Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / The advice Mark Cuban gave Unreal Deli’s Jenny Goldfarb that saved her business and took her to a $50 million valuation (Part 1)

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The advice Mark Cuban gave Unreal Deli’s Jenny Goldfarb that saved her business and took her to a $50 million valuation (Part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Jenny Goldfarb for Female Startup Club.
• 0:12
  Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. It is the most beautiful day here in Sydney. I've got little sweetie sitting on my lap, and we have got a cracker episode with Jenny Goldfarb, the founder of Mrs. Goldfarb's Unreal Deli.
• 0:32
  Jenny grew up watching her family run delis in New York City, but after watching a video of how animals actually get slaughtered, she changed her life and set out on a mission to create her favorite comfort food in plant version. Jenny is the kind of person you could chat to for hours. She's got a story made of gold, and in this episode, you're going to hear her tell me all about her grassroots efforts to get the word out there by doing door-to-door sales online.
• 1:01
  trawling Facebook groups to find people like her to connect with, the key piece of advice that saved her business, and a mega mistake that cost her $100,000. But before we jump into this episode, we are getting so close to launching magic. And of course, I would love to see you there. You can sign up to our priority waitlist where you will receive our launch offer when we go live next month at femalestartupclub.com forward slash waitlist.
• 1:31
  Let's get into this episode. This is Jenny for Female Startup Club. Jenny, hi, welcome to the show. Hello, thank you, Dune. I'm so excited to be talking to you today and learning about your amazing story. Thank you. I'm so delighted to be here. Do you want to give us a little bit of an introduction to who you are and what your brand is?
• 1:56
  Sure. So I grew up a great granddaughter of New York City deli owners, and I grew up eating a lot of good deli meat, but thought I was going to pursue mainstream. I don't know. I was in a tech company. I was in sales for a marketing company. Rando stuff on more of the salesy end of things I thought would be my career. And then I saw some videos one day as a young mom,
• 2:23
  what was happening to these animals on these farms.
• 2:27
  And it's worse than your worst nightmares. Today's actually Halloween while we're recording this. So let me just say it's like the freakiest Halloween setup you could even imagine. You don't want to see these videos. But the point is that you can't really unsee them. And so after I saw them, I told my very meat and potatoes husband, we need to find another way to consume food. And that was a big uphill battle. But after a while, I was cooking this way and eating this way and really loving it. I saw so many benefits outside.
• 2:57
  feeling good ethically, we lost a little weight. Our skin all got great. My kids got less sick. So a big fan of the diet on a whole, asides from the ethics. And anyway, of course, the ecological reasons as well. But anyway, at some point, I realized that while there were a lot of great plant-based things coming on the market and a lot of great ways to make veggies yummy by themselves, there was no classic deli meat like what I grew up with, eating in old
• 3:27
  And I did not think this is going to be a big entrepreneurial exercise. I thought this would be a little recipe I'd make for my house. So I was pregnant with my third child and I started tinkering around and I made this corn beef out of beets, chickpeas, tomatoes, high protein wheat, a complex spice blend, and,
• 3:46
  And from the first one, it was quite good. Of course, I dialed it in further and it was like, whoa, so real. You couldn't believe it. And friends and family were like, this is not just a recipe. You need to sell this en masse.
• 4:02
  And so I rented a tiny commercial kitchen in 2019 with a growing belly and two kids in preschool. I would pick up the ingredients at my local store and then go to this little kitchen where I would cook it all day and wash the dishes when I wasn't cooking it. And then I would try and sell it around Los Angeles. I said to myself, if I can sell.
• 4:22
  get this thing sold in some of the local delis that we have here. Like there are these like iconic New York style delis all over the place. Do they have them in Australia? They're all over the U.S. anyway. We have a few. We have a few. Yeah, we gotta get in there. Anyway, I said to myself, if I can sell it in these like iconic old school New York delis and we can see big reorders and people get excited about it, even in like just a few stores, then I could maybe sell this thing anywhere because no one knows good corned beef and deli meat better than those guys. Yeah.
• 4:51
  So in 2019, we get it into a lot of the major delis around LA and articles are coming out on it because it was really cool. You could like sit in like an old school deli and get, you know, like a completely cruelty free, but super delicious, authentic experience there. So the deli owners realized they had younger customers that were asking for this and would tell the whole family, we're not going out to the deli tonight because I want to have a salad somewhere. And these guys don't have, you know, so they were losing customers. They realized the opportunity.
• 5:20
  Anyway, uh, long story short, the delis turned into selling to our local Whole Foods, turned into Shark Tank. I applied for Shark Tank at the end of 2019 and made a deal with Mark Cuban for more than double the cash I was asking for in this crazy segment. And then, uh...
• 5:36
  I thought I was doing great things before. And then you have Mark Cuban and a bunch of TV on your side. So that really blew things up. But what it meant actually was that we got big into restaurants. We were selling into all these different like big chains and they were growing in the project scope. And then COVID hit. When COVID hit, first off, my dad, who I worked very closely with, he was a longtime entrepreneur and is actually involved in this business as well. He got so sick that he was put on a ventilator for 28 days. Like,
• 6:03
  No one thought he was going to make it. And then at the same time, all of the restaurants, thank you, he barely survived like a true miracle. He survived. And so did the business because all of our restaurant partners were like, see ya, we don't know what's happening. We're closing most a lot of deals.
• 6:19
  We were like, what? This was our big break. We were having all these launches coming. And so we had to kind of start over from ground zero with a retail line. So we had this big pivot that happens. And we created our retail packaging for our corned beef and our
• 6:35
  roasted turkey because we had to create more items because you can't just have one on a shelf it'll get lost so we made a whole line which is basically using real vegetables and protein rich grains uh to make the finest deli meats and so uh it's a very exciting ride today we're in like 3500 locations
• 6:56
  And many more to come. And we'll be in Australia before long, Dune, feeding you and yours. You will. I'm excited to see you here. Oh, my gosh. There is a lot to unpack here. You've just given me like three years worth of story in like six minutes. Holy moly. What a journey.
• 7:15
  It's crazy. I want to kind of like go back to that early time and kind of sit around there and talk more around your marketing in the beginning and, you know, how you were getting the word out and how you were actually getting into those delis. Like what was those like interactions? Like what were those meetings? Like how were you actually starting to get the ball rolling? So I was cold calling, good old fashioned cold calls.
• 7:40
  I would type in deli owner of, you know, whatever the one I wanted to get into that was close, close enough driving distance that I could get to for it to bring us. And I was careful. I had to learn not to call during lunchtime. I learned that the hard way getting screamed at a couple times or once very loudly. And then I said, all right, call in those off hours. And, uh, and I would, at first I had this pitch where I was like,
• 8:03
  I'm making this new vegan product and you need this and there's clientele that you're missing out on. And then at one point I gave the whole spiel and I was like, so I'd love to drop by with a sample. And the lady was like, yeah, we taste samples. And I realized, I was like, all I really have to say is, will you taste the sample? What time are you there? And I cut the glove off the phone much quicker. So slowly, slowly learn the right rap.
• 8:25
  Got them to say, okay, you can come in. I'm not going to say no. And what's nice in the food business is that everybody has a curious palate, even the most successful out there that don't need you at all. They still want to taste like what's the new greatest thing going on. So I wiggle my way in there and some off hours and bring like a little sandwich wedge that was like all dressed up. You could still taste the meat itself, but also like a fully established situation there. Yeah.
• 8:51
  And nine times out of 10, they were like, it's delicious. You know, what can you, you know, can you deliver 20 pounds, you know, and then for a while, my husband was delivering, even though he's a full time employee elsewhere. And little by little, that's how it all kind of kicked off the ground.
• 9:09
  Wow. Gosh. And with that approach, like, are we talking like you got hundreds of retailers just by like pounding the pavement and going in with your sandwiches or like a couple and then it started to spiral? Yeah. So we had the first six. You really only need that one. Once you get that one.
• 9:27
  You say to the next guy, they have it. They're doing great with it. They're bringing in all sorts of new. So once you've done that, once you use that first one, you can just keep replicating the model. It just grows. So yeah, I was at the same time, like even way back in the earliest days, I was reaching out to Sprouts and Whole Foods and I was just like,
• 9:45
  I said, oh, yeah, then we got into Whole Foods. I said it real fast in the pitch. No, no, no, no. I sent 400 emails to Whole Foods and got my samples in once. And one time they were like, yeah, we think we want to work with it. And then they ghosted me for like five months. But then at some point they said, all right, we're going to bring this into a pre-made sandwich. And then...
• 10:01
  the conversations became more established. I wasn't talking to one little deli owner. I was talking to, but then those new guys needed certain food safety requirements and insurance coverage. And I had to learn, of course, all of this on the job, you know, but I also aligned with some industry folk that winds up joining the team and that I work closely with today. And so I had guidance from,
• 10:21
  some industry people also. But yeah, just with the excitement and willingness to learn and wanting to offer something beautiful, we got into what really is today, thousands of doors. You know, we wound up ultimately recruiting a brokerage firm that handles a lot of the sales. So, you know, a lot of elements to it. I didn't go selling, you know, 3,500 doors, but yeah, the first, whatever, dozen or so times. And then now with big deals, I'm dealing with all of those, like we're going to be getting Walmart next year. And so obviously like that. Oh my gosh. Congrats.
• 10:51
  Thank you. So yeah, this little thing that I made in my home kitchen that was like, it was like deli, but it was vegan. And it was like this ladies thing with vegetables, like made it. It was like this niche little thing. And now it's going to be in like mainstream USA Walmart. So don't think that anything that you're trying to build is like, who's going to care about this thing of a thing of a thing? People do. And if you make it good enough and with enough love, you can really get it out there.
• 11:17
  I just love listening to you speak. Before I go on with my next question, I just love listening to you tell your story because you are so passionate and it is just like bubbling out of you. And I was watching the videos that you were doing on, you know, the streets of New York City where you're Mrs. Goldfarb, you're handing out sandwiches to people, you're the deli owner essentially. And I feel that in you. I feel that presence. You're amazing.
• 11:47
  I know that people also, they just wanted some like a delicious sandwich. No one ever wanted to like hurt an animal, hurt the earth, hurt themselves. We just wanted a good sandwich. So that's what I'm trying to push into the world.
• 12:01
  I'm with you. I also don't eat meat and it's a struggle sometimes. Sometimes you just want those kind of feel good, comfy, comfort food things that, you know, you've got to really try and find the solution. So I'm excited for you to come to Australia. Thank you so much for saying that.
• 12:19
  Something we love to talk about on the show is the money piece and that kind of like early initial investment that you needed to put in to get the business off the ground. So I'm wondering for you, what was your thought process to the finances and the funding piece? And how were you kind of thinking about the trajectory of whether were you going to bootstrap or were you going to straight out go and raise? Or what was that kind of piece like for you?
• 12:49
  I really wanted to like run all the departments because, you know, there was one invoice to send and there was one Facebook post to make and there was, you know, one batch to make. So at the beginning there was like, I could do all of the roles and to take that ball down the field as long as I really could. And then at some point my dad realized this was quite exciting and kind of got in also and took some responsibilities off of me. And then right at the time that Shark Tank was,
• 13:16
  was going to air. I brought on my first $20 an hour like helper, who became like my major right hands in the business today to help me like really with everything. And but not like an assistant, like someone who's like managing tons of the operations and like has really like developed into quite the role.
• 13:33
  But, uh, but yeah, I really did try to like bootstrap. Like the first money I raised was Shark Tank. Um, I probably put in somewhere between like 30 to $35,000 of my own family money to, to get it fully to like getting the Mark Cuban money. But I also had some cash flow to offset that. So, uh, I think by the time I was on Shark Tank, I had like $10,000 in revenues, which was really such a joke, but it wasn't nothing. I mean, it went toward...
• 14:03
  what the spend was there. And yeah, I'm definitely big into like, keep doing it as long as you can take that ball down the field until it's unsustainable and you really have to grow with, with money in the right way. So, yeah. And what happened with the Shark Tank experience? Obviously you went on the show, you went in with an, like an idea about how much you wanted to raise and how much you wanted to sell of your company. Tell us about the experience. What ended up happening with Mark Cuban? Yeah.
• 14:31
  So I applied to get onto the show at the end of 2019. And at the time, we had made this little promo video because my husband is actually a TV editor. So the first step is you marry a TV editor. Then...
• 14:49
  Then what happened was he put together a really cute video where I go, I'm Mrs. Goldfarb and my roots to authentic Delhi go back over 100 years. And then I'm out on the street passing samples around similar to what you saw, right? Those videos and things. And so that video was on my very rudimentary first homepage, unreal Delhi dot com. And.
• 15:12
  That video very much, I think, helps me get on the show. And I'm sharing this with your listeners so they know that this is like a very sweet key to have to number one, open sales doors. Give people like a fun way. It's obviously great through social media, but it specifically really helps with something like a shark tank because when the casting director goes to the page and they see that video on your site, they're like, oh yeah, that's my segment. I don't have to do any work. I get to go home and I'm early today. So yeah,
• 15:39
  That's my advice for trying to get onto a shark tank. But then once you're already on the show, yeah, you got to walk in with some kind of valuation. And that's typically a lot lower than you'd see in a regular financial institution because you get this incredible TV exposure. And it's totally worth it a million times over to get this exposure. But yeah, I went in looking to raise $100,000, giving up 10% of the business. In my mind, I was willing to give up as much as 30% because you have to have some wiggle room.
• 16:08
  And I wound up getting this insane offer from Mark Cuban for $250,000 for 20%. He was like, take it or leave it. I was like, I'm not an idiot. We're taking that deal. I'm in. Yeah. And then he actually made another investment last year as we grew into Publix, which is like a 1300 store chain that we got into. So, yeah. Yeah.
• 16:33
  Gosh. It's a wild ride. Yeah, a wild ride for sure. I read that after Shark Tank, not long after Shark Tank was when kind of, you know, COVID was really kind of ramping up and things were happening and a deal that you were about to do with Quiznos, I think it's called in America, you know, was about to change the pathway and Mark gave you some specific advice and helped you kind of take a new direction. Can you talk through the advice and what happened?
• 17:00
  Yeah. So we we were doing a test in 16 Denver Quiznos stores and they wanted to, you know, any big chain. They're like, let's throw it into a few and see how it does. So you have to perform that well in that test. And we did like the flying colors. So by January, January 2020, first they said, would you give us an exclusive on the corned beef? And Mark Cuban was like, told me, I was like, what do we do?
• 17:23
  And he said, we're too far along. We're not giving that exclusive. I said, no. And then a week after that, they wrote me back and said, the test is going so well that we want to bring it to all at the time they had 450 stores. And that was going to be huge for us because the food service business and restaurants, it's way more than what you get in a grocery store. But, you know, you want to play both, of course. But we were super psyched, to say the least.
• 17:46
  And then when COVID hit, that got very much on ice. They were like, hey, hope you haven't bought any of the ingredients yet. We were like, oh, what? You know, the whole world was shutting down. What could we say? And my father was so sick. It was all such a blur. But anyway, at that time, Mark said to me, you tell everyone that we're even remotely talking with that we're ready for retail right now. Meaning like, that's over. This is the new chapter. We're ready. We're ready. We're ready to sell you. Send us the paperwork, you know.
• 18:16
  And to get into retail is like, it's some time. You got to do lab testing and boxes and specs on specs on things you don't even think that are like real anyway. So that took a few months. But I did start the conversation with a few grocery folks that had reached out to After Shark Tank like, hey, we're ready to rock. Get it going.
• 18:36
  And so by January of 2021, because it takes even once you fill in the paperwork, it takes a few months to get set up. You can imagine like major grocery chains. By January of 2021, we were in 150 Ralph stores and we ended the year with like 2000 stores. Now we're in like 3000 something. We're about to launch into Sprouts in the US and we're getting into Latin America and we're definitely working on a lot of international in the next year or so as well.
• 19:02
  Oh my gosh. Thank God you didn't say yes to the exclusive. Oh, no kidding. Thank you. Yes. That's a great piece of advice. Know your power. Know where you can go.
• 19:16
  As you grow now, you know, I read that you just announced your series A raise. You're valued at 50 million. You've got a lot going on for you. What are the kinds of marketing initiatives that are shifting the needle for you to continue to kind of explode that growth? You're already in so many stores, but what happens from here? Where do you go from here?
• 19:37
  Well, at this point in time, we're definitely looking into different kinds of programs that you can use, like even on your phone, to be able to get a rebate on a free path, or scan a QR code and get taken to a fun place with a great interactive video, or have TikTok, both advertising and good content rolling out. Short form video is where everything is at at this moment in time, as far as
• 20:04
  both, you know, on Instagram, even Facebook, and certainly that's TikTok for you. So definitely working in that realm, working with other influencers. You know, we're also learning on the job, you know, in this as well. But that's kind of where we're at. You know, PR is like a definitely very much a focus. We've gotten a lot of earned media and that's like a great place to be.
• 20:27
  We found that like Facebook and Instagram ads are just not pulling like what they used to. So that's not really the space as much today. But yeah, you know, we're also going to a lot of trade shows. We hadn't so much in the past, but now we're starting to. I have that baby that I was pregnant with is now three. So for me, two nights is like the longest amount of nights that I can be like completely in another state. But I have a team that'll go for like four of the nights and like I show up for like a day and a half and yeah.
• 20:55
  And that's what that looks like on like the marketing front. So, and I'm also like very like gorilla and scrappy. And like literally today I was cold calling Panera, Arby's. Like I'm just also like in it, in it to win it and like whatever. So, so I'm anyway, that, those are some of our marketing.
• 21:13
  I love that. I love that. And I love that you're kind of, you know, still scrappy, still on the ground, still in the weeds, kind of like growing the business and having fun with it too, because that's so important to keep the fun. I am. I try to remind myself because the stress levels, like when you raise the stakes, literally the stakes get like raised. I mean, it's like you deal with like a stress. It's like a multi-million thing that, you know, you could mess up or what, you know, right. So I definitely remind myself that we're
• 21:42
  got to be having fun and we've got to like really be living our dreams even though it's you know it is it is you know stressful too so uh so keeping that in check is very important so we've talked about marketing we've talked about money the other thing i love to talk about is mistakes and the challenges because we can often get caught up in all the highlights and you know how great it's looking and how successful the business is going but of course on the flip side every journey um
• 22:08
  like we know, is crazy and there are so many lows. What are the kind of challenges that you've been facing recently in growing this business that we don't see on social media? My dad uses this phrase, the agony and the ecstasy. So yeah. That's a good one. There's also a lot of hard work. So I'll tell you one of my most recent mistakes that I get to wear, a badge of honor here on my...
• 22:33
  my little situation here, is that we got into a Costco region that I thought was just like you got into a Costco and so you're just in it, not knowing that Costco works on a rotation basis with a hugely, almost all of their items except for like Tide and like super things you'd...
• 22:49
  Then like a classic item, anything that's like at all niche or interesting or different is like a rotational item. So we bought like $150,000 worth of packaging because like, you'd need like that many months in advance to keep that kind of volume ongoing. So yeah.
• 23:06
  Turns out we get into the store and I'm like, yay, we're here. And then I wind up seeing that like they had this thing called a booking, which was like 180,000 units. It's like a lot of money. They're like $12 a unit, right? I'm like, amazing. Like that's the, I thought that was the first order. They were like, oh no, that's what we're going to buy in total. So I was like, okay, that was a loss, you know, but you only learn that from going through it, I think. And, and obviously now like,
• 23:32
  Right now I'm being pitched a product that's like a ready-made wrap made with our steak slices and some plant-based cheese and some veggies that's like really delicious. But I'm being pitched it and I would have to buy the whole item, meaning like I have to take on, I have to pay for it.
• 23:47
  the wrap itself, the labor to put it together, right? To then sell it from my catalog. So I'm saying to myself, what if I take that on? And then there's like spoils, it goes out of date. Like I'm like now way wise to like, cause I had this stupid Costco experience. Am I even asking these questions? So, you know, live and learn, live and learn. Another thing I just showed you so proudly, we've got these beautiful boxes, but the only reason we have these beautiful boxes is because for,
• 24:14
  Two years, we had these pouches and the pouches we thought were going to hang in the deli counter, like in the deli section like this. Turns out they wound up mostly getting put into produce sections where tofu and other meat alternatives are, which is actually where they sell the best, it turns out. We didn't know that. But in those sections, there's only shelves. There's not pegs. So like a huge percentage of our stores, even today, we look like this on a shelf. So good luck finding us.
• 24:41
  You really have to know we're there. So now it just came in. It's not even on shelves yet. I'm showing it like, of course, we've had this all along. No, lots of mistakes to get this. So those are some recent mistakes from recent blunders. Just a couple for the week. Just a couple for the week. I feel like the learnings, the learnings, though, that come from these experiences are like so valuable in the long term. Totally. Hard in the moment, good in the long term. Yes. Yes. 100%.
• 25:08
  When you think about the lessons that you've learned in the course of building this business, is there anything you wish you knew or you wish someone told you before you were starting out that you can share with our listeners?
• 25:22
  I think it's really that so much of the foundation of what made this business successful is that I was starting off in a place of empathy. And for me, it was like the animals, but it doesn't have to be as dramatic as that. If we're looking at something in the world that feels like it's not really there all the way, it's not really dialed in, that thing isn't like there yet servicing us. And you're like, that hurts a little bit.
• 25:49
  That's where there's some magic sitting there. So if someone had said to me, hey, you have all that pink, those animals, there's a business in that because there's like, you're leveraging all of that, like good vibration for how much good you want to put into the world and, and like attracts like. So, so that's how I would answer that one. Wherever you're feeling that empathy, there's some, there's some work to be done and there's some money that can be made in that. Yeah. Find the magic in that. I love that. Yeah. So cool. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.
• 26:23
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 26:47
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 27:10
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.
• 27:25
  Hey, it's Dune here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 27:50
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 28:12
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.