Bar Bruhis - Building a High-Protein Couscous Brand In the Mountains

On this episode, we're joined by Bar Bruhis, Founder and CEO of Boostcous, the gluten-free, high-protein couscous brand that packs 18 grams of protein and 11 grams of fiber into a five-minute meal. 

Before going all in on Boostcous, Bar spent a decade in SaaS and DTC, running day to day at KnoCommerce and helping start Sumo.com.

Bar walks through the two-year formulation grind: roughly a hundred failed kitchen batches, a promising overseas manufacturer that collapsed the moment tariffs hit, and the decision to rebuild the supply chain and vertically integrate production in the US.

We dig into how Bar funded the first run for under $50K, the signal that made him leave KnoCommerce to go all in, the five customer segments, and why he personally texts and calls one-star reviewers.

We also talk about cracking paid ads with a founder video he spent 70 hours making, going viral through Snaxshot and the New York Times, finagling his way into ExpoWest for free, and the aisle-placement that puts Boostcous next to rice and quinoa instead of pasta.

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Episode Highlights:

🥣 Why regular couscous is just a carb bomb
🧪 Two years and 100 failed kitchen batches
⚠️ How tariffs killed the overseas manufacturing plan
🏭 Vertically integrating production in the US
💸 Launching for well under $50K
🚀 The signal that made him leave KnoCommerce
👥 The five customers he never expected
📞 Why he texts and calls one-star reviewers
🛒 The first 500 orders sold from his garage
📈 Going viral via Snaxshot and the New York Times
🎬 The 70-hour founder ad that cracked paid
🛍️ Finagling his way into Expo West for free
🤖 Building the company AI-first

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Table of Contents:

00:00 – Intro
00:50 – Origin story
02:55 – The product: 18g protein, 11g fiber, three ingredients
03:25 – The two-year formulation journey
05:22 – Tariffs blow up the plan, rebuilding in the US
07:12 – Moroccan vs Israeli couscous
10:18 – Funding the first run (write it to zero)
12:28 – The signal to go all-in and leave KnoCommerce
14:17 – Who the core customer actually is
17:08 – Finding your real customer fast
19:05 – The first 500 orders from Bar's garage
20:04 – Brand identity and naming Boostcous
22:58 – Cracking paid and going viral
25:01 – The 70-hour founder ad
26:44 – Expo West strategy
28:48 – First retail doors and velocity learnings
33:05 – Building the company AI-first
35:42 – Product roadmap and flavors
37:14 – Where to follow along

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Links:

Boostcous – https://boostcous.com/
Follow Bar on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbruhis/
Boostcous on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/boostcous/
Follow Bar on X – https://x.com/Bbruhis
Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out https://www.kitprint.co/.

Shout out to my friends over at Glimpse, the go-to partner for automating retail-related back-office operations and unlocking margin trapped in invalid fees and manual processes.

Are you in the market for a new flexible packaging partner? Check out HD Packaging. Third-generation, family-owned and built for the needs of category leaders like Newman’s Own and A Dozen Cousins. Faster launches, lower costs, and no artwork fees. 

Transcript

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welcome to shelf help today we're actually pause Founder CEO of Boost Kooz gluten free high protein couscous brand that's making waves and growing super quickly before launching Boost Kooz Bar spent 10 years or so in the DDC world running day to day at no commerce helping start sumo.com just to name a few and just left no commerce I think in April 1st to go all in at Boost Goose after after I think he hit 5,000 in daily sales on track for 3 million this year so super impressive get why you left yeah super excited to have in bar maybe just kind of first off for some listeners that aren't that familiar with Boost Goose Love to just get quick lay of the land just in terms of kind of origin story why behind the brand kind of core products in the lineup and then I'll go from there yeah yeah and thanks for having me on Adam stoked yeah I think you you had a couple of friends on here recently I think I saw Sam from Good Wipes most recently he's the man yup he's a he's such a character but yeah buscoos yeah so we we launched buscoos in December of last year I can give a little bit of backstory like before that so yeah I was born in Israel that's where the name bar comes from I lived there until I was 8 then moved to the States and um always grew up eating couscous I was kind of like a big part of my diet um and always loved like how quick and easy it was to make like you know you can cook it in five minutes as opposed to like rice or pasta to take at least 15 up to like 30 minutes and it's way more versatile right you can eat it hot or cold whether it's on your salad cold or like if you want to eat it hot you can I eat it as like a bed to stir fry or curry kind of as a rice replacement even as a pasta replacement fast forward I I lived kind of all over I ended up moving to Colorado just outside of Aspen a small little mountain town called Carbondale I love to do a ton of like outdoor activities like mountain biking backcountry skiing and would always come home looking for a quick and healthy recovery meal I kept coming back to couscous but realized it wasn't actually that good for you it's normal couscous at um people think it's actually a it's a grain but it's actually just semolina flour and water so it's just pasta right and so yeah looked for alternatives didn't really see anything I think there's a ton out there it's working in like the better for you category on the pasta and rice side like Bonsai's great so is Goodles you know I don't think we're really competitive to either of those companies on the rice side there's right rice who went out of business actually for getting sued for having rice in their in their name and now we we see a lot of right rice customers move over to couscous but yeah we saw that there's like a a need here right like went to the grocery store literally the only company that's making couscous is Near East bad branding bad ingredients so yeah went to work tried to formulate a new product it took about two years and now yeah we have Boost Goose which is a protein packed couscous 18 grams of protein 11 grams of fiber per serving it's three simple ingredients so it comes from chickpea flour lentil flour and pea flour it's all non GMO glyphosate free and like a naturally occurring protein which I I think protein right now is like a huge trend but like do you really need protein sprinkles probably not do you need like a a good healthy source of protein I think yes and so yeah that's us on the topic of the three ingredient formulation chickpea lentil and pea flour just tell me a bit about the journey like that ultimately got you got there I think from what I read you you initially tried just adding protein to kind of traditional couscous recipes and for you ultimately got to where you are today and I'd love to hear just a good bit about that journey in terms of you know that ultimately got you to to the current form factor yeah yeah man that that's like I feel like an entire story in itself and I feel like yeah people see products and you don't end up talking about like the the the origin story but yeah we um so maybe it could have been a little faster obviously I'm I was like running no commerce and doing some other things but I do think it would have still taken a quite a bit of time um we essentially yeah like you said we started by hey okay there is regular couscous is semolina flour and water hey can we actually just infuse that with like a pea protein or a pumpkin seed protein and see how that like works we tried that a ton of different variations in our kitchen you know bought a dehydrator essentially like there's two types of couscous there's Moroccan couscous and Israeli couscous Israeli or pearl couscous we were going for the Moroccan or you essentially like you you sieve this like water and semolina flour formula through a sieve and you essentially try to like dehydrate that rehydrate it we tried a like probably a hundred different variations in the kitchen all of them like were not good like we would like be stoked try'em our stomach would hurt and like like this is not something I could like actually try to sell then did a bunch of research it turned out that there's like some protein couscous in Europe which was like a good sign for us because it's like hey if this is working in another market maybe we can do it here yeah found I'm like one protein manufacturer over there we actually like tested their product went and visited their facility and like actually really liked it and we were like down to to use it and then Trump tariffs hit and it was like this is the entire model is like upside down also the supply chain is gonna take way longer then it was like back to the drawing board probably like the lowest point of like do we have a business here like can we actually make this happen then it was kind of like OK you know what like we know that there is a product that's working let's try to like completely engineer that and vertically integrate it in the United States so we went out found the biggest pulse flower manufacturer which a pulse flower is essentially just um a legume flower um so you know you take chickpeas and grind them up um or lentils or peas found the biggest pulse flower manufacturer called around to like every co man you could think of found a gluten free pasta manufacturer um you know took a long time but like essentially became friends with one of the operating partners there older older gentleman that would just like give calls and kind of like butter up and ask questions and really cool guy that like wants to see innovation in the industry and he was willing to take a bet on us um we're able to there's like even another part of that story where we we found the biggest um dye manufacturer in the country who had like essentially the way pasta's made is it's extruded through like a dye and we found a dye manufacturer that had a small pasta line to test their dyes he'd never used it for R&D always used it for like die R and d essentially and we were able to convince him to do that so we flew out to him got our first formulation kind of dialed in and then we were able to negotiate with our manufacturer on an m o Q and kind of took a leap of faith of like hey let's throw some money into this see if like people even care if not we've just lost like a little bit of money and now I think it's safe to say that people care about it and and want to eat couscous traditional couscous is is typically you know like steamed or I don't know absorb is the right word and I think yours is you point out maybe this is the difference between the Israeli and the Moroccan I think yours is like more boiled and strained was that at all in terms of like and and I guess if so how did you kind of address that if I come back on in like two or three months we we do have another skew coming out that is the the Moroccan couscous but yeah there's two types of couscous the Moroccan couscous is actually much easier and quicker to to make you can absorb you know you you you can literally just boil water in a kettle and then pour it on top it absorbs it you can like cook it anywhere way faster way easier our current version is more of an Israeli type uh uh version of couscous which normal like just semolina flour and water couscous the Israeli version you do also cook similar to pasta where you know boil water yeah cook it drain it rinse it so that's our current version it was definitely you know one of like I mentioned in the beginning like there's essentially two value props to normal couscous it's convenience and versatility both versions I think are still versatile the convenience factor was definitely a concern but you know I think it's one of those things that was like move fast and fail and um you know I think it's enough of a pain point to where okay like let's launch with one skew this is the skew that we know we can produce if we can get to enough product market fit and enough signal then we can actually launch a second skew and and then eventually even more skews after that but yeah definitely a concern it hasn't seemed to come up yeah like if you look at our reviews I'm very customer obsessed I like talk to our customers text our customers certainly like you know I'd say like one in 1,000 like we'll have an issue but I think that's like normal for like any CBG brand totally overseas tariffs kind of totally threw things off to you whether it's just the nature of their formulation or they decide to do it intentionally are a big part of their supply chain is anything that I know comes comes to mind or recommendations you might have that can help and de risk it whether it's you know dual sourcing ingredient flexibility or just it was a blessing in disguise that we had to rebuild our entire supply chain I think not having to deal with overseas shipping and duties all all the things um uh tariffs like it took us a lot longer to get to market but we are way more flexible now so if you can I think manufacturing like onshore is it is definitely better having said that our some of our future skews will not be like fully us and so we have learnings to do there too I'm not sure that I'm like you know we're just getting our chops there so I would say if you can try to do it in the US um but I'm I'm certainly not an expert in in that regard and we're very much learning on the fly your other partner I think you guys put in a each put in a good chunk of cash for that first order just for some a really early stage founders that are as very similar place if they're gonna do this and I guess a good chunk of cash is relative like compared to other CPG brands like I know plenty of CPG brands that require like at least $100,000 to get off the ground sure yeah you know I can share that we were like well under fifty like I I don't know that I'm comfortable sharing the exact number but it's it's around that and yeah you know I think for us it was from the gecko it was the approach was always hey listen this is a start up both of us actually had like other jobs and it was essentially like hey can we like do something that's different and can can this thing get legs and from the gecko it was always let's put in X amount of money and pretend that that money doesn't exist it's like putting that money would have been either I put it in like a bitcoin style style investment where it's like super high risk or I invest in myself and be willing to have it go down to zero so like as soon as I transfer that to the business account I just like in my head wrote it off as like that's going to zero yep and then from there like all the decisions get easier right it's like okay we have x amount of money in the bank we are we need to prove out this business with that amount of money and ideally we don't put any in any more money and so that's the way we thought about it and and yeah obviously nerve wracking to like go to go do that that first run but you know we we negotiate net 30 terms so it was always like okay if we can if we can have this product land at our warehouse we could start selling it even before like it lands in the warehouse and we can start getting cash to feel better about it uh or to feel better about the debt that we we carried but yeah you know I think my mindset from the beginning was always like hey we're burning this this money is gonna be on fire it's like either going to zero or going to to more than zero yeah and leave no commerce if that was this is the data I need to see I'm I'm going on this full time burning the boats or whatever you wanna say so like I said we we we launched in December and I had the conversation with Jeremiah at no in like mid January to essentially say like hey you know I think I I have too much on my plate and that was that was essentially the the the conversation I had with myself is you know I was stretched too thin so I I you know I had no which you know we had 60 five hundred merchants on there and like a growing business software I do DDC Ski which is an event in Aspen every year where we fly out 30 of the biggest DDC brands you know this year we had like Sam like I said groons like David Protein like some some of the biggest and and fastest growing companies that like that took a lot of planning and coordinating and all of that and then I also had Boost Goose and it was just like this is too much I need to take things off my plate so I hired someone to help for Dita ski the no and no was the kind of like the first thing where I was like this needs to come off the plate because the only reason boost goose is gonna fail is if I don't put in the right attention like right away we saw like we were getting a first order profitability low CPAs really good reviews customers were using it they were buying it again and so right away it was like there's enough strong signal I wouldn't say there's like one specific number I was looking at but across the board I could just like gut feel that there was enough signal that there's gonna be a business here and um yeah I'm gonna all in or nothing type person so I knew that I couldn't be like you know one foot in one foot out of like two different businesses so I decided I just had to step away from now about who the core customer is of Boost Goose and anything that's been surprising in terms of who you found is actually the core buyer at all yeah yeah I think when we so it's it's such an interesting like experiment to to think through who your customer is and build like a customer demographic before you launch and then like recalibrate it and I think my time at know help me a ton with that right like post purchase surveys you learn so much about your customer who they are why they're buying where they're from like demographic all sorts of things right and so going into it I I think I I'd like to think that I had like no ego attached to the persona and wanted to just let the customers tell us who they were but yeah like certainly I you know I thought OK like it's probably gonna be like that the female that like lives in New York LA Austin that does Pilates and is looking for a healthy recovery meal after their workout or like that gym bro in those same geos yeah we've been really surprised to see who who it actually is so you know we've I'd say we have like probably five different customers number one would probably be like the mom or like the caregiver with kids really quick and easy for them to make for themselves they're also a lot of moms in postpartum need high protein so that that's been really interesting to see but then also feeding their kids it's high in iron and there's no choking hazard I don't have kids so I like didn't think through that but um it's it's a huge market right and huge share of wallet so that's one the kosher community was another really surprising one we are fully kosher certified and I think they were already eating couscous in their diet and uh you know then wanted a healthier version of that um that community also has a lot of word of mouth and so been really interesting there the gluten free community that's another one where um you know at first I didn't think was gonna be that big but it's actually been huge and we have all sorts of stories of moms reaching out and saying like hey my my son or daughter was diagnosed celiac at birth and I always wanted to try couscous this is the first couscous they've ever had really like moving stories like that um so yeah those those are probably like the three core ones and then and then the two other ones are those like ancillary ones that I'd mentioned like that that you know 20s 30s something that's like looking for added protein um the I think the most interesting one that's like come up recently is like the GLP1 movement you know they're looking for really high fiber high protein foods one in eight American is on GLP ones now so that's that's been an interesting one to to to explore they're all you know that when you're on a GLP1 you're you're pretty constipated and so like having a high fiber that's soluble fiber really helps you out for no commerce but for some of those first time founders that are trying to figure out really who their actual core customer is or is gonna be as you know as fast as possible post launch like what's the what's the best way you think they can do that yeah um I think this advice probably is across the board you have to be customer obsessed um and and that will answer so many of your questions so um yeah certainly like no or any other post purchase survey is super helpful you know when we started no is always surprising it's like 40% of people will fill out that survey um I personally am in that 60% so it's like even more surprising to me but you know getting like you know two out of five of your customers to like answer a survey and and designing that survey to really to really help you right so like what are the main value props of your of your product list them out and have people like check off the ones that like resonated with them for the purchase so that you can like double triple down on that right like most founders are like too obsessed with their product and they give too many value props like this is simplified it's food like give two value props you know I think also understanding why people didn't buy um or what or like why they didn't almost buy that's like really really helpful for understanding um like customer hesitations um but that's just one data source like there's so many others right like I look through our orders if anyone's like order you know we like had someone order like$200 worth of Boost Goose today I'm like texting that person and I'm like getting on a call with them and like understanding their story there's like I do think surveys are so so important but like at the end of the day there's nothing that like a human conversation especially a phone call ideally like a like a face to face conversation will give you so much more context and just continue to absorb that um our first 500 orders we did like we just posted we we like got a front page article in the um in the Aspen Times and like some some other newspapers here and um essentially said hey if you want free shipping come a buy from bars garage and they would like just literally come to our garage and like that demographic skews a lot older it's a newspaper reading article or newspaper reading audience so you know I I took that with a grain of salt but still very much asked them like what matters to you um looking at all of your Facebook comments all of your Instagram comments um seeing like what are the patterns there and then yeah certainly looking at your your reviews and we have I think we crossed 200 reviews today we have like 190 five star reviews but there's 10 that are not five star and I'm like very much obsessed with that and like emailing texting those people understanding like hey what do you not like about our product you know who what is your demographic and who are you why did you buy so that I can understand like how I can attract more of the right person from a brand identity standpoint as you're building out the brand from a look and feel positioning voice standpoint what was that were top of mind for you when you were we were building all that out yeah so you know we wanted the product to be we wanted we wanted it to attract and and resonate with a wide variety of of consumers right like like I you had asked for the like customer profile and I think I named like five or six right so it's like I actually have a box right here but like you know the box it looks like it might be a little glary but like the box is like meant to be like fun and light right and something different than like what's out there like I mentioned like right now it's just Near East that's that's uh like producing couscous um but yeah we you know we kind of borrowed like a lot of the colors are from like Middle Eastern uh like whether it's like um like the blue is like kind of like coming from like the Israeli flag or like even like Greece where like um a lot of couscous comes from we knew we wanted to be like fun and light so we created these characters and we have a bunch of these characters like all through our website yeah even like you know this is like all the different characters like dancing on like our hat so yeah we knew we wanted to be fun and light we knew we wanted to kind of grab some some inspiration from like where couscous comes from which is like you know Africa Greece the Middle East and we let our designer kind of take their stab at it and that's where we ended up a lot of iterations between like first and and what you see on the box today but that's kind of the inspiration Boost Goose is obviously I assume people discover the brand and try it for the first time it just seems to be pretty clear what the product is and what it does but I think the naming process is it can be a lot more complicated and and one of the hardest harder things that people do when they're building a brand you guys obviously hit it out of the park what what did that naming process look like for you and any other alternatives that you guys were close to landing on before you decided Boost Goose is the one to go with yeah yeah I can't take full credit for the name my friend Steven came up with the name but yeah it's yeah like you said it's it's definitely an iterative process making sure that you can trademark that name making sure that you can get the domain so super super iterative but um yeah my yeah my friend Steven came up with the name you know we we saw that there's like an opportunity for like the domain for the trademark and we just kind of kept building that out I think you did you know which is wasn't pretty awesome and then you know which is not uncommon at all after kind of a a boost at the beginning was there a moment where you realized alright this organic momentum is is not gonna carry us where we need to and we need to start figuring out how to crack paid yeah yeah I think I I kind of knew that that was gonna be the case from the beginning um yeah you know our first sales came from like I I have a LinkedIn and Twitter following that I've just been building for 10 years like and it mostly came from from that we had um you know we had a couple of viral posts that like there's kind of like this trend of um like I hinted at it in the beginning but there's like protein is just such a trend right now that like people are almost like tired of new protein sources right like um like it's like a like a like I think the joke is like come on really like um like what like I don't know I've seen like literally like sprinkles with protein like I don't know brownies with protein like all these like sources so then um yes someone uh snacks shot which is Andrea she's great she like posted about um like a picture of us and like a protein couscous like entered the chat or something and it went viral got like 100,000 views on Twitter turn and then from there like a New York Times writer like saw it and they also like posted about it and that got like another 250 or 500,000 impressions and then from there it was just like kind of this like downstream effect of um like a bunch of different creators made videos for it like it like this this news outlet well worthy so we just got like a ton of like like organic PR honestly that we couldn't have engineered obviously like net new product so there was some engineering there but um yeah we got lucky there and you know from the beginning it was always like OK hey listen like we could we'll always post organic content and we always like want to be like founder LED we want people to resonate with the story and feel like they know the brand and feel like they they are early supporters of the brand and like moving with us in the movement but yeah we knew that like in order to build a scalable repeatable business we needed to crack paid ads I'd actually never logged in to meta or like Facebook Ads Manager before starting boost surprisingly enough right like I've been on the Sass side of DTC but I'd never logged in and it's kind of dove into the deep end watched like so much YouTube obviously I'd already been following the right accounts on like Twitter and LinkedIn and had the right network um you know Connor Roland has helped a bit some of the other like operators that are like operating really big businesses and and know the ins and outs so I was able to like kind of ask questions along the way but yeah it was mostly just like self taught like banging my head at the wall like trying to figure it out and then yeah now like you know it's still just me and my co founder we are scaling meta like pretty rapidly we've got a lot of white listing ads a lot of creators that we work with are still our top performing ad is an ad that I probably spent like 70 hours creating it's our founder ad where I just studied like so many ads thought about our story filmed it edited it in CapCut you know like test the different hooks but that's like kind of what helped us get to this like very low CPA that that gets us first order profitability and yeah now we're we're continuing to scale that we're all obviously on Google as well we're testing acts on we're testing a we want to launch on TikTok Shop and Amazon but right now just doing it all ourselves like trying to stick keep that bootstrap mentality of of staying lean even if we do raise money it's gonna be like hey like how do we stay as lean as possible and do this as profitably as possible in terms of the retail side of things tell me about your Expo s strategy back in March yeah uh well so Expo is insane it's like the Super Bowl and there's just like so much just shit going on and so many people it's exhausting you know again like going back to the like hey we're bootstrap we don't want to put more money into this we want to you know I think eventually we will raise money but we wanna get to as far as we can without it Expo to me is a massive opportunity to unlock retail and you kind of have all these buyers in one room we don't have like connections to those buyers like you go talk to like a Peter Rahul from like David Protein like that dude doesn't need to go to Natural Expo because he can just call the Costco buyer and go fly out and see them right but like we don't have that and so yeah yeah and then from there I was like okay how do we get into the room it's really expensive so yeah I just like finagled my way in for free to Expo I don't know that I I should share like everything that I did there but yeah we went to Expo for free we were able to meet a couple buyers there nice uh yeah we we met the Gelson's buyer actually that hopefully we'll launch there in the next month or two and yeah yeah we we we like you know for the first year it's like hey we're just gonna go and like literally absorb and meet as many people as possible I think my favorite part about the CPG community is especially coming from the sass or software side like everyone in software can be a frenemy they can just pivot in especially now with AI like they can pivot even faster into your lane and yeah where like CPG like everyone is kind of like a real friend right like um like most companies that we saw at at Expo it's like oh we could like partner with you guys do a collab like oh you have a sauce company oh you have a this company so we made a ton of friends which was really cool um and that was like the the main takeaway there that's awesome with some of those first few retailers you got into which I think were near Carbondale which what the buyers cared about what you felt like really resonated and it's funny like that like looking back on it it's like when I first started I had no idea what I was doing I had no idea what a distributor was I didn't know what unifier a UNFI or K he was I didn't know how like margins work I was just like okay well there's these grocery stores that are here let's just like go knock on doors I would literally just take a box in um we I still have it but like I would just take a box in with like my picture on the front of the Aspen Times newspaper I was like hey look this is me this is my product you guys want to sell it like in so many words um and um yeah we got super lucky you know like we we live in a small community everyone wants to help each other um and they were like yeah we'll buy 2 3 cases see how it goes um and you know I still have it set up this way where they like text me when they need new cases like we need to get off of that as we scale but like yeah it's insane velocity like they are like we were out we were sold out and they would like text me like yo or like I would even go into their store and they're like we had like this lady Kathleen she came in and she's like I cannot believe you guys don't have goose goose like blah blah blah like so yeah good signal but yeah but to answer your question it was just it was like me walking with a newspaper in our box and just saying hey do you guys wanna try it and I would leave you know I would leave a box let them try it and come back the next day kind of thing speaking with the retailers you're in so far that's in terms of what has actually had the biggest impact from a velocity standpoint thus far yeah I think it kind of depends on the region we're in some groceries in New York some in in Colorado and we certainly like need to continue to improve our packaging yeah adding I can tell you that like certainly online like adding the core like the kosher logo on the packaging helped a ton but yeah I think um and and now we're gfco certified so we need to add that to our next packaging for for the gluten free community uh huh but yeah I think uh we a couple things we Learned one we don't sit next to pasta we sit next to rice farro and and quinoa which that aisle is far less competitive then the pasta aisle and like I'd like to say we like engineered that but we just kind of got lucky and and backed into that which is great so that's the first part is you know are sitting in this aisle that has way less competition like as opposed to like the pasta aisle that has all these awesome brands that are these different colors but you still have to make a decision you go to the rice fair on keenwild like it's all like white packaging that is pretty old school so yeah we we Learned that we made our we Learned that it was like harder to read our front of the box call outs um we also Learned that the our front of the box call outs were for the entire box we said we used to say 46 grams of protein and can't remember how much fiber and now it's a per serving which is what the customer wanted to see yeah so we Learned that and adjusted it but yeah a lot of those learnings you know I'd say like 90% of those learnings actually came from online and translated into retail versus like talking to the retail buyer like you don't own that customer you can't talk to that customer like online like people that are like pissed off that you have 46 grams of protein on the front of your box will like blow up your ads and just comment until like they can't comment anymore which is actually good for the the meta algorithm cause they're actually feeding an impression count but yeah we we learn from them trying to stay as lean as possible for as long as possible which totally respect how you're gonna let your time focus between DDC and retail as as retail really continues to start to take off yeah it's a good question yeah I think it comes back to I genuinely believe right now is the best time to be building in CPG1 because of the tailwind of CPG right especially like if you can get on certain trends that are like built to last like fiber and protein I think it's it's a really good time the other piece of that equation is like AI is obviously in such a good place right now to be able to automate and essentially make like one person three people and so yeah to uh back to your question we're essentially building the company AI first so anything that we can do to automate whether it's like email design whether it's responding back to customers on customer support whether it's like high touch items like I'll give you an example if someone cancel their cancels their subscription with us they get a personalized email from me and my email that is personalized via AI and automatically pulls from our recharge API builds it on a skill that I built based on the first 10 emails that I sent and then it automatically sends it to that person we may or may not win that person back into a subscriber but like you know 10 out of 10 times that that person is now more uh affiliated with Busco's and a happier customer so all of these things are are being built to like essentially try to automate as much as we can on the DTC side certainly we'll still need humans and um you know the like one of the first hires that we'll likely make is gonna be like a chief of staff or like a growth role to be able to take a lot of what I've got on my plate off of my plate so that I can start to focus on retail and have those retail conversations and then eventually like certainly we need to hire humans right like the the retail side is still very archaic it's like 1980s like you need to send a pitch deck you need to fly out you need to shake hands and make best friends with that buyer and so yeah like we'll we'll need humans that have done that that can bring connections to the table and we certainly wanna do that right now I think we have so much more juice to squeeze out of DDC and so much more to learn from our customer and be able to build like a better story like the story I wanna tell a retailer when I walk in is hey we not only know that we should be in here based on the data from our customers we've made 1,000 customers 800 of them are telling us to be in your store we also know that we can drive you more foot traffic because we have now a brand following and people that are gonna come into your store to go buy boost boost but then put other things in their cart and so we're we're trying to build that story alongside you know starting to like get some retail traction so that we can learn from the retailers um along the way uh yeah so yeah ideally we'll we'll hire someone so I can focus more of my time there how are you thinking about your kind of product roadmap etcetera whatever you're obviously comfortable sharing at this point yeah yeah I think um you know the the couscous market is is a big market it's like a a 30 billion dollar market I think there's plenty of room for us to grow into the couscous market I think the way that I think about it is you know probably 80% of Americans know what couscous is they've either like of that probably 50% of the 80% has actually made couscous themselves the other 30% probably had it at a restaurant or has seen it whatever um hundred percent of Americans know what protein is and so we're looking for that Venn diagram which is a very very large Venn diagram so right now we're we're strictly focused on couscous um there's like so much for us to do there there's a lot of white space um we like you know there's two two versions of couscous Israeli and there's Moroccan we think that we can create both right now we have an Israeli version we think that we can create the best better for you Moroccan as well so we'll continue to dive in there and then from there yes certainly there's so many opportunities when it comes to flavoring right like whether it's you know partnering with other companies like you know like like the Ollie Pop Times Grooms or even Ollie pop times like good wives like there's there's so many like opportunities there for partnership but also like our own flavors that we create and then yeah then you know being able to create variety packs and things like that so yeah short term certainly like very much focused on on couscous long term you know we do think we can boost other grains as well but that's that's not something that we're thinking about like day to day yeah fair enough cool this has been great what's the best place for people to follow along with along with you and then what's the best place for people to follow along with with Boost Goose as well yeah yeah and and thanks for having me on that was fun um yeah best place to to follow me is uh barbruhists on LinkedIn Twitter I have a website barbruise.com too I try to keep updated but it's not that updated right now um yeah probably the only bar that you'll you'll find certainly the only bar bruise that you'll find so I'm sure if you type in RB on anything you'll see me thanks to my parents for for giving me that SEO boost um and then Boost Goose yeah everything is at Boost Goose so boost goose.com at Boost Goose Instagram TikTok whatever so yeah you can find us there perfect awesome bar appreciate the time I think that's the pod I love it today we're speaking with Bar Bruce different variables to play around with were you worried at all about consumer behavior changing their cooking method yeah yeah so you are right if you uh you had to go back to the drawing board I mean I think the like it's time where they have to pull the trigger we put in um like was there like one specific moment you're like alright yeah it was pretty early on a huge people why 10 k plus in like the first two weeks in market sales kind of and kind of slowly dropped after that in terms of what the pitch looked like we're still obviously learning on the retail side how are you how are you guys thinking about your prioritization more flavors versus other grains appreciate you coming on