Latest / The Growth Class with Phil Masiello / Food Brand Manufacturing: Scaling Production In-House with Marshall Rader

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Food Brand Manufacturing: Scaling Production In-House with Marshall Rader · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: So, what does it take to turn a personal dietary restriction into a nationally distributed CPG brand?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: In this episode, we're going to talk to Marshall Rader, co-founder of GFB.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Used to be the gluten-free bar, now it's the gluten-free brothers.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: So Marshall shares the real mechanics of taking a food brand from local kitchens to major retail shelves nationwide.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Beyond scaling distribution, Marshall breaks down why they chose their own manufacturing facility, how operating as a certified B Corp drives long-term brand equity, and the critical decisions founders face when balancing retail velocity and sustainable growth margins.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Marshall, thanks for taking the time to come on today and uh really appreciate it.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: If you could sort of take us back a little bit into your life and give us a little flavor of who you are and what you've done and then what got you to this point.
• 1:10
  unknown: Sure.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for having me, Phil.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Much appreciated.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um I can give you the quick reader's digest of kind of how the GFB started and what I was doing before that and and why we got started.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, it's in my uh late 20s.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was living in Chicago.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um my previous jobs until then were you know uh supply chain oriented, things like that.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but my job at that time was in sales, and I was really working across the globe.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: It could be anywhere in the US, Brazil, China, South America, whatever, Europe.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I was diagnosed with celiac disease and just traveling, you know, at that time it was like 2008, and trying to find a way to be gluten-free, especially in different countries, was a huge challenge, as you can imagine.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, it was interesting at that time because I would go to Australia or Brazil, and they were so far ahead of us, including in Europe as well, in terms of understanding what gluten was, having gluten-free on menus.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Even Brazil had every package good back in, I think, oh eight or 09 had said contains or does not contain gluten on.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and going gluten-free was really life-changing for me in a positive way.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, within days and weeks, I felt like I had lot gotten 10 years younger.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that was a challenge.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought after eating a couple really, you know, uh, probably a year or longer eating other stuff available at that time, I was like, I think I can do better than this, and that's how we got started.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh what kind of sales were you in?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we had to make it sound sound complicated because uh we called it coatings, but it's really just paint.
• 2:47
  unknown: Pretty simple.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: So my customer was uh like you know, Caterpillar and Kamatsu like large construction firms going to their facilities and they use a lot of orange and yellow paint.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: We have a we have a client, um we have a client who essentially makes glues and paints, but we can't call it that.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: We call it adhesives and coatings.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yeah.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: No one wants to be a paint salesman, but you can definitely sell some coatings.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: They do industrial coatings and things, uh garage floors, that type of stuff, the epoxy-based, you know, all that, all that good stuff.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, so uh so how'd you get started?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I mean I literally remember um Did you start it as a side gig or were you?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Started as a side gig.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I went to the grocery store, bought them to stuff thinking, oh yeah, this won't be won't be hard.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just go home and like throw some peanut butter and some oats together, and like, you know, it'll be fast.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be awesome.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And pretty quickly realized I had did not have the skills in the kitchen to do that.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um got really lucky, found a great guy who had um was a partner in a um like a gluten-free cupcake company in Chicago.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you remember when cupcakes were like the big thing, um, and so he had done a bunch of gluten-free stuff for them, and I just I think we we agreed on like I think it was like$1,500 or$1,800 to develop three or four recipes.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he just came up with something that was awesome using really simple ingredients, which is what I wanted.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, stuff that you could go to the store and buy, uh, nothing crazy.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then so that's how we got started, and then eventually, you know, got also got lucky with finding in Chicago there was a gluten-free bakery.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I would go there and make stuff with their team once a month-ish, and then bring, you know, bring it home, put it in the corner of my apartment.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, my brother was uh joined at about that time.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: We were both doing it part-time.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: He has a big tech background, so he did the website and all the stuff like that, and got the packaging going.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I would just walk to the post office and UPS and drop the online orders in the mailbox every day, and and then started walking door-to-door in Chicago land trying to sell into the grocery stores and coffee shops and things like that.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: How would you uh how are you manufacturing?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: You were manufacturing with in their bakery or in their bakery, everything was manual.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, literally would would use a big mixer um and then roll it out with a rolling pin and like a conventional sheet pan, and then cut it with a cookie cutter.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, so it's very like junior varsity entry-level packaging.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're buying some some film that you're sealing in a band sealer, putting each bar by hand into a little package, um, just like clear, just like clear packaging with a and sticking a label on it.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, clear packaging with a sticker on the front of the back for nutrition facts and for the brand, and then just in a a plain brown like 12 pack.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that was our product we would we took to sell, you know, at the coffee shops and the local retailers around Chicago at first.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it worked.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it worked.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, people um, you know, at that point it was really explained to people, whether it was, you know, our first major customer was Meyer in the Midwest, or anybody were explaining what gluten was.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, why do I care about gluten?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the discussion 10 years, or maybe no, probably 15 years ago now, 12 or 13 years ago.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it worked, uh, it continued to sell, and uh, and then eventually about a year, maybe a year or so after that, when Meyer gave us our first chance to be in a major retailer, I had to kind of make that decision of walking away from the uh luxuriox life of paint sales, which was a you know, it was a great company.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: I had an awesome boss and great people that I worked with.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I joke it, it I joke about that, but it was like a pretty hard choice back then saying, hey, I'm gonna go from making a nice income out of grad school to zero for some period of time that will be determined later.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's always the decision, isn't it?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's always a yeah, it's uh that's always a tough decision.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's one that uh founders hit all the time, and they have to make that decision or whether they feel strong enough about the growth of their product or the f or the future.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah, we see it all the time.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: I've been through it numerous times, but yeah.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually it's like, yeah, I can come back to corporate America most likely if this fails.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: But this opportunity likely won't present itself again anytime soon.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure if I'm smart enough to have more than one decent idea, so I'm just gonna take the to the one that I have and go, yeah.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh it's something I always talk to young uh when I talk to young entrepreneurs or young founders and they're and they're getting going and they get, you know, they get that fear, they have to make that decision.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: Do I leave the security and and dive into this fully?
• 7:38
  unknown: Yeah.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: And and I always say, look, what's the worst that happens?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: You're not gonna die.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: You're not gonna die.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: You potentially could lose money, but you're always gonna be able to find a place to live.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: Your parents probably can take you in.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: You're always gonna be able to eat, and you'll always you'll be able to go back to the job you had before and start all over again.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's not it's it's not a killer.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: So but if you feel strongly about it, you have to do it.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because if not, you'll just regret it the rest of your life.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Agreed.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I got one thing my my first boss has told me when I had a after college, I moved um, you know, quite a distance away from my first job, and he could tell you I wasn't sure if I wanted to accept the job or not.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Marshall, you can always go back home.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you if you never leave, you'll never know.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you move here and you decide you don't like it and you have no friends or whatever happens, you can always go back home.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he was right.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the same thing applies here, like you said.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: It absolutely applies.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: You're you know, especially if you do it when you're young.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Now, you know, when you get older, I mean it's it's it's more difficult on on the people that you have a bigger decision when you're married and and you have your first kid and you have this idea and you want to go into it, then you sort of have to build up a cushion just in case.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, for the most part, uh but yeah.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: So then how how did you scale it?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: So um we scaled over, you know, the first six or seven years from let's call that uh 2013 to COVID uh or 20 2019 probably, and we totally bootstrapped it.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was me and then another partner, like a friend, came in shortly after Riot started.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the three of us put about 140k in.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, with that 140k, we were able to build it to nearly 10 million.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um we were profitable early, partly because we didn't take any salaries.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that helped us.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that allowed us to get a bank super early, allowed us to, you know, we looked at copacking.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but back then, as a you know, copacking's challenging just like making yourself.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure there's pluses and minuses to all of them.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: We tried to find a copacker, but we just weren't really we weren't big enough.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's limited people that want to even make a hundred thousand bars, let alone a million bars.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, um, so it's tough to find a copacker.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: We were we were the gluten-free bars, so we couldn't put in a label like made it a facility with wheat, like that wasn't gonna fly.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So um we made it ourselves.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't super efficient, but um, having our own place with limited overhead, basically leadership taking zero salary for a few years, allowed us to get a bank, allowed us to scale it, borrow, borrow for equipment, and eventually start paying ourselves, which I think took about four, four or five years.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: But wait, but but for that particular product, it's not like you know, the manufacturing of it, it's not like you're dealing with you know meat products and you don't have to as much regulation.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's basically setting up a bakery, um which you can take industrial space, cheap rent, you know, mixer, oven, and and a and a packaging machine, and you're in, you know, you're almost in business.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think when we did it manually, I mean, I literally, it was about 30k that we put into the to the industrial condo that we had.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Everything was done manual with rolling pins.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: We had some like specially made stainless steel pins that made it easier to roll things out.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So from a manufacturing standpoint, it was to get in and like find a way to be profitable early uh was possible.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, get that first machine is like a game changer.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: You go from making, you know, think it was a hundred grand for the first machine, maybe one twenty-five, but you go from making, you know, 150 or 200 pounds a day to 2,000 pounds a day with the same manpower.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then, you know, we we scaled mostly at that time uh through grocery.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, our our biggest our first major customer was Meyer, um, you know, Spartan Nash in Michigan.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: We had we've always worked really well in like that coffee shop cafe world.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, those were a lot of our big customers, and we just kind of kept knocking them down um for those first few years, whether it's you know, Whole Foods or Sprouts, um Wegmans, places like that, that we just we kept having luck expanding with and and selling well enough to to stay there.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: I um yeah, I grew up in uh in food retail and uh and restaurants and things like that.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: And um but when I I like e-commerce so much more just because uh to launch anyway, just because the the biggest flaw I think in retail is the concept of um slotting, rebates, discounts, and accruals.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think that that is just a a destructive system.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: And um you know it used to drive me insane.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we uh when we we did a beauty uh line early on, we did a beauty brand and I said I I don't want to go into retail right away, we we launched on the shopping channels and we were on we were one of the first brands on Amazon in 2006 outside of books, CDs, music and all that.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: And um and then uh you know we we had our own website obviously and we were in Canada, the US, you know, Italy, London, uh UK, and we made such a big deal that you know Ulta Beauty came to us, Sephora came to us, and then we had leverage.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: And when we went in, I said, Look, I I don't want to run a business I'm we're a marketing company.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to run a business where I have accountants checking.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to do it.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: So you can take the product, and here's the deal.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: We don't pay slotting, we don't pay rebates, discounts, and accruals because we're spending the time, money, and effort in marketing.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: We're building the brand still.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: We're still on TV, we're still, you know, all over the place.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: And surprisingly, they agreed, but the buyer at the buyer at Alta, you know, didn't obviously get the message because about two months after we were in there, I get this email, and it's like, good news.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: Your slotting came in at$18,000 a skew.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I looked at it, I went, I had 10 skews, I don't have$180,000 just sitting around.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: I said I responded, I said, I I think you better go back and look at our agreement because uh we're not paying slotting.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: And she's after that, man, she just had the biggest bone to pick with us forever.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was it was a horrible relationship.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, it just I think it's just destructive, it's really difficult for young people that or young brands to get in there, because everybody wants to get in there.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: But I will tell you that the one thing I do know about it, because everybody complains about, you know, going into retail and how difficult it is.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're going in there and trying to unseat an incumbent, you know, you just go in there and say, I got a new pasta sauce.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, if there's nothing significantly different about your pasta sauce, right, then yeah, you're gonna have to pay slotting.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: And in that particular case, I could see from an operator standpoint justifying that.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because I have to protect my margin, I have to protect what I'm making.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: But if you go in there with a completely unique item that's totally new in a new category, I I think that it's a lot easier to get in and a lot easier to negotiate.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because at the time that you were going in, there weren't any good gluten-free bars.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there were very little.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And and um, you know, that, but even back then, and I I want to say maybe 2014, 2015, I'd walk into a meeting, you know, what's really become our number one product is the bites, because they are a little more unique.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know of another product that's made like we did, like we still do make them.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, it I'm sure there's some product that was out there that I'm not aware of, but we really started that bites category.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I wish we would have probably taken more advantage of that early first mover advantage.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, uh back when we I walk into a meeting in 2015, I would show them bars and bites, no matter what I was at, and they would just sort of push the bars to the side and they'd say, I'm sure your bars are great, but they're not gonna make a difference in my category.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: I got 47 bars.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just not gonna make a difference.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: But tell me more about these.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so the challenge with that at that time, and still a little bit today with the bytes type stuff, is a lot of retailers don't necessarily know where to put it.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so, and everybody's the buyers and the structure and the stores are different.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the publics and the mire and the whole foods, they have so you're you're the consumer doesn't have a spot where they go.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if they want a click bar, they know where to go find a click bar.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: If they want GFB bytes, it's like, well, over here it's in that set, and over here it's in this other plant-based set.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a different that that's bad challenge when you've got like a new item um to get in there.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that did help us still, as you said, like you know, negotiate some of that slotting when we could.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's that is the big challenge of the industry is how do you everybody that's an e-comm wants to be in brick and mortar, everybody in brick and mortar wants to be an e-com, and that will never end.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone makes the same mistakes going back and forth and realizing, oh, you know, maybe it was better on this side of the street, you know.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's always like the well-financed.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I don't know, I'm not on Instagram a ton, but like I think I see a new bar on Instagram every day.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Oh god, yeah.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And with the same mission that I started with, like, hey, there's not that much good thing, there's really not a lot of good bars out there.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna make the best bar ever.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's what that's what this standard strategy is um or reason to exist, and it was for us too.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but you you're facing these competitors that might be well financed, might be, you know, uh, and so someone's gonna pay that slotting.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're the buyer, you're like, hey, I can get 50 grand from company A, and company B is only gonna offer me 10.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: My job is to get the money for the comp for the business.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and then with all those deductions, we just made the decision over the years, especially for COVID, like we just want to be in certain retail partners, certain quality retail partners that we can actually have a meeting with, be constructive with, invest with, have some good faith in the transaction, and believe that we're gonna grow sales together over the long term.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Paying for slotting, and many, and I would say that there's many retailers that we're just like we say no to regularly because it's just like that's not what we're gonna do anymore.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: We've we've learned that lesson.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna we're just not gonna do that.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think you do both.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you have to be omnichannel in this day and age.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: You have to have an uh an online presence.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I'm just a big fan of like, you know, even Harry's, when Harry's uh Razors went in, you know, they made such a big deal online and then Target came to them and said, put us in.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: Once uh once people want you, then you've got a little bit of negotiating power.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: But to your point about merchandising at store level, you're right.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, I think Wegman's does a pretty good job.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: My wife uses a lot of bars, and I think Wegman's does a pretty good job.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: But you're you're 100% right.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like new ones pop up.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, my wife started buying the these bear bells, and she thought it was a small company.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, no, man.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: I said they're a huge company out of, I think Sweden, right?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: I said, they're a huge company.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: I said, that's I said, that's why they've got like you know eight feet of of space.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's like Coke Pepsi, right?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: You say I I want this much space and I'm willing to pay for it, because they got deeper pockets, right?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's like Coke.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: Coke's the one who dominates that that uh beverage aisle.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I I thought it was really smart when um you know a couple of these young beverage companies came came up, you know, and um they went into just DSD distribution and eliminated all that sort of uh uh slotting.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: And one of them was smart, and she went into through uh um the beer distributors because the beer distributors were losing volume because people are drinking less and they wanted to they needed to fill the truck.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: So she started doing it that way, and it really, really gave her penetration really, really really fast.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought she was because you know, once you go into the warehouse, it's it's tough, or UNFI or any of those guys, you know, it's it starts to get a little bit uh a little bit trickier.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then you gotta manage, you know, you've got to manage that inventory flow, which is a whole different.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you spend all the time on the deductions and challenging deductions, disputing, questioning, someone's gotta do all that work.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: The accounting work behind it, to your point, with the beauty company, just like this isn't what I signed up for.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is non this is non-value added stuff that we've got to spend, you know, time with the salesperson, me, the financial person going over deductions.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just it's uh it's overly complex, which is why unfortunately you and I and everybody else pay more at the grocery store.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um because there's so much money burnt in and burnt up in the admin and administration process of how it's done today.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: I um I uh early on, you know, I I had uh um done some business with Walmart.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, for me, I thought they were one of the cleanest retailers because they never asked for anything except a uh, I think it was like a 2% warehouse allowance, and and which which I was fine with.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I can remember they called up and said, hey, you know, the product isn't moving in a couple of stores, and we're gonna move it to an end cap and get it going and we're gonna put it on discount.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm thinking, okay, how much is this gonna cost?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm I got them on the phone and I'm trying to write down, you know, and I said, All right, well, how what do I need to do to support that?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: And they said, uh, no, nothing.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: We're that's just letting you know that's what we're gonna do.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I'm not paying that.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm thinking, I got off the phone, I was like, oh my God.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I for for months I was expecting to see this deduction come through.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't so um, you know, there are some I I think Wegmans does a pretty good job as well.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they're they're fairly uh but the thing I like about Wegmans versus other supermarkets is they they're more focused on selling stuff than just buying it to make their number.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, some retailers that just buy because they know they're gonna get, you know, slotting rebates, you know, the buyers are just counting that money.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: But you're right, it's it's it costs a lot of it, there's a lot of administration.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it I didn't want to do that, you know, in beauty or in the shaving business that we had or some other stuff.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't want to have a bunch of accountants.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to deal with it.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: It just doesn't, it's not for me.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: I can't it drives me insane.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to be a marketing company.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to market the brand and build the brand.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: And And we were successful at doing that.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's still a ton of great partners out there.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the regionals and super regionals like the the Myers and Publix and H E B and Wegmans, and I'm sure I'm gonna forget a couple, but um, you know, those are the ones that still I think uh will work with you.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can get 10 minutes in their calendar, you can solve problems, you can invest together.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's that those are still great places to be that we we want to be at.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's some great retailers out there.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: I I I'm not uh against retail.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to come across like I'm against retail.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm against I'm against the uh the back end.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm against the inefficiency, yeah.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: The inefficiency is painful.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And for anybody that's at you know, at at a retailer, when you walk into an Aldi and you see how efficient that they can make it, there's some if I was running a retailer, I'd be like, these are there's some lessons here that we should take.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, where it's like the shop, yeah, you can say whatever you want about Aldi, but it's uh the shopping experience is fast.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need 87 choices for ketchup, just to use just to use flash.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, the efficiency that they've taken they've put in there with how the UPC is on the on the bag, so it can scan with any any way you slide it.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: I know that's national brand design, so it's no that's never going to change.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: But there's some lessons in in all of that that could be embraced to take some costs out of operations.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, no question about it.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, you know, it's funny you just you you said, you know, we don't need 87 varieties of ketchup.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh we were at we have a Wegman's up up the road, and that's where we shop.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a great store, it's huge volume.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: And um They just did a reset.
• 23:42
  unknown: Yeah.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: And and they made the w the uh aisles wider because it was very tight before.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I'm and I'm I went up there and you know, and uh my wife and I were walking up.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: I said, they're they're skewing down, there's no question.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: She goes, why do you say that?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Where where do you where did the space come from to widen the aisles?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: I said, the only place it comes from is getting rid of items.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then we started shopping, and as we're shopping, we realized, you know, they don't have this brand anymore, they don't have this brand anymore, they don't have this brand anymore.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: Even the bar section was probably half of what it was, which I don't blame them because you know you really want to keep the ones that move.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: You don't want the items in there.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I early on I had retail stores in Washington, D.C., and we got acquired by a supermarket chain down south, and I had to go and and do a two-year uh earnout.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: And um and I remember like, you know, looking at the stats of in the grocery side, not perishable side, but the grocery side, that there are there were fifty items out of all those SKUs, 50 items that sold more than a case a week in per store.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: 50 items.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm thinking, what the what do we need all this other stuff for?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like you could just start to to, you know, you don't need, you know, seven varieties of something.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Get it, get the top three.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: And all but but when you talk to the merchants about it, they'll all tell you the same thing.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, I got$10,000 of SKU, you know, or$15,000 or$20,000.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, the more SKUs I get, the better off I am.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a tough balance.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because if they don't if they don't have the variety that the customer wants, then why does that customer not just go to all the you know, so like that they got a tough I I totally agree with what you're saying, and then it's like how do they how do they bridge that gap of like, okay, well, you know, yeah, GFB and our uh products like us, we're not gonna sell at the velocity of Doritos.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if if they don't have specialty stuff, then do they lose that shopper completely?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where they've got the balance.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know what's funny is w when uh when I was in that business, uh the the the um company that got the highest rating for variety was Costco.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: And it was when you think about the consumer, well, first of all, you know, there is there there is a uh you know the the the paradox of choice piece that comes in where you're the customer gets overwhelmed with choices and then they have no choice and then they sort of walk away.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, Costco, they make it simple because they have you know two of this, two of this, two of this, one of this.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: But the thing that that the the customer gave them high points for in terms of variety was just that whole center because there's so much that changes in that center.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: And as far as the food goes, it was just your basics, and they're fine with the basics, right?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: So for sure.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: Have you been in Costco?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Have you gotten your products in?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: We were in Costco.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we are at Costco.com.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're working to hopefully get back in someday.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's another that's one of our good stories.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or I should say funny, good slash sad stories over the years.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we we did a first rotation with them probably in 20, I don't know, I can't remember what it was years running together at this point, 2018, 2019.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Went pretty well.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was a regional rotation.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you know, got the second run at it a couple months later.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sales were good.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the two it was two full truckloads, and the second truckload went off the road and tipped over.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And to where?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: It tipped over on the side of the road.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it had an accident.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that's not our that's not our fault, but and everyone was fine.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: But the issue was we had to bring it that destroyed all the all the you know the pallets and the the display units that are that go on the floor at Costco.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: They had we had to bring it all back and rebuild it.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't have enough packaging on hand to to put it all together and shoot it right back out.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we had to make some more, get some more packaging made.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: By the time we did that, you know, I can't remember if it took four or five weeks.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now your sales are all screwed up.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're like you were in these 40 stores for the for this period, and then and then you meet with the buyer the next time and try to explain like what happened, and it's like, is that really the truth?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how did this, you know, so that it looks like you were like you've you kind of had you you failed to to fill the order, and the data doesn't look as good because not spread over like 12 or 15 weeks versus eight.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so we couldn't we just couldn't get over that hurdle and then COVID happened and it's kind of been uh so that it's we've kind of been stuck in um limbo land.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: But we have some awesome stuff coming out this year.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: We got some good other good data.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: We hopefully getting a chance at Costco in 2027.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that'd be good.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: They're I I think they're a good retailer person.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and they're growing, I mean, they're they're getting share from all these other folks that you know um that are struggling, and I think we'll continue to, to your point.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's a good shopping experience.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's some stuff that you can pretty much always plan on being there, and there's some stuff where it's like, oh, you know, this is a great lunchbox item for my kids, or this is that, and I'll try this.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I always feel like when I go to Costco, if it's less than 10 bucks, it's it feels like it's free.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, 999, I'll I'll take anything.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where I want to be 999 at Costco, so people will bring us in.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: No, do you do you see that that's a good point what you said about kids?
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: Do you see a trend for your product where parents are using it for younger kids?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got a we launched a line maybe 18 months ago that's a nut-free bite uh with some more like fun like more fun kid flavors like birthday cake, cookie dough, fudge, brownie.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, where yeah, that it's you know, a lot of the schools these days want um either the parents or the schools want like the you know, like sort of the bento box type thing where you got a few containers and it's not not a ton of single-use plastic.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, some people that really don't want to use that.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, they're taking a few of our bites, putting it in that as a kind of a protein snack component of the lunch.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we also, you know, we're working with a few partners who are going to be, you know, have have snack packs under their own brand in nationwide grocery that use our bites as kind of a protein component in like a cheese or a veggie trait type thing.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's great.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: I noticed at the I noticed that the last couple of Halloweens on our uh in our area, we uh we got away from you know regular candy and started giving out like you know the Annie's gummies with uh, you know, there's n there no um artificial colors, it's as natural as it can be for that product.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that stuff goes like wildfire because the parent I I you know the moms are sort of forcing the kids into that world of you know, thinking about what you're eating, right?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: Not just eating garbage and you know, candy sales.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I just read a whole thing about you know candy sales going down and uh and you know, alcohol going down and all these these uh various uh things, you know, sugar related, right?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: Alcohol is sugar related, everything is sugar related.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: And even my my nine and eleven-year-old, and I'm sure it's partially because of the business that I'm in, but also it's the news that they see and where they're like, how much protein is in this?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: How much protein is in that?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Is that good for you?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: How much sugar is in this?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Should I drink so like they're they're asking me those questions?
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, it's which is I mean, I don't think we're I was thinking about protein when I was 10 years old.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know that.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was eating I was drinking I was eating a bunch of Doritos and drinking Mountain Dew, but yeah.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: I hear you.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, protein is an amazing uh phenomenon right now.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean everything you could take yeah, I saw I took a picture of the Pop Tart shelf the other day from my daughter.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a joke we have, but now they have like high protein Pop Tarts.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I I I sent her a picture, I said, Oh, they're good for us now.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Of course we can get it.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's the I think that's the danger is that there's some I don't know if it's a danger, that's by the wrong word, but people see the word protein, it's like, oh, this is healthy.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like yeah, it's healthy now.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is not necessarily of course we all should get our most of our food from whole sources when possible, but the reality is we're all too busy and we're gonna have some stuff that's to on the go.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, adding protein to like S pasta sauce this week.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Protein pasta sauce.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it's just but you know, the it's like when we started GFB, whatever it was 15 years ago now, longer.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know what year, what year we started, 16 years ago.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was the goal is like good tasting protein, you know.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that so we've always been in that world.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was kind of fat in my uh uh middle, like high school, a little bit of high school, a little bit of college.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was always looking at nutrition stuff, reading labels when I was 20.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: And protein was always like one of those things that you needed more of, was cognizant of.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: And just in the last couple of years, it's just like it's it's like that message took 15 years, and of course, we took it the American manufacturing, food manufacturing world took it to the next level where put protein in everything.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so it'll be interesting to see.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: I do think that's a long-term trend, though.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if protein pasta sauce is gonna work, but um, I do think that it's a long-term trend of you know, a little more protein in everything, you know, a little more fiber in everything.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: I I think that uh the trend is really getting back to um you know, not pres preservative free, just just cooking, you know, fresh food, you know, you want protein.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: Here's you know, here's meat, right?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean you can you can stick protein in into anything.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: There's a guy there was a guy, oh God, I can't tell you the whole story because he'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: But there was a guy who who uh we tried to help who had wanted a high protein oatmeal, but it wasn't made out of oats.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: It was made out of other stuff.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: And he sent it as samples.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't usually people send us samples all the time for things.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I tasted it and I don't usually do this, but I I called him up, I said, You cannot.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: You absolutely cannot sell this.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: This is the most disgusting thing I've ever had in my life.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: I said, This is this is like eating protein powder with hot water in it.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's just the most disgusting thing.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: I said, you have to rework this.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: I said he and so I said, you know, I don't know if you've looked, because he was selling it, he was selling it online, and so I don't know if you pay attention, but go and look at your reviews.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody is saying the same thing.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: You have to rework this product.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: You cannot you cannot be successful with it.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: And uh he you know, eventually did.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: But uh eventually he got a copacker to help him.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: But uh Yeah, I mean I think people can take that that uh protein thing a little bit too far.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: You can't just take anything and stick protein powder in it and say, hey, it's high protein.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's I mean, you know, high protein Pop Tart, come on.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what are we gonna have next?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: High protein Captain Crunch?
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, I'd be in on that.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, that's what we're gonna have next.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: But I'd be in on the Captain Crunch.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: I uh but I I can't I I think that um you know sugar is probably the most destructive, or processed sugar is probably one of the most destructive pieces to it.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I think you see it in different ways that people are actually attuned to it.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: I know I am.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: I have a terrible sugar addiction if I don't keep it under control.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it's the you know, you see it in lack of candy sales, but you really see it in in um um uh alcoholic beverage sales declining.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's not that people aren't drinking as much, it's that people aren't drinking the same things, they're not drinking stuff that's gonna turn into sugar in their bodies.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it's uh it's I think that's really what we have to do.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, we when you go I didn't grow up in a household where we had a lot of processed food or packaged foods, you know.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: My my I'm an Italian boy from the Bronx, yeah.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, my my my aunts and my grandmother went out shopping every day to cook.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and uh so it was a whole different way.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, so anyway.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Getting back in the kitchen is always a good thing.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: No question about it.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: So um, you know, what's up for for next?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: What what do you think are um are some of your uh uh bottlenecks and obstacles to to growing further?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a good question.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've got the business has changed quite a bit um over the last couple of years.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we we really have three segments of our business today.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh we merged with a granola company last year.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, is that right?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so in early 2025, and it's you know it really matched up well with what we do with you know, just great ingredients for great taste, right?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, ridiculously tasty is what we say.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it's called Hudson Henry granola, it's fairly small, but it's really the only granola at scale made with extra virgin olive oil and and real maple syrup.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: So these ingredients, yeah, it's a premium product, but uh if you check out our reviews online, like it is a 4.8 star.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: We don't polish those reviews.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, maybe it's even a five star in many cases.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it is just great ingredients, awesome products.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: We worked with them last year.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh you know, we make everything ourselves.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we have moved all the equipment into our building.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then we still have GFB, which is probably more like 70% of our business.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then outside of that, we started doing some co-manufacturing as well.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we don't want to be, we we are looking in our in that world, you know, we want to have five, seven, maybe eight or nine top like you know, people we can't just like our retail stance, like we want people that we can work with and partner with and collaborate with and join business development plans with them to help them grow their business.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that may not scale like up to 50 customers in that world, but once we get 10, we'll real we'll recalibrate internal resources to make it 15 or 20.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: But that's you know, there's so much demand in that co-manufacturing world for some some great smaller brands that need uh need support beyond just making their product.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's kind of our niche there.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we've had some, we've probably had uh since that merger, like 80% growth.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you know, from from a GFB and Hudson Henry standpoint, we want to be kind of that that snack that you find when you're out when you're out living your life, you know, um airports, airlines, convenience stores, coffee shops, cafes, uh uh colleges, hotels, offices.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's where we've always done really well and where we're continuing to grow our business.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you know, our biggest challenges to those things are, you know, we luckily luckily and um unluckily, we've been through a lot.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: We've been through great years of growth, COVID, which was you know crazy, um, took us a couple of years to recover from COVID.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, everything from you know my my development as a manager to hiring not the right people and surviving that, you know, as a small business, like that's one of the big things.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like you don't have a lot of margin for error for making mistakes.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you hire the wrong person and fully delegate, or you know, and that sounds like I'm blaming somebody else, but if you if you do something and and you don't catch it fast enough, you know, for whatever reason, like things start going through the rails and you you it it can be a big mistake that's hard to reverse and fix and takes a long time.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you if you're a big company, you got 50 sales per people and you hire two that don't work out, like no big deal.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the ship keeps going, but when you're a small company like us and you've got one and a half salespeople and one isn't very good and you don't know it, and they maybe don't tell you the truth, or something else like that happens internally, and you just don't have good enough systems, or you're not a good enough manager to catch it, you know, I could have been better and all these things over the years, then it's uh it just takes you a long time to fix problems.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you're in my background with a lot of stuff, but there's supply chain and sales, but like when we're work we're working on 2027 plans right now, and I'm like the reality is I've been working on that since January.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you wait till for 2027 to work on 2027, you're a year behind.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: What we're working on right now is really 2028.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so you can it's it's easy to get behind.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so our biggest challenges are gonna be, I think, two things, just like finding the right people to help us scale, and you know, just a couple, honestly, maybe one key role.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think for where we want to have the brands, you know, there's a big chicken or egg distribution question in food service.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, major hotel chain might want the product, but the distributors like, I'm not bringing it in until they say they want it.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then hotels saying I'm not gonna buy it until they have it in, and you're just kind of so that's always been uh way more than in retail.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: When you when publics want something, they just tell Kehi to bring it in.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and and and the the track is smooth.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um so food, I think that's gonna be the biggest for our aspirations of distribution is like sorting out how we can um grow with those key food service distributors.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, if if it's worth it, right?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we uh we have a lot of clients that are in the our big uh three verticals are food, personal care, and beauty.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: That's those are our uh targets just because we know so much about them.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we have a lot of clients in food that you know get this, you know, we we think food service is gonna be, you know, a big win for us.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I always say, you gotta look at it and determine whether it is.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah, it's a big market.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_02: I agree 100% it's a big market, but is it really beneficial?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, is it a is it a good thing to do just for volume uh if you're not making any money at it, or if the problems that are inherent in that are totally different, or the supply chain is totally different than what you're doing now, is it really worth it?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean Yeah, I mean that that's a good question.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think the answer is for us is is generally yes.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but again, you've got to pick your partners wisely.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're not trying to be everywhere.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um we would love, we'd love to be, but that's probably, you know, given you know we're not spending a hundred million dollar investment here.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: So again, it's finding the right partners where where you, you know, there's days when you go get business that you're like, I'm not sure that's gonna work, right?
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like we'll get on the shelf and we'll get a$40,000 PO, but I I don't know.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're at the point where it's like we're only really want to take the business when, you know, or move forward with a new partner when we're like 95% sure it's gonna work.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh yeah, all the reasons we have these seven reasons that we think it's gonna work.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what we're gonna do to make it work better.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, we're just gonna create a problem for each other six to six to twelve months from now.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: We uh like we have a uh a client who got into food service.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: They are they are an olive oil company, they own their own manufacturing over in Spain from from they go from uh Latri to the bottle in eight hours and then they ship it over here.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: But um, they started to bring in bulk to go into food service.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I said, you know, you've never been in food service before, you've been in retail for a long time, you understand it.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: Find a small local partner, somebody that you can talk to every day, somebody that you can put the product in and watch it for a while and make sure you understand the system that's gonna help you.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: Don't just try and go into Cisco tomorrow.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's that's gonna hurt you.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: So which they do.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we got to wrap it up a little bit, but um running out of time.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: Where can people find you?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: Let's say if they're not in the area, do you sell online?
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_02: Can they find you online?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the GFB.com, as well as Hudson Henry uh baking company.com.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then all all those are also on Amazon.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's an easier place to go to find everything.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, e-commerce is certainly a big part of our business.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's you know, custom packs and unique things available there as well.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we launched new stuff there.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and we have some new stuff, as we joked about.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: We got our high protein, high fiber bites coming out in a few weeks.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: So um watch for those.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they do taste amazing.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh blueberry almonds, uh, oatmeal chocolate chip, and peanut butter mocha.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we got some awesome stuff coming out, and everything's always on the website and on Amazon.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: That sounds great.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: Are you gonna merge the two brands or are you gonna keep them separate?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um we're gonna keep them, you know, we're gonna eventually merge the e-com together, link that a little bit, but um they'll be they'll be two separate brands.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_02: Do you use their product as an ingredient in your products in some cases?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: We just talked about that this morning, actually.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, we're working on some kind of a mashup of uh, you know, Hudson Henry granola with GFB bites to see if that's uh a good product.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, there's some a popular brand that makes uh does pretty well with their granola of bites, granola balls.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna see if we can do something kind of in that world um with our stuff too.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll we'll see.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you could you could have a blast uh merging the two of those on social media, just doing some really creative videos.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, there's some cool cluster stuff that we're working on.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully that's the next thing early next year.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: All right, excellent.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, hey, Marshall, thank you for taking the time to come on and talk to us and share.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate it, and uh, I wish you all the luck.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Phil.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having us.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and all your links will be in the uh in the description.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_02: So if anybody wants to go, we'll have all the links to the websites uh in the description, and uh and you can check it out if you're in the uh some of the retailers that the products in Wegmans, Publix.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, those are some pretty big retailers anyway.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: You've pretty much covered the East Coast with those two, I think.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then you've got uh HEB, you said, um and Spartan Meyer Meyer Sprouts Time, yeah.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_02: So people can find you product.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: So that's great.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: Whole Foods.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_02: All right, man.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate it.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for taking the time and uh to everybody else, we will see you next time.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Joel.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.