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Episode: What It Really Takes To Build a Food Business: Part 2

Author: Guy Raz | Wondery
Duration: 00:37:04

Episode Shownotes

This is part two of our special series on building food businesses presented by Klaviyo. If you haven't heard part one from last week, go back and check it out.In that episode, three founders of three different food brands – Becca Millstein from Fishwife, Brian Rudolph from Banza, and Caue

Suplicy from Barnana – shared how they got their start.Today, you’ll find out how these founders have grown their brands into category-defining businesses. You’ll hear about some challenging moments – and also strategic advice if you’re building your own business.This episode was produced by Alex Cheng with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was James Willetts.Our thanks to Klaviyo for sponsoring today’s episode.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram and sign up for Guy's free newsletter at guyraz.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Summary

In this episode, entrepreneurs Becca, Brian, and Kaui discuss strategies for successfully building food brands. They emphasize the significance of visually appealing packaging and influencer marketing to attract consumers. The founders elaborate on maintaining strategic focus on core product lines while being adaptable and resourceful during challenging times. They share insights on the complexities of co-founder relationships and stress the importance of clear vision and communication. The discussion also touches on crisis management, consumer engagement, and evolving customer preferences towards sustainable food options.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (What It Really Takes To Build a Food Business: Part 2) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_02
Hello and welcome to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. Last week, I spoke to three founders of three different food brands about how they got their start. This is part two of that conversation on building food businesses presented by Klaviyo.

00:00:16 Speaker_02
And if you haven't heard part one from last week, go back in your podcast feed and check it out. It's a great conversation. In that episode, we heard Becca Milstein, who co-founded her brand Fishwife, that's figured out how to make tinned fish cool.

00:00:31 Speaker_02
We also heard from Brian Rudolph, who wants to transform the pasta category with his chickpea-based brand Banza. And finally, Kaui Suplicy, who brought his favorite childhood snack of dried bananas from Brazil to America with his company Barnana.

00:00:48 Speaker_02
In today's episode, you'll find out how these three entrepreneurs have grown their brands into category-defining businesses. You'll hear about some pretty challenging moments and also strategic advice if you're building your own food business.

00:01:03 Speaker_02
But first, how do they even get people to try their products? Here's how Becca from Fishwife did it while selling tinned fish direct to consumer during the pandemic.

00:01:15 Speaker_02
Here you are living in a desert town a couple hours outside of LA, you've got the labeling, and I know you raised a little bit of money from friends and family to get a production run.

00:01:25 Speaker_02
You've got a cannery in Oregon that's gonna work with you, but you gotta sell it, right? Then you gotta get the word out. What did you do?

00:01:32 Speaker_02
Did you, even with ads on Instagram and social media, how do you get people to click the order button and try this?

00:01:41 Speaker_01
It's the most universal truth in CPG and in food that your packaging has to be extremely compelling, both on the grocery shelf, but also very much on social media.

00:01:52 Speaker_01
So I think, you know, the position that we had was by being the first to really try to upend the category and by doing it in such an interesting way. I mean, people just got really excited about it when they saw the packaging.

00:02:05 Speaker_01
The thing that supported that was influencer seeding. So from day one, it was just.

00:02:11 Speaker_01
me on Instagram trying to find all of the micro to macro food influencers and reaching out to them and saying, Hey, you know, want to make the canned fish category a much more exciting place. This is our brand. This is what it looks like.

00:02:23 Speaker_01
We think it's really, really delicious. Want to try it out. So you would go, you would, you would find them yourself. Yes, yes. You do everything yourself the first year, maybe two years, and you should.

00:02:33 Speaker_02
And so you would go to micro-influencers, right? Because this is because a lot of them will say, well, I'm not going to do this unless I'm paid and or unless, you know, there's something in it for me.

00:02:42 Speaker_02
So how did you navigate that with, you know, with a limited amount of money that you were working with?

00:02:47 Speaker_01
Yeah, at that point it's really easy because we had no money. You know, I bootstrapped the business for the first eight months. There wasn't a question, can we pay this influencer or not, because there were no cash reserves.

00:02:58 Speaker_01
So it's a great way to see if early signs of whether you have product market fit or not, if these influencers are excited about what you're doing.

00:03:06 Speaker_01
If they're not excited at all about what you're doing, you probably need to revisit the drawing board and say, what's not right about the brand? What's not right about the product? What am I not telling well in my story?

00:03:18 Speaker_02
And did you give influencers advice on how to talk about it? Because for some people, they would see it and say, well, what do I do? Do I just open up the can and just eat it with a fork? Do I make a pasta out of it?

00:03:31 Speaker_02
Do I throw it in a pan and heat it up? Like, did you help the influencers kind of show people what to do with it?

00:03:39 Speaker_01
Not at all. I really didn't want to be prescriptive. I wanted to use it as a, you know, a learning lesson for me, sort of market research to see how these influencers naturally gravitated towards utilizing the product. Not at all.

00:03:53 Speaker_01
And learned a ton from that.

00:03:55 Speaker_02
But really, to get them to try it, you really focused on just getting them to buy it because they thought the packaging was really cool and interesting.

00:04:03 Speaker_01
Yeah. And the storytelling as well. I mean, people people want to see small businesses win. They want to see small women owned businesses win.

00:04:11 Speaker_01
They really wanted to see something win during covid because it was such a challenging time for so many people, such a lonely time. that I really do believe people were just looking for any sliver of joy.

00:04:22 Speaker_01
And that was very much, you know, fundamental to the brand identity was joy and delight and color. So I think people just wanted to champion the brand from the beginning, which we're grateful for.

00:04:34 Speaker_02
Brian, once you got into Meijer, just having it on the shelf is not enough. Eventually, you would settle on your sort of now iconic orange packaging. It really jumps off the shelves. Orange, it's just an orange box, very few things on the packaging.

00:04:48 Speaker_02
But still, you need people to try it and to adopt it because it's a new thing. Chickpea pasta, a little weird at the time. How did you get people to try it, to start to use it?

00:05:00 Speaker_00
Very similar to Becca, actually. We were extremely lucky to send a lot of free pasta to influencers. And it's actually so similar to Becca, right? We were not prescriptive. We really just wanted to put it out into the world.

00:05:15 Speaker_00
And we noticed that because it was so novel in part, and a lot of the content on social media was very focused on health and eating healthy, It's so easy to say, look how easy this swap is using all the same recipes as regular pasta.

00:05:31 Speaker_00
And we noticed a lot of influencers that we would send free pasta to just excited to share it on their feed. And it would get a lot of engagement. And then a lot of people who buy our products were otherwise not buying pasta.

00:05:44 Speaker_00
And so we had to catch them outside of our sort of typical pasta space. And we noticed that end caps were just transformational for the long-term success.

00:05:54 Speaker_02
What do you've got at the end of the aisle in the grocery store? Because I'm assuming you were put in the gluten-free section initially. You weren't put with the regular pasta.

00:06:03 Speaker_00
We fought so hard to not be in the gluten-free section. We actually intentionally did not put gluten-free on the front of our packaging because we wanted to be seen as a mainstream option for anyone who's buying pasta.

00:06:18 Speaker_00
But so frequently in the early days, yes, we were put in the gluten-free section and while fighting that battle, if they put us on an end cap,

00:06:26 Speaker_00
We just saw an immediate amount of trial, which would then lead to repeat, and it became a really helpful case study for the retailer.

00:06:35 Speaker_02
Cowie, how were you guys able to get people to try this?

00:06:38 Speaker_02
I mean, dried bananas are not totally unusual, but still, you know, obviously raisins, I'm assuming, and dried apricots, you know, when you're talking about dried fruits, those are the best sellers. But dried bananas, you know, not so much.

00:06:53 Speaker_02
So how did you get people to try this thing?

00:06:57 Speaker_03
It was a combination of the product, the packaging, and the story, and a lot of research. I learned that bananas were the number one selling item in grocery stores. So I knew that people love bananas. So they like the flavor.

00:07:09 Speaker_03
They're just not used to that format. So we created a package that it would take people to the place where we're sourcing the banana. So a very tropical kind of look, banana leaves.

00:07:21 Speaker_02
A little monkey on there.

00:07:22 Speaker_03
A little monkey.

00:07:22 Speaker_02
Cartoon monkey.

00:07:23 Speaker_03
Yeah. And we on purpose did not put a window on the product. Because what a lot of people are telling me, Americans are not ready for this. It doesn't look good. Oh, because they're like brown, right? They're brown.

00:07:34 Speaker_03
So we just kind of made sure that the package was really beautiful. And once you buy, OK, I don't like the look, but I'm going to try anyway. And to us, it was all about trying. So what we did is we invest a lot in demos. I was doing demos myself.

00:07:49 Speaker_03
So getting and sampling people in stores, in events. So a lot of triathlons that I knew, running races. And also telling the story, banana is really unique because of the way that we source the product.

00:08:02 Speaker_03
And at the beginning, we didn't really talk about that.

00:08:04 Speaker_03
But when I was having one-on-one conversations, I would end up mentioning that we were buying these bananas that didn't qualify as fresh produce export because they were green but not green enough or had the wrong size or shape.

00:08:18 Speaker_03
So at that stage, we realized that people were very intrigued about that.

00:08:22 Speaker_03
So that was kind of focusing on the food waste reduction efforts that we had, the upcycling, and then later on, on the sourcing from indigenous communities in the Amazon, which I think nowadays consumers are more aware. When we launch

00:08:40 Speaker_03
they were buying because of taste and price. And then we have seen that they were kind of supporting us more and more because of our sourcing practices and how we had a social and environmental responsibility.

00:08:55 Speaker_02
Becca, you know, in your first full year, you guys did pretty well, I think about $750,000 in sales. That's correct. And that was entirely through direct-to-consumer sales.

00:09:06 Speaker_01
90% DTC, the rest was in specialty markets around the country.

00:09:11 Speaker_02
In your first full year, you also ran into a pretty difficult setback. I guess the cannery that you were working with in Oregon was backed up and they said, we cannot get your product out for many, many months.

00:09:27 Speaker_01
That was the first time that I learned the lesson of redundancy in supply chain and why it is so important.

00:09:32 Speaker_01
Thankfully, I had started to work with another cannery in Washington State, with whom we still work today, on developing a smoked salmon product. And they were actually just getting their co-packing business up and running.

00:09:44 Speaker_01
We were their first co-packing partner. And they were able to and eager to take on the two SKUs that we'd been producing with the Oregon Cannery.

00:09:54 Speaker_02
So in your business, it makes sense that you've got sort of a clear and I would say limited number of SKUs, right? You've got trout and anchovies and tuna and sardines and smoked salmon and a couple of different flavor variations, right?

00:10:10 Speaker_02
But I wonder, and this is for all of you, and I'll start with you, Becca, how do you decide how many different product lines, different products to offer?

00:10:19 Speaker_02
And is it in your view, like, as you kind of begin to grow and scale, is it just tinned fish that you want to focus on?

00:10:29 Speaker_02
Or, like, at what point do you start to think, maybe we should sell, you know, pasta to go with this tinned fish or certain kinds of crackers or other things?

00:10:39 Speaker_01
Yeah, I think the other most universally agreed upon principle in CPG is that focus is the ultimate value. And growing from the core is really the best way to do it. Spreading yourself too thin is really just never a good idea.

00:10:55 Speaker_01
So for us, what we're trying to do, which is change the nationwide perception of tinfish, of a category, it behooves us completely to just focus on being the absolute best in the category.

00:11:09 Speaker_01
having our brand name be synonymous with the category, that is really the way to build a strong business.

00:11:15 Speaker_02
Brian, one of our earliest episodes was with Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, and he talked about the secret of their success, which is they only fly 737s, so they only need to service those aircraft, right?

00:11:27 Speaker_02
They only need to get parts for that plane, which is like the Honda Accord of airplanes. And they turn planes around very quickly. So very efficient business, not too many offerings that you know, you just you line up and you go on the plane.

00:11:39 Speaker_02
That principle also applies to food businesses in and out burger, we've had raising canes on the show, right, they offer four things. Initially, you had two types of pasta, right rotini and penne.

00:11:49 Speaker_02
Now you've got like cavatelli and roti, you know, beyond routine, you got wheels and alphabets and, you cascatelli and bucatini and penne. I mean, all these different and you've got rice and pizza and mac and cheese and protein waffles.

00:12:03 Speaker_02
I mean, arguably, it's more it would be more efficient to just do two kinds of pastas and really lean into that. When does it make sense? When did it start to make sense for you guys to really start to expand it out? And why did that make sense?

00:12:17 Speaker_00
Yeah, so it really all comes back to the mission. Our goal is to get people to eat more beans. Beans are one of the best ingredients for human health and the environment. We don't eat enough of them. So how do we sneak them into people's lives?

00:12:28 Speaker_00
And what started with penne and rotini expanded into many shapes. And then we looked at all these foods that are typically made from wheat and said, Can you also make that from beans? Why not? Pasta's still very much so our baby.

00:12:43 Speaker_00
I would say it gets the overwhelming amount of attention. And we are constantly challenging ourselves, sort of like Becca said, to be the leader in what we do and to make it clear that we are extremely focused on chickpeas.

00:12:56 Speaker_00
And we want to be the best company when it comes to chickpeas. How about you, Kelly?

00:13:00 Speaker_02
I mean, you guys also have several different products. I mean, you've got, you know, the chewy, classic dehydrated bananas, but then you've also got chocolate dipped bananas.

00:13:09 Speaker_02
And then you also have other products that you sell chips, for example, plantain chips and other things. How do you guys decide, you know, what works? And have you have you tried something that didn't work, and then you just kind of pulled it down?

00:13:25 Speaker_03
Yeah, absolutely. Uh, when launching the company as Becca mentioned it, focus was very important to us.

00:13:31 Speaker_03
So for a very long time, we had two products, the original chewy banana bites, just bananas, one ingredient, and then the bananas covering chocolate.

00:13:40 Speaker_03
And with time, like, of course, you want to introduce more products, grow the portfolio, retailers ask you for that.

00:13:47 Speaker_03
In our case, the more that I learned about the food industry, I learned that there was a lot of things that were wrong with the industry. We have kind of a broken system in a way, where most of the efforts go into growing corn, soy, and wheat.

00:14:01 Speaker_03
That is not necessarily good for people or the environment. So we start focusing on the sourcing, so reducing food waste, but then also working with these indigenous communities.

00:14:12 Speaker_03
And I realized that if I could buy more products from these communities or different products, I was really helping change their lives for the better.

00:14:21 Speaker_03
So that has been part of our innovation where we started with just bananas, and now we are buying plantains from the same communities in the Amazon.

00:14:30 Speaker_03
And we're also buying cassava from these communities because they can grow cassava in the same land that they grow plantains.

00:14:38 Speaker_03
So it has been a little different, more kind of what we can grow to help these communities and then introduce products based on that. And we try different things. that for some reason or another didn't work. One, that I think it was a great product.

00:14:53 Speaker_03
We introduced a plantain-based tortilla chip, which it tasted great. There was a lot of nutrition in the product, but In this industry, you have to plan a lot ahead of time of launching.

00:15:08 Speaker_03
You have a category review and we're launching the product nine months later. And then came time to launch was at the beginning of the pandemic, where retailers are not bringing those kind of end caps promotions. They're not happening.

00:15:23 Speaker_03
So it was very difficult. to launch that product, I still think is a really good product. We might bring it back eventually, but yeah, it was wrong timing.

00:15:33 Speaker_03
And I just heard like a, this week that I think not only 2024, but the past three years were like the lowest amount of innovation in the store because you couldn't really launch new products in stores and consumers were not really buying a lot of new things.

00:15:50 Speaker_03
So, I think it's time to start innovating again. Consumers are probably ready, but Becca showed us that you can really launch something new and do well.

00:16:00 Speaker_02
When we come back in just a moment, Becca, Brian, and Kawe talk about some of their most challenging moments and advice for founders starting food companies today. Stay with us.

00:16:11 Speaker_02
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00:18:22 Speaker_02
Hey, welcome back to How I Built This, I'm Guy Raz. Here's more from my conversation with Becca Milstein from Fishwife, Brian Rudolph from Bonza, and Kauai Suplisi from Barnana.

00:18:32 Speaker_02
So I do want to ask, and we've talked about challenges, but I do want to ask about a couple of tough moments that you've all been through.

00:18:38 Speaker_02
And I want to start with you, Becca, because starting a business is challenging, especially when you have co-founders and others. And I know that you had a co-founder, you had a, falling out.

00:18:48 Speaker_02
You haven't talked about it publicly very much, and I'm sure it was personally painful. But I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about what you've learned as you've navigated that experience, because this is very common.

00:18:59 Speaker_02
We've had many, many examples of this on the show. Humans are humans. And we make different decisions and we have different views and philosophies about where the business should head. So tell me a little bit about what you've learned from that.

00:19:11 Speaker_01
Yeah, of course, I can only talk about it in sort of broad strokes and what I learned from it.

00:19:16 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:19:16 Speaker_01
So I think when people are considering having a co-founder, you know, I just tell them, really make sure you're listening to your gut. Really make sure you are having the hard conversations up front, very much at the beginning.

00:19:32 Speaker_01
Talk to a lot of people and get their thoughts on the balance of skill sets between you and your co-founder. Really look deep and say, is this the person that has the best complement to my skill sets?

00:19:45 Speaker_01
And do I want to work with this person for maybe 15 years side by side? Do I think they'll stick? you know, stick with it with me and be the best person in the trenches with me and have the attitude that I have about this business.

00:19:57 Speaker_01
You know, co-founder relationships are really challenging. When I went through my challenging moment with my co-founder, I was constantly talking to other people that had gone through it. And that was most of the founders that I knew.

00:20:11 Speaker_01
It is the majority of co-founder relationships that end in a really, really tough conversation and that can take

00:20:17 Speaker_01
A lot of resource from the business can take a lot of your resource can take time that you would otherwise be using to build your skill set.

00:20:24 Speaker_01
So unless you absolutely feel that you need this person by your side and that they really have something for the business that an incredible first employee can't bring you. don't have the co-founder.

00:20:37 Speaker_01
I think the last thing I'll say is just the most important thing a founder can provide to a business is a vision.

00:20:43 Speaker_01
But I think it's hard for two people to share a unified vision and for two people to share the responsibility of articulating that vision to their team. So being a solo founder, I would very much recommend it.

00:20:55 Speaker_01
I think it's amazing, but have just tremendous early employees.

00:21:00 Speaker_02
I love this perspective because it's very counterintuitive, right? Like the Paul Graham model and, you know, the famous founder of Y Combinator, he says he only invests in businesses that have co-founders.

00:21:09 Speaker_02
And there are reasons why, you know, it makes sense for many, many people because it's tough starting a business and there are going to be moments where you feel like you're not going to make it and having somebody with you on the journey

00:21:20 Speaker_02
can be very helpful. I have a production company, we make kids programs, I've got co founders, we're very close partners. Coway, I know that you have very close co founders, Brian, your brother's your co founder.

00:21:32 Speaker_02
Oftentimes we don't, when we start businesses, it's most of us don't want to sort of have those tough conversations like something like a prenuptial agreement. Like, most people don't do them because they just feel weird and unromantic, even though

00:21:45 Speaker_02
They might make sense, right? And there's this kind of a version of this with getting a co-founder. And I wonder, Kauai, when you brought on your co-founders, did you guys have those tough conversations at the beginning?

00:21:57 Speaker_03
We did because I think as Becca said, it's very important to have an understanding of whose vision you are following. And I think in my case, it was a little easier because I was the one that grew up eating this product and I brought it here.

00:22:13 Speaker_03
So if you have that understanding, okay. We're starting this because I came up with this idea and I need you guys to help me execute because you are better than me in these other areas. It makes things a little easier.

00:22:27 Speaker_02
Yeah. Brian, I want to talk to you about a recent challenge. Your brand has become the fifth best-selling pasta brand in the United States, which is extraordinary. It's remarkable. I mean, this is a huge category.

00:22:39 Speaker_02
Pasta is a massively widely consumed food product. But earlier this summer, there was a group that claimed that, you know, there was a chemical detected in your pasta that's not healthy. and they started to kind of talk about this.

00:22:53 Speaker_02
Tell me a little bit about how you've dealt with that, how you're responding to it, and what you feel businesses can do to protect themselves from attacks that may be unfair or are not rooted in research and science.

00:23:07 Speaker_00
So I'm going to be honest, this is still very recent, very raw, but we live in a time where fear and misinformation spreads so fast on social media.

00:23:18 Speaker_02
Anybody can say anything.

00:23:20 Speaker_00
Anybody can say anything. And so first of all, I want to quickly address that. Our foods have always been safe to eat. We published a statement very quickly on our website that

00:23:29 Speaker_00
you know, not only acknowledged historical testing results for what was sort of being questioned, but also even tested the same lot is 97% lower than what was being claimed.

00:23:39 Speaker_00
So there was a lot about it that felt incredibly unfair, incredibly unjustified. And to be clear, your ingredients are basically chickpea flour, salt, and water. It's four ingredients, yeah. It's a very simple, simple product.

00:23:51 Speaker_00
And I don't think we still, we yet have a playbook for how to deal with these things, is the truth. You're talking about everybody, like any brand, yes. Any misinformation that spreads. This is such a dynamic world that we live in.

00:24:05 Speaker_00
You feed the flame when you engage with some of these things. And I should be clear, I am sympathetic to concerns around this. You know, I have food allergies, right? I'm very concerned about what I'm eating. I have to think about it all the time.

00:24:20 Speaker_00
Whenever I go to restaurants, I'm asking tons and tons of questions. But with any of these things, trying to control a narrative like this is just, it's really hard. And we took a very respectful sort of behind-the-scenes approach.

00:24:37 Speaker_00
We released a statement very quickly. We did not discuss it in a very loud way intentionally. And I'm not sure if that was right. I think time will tell.

00:24:46 Speaker_02
What I've learned I think from over, you know, 600 episodes of the show is that crises pass faster than you think. That we remember them as being longer than they actually are in the grand scheme of things. Every brand, every business has had

00:25:03 Speaker_02
a crisis or some kind of, you know, crisis has passed. And I'm sure all of you have that. I mean, Becca, you talked about your your own, you know, with the falling out with your co founder Coway.

00:25:12 Speaker_02
I'm assuming you guys have had some crises as well that you had to deal with.

00:25:16 Speaker_03
Oh, plenty. That's what you don't really know when you're starting a business. Just starting a company is already hard. And every day you have things being thrown at you from unwanted litigation. Did you have to deal with that?

00:25:31 Speaker_03
Unfortunately, several times. Sorry. It can be from something on your package that someone thinks that it should be in a different way.

00:25:42 Speaker_03
or a nutritional panel thing that you tested hundreds of times and someone came up with a test that is different than yours.

00:25:49 Speaker_02
Like they'll say, oh, it doesn't have seven grams of potassium, it's four.

00:25:52 Speaker_03
Correct, yeah. And it's tricky because food is not always kind of a correct science. Like different bananas have different nutritional content. And then there's opportunistic lawyers out there just trying to make a quick buck.

00:26:07 Speaker_02
who are looking for class action lawsuits. And again, not to vilify lawyers, I'm married to one, but there are industries out there, people who are looking for, you know, ways to go after brands because there's a business opportunity.

00:26:19 Speaker_03
Things always go wrong. If there's one thing that I learned is, doesn't matter how well you are prepared, things will take longer, usually three times longer, they always will cost a lot more as well.

00:26:31 Speaker_03
So I always take that in consideration when launching a new product or doing anything new because things will go wrong for sure.

00:26:38 Speaker_02
Yeah. Becca, I'm curious. I mean, one of the perils of being successful and really opening up a category is lots of other people say, Wait a minute, why am I not in that category?

00:26:49 Speaker_02
And they jump in, and then it becomes more complicated, especially when the big players in that category were kind of asleep at the wheel, and then they start to ramp things up again.

00:27:00 Speaker_02
How do you because now you have attracted competitors, and even some of the big brands are looking at you and thinking, Hmm, maybe we need to do some of this. How do you withstand that?

00:27:10 Speaker_02
How do you pivot to make sure that you stay sort of a leader in your category?

00:27:16 Speaker_01
Yeah, I mean, that's the fun of it all, isn't it? You know, people are always asking, especially investors, about what your moat is. And the reality is, in the CPG industry, having an actual moat is- It's very hard. It's kind of non-existent.

00:27:31 Speaker_01
I mean, having your own manufacturing, like Brian does, really can help, but that's extremely expensive. And so how do you build your moat? I think the way that we've gone about that is probably over indexing a lot in what is called brand marketing.

00:27:47 Speaker_01
So it's doing things like you know, multiple collaborations a month. It's doing partnerships with small artists. It's doing menu items across the country. It's doing pop-ups that you invest a ton of your team's time into.

00:27:59 Speaker_01
It is doing really high-quality customer service. It's doing, you know, a brand ambassador program across the country and making sure those brand ambassadors are really effectively communicating your brand values. And I think

00:28:12 Speaker_01
Our number one core value at Fishwife is build with love.

00:28:17 Speaker_01
And that really means that wherever Fishwife is showing up, it should be evident that our company has put so much time, probably too much time into making sure that is a really, really special, unique customer experience.

00:28:32 Speaker_01
You know, even in a world where customer loyalty is actually not that easy to get.

00:28:37 Speaker_01
they do feel this deep connection with the brand that will motivate them to stick with you, to pay more for your product because you're going to cost more than the incumbents.

00:28:47 Speaker_01
So you have to convince them why that's the case and that comes through a combination of the product quality, the ethical sourcing, the packaging, the brand marketing, etc.

00:28:57 Speaker_02
As you all know, this episode is supported by Klaviyo.

00:29:00 Speaker_02
And this is a brand that that does sort of marketing automation, right, that kind of automates SMS and email marketing for businesses to acquire and then retain and grow customers through that kind of marketing. And I wonder how you

00:29:14 Speaker_02
think about customer acquisition and targeting maybe a core type of customer or like maybe there's sort of an avatar for who you imagine using your products. First to you, Brian, how do you guys

00:29:29 Speaker_02
acquire and then seek out and who is the kind of person you're looking for.

00:29:34 Speaker_00
So this has really evolved. When I was making the product in my kitchen, I think the vision for what our customer segmentation would look like was a little bit different than it is today.

00:29:44 Speaker_00
I mean, it was it was really just as simple as people who are gluten free are going to like this, people who are vegan are going to like this.

00:29:51 Speaker_00
But, you know, I think as we've become more professionalized, grown as a team, we do segmentation based on these different profiles or types of consumers in the way that they think.

00:30:01 Speaker_00
And, you know, some are families that are just trying to eat healthier. We also have a consumer profile of people who are very structured in how they think.

00:30:10 Speaker_00
And those are two distinct demographics from our perspective, and we actually talk to them in different ways.

00:30:16 Speaker_02
Yeah. Kawe, also grain-free products that you make. How do you think about acquiring new customers? And then who do you think of when you think of that kind of core customer?

00:30:28 Speaker_03
When we started the company, we didn't have the budget to do customer research and things like that. So I was just doing it myself, right? Like what do I like? And then I'll ask my friends and family, what do they like?

00:30:40 Speaker_03
And in a way it was pretty kind of spot on, but as you grow the company and introduce new products, it gets a little more difficult. Right. And so we, we have invested in, in more research and to understand who, our consumers are.

00:30:57 Speaker_03
And what we learned is that from the chewy banana bites to the chips, they are different consumers. Women tend to kind of go more towards the sweets and the chewy ones.

00:31:08 Speaker_03
And we realized as the companies are growing more on the chip side, there was kind of more males that were buying those types of products. So it's very interesting.

00:31:18 Speaker_03
and shameless plug-in we use Klaviyo and did at the beginning and then someone that we hire end up choosing someone else and then we went back because they were better.

00:31:28 Speaker_03
But it's a great way to kind of get that information and understand like who is buying it and why. Becca?

00:31:36 Speaker_01
So it's really interesting to hear Brian talk about where he's at in terms of customer segmentation because Bonza is a few years older than us and I feel like I'm hopefully looking into the mirror of my future self.

00:31:47 Speaker_01
So right now, we do a ton of customer serving. So I feel like we're very much in the data collection phase. You know, our core customer has been, in the four years that we've been around, very much millennial women.

00:32:00 Speaker_01
as the years have gone on, especially it's gotten quite a bit older as we've gotten into retail and also gotten more national awareness outside of just social media.

00:32:07 Speaker_01
The last data point that I'll put in is we do have this pretty robust brand ambassador program that I'm really proud of, honestly. Tell us about it. Yeah.

00:32:17 Speaker_01
So, I mean, like Kawai was saying, you know, I think we all started out doing our own demos and that was just such a rich data pool and such a rich experience to talk to people that had never heard of Fishwife before.

00:32:29 Speaker_01
So, at this point we have about 15 brand ambassadors nationwide in our primary markets. We've built that team in-house, which, you know, for those that are less indoctrinated into this area of work,

00:32:43 Speaker_01
A lot of people use third-party BAs, which is great, and we have done it before, and it has been extremely effective.

00:32:49 Speaker_01
But having them internally, having them in-house, allows us to, A, I think, get them to truly understand and transmit our brand message more effectively, and also, in return, to get better data.

00:33:04 Speaker_02
How big do you want to be? What does success look like for Fishwife, in your view?

00:33:11 Speaker_01
It's really summed up in our mission, which makes it easy. Our mission is to make premium, sustainable tinfish a staple in every American cupboard. Definitely the vast majority of Americans still think of canned fish as commodity, chunk-like tuna.

00:33:27 Speaker_01
And having one or two use cases, a tuna fish sandwich, a tuna casserole, we know there are so many more use cases that are so much more delicious. There's beautiful pastas, there's rice bowls, there's onigiris, there's sandwiches.

00:33:42 Speaker_01
So we have this opportunity to introduce people to so many species that they're not familiar with. anchovies, mackerel, trout.

00:33:52 Speaker_02
Sardines. Sardines. And they're plentiful and they're also sustainable.

00:33:56 Speaker_01
Exactly. So success to me looks like achieving that behavior change.

00:34:01 Speaker_01
You know, the majority of Americans understanding sort of the difference between commodity sort of canned fish and premium high quality sustainable tinned fish and always having that in their cupboard to pull out.

00:34:13 Speaker_02
Kawe to you.

00:34:15 Speaker_03
I think it's very similar. The bigger we get, the more impact we have, the more food waste reduction we have, the more people we help in the Amazon, like the more forests we protect, more regenerative agricultural.

00:34:28 Speaker_03
So introducing more products and growing because every time we sell a bag, we are helping someone or helping the environment. So just more of the same.

00:34:39 Speaker_02
Brian, number five pasta, what does, again, an amazing number, what does ultimate success look like for Banza?

00:34:48 Speaker_00
I think if we can help fill that gap in consumption of beans, where if it's now a third of the recommended daily value that people are getting, if we can get people to eat beans every day, it doesn't just have to be Banza, but we've inspired the consumption of more beans, that's a win.

00:35:04 Speaker_00
We are also very inspired by what Chobani did in yogurt, where 50% of the yogurt category is now this higher protein, lower sugar version of yogurt.

00:35:14 Speaker_02
And it's so delicious yogurt 20 years ago in the U S sucked. And now so much of it's so good.

00:35:20 Speaker_00
So good, less sweet, right? Like how often does that happen? The thing that's better for you wins out. Yeah. They're the real inspiration. And I think if we can do anything similar to that in pasta, that would be a huge one for so many reasons.

00:35:34 Speaker_03
And if I may, what I think is very interesting between our three brands is that we are focusing on things that people have been needing for thousands of years. We're just kind of reintroducing them in a way that is more convenient.

00:35:47 Speaker_03
So I think that is the beauty. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel. It's like our bodies absorb these items really well. They're good for the environment.

00:35:58 Speaker_03
And just through history, the industry changed and we need to get back to those basic things that are good for the environment and the people.

00:36:06 Speaker_02
Becca, Brian, Kauai, thanks so much. Thank you for having us. That's Becca Milstein, co-founder and CEO of Fishwife, Brian Rudolph, co-founder and CEO of Bonza, and Kauai Suplisi, co-founder and CEO of Barnana.

00:36:22 Speaker_02
Thanks so much for listening to this special episode series brought to you by Klaviyo. And before you go, please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free.

00:36:36 Speaker_02
This episode was produced by Alex Chung with music composed by Ramtine Arablui. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was James Willits.

00:36:45 Speaker_02
Our production staff also includes Carla Estevez, Chris Mussini, Devin Schwartz, Elaine Coates, JC Howard, Katherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, and Neba Grant. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.