business. How are you guys leveraging it? It's funny because it's a space like I obviously I'd never heard about, and then all of a sudden for Cameo for Business, we've started to now have partnership discussions with a lot of the retail media networks that are looking for content. How are you guys leveraging retail media? Has it been a game changer for you guys?

Yeah, I would say like we've always been very disciplined with how we're spending our media dollars, but I think now at our scale, we are having to figure out additional tactics to increase awareness. Again, our consumer's not certain to shop at The Jerky House. We have to find a way to get their attention. Right. So there are a number of retailers that are really figuring out ways to create more awareness for brands through media channels. The other thing is the way consumers are shopping has changed. So not only are there new media opportunities, like delivery, right? Their online platforms, Instacarts of the world. Like, you really have to understand, like, a lot of people talk about omnichannel and what that means, but like, you truly need to understand the omnichannel strategy or you're going to lose an opportunity, right? I think delivery, pickup, those— there's a different way to shop. Because if you think about it, people don't realize, well, if you're placing an order and if you're not merchandised the right way or you're not easy to find, that shopper that's buying your order is just going to say it's out of stock. And then you've lost an opportunity. I mean, people don't realize that, like, there's a whole new behavior on how to think about that person shopping versus the normal consumer that may know exactly where you are. So it's all these different tactics that you have to understand, and it's like really mining the data and really understanding what's happening and being able to say, well, it says I was out of stock, but I wasn't out of stock. Oh, well, maybe because the tag wasn't right, or maybe it was not put in the right place. So it's like just really understanding that. The other thing I'd say is, like, there's some media strategies where they can maybe juice the numbers, but they're not going to really lead to stickiness or reorder. So you really have to navigate platforms to understand that. Is it an awareness driver to the right consumer, which means that eventually they'll continue to purchase it? Or is it just going to, like, maybe artificially juice the number and then it's going to go back? Because the goal of any media strategy is you want wanna make sure that your baseline continues to increase, right? And so that's how you know it's a winning campaign. I'd also say it's quite timely. Last night, I don't know if you caught the Thursday Night Football game.

I saw, I was outside at Tavern on Rush, so I was watching through the window, but I didn't watch the game.

So it's interesting, 'cause Amazon Prime bought the Thursday night

rights.

And it was the first time that Chomps actually did a commercial ad with the NFL on Thursday night. And then it was funny, I was at a dinner with YPO that Steve and I both are part of, and like my phone is blowing up. Like all my buddies are like, oh my God, we saw the Chomps commercial. And so like we are at our scale having to think of other ways to create brand awareness. And NFL, there's, you know, no sports platform that has more eyes, right, than the NFL. And so like the team is also like, okay, well, We believe that there's something there, but we can't do traditional media. 'Cause I think if you think about like the TV, like I wanna be able to, how do I retarget? How do I really find the consumer? How do I really understand who's watching? And now through the Amazon platform, you're able to do that 'cause you really can see the customer data unlike you could if it's traditional. So looking for other strategies like that. And the other thing, you know, there's remnant ads that we're thinking about. It's effectively like TV ads that maybe haven't been sold at like the normal premium price. So like very last minute. So we may have a commercial teed up and some remnant opportunity may come in and we'll buy it at a fraction of the cost and it just plugs it in. We

used to do that with Out of Home a lot. One of my favorite activations we ever did— reaction videos are such a big part of our business. So what we did was during Christmas 2018, we actually had this remnant billboard in Times Square. Really? It was a 5,500-square-foot billboard that was basically about to get replaced. So they weren't— we were able to buy like kind of an 8th of it, or, you know, they would rotate with other companies. And we got it for like $8,000 or something kind of like crazy for one week. And the whole campaign was, when you get your Christmas Cameo, send them up, and we're gonna have— we'll put the best reaction videos on a Times Square billboard. billboard for New Year's Eve, right? And then the crazy thing that happened was it took them 3 or 4 months after that to actually like get rid of this billboard. So it continued to run in Times Square forever. But I love those type of like remnant opportunities. I think they're awesome. What are some of your favorite, like obviously we talked about the experiential earlier, like what are some of your favorite like marketing campaigns you guys have ever run?

I think, Right now, the big campaign we're running is Take Bigger Bites, 'cause it's kind of like aspirational of like, you know, it's not necessarily like physically taking bigger bites. Actually, you should chew your food well. Like, it's this ethos around like, you know, your consumer wants to aspire to be bigger. They wanna eat healthier, wanna live a healthy lifestyle. So like this Take Bigger Bites campaign has been phenomenal. The protein pop-up in Austin, that was a really cool campaign. But it's interesting 'cause like we did this campaign in like 2018. Like when we realized like this female consumer was quite unique and special, we did this campaign that was She Eats Beef. And we would have these like She Eats Beef t-shirts and we have like these videos and like nothing ever came of it. But we thought like, oh my God, this is gonna be amazing. It's gonna go viral. And it didn't. I think it's somewhere in one of our storage units. We probably have like thousands of She Eats Beef t-shirts. Like sometimes you'll see like random people at the gym wearing them. But like, not all the campaigns land. But the other thing too is like, from our perspective, you just need to do genuine campaigns that really resonate with your consumer. Like, we haven't really needed to do any big crazy ideas to get attention. I think for the last several years, we've had a lot of supply challenges, right? And so we— this is the tipping point now where we're kind of switching from supply-led versus demand-led, which is a really interesting time. But now it's when we're having to challenge the team, 'cause like the muscle they're flexing now is gonna be different. Very different. And so the question is like, I have a really strong team, but like my guys, we're gonna have to think differently, right? Now we are gonna have to lean in and think about media investment strategy to grow awareness. Like sales, like we have to figure out, like we've done really good to grow distribution, like how are you gonna continue to grow depth? In accounts. Like, I don't want to necessarily just continue to add doors. Like, I want to make sure we continue to grow each real retail account. Like, what does it look like? Like, what if I don't give you innovation out of category? Like, how are you going to continue to grow the set and come up with creative options? Like, I was in the office the other day and we have this amazing, like, half-pallet shipper that is going to go out to some of our key partners where it's like they're putting so much product on the floor, but like maybe it's during the Super Bowl time or maybe it's that back-to-school And it's like, how do you get just more product on the shelf? So we haven't really had, like, I know like some of your others, like you talk about these crazy cool stories about influencers and celebrities. And it's like, we just, we haven't gone that route, but it's not to say that we're not going to. 'Cause I think— Well,

I also think too, right? Some of the cool ones like Sean's, that was an organic customer. And I have to believe that whether it's pro athletes, like who are some of the most interesting people or most famous people that you know That are like, you know, like love your product.

I wish I had a list like Julie had, but Julie's was

insane, right? It was even like like Gorbachev.

Yeah, exactly. No, I mean, I would say like if if you think like have any like

teams adopted it?

Yeah, like early days like the 49ers were like there's a there's a ton of sports teams that were in the locker room. But again, like you said, it's organic because like the nutritionist just knows. that it's a genuine product.

And it's the right thing to put in their bodies.

But like, I would say like, there's a wealth of celebrities and we'll like, there'll be some new Netflix show and someone will send me a picture and we're just sitting there on the table randomly and we didn't pay for it. But like, there's like, you mentioned Howard Schultz, like the Starbucks founder. Like there's, you know, Daniel Lubitsky, the founder of Kind Bar, right? So like I ran into him at a trade show and I was like, He's also been on Shark Tank, and he's just like a really cool guy in the space. And I—he hadn't heard about Chomps when I first met him. And then a year later at the same trade show, like he came to find me because now Chomps is really on his radar.

I'm seeing you everywhere.

And the year after, he came and found me again. And that the the the Austin pop-up—he he just organically posted on on on Instagram about like Rashid and Pete. This is an awesome activation. So it's like these folks were like you look up to. Yeah. And like now, like we're, we're on their radar now just because of truly organic grassroots, like brick-by-brick building. So yeah, I mean, like, look, there's, there's a lot of cool celebrity influential people, but again, we just kind of— I want that mom that Chomps gets them through the day and she's put it in the lunchbox. Like those to me, like those are the most important customers and that's really why the brand continues to grow the way it is because those are the folks that are going to order every single day. And they're going to talk to their friends and they're going to spread the word.

Talk to me about future state. Obviously, you've built this incredible business. You guys control it. You own the majority of it. What's next?

Yeah. I think right now, There's a lot of demand for the product, and I think the category is on fire right now. And I think there's a lot of folks that are doing really, really well and growing in the space. But you know, we also have had to say no a lot of times. We've recently opened a new manufacturing facility in in Missouri, in a town called Mexico. I have to say Missouri first because it gets confusing, but it's in Mexico, Missouri. It's a small.

You gotta be careful; otherwise, you're gonna you're gonna get Trump's gonna tariff you.

Exactly. So, the facility, it just— for the past 2 weeks, we're doing sellable product. It's coming online. So, like, right now, the current solve is, like, making sure we have enough capacity to keep up with demand and have capacity to support our 3-year plan. And that 3-year plan is really just our stick business. We have a really strong innovation team that's working hard on what's next, because if I think about, like, 3 to 5 years out, like, we want to make sure that we can continue building momentum. So, it's trying to figure out where does Chomps have permission to play. And the other piece is we have to figure out C-store, small format, right? There's so many doors out there that we're not in. And so, it's trying to figure out how do we win in gas stations?

Is C-stores convenience stores?

Yeah. And so, how do we win in that channel? Convenience stores is different. Like, unlike a big grocery store, they have like a storage, right? So in C-store, you have to— they have what's called DSD, direct store delivery. So you effectively have to deliver like every day. And so if you have a single product, it's tough to do. So you ask about like what's next. What else?

Yeah.

So Pete and I have control. We're enjoying every day. It's a different challenge. You know, we try not to think too far ahead as far as what's next. But like at the end of the day, like Is there a partner that we'll have to align with to make sure we can continue to grow? Like, does the business become too big to have me lead and someone else has to step in? Like, I can't answer that question right now, but I know the time will come. You know, anytime you take outside capital, you have to have some sort of liquidity event. Right. It could be going to a strategic. It could be IPOing. It could be simply doing a dividend recap and being able to, like, pay them out. So, like, we have always wanted to have optionality, right? Like, when you think about, like, you never want to be sold. You want to be able to transact on your terms, right? And so, like, that's what we're trying to do. We're building the business for something that's going to be here to stay. Like, we think a lot about, like, our legacy. But even when I talk about my team, I'm like, guys, you are in the trenches. You're the ones that are— Right. Are building this brick by brick. This is not just mine and Pete's legacy. This is your legacy. And, and trying to think about, you know, how do you instill that, that owner, owner mentality, right? We think like a lot of my time now is thinking about our people and culture and how do you make sure we keep them excited and engaged and how do you balance, you know, because like burnout's real, right? We push our team really hard. Like, how do you, how do you thread that needle to make sure that you get the most out of it but not to the point where Right, you're on the other side, 'cause it's tough to recover once they really go over it. So I think that's a lot of it is about team. I mean, look at 3 to 5 years ago, we had 20 folks on the team, right? We're at like 160, we'll get to 175 at the end of the year. Like, that's different, it's tough. And we're fully remote. I know you guys are in office, what was it?

Yeah, I mean, we were— I love your story about COVID We were fully in office, then we were fully out of office, then in, I think in February, announced that if you live in Chicagoland, you have to be back 4 days a week, and we give you a $10,000 raise. And then for our employees that aren't in Chicago, we have a program called Team Week. This is actually one of them where we will fly you to Chicago for 1 week a month, but it's the same week for everybody. Use it or lose it.

Right. And so we, like, for our business, like, because we service, uh, a national footprint of retailers. And for us, like, we realize that we can operate well in a remote environment, but we can't just assume if we're remote that it's going to create connectivity across the team, that it's going to allow for collaboration and cross-functional work, that it's going to allow folks to kind of get that water cooler feel. So like a lot of the time is thinking about like, How do we, you know, create that connectivity in this remote environment? And it's tough. It takes a lot of work. Like, we do— a couple months back, we had an all-hands retreat where we brought the whole team together. We were in Colorado Springs. Yeah. You know, we'll do like a holiday party where everyone's together. And then each one of our functions has to bring their team together 2 times a year. We have like a senior leadership team retreat. So it's like, it probably would be cheaper to just have a big office and have everybody come in, really starts adding up at this scale, but I have a really strong team where people are spread out all throughout the US, and it allows me to get some top talent, but I have to overinvest in bringing them together.

Yeah, and by the way, we did that too, right? During when we hit our peak in employees, we were like 400 people, and we had people in 38 states and 14 countries. That's crazy. Right, and same thing, we would bring everybody to Chicago once a year, the week of Lollapalooza, for our annual Cameo Palooza events. We would do offsites, your tech team offsite, HR offsite, like everybody would have those offsites. And we still have a lot of that legacy stuff, but at least for our culture. And by the way, ours is like the cool thing about your culture, as you mentioned, the business is, you know, this business inside and out. It's simple. The trends are not changing minute by minute. Our business, somebody goes viral and like Like, it's all hands on. It's like newsroom culture for us here. And I've just found, like, me as a leader and the way that our team operates best, like, it's been really important for us to get back.

Yeah. And that's— I mean, that's a perfect example. Like, a lot of times people, like, they'll ask, like, what's advice you can give a founder or someone who's starting up? It's like, it's tough because, like, my journey is so specific to Chomps. Correct. Right? Even another food company, even another snacking company, like, The steps that we took and what made us get to where we are today, it's because it's so unique to our product. 100%. And so every company is different. Like, one of my favorite pieces of advice that I do give folks is like, it's important to talk to other folks, but understand that the advice you are given has to be viewed through your company's lens. 'Cause in early days, like, we definitely copied what other people did. When RXBAR was on fire, like, anything that Peter and Jared were doing, we're like, Well, shoot, they implemented this tool. We're going to do that. And like, it never worked out because it wasn't right for our product or our company or our culture.

So you're not going to be selling cod?

No, we're not going to be selling cod, although that was a great— I loved it. I loved it.

It was so good, except Peter sent me the cod and it came in like freeze-dried package, but it showed up on like Saturday. And my package room isn't open on Sundays. So basically it didn't get into the freezer,

right?

Right. So by the time like it got there, and then I was out of town, so I opened it a week later. Oh my God. And it was the most rancid smell you've ever smelled in your life. But it was such a brilliant campaign. And like, I, like, I just love what they're doing.

Side note, yeah, Logic Meat Locker, that's why we pivoted.

Yes.

Because when you're shipping frozen, there, you can only ship Monday through Wednesday. And somebody's not home, who's responsible? And it was like, that's the exact reason we're like, we gotta get out of this frozen business. But amazing marketing idea. Like Peter Ray Hall is a really sharp guy.

What are some other brands in, you know, kind of in and around your space, like food broadly, that you really admire?

Yeah, so I think about like brands that have really reinvigorated categories. So like, Annie's, John Foraker, like what he did for mac and cheese, right? I mean, I think the stat still is like, I think Annie's mac and cheese is larger than Kraft mac and cheese, which is just insane to think about that. Another one that I just really like is Chobani. What Hamdi did for the yogurt category, right? Like

incredible, incredible speaker, incredible story, just such a—

And still privately held and still like growing or Acquiring other companies. And like, it's just, if you think about the yogurt space before him, it was all the same flavor. It was the same, like almost watery, but like he brought this, you know, completely different experience. And now there's every single different types of yogurt under the sun. And so that, it's just crazy to see what he's done. But then even like new income, like I love like Good Culture, right? Cottage cheese. Like who, who would've thought that you could make cottage cheese cool? Right? And so like, I feel like it's what Chomps did for the jerky set, these other brands that are really refreshing categories that are necessary. It's necessary, right?

Let's talk about some fun top line, fun stats, anything you can share. Do you have like, we've sold this many pounds of meat a year, this many cows? Are there any really fun— I've seen the stat about 2 million sticks a day. Is it a day?

Yeah, so we're currently producing 2 million a day.

Which is insane.

It's a lot. And it'll be about 3 to 3.5 million next year as we continue to scale. Look, I mean, we are scaled at this point. I think retail sales will do close to a billion. We're still growing, I would say, 50 to 60% a year. 60% year over year. Um, that's about the extent of it. I, I, we're, I, I, we're pretty quiet with numbers and stuff. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's scale. But like, I honestly, like, when I think about my '26 plan, my 3-year, my long-range plan, 3 years, like, I'm so excited because I feel like we're just getting started. We're scratching the surface. There's so much opportunity. You talked about like the GLP-1s, like Everybody's realizing, you know, it's tough to hit your protein goals, right? And people want to find a healthy, a tasty, convenient solution, and Chomps offers that. And it's like, and, and it's the best quality you can get. So I mean, I can give you stats about where we're at today, but I think when I think about where we're going, like, it's, it's pretty crazy. I mean, with just our stick business, I want to continue to keep the, the team very disciplined and very focused. It's tough sometimes because that next shiny thing is really cool and exciting. But like, I think our current lineup is pretty amazing too. But you'll see, like, next year you'll see some really cool flavors. I can't say what they are now, but I think the next several months there's some cool things coming down the pipe.

Awesome. All right, last question we ask everybody on the show. You get to have a death row meal. Now you can pick You can mix and match. You can be like, I want this from here, this from there. Who's your death row meal, and who are the 3 people you're sharing it with?

So I love food.

And they can be living or dead.

Okay, so I'm half Pakistani, half Italian. I love international everything, but I also eat— like, the, the classic answer would be like an amazing steak from, say, Bavette's or something, but like, I eat so much steak and so much chicken, I think it would have to be A seafood meal. I'll give our friend RJ Melman a call. I love— maybe it's RPM Seafood.

I had the halibut last night at RPM Seafood.

Good shit. Probably a friend's boat, pull up on the river, have them serve it, have some oysters, and have their— the black miso cod and some of the crab. But probably an amazing seafood meal. Who would join me? Probably my dad, who— he passed about 7 years ago. He was like the anchor of our family. He wasn't able to see like the success of Chomps. And so like being able to tell, give him the update on where we're at. And honestly, probably with my wife and kids. I mean, again, I think that would be the most perfect situation. He was also a fan of seafood too.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Well, Rashid, thank you so much. This was amazing conversation. What a hell of a business you've built. Thank you. For those of you that Want to learn more about— I know social is not huge for you personally, but where can people go to find out more about Chomps?

Yeah, I would say chomps.com. If you want to try the product, you can buy it at Amazon. Pretty likely any of your retailers, grocery stores, are going to carry it. If you want to follow me, LinkedIn is probably the extent of it. But again, yeah, I really appreciate the time. This was an awesome conversation. I love the opportunity to be able to tell a little bit more about the Chomps story.

Well, it's an amazing one. Thank you so much.

Awesome. Thank you.