Latest / Beyond The Trailhead / Mountain House Marketing Director Seth Beiden | Beyond the Trailhead Podcast Ep. 48
Transcript
- speaker-0: Alright everyone, welcome back to an exciting episode of Beyond the Trailhead. ⁓ this week we have ⁓ an incredible guest, ⁓ Seth Biden with Mountain House. If anybody has been on the trail for any amount of years, ⁓ then you've had a Mountain House meal. ⁓ and so we had met at a trade show and just thought it'd be great to chat a little bit about the history of Mountain House and then being that Mountain House is in a bunch of stores, it's kind of that staple that you go to when you're on the trail and when you don't find anything else, or if you're it's it's like My my wife is her go to is the the beef stew ⁓ when she's on trail. So I thought it was great to have Seth on. So Seth, thank you so much for being on. I appreciate your time. speaker-1: Yeah, thanks for having me. It was great to meet you at the show and it's nice to talk again. speaker-0: Yeah. Well I I know you had kind of given me a little history and stuff about yourself ⁓ offline, but I thought it was a great to just kind of hear first your background and how you ended up at Mountain House ⁓ from Campbell back to Mountain House. So just kind of go into your history and then ⁓ what it is that you do at Mountain House and and why Mountain House is is so big the way it is today. speaker-1: Sure. I started my career a ⁓ pretty eager beaver out of college. ⁓ kind of originally hoped to be an architect or an engineer. but then decided that I learned that you don't get to build the bridges right when you graduate. ⁓ so somehow I ended up with a sociology degree. And I think that's the extrovert people watcher in me. ⁓ but both translate very well to like marketing in the outdoor industry because a lot of what I did at Camelback was One, I just got a job as a general coordinator to go prove myself and just want to get my hands dirty and and yeah, you know, get to work, frankly. ⁓ and part of that ⁓ grew with working consumer events and talking to consumers and frankly, you know, shoving myself into the product and design process because I was really like I that architecture brain of mine, but also I just want to know why things are built certain ways, how they work, who they're for. And that's really like lended a lot of ⁓ experience and credibility to my career as kind of a a product marketer or product expert. ⁓ so within Camelback I was obviously on the marketing team. ⁓ I was there for nine years. So it covered a lot of ground and a lot of change. ⁓ it was I wouldn't say the heyday 'cause that's being biased, but I y everybody's biased, right? But it was a good time. We were we were launching, you know, water bottles for the first time. We had formerly been like the hand the hands free hydration company. Yeah. ⁓ we were getting into bike bottles, which people told us that was the first product I worked on was the podium bottle. ⁓ fun side story. speaker-0: Yes, but I have that in my closet actually, so speaker-1: Awesome. It's still the only bike bottle I will ever use. ⁓ it's a it's a textbook case of if you can solve a problem nobody knew that they had, that's that's an innovation right there. however, the bike industry told us we were insane for trying to sell a bike water bottle for $8 or $9 because everybody gives them away for free. ⁓ fast forward six or seven years later, ⁓ the insulated podium bottle for a retail or $21 was Best selling product we made at one point. So the industry doesn't always know. We don't always know. You know, we launched a lot of products that that didn't see the light of day either. ⁓ but anyway, the podium bottle all the way through, really innovative pieces like our UV water purifier. We made a ⁓ a ball ⁓ a filter, like a pitcher for your fridge. So we had it every day. So we had a lot of different things. really fun time at Camelback. And then after eight or nine years there. I had kind of not tapped out all my experience, but I had I had jumped around and and lived a lot of lives within the Camelback portfolio. And I I've always really embraced like the the comfort zone and leaving that comfort zone. ⁓ and I was pretty curious about the agency side because one of my biggest passions at Camelback was working with the media, ⁓ journalists, freelance writers, and gear testers and conveying those gear pieces of information of why that resonates for their audience. So I thought I'd With a two-year-old at home, I thought the best thing to do would be to quit and start my own company ⁓ to kind of prove the concept. ⁓ which was it was what everybody said. It was insanely difficult, really uncomfortable, really challenging, but also more learning than I ever had in any short period of time. ⁓ so very ⁓ time well spent. ⁓ and then I rolled that into a larger agency a couple of years later called Sasquatch Agency, which was a full service marketing agency. And that was mostly due to like my Realizing that I needed to scale my business so I wasn't just kind of living and dying year by year. Yeah. ⁓ but I also didn't get into that business to become a business owner. I really wanted to execute PR and do the work. ⁓ so merging that agency in with Sasquatch was fantastic. And I was at Sasquatch for eight years. So nine years at Camelback, 10 years on agency side. I've played both sides of the fence. ⁓ I love that experience. ⁓ I'm back in-house now. ⁓ partially that's the comfort zone and wanting to switch things up and and stay dynamic. ⁓ and a lot of that is just I learned a ton being on the agency side of what clients need, how they need it, you know, where things are lacking, where things could be better. And I also thought what better way to go back to build, you know, one brand instead of focusing on multiple brands than to like pick a company like Mountain House that's got heritage, it's been around for a long time, but it also has a lot of room to kind of modernize and kind of re engage our core consumer. Despite being a a nearly sixty year old company. So yeah. It's been fun. speaker-0: That's cool. No, I wh when when I think of Mountain House, I always think of the ⁓ like you you had just kind of mentioned, like reinventing. And I think, you know, there's those meals that have been around for ages and ages and ages. And it's great to see that you guys are now kind of saying, Hey, ⁓ and I'll I'll credit you, I guess. I don't know who to credit else, but speaker-1: Hey, you know, saying while I'm on this call. So everybody else listens, we'll take it. speaker-0: Is you know, you have some other great meal ideas coming out. And ⁓ it's not easy, you know, people think it's easy to just create a a new meal from scratch. And there's a lot of, you know, have we've had quite a few different companies that have freeze-dry meals on here that it's it's hard to get it right because everybody's palate is completely different. So just when you think you got it right, 10 other people think it sucks. So now you've got to find that middle ground ⁓ and everything. So So when you started at Mountain House, how long have you been there now? speaker-1: ⁓ I've been there maybe ten months. I started last October, so we are approaching the one year mark. I feel like I've been approaching the one year mark since I started though. There's a lot of ⁓ there's a lot of energy, there's a lot of passion. People are excited about what we're doing, but it's it's also it's a lot every day, which is totally what I signed up for. speaker-0: And Roundhouse has been around since I think is is it nineteen sixty three or am I thinking? speaker-1: 69 is when the Mountain House brand started. ⁓ we are we are owned and operated by a company called Oregon Freeze Dry, which is like a it's a freeze-drying production company. ⁓ they've been around a couple of years longer because they're a freeze-dry food manufacturer. And like that's a big point of difference, frankly, for Mountain House is yeah, we don't hire anybody to make our food or freeze dry our food for us, right? We do it all from scratch in-house, including like where we order the these individual ingredients. Are all selected by us, you know, shipped to us, cooked by us, and freeze-dried by us too. ⁓ it's a another unique point there. ⁓ thing I wanted to get like out in front of people, like I this I I'll follow your lead on how you want this podcast to go, but these are like the crash course of things I've learned that I didn't know. ⁓ one is like to start from the beginning, I like to tell people not and this is teaching myself things that I didn't know, and I'm an avid like ultralight nerd backpacker. Yeah. ⁓ not all food in a bag is the same. So there's there's dehydrated and there's freeze dried. They're very different. ⁓ dehydrated is you know it's it's it's basically dried. So think think like a grape turns into a raisin, right? Or beef jerky, like it's actually heated and the moisture's pulled out. ⁓ the unique thing about freeze drying, which objectively makes it superior, is that you under a vacuum you extract all of the moisture from solid to vapor. It never turns into liquid form. So you retain taste, texture, nutritional content, and color, which are all why when you rehydrate it, those things often taste better. They don't taste r rubbery or chewy. Those are t those tend to be pieces of like freeze-dried ingredients. And now that I've tasted food for a living basically, ⁓ I can tell that there are some some bags of food. I'll say I won't list competitors. There's some bags of food that are exclusively dehydrated. And there are others like ours that are fully freeze-dried. And then there's some in the middle that depending on where they source their ingredients, they might have a mix of both. And to the untrained consumer, which included me, like you don't really know what the difference is. You just know if you like this thing or you don't like this thing. And so that's a I always like to start with that because that's a big difference that people don't tend to shop. Right. Like it's very different than shopping for a sleeping bag. Like you can find a lot of information on synthetic versus down. I would love to have that same that same model for dehydrated versus freeze dried. Yeah. Because when you see everything hanging on the shelf at a local retailer, like they're just they're just bags of pictures of food on them, right? And they're all kind of the same price. And you're picking by flavor, but you don't know that This fettuccine Alfredo versus that fed like you don't know that they're actually going to be quite different in, you know, out in the field. And you're committing to take them, hopefully, far outside. And that's your food. Like there's no you know, you're not swapping at the schoolyard like I'll trade you my bologna sandwich for your pizza. That's not happening, right? Like you're you're stuck and you're committed to it. So we take it pretty seriously and are passionate about what we deliver. speaker-0: No, when you were saying that I was thinking, it it's funny you say like the f this fedotrina Alfredo this Fedicini Alfredo. W why is it? And maybe it's just a thing that just is a common meal, but why is it everybody has a beastrogonoff, everybody has a ⁓ a lasagna, everybody's got a lasagna. ⁓ is it just cause some of that stuff is is is easier to freeze dry or dehydrate, or is it just because those are staple meals that just ended up becoming common? speaker-1: It's I'll I'll be a little bit of self-gloating here in the fact that Mounthouse has been around far longer than anyone. Yeah. ⁓ and then I'll be and then I'll be really candid about the next comment. So yeah, one is you you have to sell the food to the customer, right? So like you wanna pick things that are approachable to a wide demographic in general, which is kind of why you see things like that tomato based pasta type stuff or you know. Savory, reliable home cooked things, things you'd cook at home or things you'd order at a restaurant, especially like nationwide. ⁓ also Mountain House has been in that market, right? This is one of the challenges I've had is I know that we are known for kind of this this area of flavor profiles. Yeah. And that's that's what has been sold for a long time. So that's what other brands have copied because they see success in those. But that's also, and the sales guys are gonna kill me. Like if I've said one thing to the sales team, it's like, can you think outside the top 10? I had no clue at all until I actually signed this job acceptance form. Yeah. Mountain House made 31 different recipes of food. I see the same. Yeah. Eight to twelve at my local retail. Cause when I go buy food for backcracking, I'm buying it right before I go because I don't know what I'm in the mood for or what I've had last week or I might be sick of, or what I want to try that's new. So I kept seeing the same type of things. ⁓ and we make thirty-one different recipes and like so we have a wide range of, you know, culinary options for people. And I think of a lot of other brands do too. But it it really depends on how you shop it. Are you shopping it on individual websites or are you going to your local retailer to pick it up? Yeah. So ⁓ speaker-0: Is is there so like you're saying there's all those flavors too, and I see and I guess it's just because, you know, nowadays we have so many more like Asian or Indian, you know, different influences, Hispanic influences and stuff like that. And is that kind of one of the factors in just the the trend in food that I see so many people coming out with like a a beef bulgogi kind of ⁓ ⁓ flavor, you know, or something like that. I I've seen that quite a bit on like the the smaller mom and pop stuff that ⁓ or the garage side of things that they come out with it. Yeah. I'm like, ⁓ this is this is awesome because it's their family recipe, you know. speaker-1: ⁓ I think because the box is pretty checked for like I keep calling it like Middle America comfort food. Right. ⁓ sorry, you're gonna get a lot of air quotes from me because I always just just owning what I say. I think because that box is checked, I I admire a lot of what those cottage industry brands do. Like, shout out to Lloyd. Like I have garage grown gear like tabbed personally and now professionally because they have they have a great way to sort and I love knowing who's doing what, right? Yeah. ⁓ so as with As with any company in the outdoor industry, like the way you go about things is you and like I'm a unique piece at at in the food industry, which I was unaware of before this job is ⁓ marketing actually works on product development more directly than it does on gear. So like I'm heavily involved with the R and D team, which I love as a product marketer, right? Yeah. But the way we go about doing that is ⁓ we look at where we where we've been, where we're successful, what what part of our prof portfolio are we lacking, right? And then you compare that to the to the industry, what competitors are doing, what are they doing well? Yeah. You know, where are they succeeding where we either don't have an option or are failing? And then comparing that just to the greater, you know, ⁓ like society, I guess that's not the right word, but you know, the greater public. ⁓ and so what we will do is we'll look at, you know, what recipes and what genres of food are we under, you know. producing in. Yeah. Is there a draw for that? Is that trending right now? Is like is Thai food hot? Is Chinese food hot? Like what's what's going on in the world? What are people going to want to buy? Because, you know, we sell everywhere. That's another pretty unique thing about Mountain House is like sure we're big in your like mountain towns and the culinary flavors and palettes of those people are different than the person who's probably stocking up for hurricane season to put it in their basement and have like 30 days of food just in case. Right. Yeah. ⁓ It's a different. So we need to cover it all, which is why we do a good job with thirty-one flavors. But ⁓ it yeah, you factor a lot of different things in. And then like everybody else, you can only put so much time into innovation and R and D and those types of things. So ⁓ we are doing a lot of that right now. I mean, I my hope is that this last year of work from us will be seen from the next five plus years in the industry. I think there's some stellar things coming from Mountain House. We have a really good base of expertise. And I think the new energy and the new focus is gonna produce some some new stuff that people are gonna be really excited about. ⁓ and that's part of this, that type of, you know, looking back at ourselves, being honest with ourselves and like figuring out like what can we do? How can we step it up? What are our customers asking us for that we can make or cannot make? Like I was just at PCT days, ⁓ working the booth, talking to the through hikers, you know, and I heard I heard a wide range of feedback and I love I always love doing that. The core consumer is like where you get your best information, right? We had we had more vegetarians there than ever, right? Yeah. And we have some vegetarian recipes, but I thought, wow, we could really have more. Yeah. ⁓ we also heard from people that told us we needed to have like a two thousand plus calorie pouch. And I thought for you, for the through hiker, that makes total sense, right? For the car camper, no. But like, but I love bringing all those statistical like reference points home and outlining them and and talking about them with the team to see like what might be a new product in five years or three years or something like that and tracking those trends. So speaker-0: Yeah, I guess it it's hard because you have so many different mouth literal literal mouths to feed. You know, like you for me, I I used to go with like super high calorie meals because I was like, ⁓ I need all these calories, but then I'd sit there after I'm hiking and I'm like, man, I can't finish this. So now I've got to figure out a place to bury it or whatever. ⁓ and then sometimes I do need those super high calorie meals. Or even I was vegan for a while. So I'm like, okay, now I gotta find vegan meals, which was a lot. harder. So I had to go with ⁓ brand like every brand had at least like one vegan meal or something that wasn't necessarily marketed as vegan but ended up being vegan ish. And I'd I'd pick those up and and ⁓ I just think ⁓ hearing from everybody at a as a bigger brand is great to hear that you're listening to people because I think people ⁓ I've heard it from a few people before ⁓ just through the through the grapevine like Hey, like Mountain House just makes the same thing. And they're ⁓ and I'm like, no, but they they they're just as much listening to the consumer and listening to it and hearing it from you from your mouth. It's like, okay, they really are listening and they've got some things. I I know some things that you have coming up that are super, super cool. But I know, like last year when I had met you, met you guys were at Switchback the year before, and you came out with the pizza, ⁓ the pizza one, and that thing is that flavor is awesome for me just because it tastes like a For me, it tastes like a pizza pocket from when I was in high school. And I'm just like, ⁓ this is the best flavor, you know. speaker-1: I I instantly thought it was a bagel bite for the same reason. Like, ⁓ this is burning the roof of my mouth after school in middle school. Yeah, that's what this tastes like. speaker-0: Yeah. So so since you're involved more, because I think people think that ⁓ when they create a business, a lot of people that listen to this podcast, you know, they're they have their own company, they're maybe coming out with a a food or a product, and they're looking at it from the the sm the little guy kind of thing, but from a big company's perspective, how do you how do you help grow and change the mindset of a bigger company? ⁓ to continue to s sound like and feel like it's like a cottage brand. speaker-1: Yeah, it's I think for us what's great is there are so many people at Mountain House that have been here a very long time. Our historical knowledge is deep. ⁓ and then you go way back to like I'm gonna get the number wrong, but we had someone just retire after like fifty eight years or fifty five years working at the plant, like who worked for OFD freeze drying for his whole career. ⁓ and there's There's more there, right? So staying core to who we are is pretty easy. It's been the shift in where where is Mountain House going without like alienating and moving. It's more like, hey, ⁓ and it's hard to call us like I don't think anybody in the in I call it like the bag of food industry, right? Is like the eight hundred pound gorilla, but Mount House is the is the substantial like largest free food company. And so for us to shift, like that's great in the In the sense that people know who we are. They know that they can get like we've done these, we've done beef strogana for 60 years, right? You buy it now, it tastes just like it did 20 years ago because of our process and how we've, you know, we we've, you know, made an expertise out of making food. But then how do we how do we move and how do we grow ⁓ and stretch? And I think that's hard. ⁓ it's a lot of data, right? And as a marketer, I hate data. I just want to like say things and have people believe me. ⁓ but you know, as I go about like we're launching I'm not gonna spoil too much, but like it if you ask around, you can hear, right? The industry's not yeah, not too so good at keeping secrets. ⁓ we're launching a a new line of food next year, right? Yeah. And that concept for us started relatively recently compared to how it would normally start. But that was part of the passion with this company. And a lot of it was like, Where have we been? But where do we need to go? And how do we do that authentically? Yeah. So we we had to put numbers behind it, we had to put data in who's gonna buy it and why are they gonna buy it? Like Because as a as a big business, you have to justify the revenue and the spend and the innovation cost and the RD. Like there's a lot of pieces that go into that. Like the higher I get in my career, the more I have to see behind the curtain to all the necessary red tape. And you go, ⁓ I see why every you know, like 24 year old Seth had no clue, right? ⁓ flash forward almost 20 years later, right? I'm 43 and I'm like, Yeah, ⁓ like I'm starting to see how the cogs all go together. And you know, you you see that. So I mean, you you're br you're basically building a business plan, right? Like we we put together a three to five year plan on not just this, but just like where the brand wants to go, what you want to do. And some of it's aspirational, but but most of it needs to be attainable. ⁓ and that's gonna be our, you know, our strategic guardrails and our guideposts for where we're taking the brand and what we're doing. Yeah. And one one solid foundation of that was we are not going to change where we've been and who we've who we've talked to. And yeah. So we'll have kind of What Mountain House is now will stay and people will have that. The goal is they will also have more options. ⁓ in addition to what we've offered so far. So ⁓ it's just a little bit of both. Balancing the past with looking at the future. speaker-0: I think it's it's hard to ⁓ people think that you can just make something instantly and have it to market, but they don't realize the the pain in the background. ⁓ and we've had many people on this podcast like talk about the ups and downs in their business from not getting packaging on time or learning that this shipment got lit on fire and now there's, you know, all these different things. And ⁓ It's great like when you had said you were at ⁓ PCT days, that's great to hear like that a big company is going out and doing those things and it's not just always the the smaller companies that are there because then it may it it shows that you guys care about the growth and getting that data for those meals and and I'm assuming you probably taste tested stuff and stuff like that out there too and let you know let people hear that feedback and stuff like that. Is there anything since you've I know you've only been there for 10 months? But are there any kind of crazy stories that you're like, man, since I've been here or I've heard of this that I can share that's like wow, when Mountain House did this, this was like, ⁓ crap, we'll never do that again. Or ⁓ you know, I it's been around for so long. I can only imagine there's gotta be some just craziness. speaker-1: So try to try to keep me in the rails here because I have like some like things that I was excited about that are not necessarily like they're not not that they're not off brand. They're just not like they're not all food relevant to be honest. No, no. ⁓ our head of R and D, Drew, is like this amazing engineer and like R and D guy, right? Like again, I I know I've done enough sociology type stuff and I've done the Myers Briggs personality profiles. I'm like Drew is the opposite of me. He's a good balance to me, right? ⁓ and so I respect very much like what he and his team do. I always do with RD in general because they provide the tools that I then go use, right? Yeah. ⁓ but he's been there 13 years. ⁓ he seems to know everything about freeze drying. We don't have engineers, we have food scientists, which was another new fun thing for me. It's like, ⁓ and they if we so when we pick a recipe that we want to try, it's to me, I was like, ⁓ we just need to come up with the recipe and then freeze dry it. It's like, yeah, that's not how it works, right? Like marketing guy. ⁓ Yes, but they have to reverse engineer all of the steps because what people, what I think is good perspective for people for just this kind of outdoor food in a bag as a whole is when you add the hot water, wait, and stir the allotted amount of time, you're finishing the cooking process. So everything needs to be strategically undercooked. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: just enough so that when you put hot water in and you wait five or eight or seven minutes or whatever it is, when you get it, it's the best tasting meal that we can give you, right? And with just adding water. ⁓ and so like it's the R and D team's job to figure out what gets cooked. And what what's unique about Mountain House is we actually cook everything one big cook pot. We do 1200 pounds of food in one big cook pot. It's it's like a big pot you'd have at home. It's just a lot bigger and it hangs halfway through the floor to the next room where it gets piped out into like some trays to get freeze dry. Yeah. So and we do we do two of those at a time. So we're doing 2,400 pounds of whatever recipe you're cooking, but we're cooking it. And there's a team of people in there. I've I've seen it, I've smelled it, it's great. The spices go in. ⁓ for our cake. ⁓ no, there's a new recipe coming out that I can't talk about. It uses like 53 pounds of butter. And it's a block of butter that looks like it looks like a car engine. Yeah. And it's someone's job to take like, you know, a spatula and put in enough butter so that the butter can melt and meld with the food without burning. And so every single ingredient, like you do at home, needs to be added at the right point to be cooked long enough, but not too long. Yeah. So that way when you rehydrate it. So it it is a pretty like there's a lot of testing that goes into how you actually cook the food before you even freeze dry it. ⁓ and that takes time. The other the other non-food thing that I think would blow people's mind is I asked this is why I brought up Drew. I asked Drew, I was like, What's the coolest thing you've ever freeze-dried? And I was like, you know, come on, apple pie or like T-bone steak. Yeah. ⁓ and he said that there was there was this big flood in in a historic library in the south somewhere. And all these books were submerged and were written off as damaged forever. And they sent The they sent the books to OFD to where we can freeze dry and they freeze-dried the books. And again, to go back to the magic, you take a frozen solid thing. Yeah. It goes into the freeze dryer. And under like just the right amount of heat, you extract we extract 97% or more of the water as a vapor gas. And so it didn't damage the book at all. And the book never went into The the wet state, right? Yeah. And so every single page could be peeled and pulled apart. And so like these books were saved with freeze drying, but who would have known, right? Like I thought I was gonna get some fun food answer. ⁓ you can also freeze dry probiotics and have the cultures live. And that's how you get those little yogurt drops that kids like take and put on their tongue. Is like now it's magical probiotics. It's like, you know, shelf stable yogurt, basically. But that's how gentle freeze drying can be, which is like another notch in why how freeze drying's different than dehydrated. But yeah, the book story was was great to me. The backstory on how to how to properly, you know, kind of perfectly undercook food to get cooked. Like there's some fun tidbits in there. speaker-0: That's wow. I never would have ever have thought that. Now that you mention now that you say it, the science behind it is I'm like, ⁓ yeah, it totally makes totally makes sense. Cause I've I've gone so many times, I've had a freeze dryer in my shopping cart on Amazon. And I'm like, I'm gonna get one and I'm gonna start just like making my own food. Yeah and trying to make some stuff for my kids. And then I'm like, ⁓ forget about it, you know, and take it out. But I was just Talking to ⁓ this couple, they're the through hikers on YouTube and stuff like that. And they freeze dry like all their stuff. And I was like, hey, should I get a freeze dryer? And they're like, depends, you know? And then when they talk to me through it, I'm like, I think I'm gonna go ahead and get one. And now I know I can potentially freeze dry all kinds of stuff. I just have to think about it. Yeah. And do it differently. I can't imagine the the setup that you guys have over there compared to somebody who's maybe doing it in a smaller local kitchen or, you know, in their basement at their house, ⁓ kind of packing stuff. So ⁓ that that's wild that's wild. speaker-1: ⁓ I I will say on that note, a unique thing for us too is like as as willy nilly as I want to get with like ideas, ideas, ideas. Yeah. That's the scale we cook it at, right? So like I envy a lot of the cottage industry brands and like not to play favorite. There's a lot of cottage industry brands that I still buy and use personally that I did before this job. ⁓ they're fantastic. They're gonna pioneer us to do better. But I envy their ability to just do fun stuff because we can't do some of the things they do because of It either doesn't meet our 30 year shelf life process or like potentially like our our cleanliness standards because we have very strict guidelines based on the the production run for like you know nuts and different things and cleaning. But I love when I see things that I'm like, ⁓ I bet that was fun to do. Yeah. Probably really costly and really like to do to do it on scale like that, like twelve hundred pounds per pot, and we do four like four pots for we cook, we freeze dry forty, eight hundred pounds at a time of wet food. So like it's it's a lot of food. Yeah. But you don't want to mess that up. You can't just like try a recipe and, you know, hope it's gonna work. ⁓ but where the cottage brands can. And I have a good buddy who has a freeze dryer, and I get to kind of live vicariously through him on his successes and failures of what does not work and what does work. And so I at least I get a little bit of like personal fun out of it. ⁓ so I get to kind of play both sides, like yeah. We're the we're the b brand that's been around for sixty years and we like we pride ourselves in the process of like our food comes out the same every time so it's reliable, trustworthy, you're not gonna get, you know, funky batches. But then I also envy the like, sure, let's put that in there and see how that works out. Like that sounds fun to me. speaker-0: Yeah, I've always I've seen people do ⁓ like chipotle bowls and ⁓ I'm like, ⁓ that would be great to have chipotle on the trail, you know, just your bowl. I know there's certain things that fats don't freeze dry well or dehydrate well or or whatever the thing is, I'm like, okay, I have to but I I want Chipotle on the trail so bad. That's what keeps pushing me to ⁓ to get it is knowing that my son also has a lot of allergies. And so for us to find certain things that he can eat. A lot of times I'm like, I might as well just buy a freeze dryer so that he can actually eat on trail instead of me sitting there eating a good meal and then he's just eating like trail mix because that's the only one of the only things he can eat. So Yeah. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ speaker-1: brought up ⁓ recipes and while you while you're talking about allergies, I want to bring that up because we take that really seriously too. We have everybody has their little tags. We have markers on ours for dairy free, gluten free, those types of things. ⁓ like other things I didn't know, which we didn't we don't need to get into, is just like the regulatory things for food are totally different than any other packaging I've ever worked on. Like I've done packaging for backpacks, underwear, jackets, tents, like whatever. And it's like cool, the hang tag's not a big deal. You literally like take it and you throw it away when you buy it. With Mountain House, you The packaging is the last thing you have. It's your cooking vessel. Yeah. But it also like it's food. So there's there's a lot of regulation on talking about food, and that's why you'll see those things. But you you brought up different like culinary ⁓ genres and we we are conscious of making sure that we have food for everyone type of thing. And so when we explore like a lot of like Asian inspired meals, those tend to have more dairy-free options. So that's why you'll see like so people. Like I just went on a four-day off trail trip in the Sierra with a buddy and he's he's dairy free. And so I was going through all of our meals and you start to see some similarities in like just food styles that are more you're gonna have a better result if you can find a food that's authentically kind of dairy free or close to dairy free versus trying to make something dairy free that doesn't wanna be. Yeah. And so that's another reason you'll see a range of foods is separate from proteins and whatnot, you'll you'll, you know, those glutens. And milk products and dairy products. ⁓ that that becomes a a big factor. And frankly, you get a lot of protein and a lot of fat. So you get a lot of calories from dairy items. So if you're looking at our recipes or other ones and you're looking at the wide range in protein content and calories, like a lot of those are driven by the dietary things. And not everything is like just thought about in like isolation of itself. It's a lot of it's factored in, and that's why you see a range of different different characteristics. speaker-0: That's ⁓ so there's a Korean meal that we eat. It's ⁓ it's a bibim bop and it's it's like it's it's awesome. It's we've had a lot of like Korean stuff 'cause my wife's Korean, so she wants Korean food on the trail eventually. She's like, Okay, I can't wait to get off trail so I go get some Korean food 'cause I'm sick of eating all this American food or these other ones. I just need kimchi. And I'm like, it's fermented. Why don't we bring it with us? I always think that every time speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. While you're hiking. speaker-0: I know. Every time I'm on trail, I'm like Exactly. I'm like, it's fermented already. Just keep it in our bag. What what's the big deal? But I I forget every time we're out there. But ⁓ that's so true. I I I take that from my son 'cause that's one of the only ones that he can eat. And you're right, I never even thought like usually the Asian ones, ⁓ the American ones always have cheese in it. It's there seems to always be some sort of cheese in an American meal that I'm like, Okay, I mean I love cheese and I love mac and cheese and everything else. But ⁓ Just keeping that for my kids is just so hard so hard for them. So I'm this far. I'm I'm gonna go on though. speaker-1: Maybe it's fun for your audience. I'll show the side that doesn't have text on it, but this is a this is a twenty twenty-eight prototype recipe that I'm supposed to taste before I get PTO next week. And so the food scientists are like, taste it, let us know your thoughts. This is specifically a dairy free, high protein dairy free option we're working on for twenty twenty eight, right? ⁓ and it just has Sharpie on the other side because again there's food regulations on like I'm an employee, so I'm allowed to taste it, but I can't let you taste it. I can't even give it to you in a spoon based on how it's been made or not. Like Yeah. It's streak, let alone mail it to you. ⁓ so it's it that's kind of fun. But this is this is like the passion of mine is like I get to taste this a year and a half almost ahead of what most people are gonna taste it. But also like lots of pressure, right? I hope it's right. Yes. ⁓ this one is is, you know, like an an Asian inspired dairy free option and I'm thrilled to try it. I keep waiting to like cook it for lunch so I can do eat it when I'm hungry. ⁓ Yeah. I also like to taste test things on the trail versus at home. Yeah. Because they are so different. ⁓ I took this on this off trail, I went into emigrant wilderness with a longtime buddy of mine and we did some like we just went lake hunting, frankly, and had no agenda and it was awesome. And I took I gave him current dairy free stuff and then I took our twenty twenty seven recipes and I ranked them in complete reverse order. From where what I liked outside versus what I liked at home. Yeah. I mean, it was a it was a hundred percent inverse. And I thought, wow, that's eye opening. You know, what I wanted after a long twelve plus hour day hiking in the sun was not really what I thought tasted best at home during just a, you know, a formal tasting. So that again, like keeping yourself honest with the use case and how customers are gonna have it. And again, that's just anecdotal set feedback, but It was a good reminder to be like, ⁓ you don't know everything at the time. You have to you have to expand the testing around. ⁓ so speaker-0: That needs to be a new label on packaging is if it's tastes better on trail label or tastes better at home label. So the people can be like, Yeah, you know what, I'm gonna buy this for when I'm on this tastes better when you've been a week on the trail versus when you've only been like first day on the trail. speaker-1: Yeah. I I gotta give a shout out to Brendan Leonard. He runs semi rad, fantastic website, even better if I did email. But he does all these hand sketchs, right? Like bar charts, graphs, pie charts, all that stuff. And he I still can't find it. I had it. I have his coffee table book. But he had one and the chart, I'll try to do it in reverse with the camera. The chart was like, you know, proximity to trailhead and perceived taste, and it just kept going up. Like the further from the trailhead The better the taste was. And I I need to find that 'cause I'd love to make it like the background of my screen or something because it's so true. But now it's my profession. So that's always yeah, he's that I love that. I always think of that when I'm on calls like this. speaker-0: I might I might do that 'cause I'm I'm really close to the AT. And so ⁓ I I would love to go up on the trail and just give people really crappy food on purpose and see if they're like, ⁓ this is awesome. You know, but yeah, it's been like it's like a three week old PB and J sandwich or something like that, just to just to feel that out. ⁓ speaker-1: Well, I'll send you a box. You can do some trail magic, do some testing on our recipes, right? Like just pick some hikers up, ⁓ like a surprise and delight, and then let me know what your favorites are. But I'll send you only meals that are not in the top ten and we'll see how many they've even seen before. speaker-0: Give me the little Hey, have you guys did you guys know that Mountain House made this? They're like, I had no idea that Mountain House made a oxtail stew or whatever. speaker-1: We do we have a cur we call it a Korean inspired beef because we don't want to call it a bullgogie because it's you know trying to be respectful and authentic, but like that's one of my favorites. It was new in the last two years. Yeah. But the thing that sells me on it is it's like these it's got these great chunks of zucchini and freeze-dried vegetables are pretty good. Yes. ⁓ and so I like I'm always looking for veggies and fiber and stuff in my outdoor meals because it's pretty easy to get sugar and fats. Yeah. ⁓ but Like yeah, I'll I'll have to see what what you and your wife think of that one. That's that's a favorite of mine. speaker-0: That'll be cool. I'm I I love letting her try new things. I'm always pointing here, like everybody knows where I'm pointing, but she's in the other room over there. speaker-1: Nice. I point to everything I'm like Yeah, you don't know where I'm at. speaker-0: Yeah. But I I love having her try it and then she goes, All right, this is a trail taker. It's kinda like when she makes a new meal, she's like, she learned looks at us on the table and then we all go, add that to the list is what we always tell her when we know that like she found something that's like a new winner and stuff like that. Yeah. ⁓ I guess you had kind of mentioned a little bit going on the trail with your buddy, but ⁓ I always ask people like, you know, how do you how do you stay connected to the outdoor industry when you work in the outdoor industry? You know, you've been in the outdoor industry for a long time. I know sometimes it can get overwhelming and then you might not even want to go out on trailer. Maybe you wanna go out more to disconnect. speaker-1: Yeah, it's from my camelback days, I I am very like tight with the bike industry as well. ⁓ yeah. And I've th I think the last client I had on the agency side was Pirelli tires that we did for the bike industry. And then when that went away, I kind of consciously I as an extrovert, I probably out loud was like, wow, that was that was the last formal tie to the bike industry after 16 years. And it was it was bittersweet, but like my main hobby is mountain biking. I absolutely love mountain biking. ⁓ COVID outside of global mayhem was a good time for outdoor stuff because I had a group of friends and every single night it was who's in tomorrow, 6 30 at the bridge. Yeah. And we would ride until our legs fell off, right? We rode, I always say I my joke is we rode five to eight days a week. And when When I l when I stopped working on the bike industry like this on my laptop during the day, the riding became more of a personal passion. I wasn't like thinking about I didn't I didn't feel obligated to wear a certain brand or like ride a certain tire or pick a certain bike, you know. So it it disconnected those things. ⁓ and it let me kind of just be a consumer. Yeah. Which I think is is something that I took for granted before starting this job is like I'm so so tuned into gear and who's doing what and what's new and what's and that's that's great because it saves me a lot of money, frankly, because I don't need to buy stuff and then never use it. You know, I I lean a lot on like editors and writers that I know, like, hey, what's the best bike they have out now? Yeah. You know, like I kind of like cut the line and try to ask for personal feedback on on reviews, but ⁓ for the outdoor side, I'm still, you know, obviously extremely connected to that. ⁓ to me, it's it's very like. It's very cerebral mental ⁓ on one hand and then it's physical on the other. So I know that I mean, when I got the job at Camelback and I walked in and I saw my cubicle, I I actually laughed out loud. I was like, no way. Like I was just had office space, the phone had my name on it. And I was like, this is it. I'm like, I'm I'm just might as well start dying inside, right? Like I'm just not built for a desk job. I don't think anybody wants to have a desk job, right? Yeah. ⁓ But this industry is fantastic because all the people like yourself and the people listening, like we all have a mind for outdoors. So people are incredibly positive, they're motivated, they, they're, they're health focused, they're sustainably like, you know, public space, share, share the environment type stuff. I love all that. So I like that that's a constant in my life that I don't need to go seek on my personal time. And then there's the flip side of. I gotta get out of here. I gotta disconnect from Microsoft Teams and Zoom calls and all that stuff. And I assume it's okay. I'm not gonna swear, but like I always tell my friends, I'm like, I can't wait to go outside and think think about a few things. What am I gonna eat? Where where am I gonna sleep? Where am I gonna dig my hole to poop in? And where am I gonna swim? It's like that's it. Yeah all day I'm just thinking about food, lakes, and handling business, right? And it's so simple. ⁓ I I don't hike with the GPS SOS. Like I will sometimes if I take like my son or a group of people, but I I love that we still can go places where there's no cell signal and there's nothing and my phone stays on airplane mode the whole time. I even bought a film camera last year because I wanted to keep my phone in my pocket forever and not even use my phone for pictures. It hasn't worked so far. Now I just do both. But the whole focus was to escape, right? I need I need that time to clear my head and to reconnect like on a human level with just the simplicity of being outside and shedding the burden of everything. The like the physical needs of of stuff, right? I have stuff all over my office here and whatnot. I got a like six bikes in my garage. Like, what do I really need? Well, I could live out of a backpack for a while. That's pretty cool. So it just resets that. And then just mentally and physically like change. Like I I love endurance. I love the endorphins and the and the the dopamine hits you get from working hard. ⁓ it's actually a big thing we're doing here at Mounthouse. You'll start to see the the shift from like in the past we were very much like, you know, they they called it adventure made delicious, which is is nice, but I we all thought we wanted to be more than that. And so we've come up with this whole new brand campaign called Savor It. And the whole concept is like leaning into the type two fun, like our food. It takes some effort, right? You I I've I backpack plenty without without a stove and don't always take mountain house. Sometimes I just take what I call like trail food and I just eat all day. I sleep, I get up, I keep going. It's simple, it's lightweight. But like if you're gonna bring this tasty meal that you're excited to have, you should relish that moment. Like you put in the work, you spent your time outside, you cashed in your PTO to do something hard. You could go sit by a pool, sure. No, like you're gonna go climb, you know. couple thousand feet and seek out this ice cold lake to get in because that's what you want to do on your time off. And so our encouragement to people is like savor it, savor that moment, savor that meal, like the whole process. And so that was really personally tied to like my experience outside. And whenever I'm trying to disconnect myself from personal emotion, like we we like to test it and ask it around. But I was really glad that that resonated with you know, hunters, bike packers, overlanders, you know, like Backpacking, hiking, like everybody has that moment where it was like, Yes, today was hard, but I'm glad I did it. Yeah. And if if Mountain House can be like the reward at the end of your day to like bring some comfort before bed, then like that's why we want to cook those comfort foods or those foods that you strive to have. Yeah. I'm with you. Like, I want almost exclusively like Asian meals outside. I just that's what I'm drawn to. I don't really want lasagna or beef. I don't want beef stew ever outside. That's too hot, too heavy for me, right? But like our veggie pasta prima is killer. Like it's lightweight in like it feels light. It's ⁓ you know, veggies and pasta and stuff. So anyway, I digress, but like my my effort to get outside is very personally focused and I'm frankly thankful that I can relate it to to the industry because it kind of keeps it tied, at least in the same Venn diagram together. speaker-0: No, I love when you had said your campaign of ⁓ this the savor part of it, I was like, man, that's so good that I think every company needs to go. It's not just the product, it's it's also how you market it. But that's just sounds that's a really great shift and it's a great sound of like, okay, I'm gonna save it. And it does cause I'm just thinking my marketing side too. I'm like, ⁓ that's a really great, that's a great s you know, slogan there. It's like, ⁓ Everybody can resonate with savoring it, whether you're at a park or you're on the mountain or you're stuck in a tornado shelter. You'd say yeah. Save right after the tornado passes, you know. But like it it's so good. And I don't think a lot of people a lot of people I feel like they put food on the trail as like secondary when we all go out. Like I don't just go, I'm just gonna go eat food. I want to go eat good food. Right. And ⁓ I know I'm completely going off on the other tangent, but I'm just thinking of what you said is like, yes, savoring it. We want good food on the trail. We want to savor it just like I take my wife out on a a date and have a good meal. I don't want to just take her and have crappy food. I want to sit there, enjoy the sunset, and go, ⁓ my gosh, this is amazing when I eat it, and not go, I just gotta get through this, you know, because it's it's just sustenance. So no, that's cool. I like that. speaker-1: Yeah, I'm with you. speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ speaker-1: Thanks. Yeah, it's but it's one of the things we put a lot of effort into this year, which is like doesn't come easily, yeah, you know, or quickly. Yeah. But is if it resonates, it's it's absolutely worth doing, right? And that's the exciting part about marketing is trying to come up with something that people go, ⁓ I get it. That works for me. I identify, right? Because sure. Sure, we're here to sell the food, but like really we want people to like align with like there's there's options everywhere, right? Like we want people to be like, ⁓ I'm I'm like a mountain house person. I they get me. Yeah. They do what I do, right? And we do. We're in we're in Oregon. Like we've been in Oregon for sixty years. It's like that's that's what our staff does for fun, you know? Hunt, fish, ice climb, like bike pack, trail run, ultrarun, like all sorts of stuff. We're in a great place for that. So We want our fans to know that like we're in it with them. There's a passion there. We're not just freeze drying food for fun, right? speaker-0: Did you ever watch that TV show? It was like I think one or two seasons. It was called The Pitch, I think on A and E or something like that. You have to watch the previous episodes because basically they would take ⁓ a company like, I don't know, like nationwide, for example, they would be like, Hey, we need a new logo, which is that blue square, right? And they would they would say, Okay, these two companies come in and you're gonna come and do this is this is the pitch, this is the idea, or this is the idea. And then you come up with two companies came up with a pitch, and then whoever won. The pitch got the contract. And it was like funny and ruthless. And it was like a reality show. And ⁓ it I watched it and I was like, this is it was such a great thing. And my daughter's in ⁓ college for marketing right now. And I'm like, okay, now that I'm saying it, I gotta I'm writing it down to have her watch that that show. I I a a question I had. speaker-1: I have not seen that, but that sounds awesome. I'm like between that and the amazing race, I'm like, sign me up. How do I do that? That sounds like a speaker-0: ⁓ my God. I I'm signing up for ⁓ every year my wife goes, Hey, you can try it for Survivor this year. And I'm like, all right. And then now she's like, You're a little too old for Survivor. I'm like, I'm not too old for Survivor. We always jokingly say we're gonna do the amazing race, but then we also say we'll probably kill each other ⁓ on the amazing race if we did it together. my one last question, and I've I haven't had a chance to ask anybody this, but since we've had a lot of food companies on. I think I I want to ask, especially from that larger perspective, is how do we work together as an industry? Because you know, in every industry you have, you know, a bunch of people make backpacks and they all kind of like, hey, well, my backpack's better than yours, you know, but you don't ever really throw anybody under the bus. But how can food companies, for example, how can we all work together to grow the food industry more instead of certain people say they go, ⁓ well, this food company sucks and they just bash them online. And you know, it's that whole yeah, I know in the restaurant industry, my friend, a couple of friends who own some big name restaurants in the city, they have it's like this cat cat scratch game of just like they're always dogging each other. And I'm like, why can't we just help each other? Cause no one's gonna go to your restaurant and just eat at your restaurant every day for three hundred and sixty five days, right? speaker-1: Totally. So I actually that's funny you said that that part because I thought of that as we were talking earlier of like I still don't eat only Mountain House. Like I one is I want to try other brands. Yeah. For for work related competitive reasons. Yeah. I also like I said, I don't take a stow every time. I don't I don't I don't always wanna have a hot big meal at the end of the day, whether it's mine or somebody else's anyway. So Yeah. Yeah, I don't eat at the same restaurant. Like that's what made me think of that as like I go to Thai food, I go to Mexican food, we get burgers, like we cook at home. Like I everybody gets ⁓ flavor fatigue, right? Yeah. ⁓ so there, I mean the real the kind of high level, this is what like AI or or Google search would tell you is like you grow the total pie versus trying to carve off pieces of market share from the pie. ⁓ we had the same idea with camelback too, right? Like we Camelback was the major player in the hydration. We called ourselves hydration ⁓ company more than like a backpack company. But we knew if we invested, this is a Camelback story. If we invested in just hydration information and the benefit to staying hydrated more often throughout your life, every section of your life, then we would win, but also like everybody would win. And if the whole pie grows, we grow because we're the dominant market share. Same thing with Mountain House, right? If we can. Help people understand that food in a bag can be delicious and is delicious if you make it the right way. And it's something to look forward to. ⁓ then everyone will get a shot. My hope is that people know that Mountain House has been around the longest. It's got the most tried and true process. So it's probably the safest bet. If you're gonna try something, start with us. Try freeze dry over dehydrated. Yeah. It's a superior experience. Like, But just try something and give it a shot. And so like even if even if someone tries a mountain house and doesn't like it, they're gonna go try someone else's. So just by the general consumer being aware that like this whole category could be a benefit to them, yeah, then that will help grow the whole category. And yeah, for for a brand our size, like sure, we when competitors start shipping at our heels, we wanna go like kind of like keep them at bay or knock them back a little. That's just standard business practice. But really it's it's way more fun for us and everybody to like help everybody grow. Yeah. And and a share because it's it's way more fun to play like offense than defense, right? Yeah. ⁓ and I think that, like I said, like I've I never would have done this before this job, but I now use Mountain House for convenience in ways that I never thought of. And part of that's because I get Mountain House food all the time. But Like I I flew into New York City and my and I and I took food with me to like ⁓ I don't think I'll need it, but why not? Right. Yeah. And I have it. So I took a meal thinking this might work out. And it absolutely worked out. But like my flight got delayed. I got in late. I had to take a, you know, a car service taxi to my hotel. With the time change, I'm on the West Coast. With the time change, it's like it's ten, ten something, eleven PM New York. I'm ready to like assimilate to the time and go to bed. I don't really want to go out just to get dinner. And I don't really want to pay for room service. Like, and so I had the Keurig machine and I was like, I can just solve my problem by having like I can have dinner in 10 minutes and be done with it. Yeah. There's like weird little hacks like that that I'm like, ⁓ this is and the food is good. Like I had chicken and dumplings in New York City. And was like, Yeah, it's I don't need to expense this meal now. Like it was just really convenient. And so for people who like travel a lot, like, Airport delays, layovers, if you have dietary restrictions and you can travel with food that you know is good for you, you're not fighting the the cue and the wait line at an airport bar or restaurant or whatever. Like that's not what we make it for, but yeah, this whole category can benefit from people finding everyday use of these things. And I think that's a that's a future avenue for the convenience of like it's packable, it's portable, it's lightweight. That can do a lot of things. ⁓ it doesn't just have to be for backpacking, right? speaker-0: I didn't even think about I it's funny 'cause you said that and I'm like, man, I do that all the time, but I wouldn't even think about it being a thing that you can actually market too. It's like, hey, as a business person, you can always carry it with you. It's not that hard. And then getting hot water is not that hard to do. At most hotel rooms all have that. I mean, I always carry my ⁓ my little ⁓ BSR stove with me and stuff like that just 'cause I'm weird like that. ⁓ Yeah. But I I'm gonna always have it with me to make ⁓ make ⁓ green tea at a hotel room 'cause ⁓ yeah, I saw one of those videos years ago where like they say those coffee pots in there, they're just full of black mold from all the use. So I'm like, Okay, I'll just bring my stove with me. ⁓ but that's a that's a great idea. And like I'm gonna start doing that for my kids too, is trying to find food sometimes. It's like, Okay, now I gotta Uber Eats, you know, a a ten dollar meal and I gotta pay thirty bucks for it because I'm yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: Wow. So a couple hacks. One is my my pessimistic like Seth, not not this job joke, is like I always roll the dice on the curing machines because I feel like that's good gut health. ⁓ but you can to so people know I travel a lot and I travel by air quite a bit. So I don't bring a stove because then I have to buy fuel and you can't fly fuel. That's a whole thing, right? ⁓ you can request to either have a tea kettle delivered to your room, like one of those electric kettles. Yeah. Or if they don't do that, they will just deliver like An insulated carafe of hot water. So yeah, even at a hotel, you don't have to use the curing machine. I've done that before too. Depends on the hotel. ⁓ that's a hack. And then yeah, you said hot water is accessible. It's like, yeah, any restaurant, any coffee shop, you can you can always, even if you had to pay for it, you could walk into any Starbucks and just request a hot tea and ask for the tea bag separate and use the tea. You know, like yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: I like to do tea at night backpacking. I like to do tea at night when I travel. So I'm I'm always looking for hot water and the curing machine for tea is not very good because it's usually pretty coffee stained. ⁓ but those are just some hacks of like how to get hot water because you could I've I've made meals on the airport when I had a three hour layover. I was deep into a book and I'm like, I don't want to sit at a restaurant or a bar. It's loud. I wanna find a quiet corner, I wanna kill I wanna knock this book out, but I'm hungry. And so I j I went to a coffee shop and asked for like, you know, a pint of hot water. Yeah. Eyeballed it, stirred it up, had my little bag of food in the corner. I was the weirdo at the airport, but I also got to finish my book, so I was winning. So yeah, different different uses, but speaker-0: Yeah. No, that's good. Well, no, that's awesome. I mean, Seth, thank you for all the insight and even not the the mountain house insight, but just like the general insight from the industry from over the years is always great to hear tidbits because a lot of a lot of I get some emails now from people saying like, ⁓ this person said this, it was so good, or this is so good. It's just those one little tidbits that they go, Okay, now I can grow my business where I need to like even the slogan. I'm thinking, okay, I like this is great for me to find out what my client's slogans are a little bit more so that I go, okay, now I can incorporate the the what how I do my images a little differently, knowing that they're not pushing for they're pushing for this versus this. so I appreciate it. So ⁓ what we're gonna do now is we're gonna go into our lightning round. I'm just gonna ask you a couple of quick questions just to get to know you a little more. ⁓ but before we do, I I say like as if no one knows where to get it, but where would it, where would people find Mountain House if they're looking for Mountain House before we start. speaker-1: ⁓ well, we're big supporters of your local retailers. So brick and mortar, mom and pop. I I st that's still my favorite way to buy. Go go grab stuff you're gonna eat tomorrow, the next day. That's a great way to do it. Yeah. That's also why I encourage, you know, retailers and our sales team, like put some new recipes in there. You might shock some people. They, you know, jambalaya, tika masala, yellow curry, like those changpao chicken. We make all those, right? I don't see those a lot. ⁓ they were favorites of PC T days. So Finest brick and mortar, of course your mass, you know, sportsman's REI, and of course mountainhouse.com. We have on mounthouse.com, there's some really cool options. You can do what's called build your own kit, or you can actually like assemble your own box of meals as a full kit. ⁓ and then for the avid backpackers, which I highly encourage. ⁓ I have done this since before this job. We sell number 10 cans, which is give or take four to six pouches of food in one can. ⁓ I always have a can of of our diced grilled chicken. I'll add that to recipes to boost the protein. I always have a can of our blueberries and granola because I used to make my own with like nido milk and stuff. This is just faster, but I will put these in a freezer bag and I'll have them when I work travel in hotel rooms. I'll have a, you know, blueberries and granola and milk and then I'll get a banana from the coffee shop and have a nice little breakfast that I don't have to wait and get it. I don't want always a breakfast sandwich. So The number ten cans are a great way if you're backpacking a lot to like piece out your own food. Yeah. ⁓ if you're trying to be sustainable, ⁓ Canock makes an a reusable bag so you could even source your own food in in a bag that you could eat out of or you could put them in freezer bags. But those are good options for ordering off the website because you can get those number ten cans in both and then create your own meals and get a lot of cost savings that way too. That's cool. speaker-0: I love those hacks. I'm like, ⁓ man, I 'cause I just usually just do food, but now I'm like, I'm gonna start just mixing matching. I'm just gonna grab like four meals, I'm just gonna start throwing a bunch together and see if I make like some magic meal or something like that out of it. speaker-1: And honestly, like I always encourage people, this was the funnest part of PCT Days, is like make it your own, right? Our meal is is just that. It's just our meal. Like you can make it your meal. At PCT Days, we did a a chopped iron chef food network inspired challenge with Through Hikers that we gave them, you know, 30 different trail ingredients. So like Sour Patch Kids, Pop Tarts, hot sauce, like Cheetos. All the stuff that you would buy to make like quirky stuff on trail, tortillas. And then we gave them all like ⁓ chicken and dumplings and we're like, You eight people now modify this and we'll pick a winner and we send ⁓ home with like thirty bags of food. But it was fun to see what people want to do to elevate our recipes. Right. So like make it your own, put it in a tortilla, add avocado, add add she I think adding Cheetos to everything makes them better. Yeah. ⁓ hot sauce on everything is better, right? So like, but but do it your way. Yeah. ⁓ and to your point, like my favorite one of my favorite recipes from us is I take the pasta prima, which is a veggie, heavy veggie and pasta, but it's low protein because there's not any meat. And I add like a huge cup of diced chicken and I make my own chicken pasta recipe out of ours because it works for me when I get outside. So you can you can make up your own thing. It's just food, right? Have fun with it. speaker-0: That's cool. Awesome. Well, okay. Lightning round. Here we go. First question for you, and is my favorite as always, is ⁓ your favorite national park? ⁓ No pressure. speaker-1: I live by Yosemite, but I'm not gonna pick that. ⁓ Zion's pretty spectacular. Yeah. And it's and it's nothing like where I live. I live four hours from the Sierra and it's my favorite place to play, but Zion is mind blowing. Yeah. speaker-0: I love s I I love Yosemite. That's our first major kind of I mean I I've been to other national parks, but like the one that that everybody goes to and I'm like, I see why everybody loves this place. And then you go into Zion and I'm like, ⁓ my gosh, there's so many it's so back and forth on both of them. speaker-1: I know you said lightning round, but I have a hard time staying on topic. No, go for it. For those of you, and this I gotta tell all my outside visitors, for those of you that one is Yosemite is worth it. People should see it. ⁓ I encourage people to absolutely take time to explore the areas near Yosemite because Sequoia Kings Canyon. I did the JMT eight years ago now, and Yosemite was my least favorite of that two-week trip. Yeah. So Evolution Valley. You know, swim in evolution lake, the Kings Canyon, like it's there's stunning terrain this year that it's not Yosemite. So see that, but then see other stuff too. So that's what I would tell people if they're coming out this way. Yeah. speaker-0: I'm so bumps I'm headed down to San Diego for four days, ⁓ coming up. And I'm like, man, I wish I had enough time to I know it's 'cause I'm from Georgia, so I'm like, I think California, but I know it's a really long drive from from San Diego. But I'm like, man, I want to find I have a a raft that I want to take out on a lake and just find a lake in the middle of nowhere and go on on the raft. So yeah. Yeah. ⁓ speaker-1: Lot of lakes up there. speaker-0: All right, so next question is ⁓ tent, ⁓ hammock or cowboy camping? speaker-1: Always cowboy. speaker-0: Really? Okay. speaker-1: Unless there's bugs. I yeah. My my favorite piece of gear is a is a custom made ⁓ three ounce tarp that my f my good friend ⁓ Glenn Van Pesky made for me. Yeah. And I take it when I never plan on needing it. It's just a it's just a don't die in case it rains and gets cold tarp. ⁓ I it took me a while to go cowboy camping, but man, there is no other way you are fully in the outdoors. You get to see the Milky Way when you open your eyes. You hear and smell and see. ⁓ it's so great. And yeah. I even went away from an air mattress because Glenn taught me how to dig out. He calls it the G V Pivot, where you dig out like your hip butt region and it's the most comfortable sleeping I've ever done outside. Is no air mattress, no tent. It's just magical. speaker-0: Really? I'm gonna try that. I'm gonna try that 'cause I've never even thought about digging it out. I've heard of it, but now that you're describing it, I'm like, okay, now it makes sense. speaker-1: Yeah, use your shoe. You'll find your size, your depth. You'll you'll decide if you want to fluff a little lumbar loam. I don't need lumbar for my back shape, but some people do. I do a little like recession for my shoulder because I'm a side sleeper, but I will tell people if you spend the time to dig the dirt out, yeah. I use a little little torso length thin foam pad and I love to sleep. And I have a pillow and it's it has replaced my air mattress, not for weight, but for comfort. You're all speaker-0: Ultralight, ultralight. 'Cause when you said you only do it for your torso, I'm like, you're an ultralight, ultralight guy. speaker-1: I I have chased the ultralight. I've gone into this stupid light to find a limit and I came back a little. I did that during COVID. I I did a I did a forty eight hour trek where I knocked out like eighty miles and carried basically nothing and figured out what I did want. ⁓ that was fun. speaker-0: Just enough to not die, right? speaker-1: It was it was it was not so stupid light that it was unsafe, but it was extremely uncomfortable constantly. ⁓ and I learned. I learned I like a pillow and I like a sleeping bag that's a little bit warmer than I need. So yeah. Yeah. speaker-0: All right, ⁓ I guess the next question is then what's your favorite trail snack? speaker-1: I just found it. It's a new one. ⁓ I typically hate macadamia nuts, but ⁓ my favorite non-mountain house food is I go to grocery outlet like the day before my trip and I spend like a hundred bucks on just all types of food. Yeah. I found these, ⁓ I could look up the picture, but it's basically like a honeycomb baked ⁓ macadamia nut snack. Mawa Loa makes it but it's 180 calories per ounce. And it has this like like this oily fat taste, but it's sweet and crunchy. So it's got that sweet savory combo. I couldn't eat a lot of it. It would not be good for the ⁓ you know, the number two situations. But my my favorite snack is that. And I also learned that I don't like chocolate outside like ever. I carried a chocolate bar in the JMT for every night and I didn't eat one of them ever. I gave them away every night. So That was like my most surprised, like, wow, I don't like these at all. So yeah, I'd say these like honey roasted macadamia nuts like my new speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: Not peanut but anything peanut butter. speaker-0: Yeah. You gotta email me that, ⁓ whatever it is, because I'm if I can get it, that sounds so good. I love macadamia nuts. So ⁓ speaker-1: ⁓ I'm taking notes too. I love a good hard copy. speaker-0: What's your least favorite then trail snack? speaker-1: ⁓ I don't This is gonna kill people. I don't know if it's my least favorite. Again, it might be my most shocking. I don't really like like sweet dummy berry or sour patch. Like I don't ⁓ I don't like those much at home anyway. But when I'm on trail, if I'm having something sweet, I want it to be like fruit. Like I whether I packed in something for the day, ⁓ or we actually have a new a new freeze dried thing coming out next year that I had Trailside, which kind of blew my mind because I saw what I thought we'd have. I can't I can't spoil it here, so it's not really helpful to mention it, but it has it has fruit in it. And I was like, The fruit is like refreshing. ⁓ but I really want like gummies. ⁓ and people love gummies. And I'm kinda like, I'll have one if you're sharing, but otherwise, nah. speaker-0: Yeah. My wife's a savory person, so she'll eat like if I bring out the the sweets, she's like, Can I just have some potato chips or something like that? But but I love this the sweets. speaker-1: So crunchy. Crunchy salty. ⁓ I'm gonna do you while you're asking me, I'm gonna pull up two pictures. We'll see if this works. I'm gonna pull up my cowboy camping setup from our trip, and then I'm gonna show you the the divot. So this this is that's our setup. ⁓ no. I'm the blue one. My buddies in the black back there. That's a granite sand area, so it was easy to dig a hole. And the next morning I took this picture of it to share with Glenn. You probably can't see it, but the kind of the dark patch. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Is the recess of Where the divot is. Yeah. That's it. So it's that a a plastic sheet and a three eighth inch foam pad. And I slept like a baby. It was amazing. And a little bit of tree cover to keep the you know the heat retention and whatnot. But while you go ahead and ask me the next question, I'm gonna f ⁓ I found a layout of food and you'll s you'll see what I packed. speaker-0: ⁓ my next question is, ⁓ if you are going to collab with any brand, if Mount House could collab with any brand, who would it be and why? speaker-1: Ooh, I I'd want to collab with like salt and straw out of Portland, some super hipster bougie ice cream company, because we we freeze dry ice cream sandwiches already. ⁓ I would love to have some really high-end like Dulce de Leche or Toffee Espresso, like freeze-dried ice cream. Freeze-dried ice cream is great, you just eat it dry. Yeah. ⁓ I like to take our ice cream sandwiches in the pouch and like Smash them up and I eat them like trail snacks. Yeah. But that would be, I would like to take some bougie ice cream outside. That would be my my collab. speaker-0: That's awesome. All right. ⁓ last question is ⁓ what's one word that your team uses to best describe you? speaker-1: ⁓ speaker-0: A good word. speaker-1: Yeah, no, it's they're usually it's usually related to talking a lot. I'm like I'm an extrovert like to the extreme. So I would say they would probably say like nonstop, loud, relentless, talkative. Like that's probably what I yeah. Intense maybe. I don't know. I yeah. I wake up ready to go. ⁓ and some people aren't ready for that. And I understand that. So I try to I try to acknowledge that but still be myself. So yeah. speaker-0: See you morning person too. speaker-1: ⁓ I'm a morning person once I'm up. Yeah. Like I wake up quick, but I still don't want to get out of bed. Here's your here's your ⁓ your Mao Lois. speaker-0: ⁓ sweet. Okay. I'm gonna order those now. Those look so good. speaker-1: Look at this. This is what you gotta do. You gotta go caloric density. Hundred and eighty calories per twenty eight grams. Like that I always shoot for I shoot for one twenty five an ounce if I can. I still put my food together based on what sounds good. But if I'm more than a pound and a half of food a day, I know I'm doing something wrong. So I tend to just kinda go by weight. speaker-0: Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I'm I'm usually about the same weight for food, but then my wife, I feel like I'd bring because she has like a what I call it again. ⁓ something where like she has to constantly have carbs or she gets like lightheaded. I I don't know why I can't think of what it's called again. ⁓ hypoglycemic is is what she is. Okay. And so I have to constantly when we're on trail, I have to be like, hey. Okay, are you okay? Let me give this to you because I gotta stay on top of it because she'll forget and then she'll get to the point where she's like, ⁓ no, I need something. ⁓ 'cause we were shooting a wedding one time in like West Virginia, and I had her grabbing something, and then she comes running up the hill, and we're doing portraits with the bride and groom on this really nice hill and stuff. And then next thing you know, she's like, and we have walkie-talkies, and she goes, She's far off in the distance. I just see her kind of like go down to the ground. She's like, ⁓ I'm not gonna make it. speaker-1: Crashing, crashing. speaker-0: Yeah. And then that's when we found out the bride was a ⁓ a nurse or an in the yard doctor, sorry. And she goes, ⁓ don't give her coke, give her like crackers and some sugar. And seems like she's hypoglycemic. And then we did it and she is. So I'm like constantly giving her constant carbs to load her up. So she'll love those two. speaker-1: The other my my other favorite trail food is tuna. Like I love to take the those foils of tuna and add mayonnaise and hot sauce and put them in a tortilla. But ⁓ Glen turned me on to garlic and herb triscuits that I scoop my tuna with. ⁓ But those would be great because you can you can pound those into like a powder, in like a trisket powder. And ⁓ she could almost have them as like a you could use a spoon to eat them if you want, or you could even have them as like a little gel, maybe like ⁓ like a sprinkle ⁓ in your mouth. ⁓ but those are good too. Yeah, that's a good carb. They go well in a tortilla. They go good on top of Mounthouse foods too. It's like some crunchy bits. Yeah. speaker-0: Man, I've got all kinds of ideas for my next my next trip of like what can I do with my food to like elevate it above and make it speaker-1: Tell me what tell me what you do. I'd love to know. It'll help us inspire like other things we add, you know. We don't we we don't want to make boring food. We just also don't want to push the limit so far that most people aren't gonna want it, you know? Yeah. ⁓ so we try to find the gold the Goldilocks stone, right? Yeah. Right in the middle there, just right. speaker-0: You know, on the back of your like food packages, you know, like when you buy ⁓ I don't know, chocolate chips, right? And it has like two recipes like, Hey, you can make chocolate chip muffins or you can make chocolate chip cookies. Do do anybody does anybody put that on the back of their packages, like, hey, not only can you eat this, but think about this, add some crackers to this meal or add triskets to this thing. speaker-1: Not that I know of, but I bet if somebody did, it'd be some thoughtful like cottage industry person. Yeah. That would be like, hey, this would be good with like whether it's a pairing or like I I mean the through hiker is like, you know, everything in a tortilla is better, right? Or everything with Doritos is better, whatever. But I mean, that's my buddy Dan. I went with this on this trip. He's like, Yeah. How many tortillas do you want? I want two per day because I'm putting everything in the tortillas, like his move. And I'm like, Yeah, that's great. Like tuna, tuna in a tortilla with chips and Jalapeno Cheetos, like that's a common snack for me. ⁓ yeah, I would say like pairings. I'd be great to put that on the package. Yeah. And we there's a lot of real estate to fill in these packages, right? So you could put that somewhere. That'd be a great challenge for like our consumers on social. Like, give us your favorite pairing and see if you earn a spot on the bat on the pouch or something. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Well, I mean, Sean, thank you so much for for being a part of the podcast today and everybody for listening. And ⁓ look forward to the next episode and I guess maybe I'll see you on the trailer at the next next trade show. Sean, thanks for coming out. Appreciate it. speaker-1: Seth, it's all good. speaker-0: What did I say? speaker-1: I c I get called well, you call me Sean My buddy's mom called me Shane all through high school. ⁓ and so I so I usually let it fly and I'm like, whatever but then I thought for the podcast this will be weird, so we're gonna make it we're gonna make it real. No, it's good. I know we're ⁓ That's so funny. I'm like speaker-0: So I'm just gonna edit that part and just be like speaker-1: I leave it up. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. speaker-0: And and I'll see you on the next one. speaker-1: Yeah, no sweat. However you wanna roll it, man, this is live take. I like it. speaker-0: That's awesome. ⁓ my gosh.