Jason Wright - Scaling WILDE Into a $100M+ and 20,000+ Door Brand

On this episode, we're joined by Jason Wright, Founder and CEO of WILDE Protein Snacks - the brand that figured out how to turn chicken breast into a thin, crispy chip (and now crackers!) and has since grown into a $100M+ business across 20,000+ retail doors. 

Jason walks through the full journey - from a failed meat-based protein bar to the eureka moment at the bottom of a potato chip bag, through R&D at Colorado State's meat science lab, a disastrous test run at a pork rind facility, and the moment that inspired WILDE's now-patented production equipment.

We get into why WILDE had no choice but to vertically integrate and what it took to build a 55,000 sq ft facility in Kentucky during COVID - WILDE is now opening a 130,000 sq ft plant. 

Jason also breaks down pricing strategy, why demos remain the top velocity driver, and how TikTok creators are scaling a "disbelief" marketing message.

We also dig into WILDE's innovation pipeline - the hard lesson from discontinuing a pork chip, and why the brand is now focused on formats. Crackers just hit the shelf, a tortilla chip is coming later this year, and a pita chip is on the horizon.

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Episode Highlights:

🥣 From granola founder in NYC to chicken chip inventor
🧪 R&D at Colorado State's JBS-built meat science lab
🏭 The pork rind facility disaster and what came next
🔧 A bulldozer-inspired idea that led to patented equipment
⚠️ IP leakage at a co-man (Conagra, Tyson, Hershey)
🏗️ Building a 55K sq ft facility during COVID - and now a 130K sq ft plant
🎨 Naming the brand after Oscar Wilde (and the trademark fight)
🛒 How Whole Foods pioneered the protein snack set
🚀 Demos as the #1 velocity driver (and scaling TikTok creators)
💡 The "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" marketing philosophy
🧀 Launching the WILDE cracker (chicken breast + four cheeses)
🎯 Why WILDE is now focused on formats, not proteins
👀 Innovation roadmap: tortilla chips, pita chips, flat pretzels

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Table of Contents:

00:00 – Intro
01:00 – Origin story: Feed Granola and health food in NYC
03:17 – The failed meat-based protein bar
06:57 – R&D at Colorado State's meat science lab
08:03 – The pork rind facility disaster
09:30 – The bulldozer moment and patented equipment
11:00 – Why WILDE had to vertically integrate
12:01 – Co-man in Virginia and IP leakage risks
14:00 – Why Kentucky and how they financed the build
18:11 – Brand identity and "protein chips" framing
20:07 – Naming the brand after Oscar Wilde
22:17 – Pricing strategy and retail expansion
24:05 – Landing at Whole Foods and the protein snack set
26:27 – Driving velocity: demos, TikTok, and disbelief marketing
29:25 – Distribution: UNFI, KeHE, going direct
31:03 – Pork chip lessons and the pivot to formats
35:51 – New product launch challenges
39:12 – Fundraising tips: seed vs. growth stage

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Links:

WILDE Protein Snacks – https://www.wildebrands.com
Follow Jason on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-wright-ceo/
WILDE on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/wilde-protein-snacks/
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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all right welcome to shelf help Today we're speaking with Jason Wright founder and CEO of Wild Brand that figured out how to turn chicken breast into a thin crispy chip um prior to prior to wild Jason started Feed Granola I think in new in um New York City back in early 2 scaled it up a bit as kind of probably his first uh kind of foray into CPG to a certain extent then she moved out to Boulder started tinkering with some meat based snacks that I think at the Colorado State Meat Science and farm which I want to dive into a bit and then eventually had kind of a Eureka moment that ultimately LED to and I think since I think about about five years or so grown to mid eight figure business across 20000+ doors and the process of building out a really big facility which we're going to touch on yeah really great journey really excited to dive into it um yeah Jason maybe just first off just for maybe the listeners that aren't as familiar with wild the love it just get quick lay of the land just in terms of how the origin story why behind the brand core products in the lineup and then we'll take it from there yeah man Adam listen first thank you for having me it's a pleasure to be here yeah um so where do we start wild so you touched on a little bit of my my background with feed granola launched that granola company 2,005 in New York City was really the first time I'd been introduced to health food when I lived there and and I kind of just got fascinated with how health food and clean eating made you feel good so I launched granola I Learned a lot didn't have a lot to show for it um but it really is what LED me to wild and just at a you know high level wild was born at the bottom of a potato chip bag I was eating a bag of potato chips one night I love potatoes I love French fries but I hated the way they made me feel afterwards and it wasn't from like a physical like or from a from a you know it wasn't how you look it was more about it literally made me feel and all carbs made me feel like this like I'm on some type of drug like I just don't have a clear head and so I wanted to replace the potato with chicken breast and I kind of made that my mission because I've always done well on a high protein low carb diet I should really say a lifestyle I've been doing this for I don't know 30 years now and so that was that was the birth of wild the idea I started tinkering around with like ways of how I thought I could do it in my kitchen and then I got introduced to Colorado State University there in Fort Collins and uh and JBS had built them a big meat science kind of lab and I started going up I made a connection there with the um with the dean and some of the professors and I started going up and paying to use the lab some of the students would help and we just started um working on how would we bring wild from an idea to a reality and and we can go deep as you want to go and there's a lot of twists and turns and but that's really at the high level of how we got started diving into the formulation and an R&D stuff a bit more I think like original the product actually wasn't a chip at all it was like a jerky grain seed protein bar ish that didn't quite hit the Mark assuming I got that right like how long did you give the bar before you decided to scrap it and like how did you know it was time yeah no listen I um I'm glad you brought it up I don't always tell the story if I'm just telling it you know off the top of my head but yeah if we back up so after New York I moved to Austin Texas and that was really the idea of wild was in Austin and there um I was training for a Marathon and I got to taking a jerky on my run because as you ramp up in miles like I needed something to eat and I still had a love for granola and so on a you know on a run one day I thought Jerky's very hard to eat you know you got a package I wanted something in a bar format some people would say well that existed Jay that that's called a stick but I don't know I didn't want a stick I wanted something in my head that looked like a combination of jerky and kind bar yeah that was a lot harder than than than I thought fast forward we launched wild as a meat based protein bar epic had had hit the market it's funny because I worked out at a local um now I think it's called Lifetime Fitness but back then it was pure fitness and it was right beside of Whole Foods headquarters on Lamar and I was leaving there one day and I'd started working on the bar idea and I was leaving there and they had a little juice bar and they had a bar they had protein bars in there and there was an animal on a package and I kind of knew exactly what it was I was like holy heck somebody's already far you know they're already way down the road on what I'm thinking and little did I know I was gonna package over and see Austin Texas and so my wife and I went right home and I said hey we uh we gotta leave like I got bad news like there's a bar that's in town already ahead of us and so we packed up and we went to Boulder but we launched uh we launched um the bar in 2,016 and there was like Mighty Bar there was Crave Bar uh huh there was there was other bars Tonka Bar and to be honest the bar category as a meat based protein I owned it and it was very small no none of the other brands were getting traction including wild and and we went the avenue of trying to bake it and that really I mean tell talking about not knowing what you didn't know it did not make for a great product taste wise texture wise and I remember after the first board meeting I knew I was in trouble and and I was thinking how in the hell am I gonna pivot outside of this and and to be quite honest if we really want to go deep in the story I was in a depressed state and I was crushing potato chips and French fries and I had turned I was no longer the J of high protein low carb I was in a funk and I was eating comfort and at the bottom of that potato chip bag I said I can't do this anymore like there's gotta be a better way and that's when I thought about could I replace the potato with chicken breast so the bar didn't last long I think you know revenue wise we only got to borrow about 2 million in revenue not a lot forward a little bit you're at you're working at Colorado State working on R&D stuff like how long did it actually take from I guess get to a product you felt was ready to go to market and like what did you start with and like you know what did the kind of key I don't know iterations look like along the way yeah man listen it's a it's a hell of a journey so buckle up you know wild is two phases so there's a I bring fresh chicken breast in and you got bone broth and you got egg white and you do what I call you know we we we uh crafted in what I call a wild potato because then on the other side I got a slice I gotta crisp it I gotta season it I gotta bag it so early on I kind of had an idea that we were gonna find um you know a USDA facility that could help us with bringing taking fresh chicken breast bone broth egg white tapioca flour turning into what I call the wild potato then we were gonna partner with a pork rind facility and we were gonna finish it there okay and I I went down that path in 2,017 we raised some capital you know which was a big story because I had to tell the current a investors hey we're gonna transition and pivot to this other product because we don't believe the current product that we went to market with is gonna be the the winner so anyway we raise money we we tell everybody we're gonna manufacture in a pork rind facility we go down and test in a large pork rind facility that produces probably all of your pork rinds you might find in Whole Foods you know you might find in in sprouts and other places a premium pork grind and we tested and it was a disaster we Learned very quick that how they do it we were never gonna be able to do it that way we made a big mess and we had some upset people that ran that manufacturing facility we we basically shut down one of their uh cookers and because we shut it down meaning that our product just got stuck inside and we couldn't get it out the one thing that we came away with is one of the guys down there named and I won't name it but they named a manufacturer of cookers that we should go call ASAP and so we did that and I had to go back to the investors and say guys listen we we we're not gonna be able to do what I thought we were gonna be able to do we're gonna have to do this ourselves and so we luckily I had a group that was bleeding me bleeding the idea right and so we go to the name of the manufacturer we sat down with them out in California outside of Oakland and we uh we go through what you know I wanted to accomplish we also I go there with a prototype working with a machine shop and I tell this story and I'll tell it here I'm fine sharing it so when I go back to Boulder from the pork rind facility I got a German shorthair pointer and she and I always would go out to to Fritz Farm we would go out to she would run out there and um and anyway we were going out and it's about 30 maybe 20 minutes outside of Boulder and long story short we stopped at a stoplight there happened to be construction going on beside me there was bulldozers going up and down they were gonna expand the highway and as I was watching that track I had an idea so I go to a machine shop I asked them to create something I take it out to this this manufacturer and I said I'm trying to do this inside of one of your cookers and that LED me to building our first piece of equipment which today we have a Pat so that's awesome that's very cool yeah just built are in the process of building or maybe got to finish up now building plus square foot facility you're going to be making a whole lot of wild chips a lot of CPG founders and operators and investors or what not would probably tell you know not vertically integrate this early not you know invest a lot of your capital in the cap ex that kind of stuff obviously you're decided to go a different route obviously it seems to be working really well for you guys so for like what's um I guess what were the key factors that push you to build versus go the co packer out at the current stage of the business well you know you bring up a lot of great points I'm gonna take us back to after the the Port Ryan facility so we're we're we do go into a co man so we uh we build our first piece of equipment and exactly what you just brought up we were not ready to go do it ourselves we did not have that on our radar we we said hey we better go find somebody with some space and we can put this you know and and install it in their building and we found that we found that in Martinsville Virginia which happens to be iconic or known for a racetrack and back in the old days it was known for I think furniture and so long story short this big jerky manufacturer there had space we installed our equipment and that was our plan that was our plan we were gonna get them to scale you know phase two of wild in phase one of wild we were working with a manufacturer in Chicago so we were gonna do you know wild potato in Chicago we're gonna ship it to Virginia and and cook it off and and uh and and season it and bag it it it was so much technology and stuff that we were learning and and new ways of doing something that we were showing everybody and they were working with Conagra they were working with Tyson they were working with crave who was owned by Hershey at the time and our secrets were getting out very fast okay and and and and we this was all new new you know ways of doing this and what we found ourselves doing is we were actually doing it me and my business partner Philippe and and we were living in Virginia in a hotel but two restaurants you want to go to that's it and and we were being charged a lot I mean with the toll fees like it was a very you know we we were not it was not survivable we were we were going to go under if we'd stay there so we had enough proof of concept in 2,019 that our investors said if we're going to really do this guys we're going to have to go do it ourselves okay and and so in 2,019 we made the decision of let's go find a building let's bring both to one place we knew we ran the model we knew we'd save a lot we could do it ourselves we could control quality and back in those days we had so much to learn product was not great you know early days I apologize anybody listening that that that had wild in the early days like you know it was just a huge learning curve but 2019 we start looking and 2,020 we find well I'll back up I will I do I think this is important piece of the story the reason we locked looked in the Midwest is because if you looked at like Ohio Kentucky and even Indiana you would start to see that if you're going to do one building and you need to get to like East Coast West Coast Northeast that you know you really kind of need to be centrally located and if you think about it Kentucky's super centrally located one of our board members had done a study he he's the CFO of another big brand and they had done a a large study on where they should build their manufacturing facility and they landed in Ohio which is about an hour from me State Line and they were very close to picking Kentucky and so we got some piggyback on that and so we started looking in Kentucky fast forward we found the right situation here we started building in 2,020 we opened our facility in 21 we brought all the equipment in and then we were off to the races now I'll tell you yes your question was about how do we make the decision to go and do it ourselves we did not have a choice Adam right we were either going to bleed out or we had to like we had to bite the bullet and go do it and so that was what LED us to opening that facility and that was a 55,000 square foot facility and today we're opening that 130,000 square foot what what did like the I guess the financing yeah so the first one we had no credit we had to go do it all ourselves I had to raise equity yeah and the first one's a 50,000 square foot facility and I'll tell you something that that I didn't think about on this one but on that one we so the guys that built the building for us are are now investors of ours and they built all of our buildings and they were well um they worked close with the um the governor and they worked close with the state they built a lot of buildings for the Bourbon industry but the beauty of doing it in 2020 was we were in covid and no one was coming around inspectors were not coming around uh thing suspects inspectors uh so so what I'm saying is that we we built the building we got everything up to code you know we work with major mechanical and electricians but we didn't have any like ropes we just built it quickly we were in it and I think the building inspector finally came over we were actually running product when he gave us all of the necessary documents the occupancy and stuff and so fast forward to this time around we had to go through the whole nine yards submit drawings you know and it's a much more sophisticated build out but we had a huge learning and we had some some roadblocks and some redos and that just cost us time but back to your question on the finances this time around we had some credit you know wilds north of 100 million and so we were able to go out and get a lot of finances you know equipment financing equipment lease so we had to raise less now you still have to raise money to pay the payment right but but we had to raise less or we had to take less equity this time around to build out the facility we were able to work with Store Capital which is a great partner of ours that does a lot of what we call fit up they end up buying the real estate from the guys that we knew that built it and then with that they were able to roll in a lot of our installation cost so that was the difference between this time around but if you just take in and not talk high numbers but what we built the first building for and and and what we did is probably text to 12 x to calls the big building wow standpoint wild is definitely one of the more say visually distinct brands in the the better for you snack aisle let's say like thinking back to those early days when you're building out and getting at the brand identity voice tone and everything how the brand presents itself and looks on the shelf what was kind of top of top of mind for you you know I'll tell you that I'm glad you asked that this was what we went to market with okay and I did not know what I was doing and and I'll tell you that we you know we we we went to Whole Foods and and we went to sprouts and we did a lot of demos and we listened to the customer and um and what I Learned quickly is people really responded to protein chips not chicken chips yeah especially with my accent it probably sound like I was saying something else and then people were really curious about how you made it and they were also curious about um what part of the chicken you were using and that was something I overlooked in 2,019 we decided or 20 I guess we decided to uh to come out with this bag you know there's been some iterations but we started talking about uh chicken breast egg white bone broth and so really you know a lot of people think about protein and a lot of people when we're in a protein craze they add powder to it but Wild's foundation is we're built from chicken breast you know that's what we start with and really the idea for wild as we uh and in the marketing behind it is we're just trying to take real food and turn it into a snack that we can all crave and feel good about eating um we're not trying to take Pop Tarts or Doritos and just sprinkle protein in it um that's not that's not what we're what we're what we're after and so yeah that's that's that's kind of the like you know the key behind I think transparency is just behind the package totally generally fairly ambiguous and more challenging process than I think people know or really think about what what did that process look like for you coming up with the name wild you know I wanted a one syllable word that was important because we were doing something that was wild like no pun intended but like uh you hear people say like that's wild you know what a wild ride what a wild time and I thought like what a wild idea like to do chip or chicken breast yeah and and so I played around with trying to figure out ways unique ways to spell wild doing that through the internet it LED me to Oscar Wilde if you know who Oscar Wilde is so Oscar Wilde um you know very very witty really didn't give you know two cents about what anybody thought was very clever in his uh in his ways of of uh just how he looked at things and I thought man I love it and and so the name wild came from the spelling of his surname and uh and I gotta tell you it took a while to uh to get that trademark when I first showed up and started talking to trademark attorneys they were like you can't trademark a surname and so we took our time and we had to show proof of concept proof of use um in the market that that was actually attached to a product and not just a surname we were not trying to trademark surname anybody from a last name of wild can open a restaurant you know we do get a little bit there are other brands out there I've seen that one is called Wild Tara where they completely ripped off our name they're owned by General Mills and they came out with a Wild Tara and I have to spell it with a E and so that's a whole separate conversation but I just wanted to be able to own it and I like Oscar Wilde and in some of our language some of the ways we say things there's a little bit of his wittiness in there yeah he's a brand new for sure I love that from a pricing standpoint as early days when you when you went to market what did your strategy and kind of process down your go to market price and then you know a few years later has your kind of approach to pricing changed at all yeah it's a great question we launched in a 2.25 ounce so if you remember back in those days I think two and a half ounce was the pork rinds um so you had epic and you had 45 0 5 and 2.5 ounce and that allowed those guys to hit 5 99 so I couldn't do that I had to go 2.25 ounce and we hit five 99 at Whole Foods um sprouts and that was our strategy we wanted we didn't think you could be over six bucks and as people got into the brand and fast forward we came out with a 4 ounce which sets at 7 99 we also came out with um small bags and multi packs so a four pack at like 9 99 but in the early days we really relied on that 2.25 and you can still find that 2.25 today at all airports so that's our airport uh strategy I think they sell that for like nine 99 or 8 99 in airports but um but our strategy early on matter of fact that was the 2 2 5 so if you look it up like that says 2 2 I know it's true backwards but it's two two five and that was it now I changed this and went to a pillow bag because when we left the manufacturer down in uh Virginia we lost that was not part of our equipment we didn't own that okay they had a piece of equipment that we were using but we went to a pillow bag and then that that uh but that was our strategy early on you mentioned Whole Foods and sprouts I think you landed on the shelf there pretty early on I think I've heard you say you know Whole Foods kind of pioneered the protein based protein based snack set yeah walk me just a bit bit bit getting on the shelf like how that first meeting come together yeah you know it goes back um so there's a guy David Woods Dave Woods and he's moved on from Whole Foods now he's over at Crossfit he lives in Boulder actually he lives outside he lives I think outside of Denver but uh he was a friend of mine um I knew him he was the uh he started out as the regional buyer for Whole Foods Rocky Mountain Region and he actually brought in the meat based protein bar and and then he got promoted to snacks and he moved to Austin and so he called and he was like hey Jay we're gonna create this he was big in the Crossfit he saw the trend before anyone else saw it he said we're gonna we're gonna create this he's gonna call it alternative snacks but it's really gonna be protein he said and I'm gonna have pork rinds and I'm gonna have I'm gonna put you in there and I'm gonna put a four foot set within salty snacks and and we were all for it and and it was just luckily I knew him he was the timing was right he saw it he wanted to create this set and um and I cannot tell you how many times we tried to convince other buyers to do the same set and and and it took a while for people to catch on but that set was doing it did really well for him uh we eventually got sprouts to sign up and do that set you know kind of move all those products near each other um and then it took forever to get the grocery people um to start doing that but like we would show them slides on what the set we thought it should look like and I never forget we would get laughed out of the room and you know if you go to Kroger today there's an actual four or five foot set where it's Quest Wild Protein Doritos now you know there's a simply protein so there's five or six items that are that are now part of this protein set but this guy David Woods kind of saw it you know before anybody yeah been some of the keys to driving velocity at Whole Foods and I guess let's just say the broader natural channel and then any big differences that you've seen in terms of the things that have the most impact from a velocity standpoint between the natural channel and let's just say conventional you know bigger you know the Kroger's of the world and you know the Walmart's of the world let's say yeah man listen I so demos has been key for us I know that's old school marketing thinking yeah and yeah and I'm full I'm fully aware of that and uh but but there was a education piece of wild if people have to get around and I think in marketing that we have done or we're doing and and internally what we've come up with in the positioning that would be brought to life here this summer I think we finally have figured out how to do this but before we you know have that figured out the best way to do it was to just put a product in someone's hand and let them try it for themselves listen we do we do well at Costco and and and the reason is is because Costco has trained their consumer to go in and try product Whole Foods the same way sprouts you know very similar so um that has been uh you know the big the big driver of velocity has really been demos now we're starting to cross over where we've got a lot of influencers starting to talk about the brand we've got um TikTok we're starting to scale a bunch of creators on TikTok and really they're driving disbelief they're driving disbelief to their audience that you won't believe a product made of chicken breast is gonna eat like a Cheez it or you won't believe a product made of chicken breast can eat like a potato chip and it's all about disbelief I mean listen I know it sounds weird but man it tastes wild and we gotta get that message across and I always tell our our our our and I know they get tired of me saying this but I'm like listen guys let's peel something back if I can't believe it's not butter did not say I can't believe it's not butter and they took the approach of telling you it was an alternative spread to butter crafted from I don't know sunflower oil and whatever else there's no chance it gets but when you tell somebody you can't believe in something they automatically wanna try to see if that statement's true yep and I think for wild I've seen time and time again where people will be taken back because you say it's made of chicken and I don't think they're you know they've never had anything made of chicken in a snack and so by default your brain just cannot connect and yeah you just like wonder but then they try it and they are blown away and especially on this cracker Adam I gotta get you samples the cracker is is unreal I'll take all the samples I can get the door count beyond natural channel getting more conventional distributors are obviously important piece of that what's been the distributor what is the distributor journey look like for a while that as the brand has grown and yeah so in the early days you would you know traditional U N F I K E you know route the market as we started to make a name for ourselves we were uh starting to um you know I think maybe our first direct customer I think was uh I think was target we're now direct and you know Costco and Sam's were direct at Kroger a lot of the accounts have now went direct we still work with UNFI and Khe in a big way they feed sprouts they feed Whole Foods actually on the West Coast most of our business in Kroger is serviced through distributors where on the East Coast is direct just different warehouses they have you know east versus west but you know we have we have our commercial team now is about fifty of that I would say that 15 is our sales team and we've started to build a really great team the whole team's great but we've like you know you continue to build out you know I remember when it was just me and Felipe and my wife and we were trying to she would go in and and and be making boxes that we were gonna ship to Amazon and and flip and I'd be running the product and and now to grow and have you know 180 people at the facility close to 200 now and then 50 on the sales or the commercial team it's a man look like and like what is the journey your process to decision to ultimately bring a new skill to market hey man you you you did your homework I like that uh listen I uh I Learned a valuable lesson on that porch so we launched the pork chip in 2,021 when we made the commitment what was it was it 20 was it March of 20 when covid really like took effect and I think that's when they canceled Expo yeah pretty much March yeah I made the commitment to launch the pork chip prior to that Whole Foods and and then we were supposed to launch the summer of twenty and then we had covid and so we we kicked the can down the highway but long story short by the time we got to launch the chip was going to be made of uh pork loin and when covid hit all the nae pork loin like you couldn't get it and so the other piece that we could use this is going deep but wild our process calls for a really lean cut of meat so chicken breast check the box pork loin check the box Turkey breast check the box well the other piece that you could use is the ham and the ham on the pork is super lean but when you say the word ham people think deli so I couldn't say great point you know I couldn't say you know crafted from a ham chip right yeah I mean it was really so we were in a bad situation so we ended up at the last minute calling it premium cuts of pork and I think people just thought it was some type of pork rinds so the lesson I Learned there was chicken when you think about it chicken is one of the most consumed proteins if not the most consumed in the world 99% digestibility so it's one of the most healthy if not the healthiest and no matter what religion you open up or what belief system you open up everybody seems to check the box on chicken they're pretty good with chicken so I made the decision that day we we disko pork and I said you know chicken is what I started that's the foundation of wild like let's focus on forms let's focus on cracker and and we can talk about other things that we're focused on but we made that decision after we discoed the pork chips and we never intend I never intend for us going back now we're focused on formats eating occasions and one thing I liked about the cracker was if you looked at the cracker aisle I thought there was a huge opportunity in white space and no one had really done a cracker right and I felt we could and and I and I believe that with all my heart that we have launched a special special product um and early readings on it are like bigger than I could ever imagine we've only been in market two weeks but I've got data and and and post that um we're focused on launching a tortilla chip at the end of the year built from chicken breast wow and then and then we could come back and launch pita chip built from chicken breast but when I think about all these products like I would love to be the um snack that you turn to we always say here don't settle don't give up and I think right now if you look at the cracker aisle we don't want you to settle for empty snacking so we're gonna bring something where taste is not a trade off but you feel good about it after you eat and that's really what I want so if you look at that if you looked at you know go back to that triangle you know that that everybody snacks on in the chip aisle go over to the deli section and that pita chip that everybody snacks on you know I got my eye on that and if you go over to the the flat pretzel category and that flat pretzel that everybody snacks on I got my eye on that so that's really we have all those capabilities now with this new plant and with the what we learn all the years of the cracker sorry the chip we applied the knowledge to the cracker the cracker we Learned something there that now allows me to to concentrate on dough form so you know you start with dough on cracker you start with dough on pretzel you start with dough on pita chip and listen it you know if if I could go over with today I mean maybe I would have started with uh knowing what I know now I mean maybe maybe the product looks more like a Pringle so we just have opened up another level of knowledge now that allows us to really come strong with some some great snack um that you know can compete with the legacy product or the keys to a successful new product launch in just in terms of 1 hitting your budget and then 2 actually launching on time yeah so budget wise that's tough man because I don't know how many times I've had to go back and say hey you know this line that we're building I'm gonna need a little bit more we're right not quite done so budget wise I think some of this stuff so new technology you don't know what you don't know is you're putting this together you're installing it and and you know I'll give you an example uh with the cracker we don't we won't know this until we get there I didn't know it until he actually ran it in real time but we have some timing issues and what I mean by that is you know the cracker coming out of the oven trying to go into a slurry the way we flavor it um which is olive oil and seasoning by the way it was big deal for us to not do a to do something with olive oil but if you have any stoppage downstream you know maybe they're not sheeting right or something's going on what you learn is you need an accumulation area kind of like a dam you need to build up a big quantity so when you let the dam open you can just start a steady flow feeding through the seasoner and feeding through the baggers and all this can be steady Eddie and we did not think through that well and so that was something that you know kind of bit us and and we're working through right now but what was the second part of that question oh just in terms of that um other than budget is like the keys actually launching on time because it seems like often times that doesn't happen yeah and then and that didn't happen this time so basically we were we were going to be in market we had told everybody we'd be in market right after Expo and uh we were the last piece of equipment coming from Europe was a little bit late and there was a we we we thought this was gonna be the easiest piece of equipment to one install and then two get up and running and it turned out that that was the hardest piece and we had some plc problems like out of our control where I don't know if something got damaged in shipping from Europe but we had some plc problems and it was not this is not like equipment that's off the shelf and so manufacturer had to scramble get us up and going that went through like four weeks of back and forth finally we started running but we Learned that um you know we we we have a we have a dough that has chicken breast and bone broth and then four cheeses we had sticking issues so long story short we end up launching in may you know we're we're a month and a half late we're working with all the retailers trying to explain our problems but you know I get it those guys are got hole in the shelf so it it's that's been that's been a challenge everybody's working with us I would tell you once we get it on shelf trial is being driven a lot by demo right now uh huh there's a big campaign coming in the summer with a lot of influencers that'll hopefully drive it you know but right now in the early days the quickest we could do is demo so you'll see demos at Costco you'll see demos at Sam's you'll see demos at at uh Whole Foods and sprouts yeah raised 1.3 ish million seed another like one and a half I think in Series a two years later and then you did a bigger round I think 20 million or so Series a uh in 2024 just for some founders that are on a similar journey they're getting some traction they've raised seem like they're on track to raise some money probably have the chance to raise a large rounds in the future just from a the founder's point of view in terms of kind of tips and tricks you might give them in terms of how they should be thinking about you know structuring structuring their pitch at that more that you know the seed stage versus raising at more that gross stage at Series a where you just raise that 20 million bucks you've obviously got some more historical numbers that are part of the story like what do you feel like are kind of some of the key differences between the two to be successful at both stages if that makes sense yeah for sure man I think in state in early stages proof of concept if you can have it in one or two stores oh man it validates it so much right I think that's so important and I'll tell you one way to get there is we opened up a note and um because we didn't get the valuation we wanted we opened up a note with a cap and we had early people invest in it and then that converted into the big round but what it did is allowed us to get some proof of concept now listen that was on the bar and I looked back and I don't know how we raised money on the bar I think epic was hot at the time meat sticks was hot people were coming with meat bars there was a lot of talk about it energy behind it and I think people just believe that you know this is gonna be a big big idea big category it didn't happen things like that happen you know and then and then we went through um you know some some down rounds as we were getting to chip to market just because investors pay for sales and we were going through a lot of a lot of you know early capex and early equipment once you can get proof of concept right people can see that that you know it it's it's it's being pulled from the shelf that's a that's a easier sale then if you really really need to raise a large amount I think you need to really think about the Tam the total addressable market I think you need to really think through we think about this all the time one reason it's leading us to eat drive drive the launch of innovation that we're coming with is what is the Tam on the product and you start to look at like tortilla and you start to look at cracker and something that is closer to the form that people are already eating but but I would I would really do some um modeling on you know your velocities and then and then what the potential Tam could be a lot of these investors are interested in how big it can be one day right I mean that's what we're interested in we know the early days are gonna be struggle and we're gonna have bumps in the road and that's part of it but how big can it really be and I think when you try to tell that story through proof or data that's gonna go a long way totally that's really helpful really helpful well yeah Jason it's been great I appreciate the time what's the best place for people to follow along with you and all the expertise you've got and then where what's the best place you want to direct people to follow along with the brand these days yeah man so LinkedIn I'm pretty active on LinkedIn I haven't been as active lately just because I'm buried in a manufacturing facility but uh you can always get in touch with me on LinkedIn and then the the brand um I would you know Instagram follow us there most of our announcements almost all of our announcements are always on Instagram I think that's probably our best outlet of information we are refreshing the website but you know a lot of people don't visit websites anymore you know a lot of people it's all about social TikTok but for me you know LinkedIn the brand has a LinkedIn as well and yeah we'll have some more announcements coming soon and we look to have a great summer and you gotta try that cracker and I'm gonna send you the cracker cause you're gonna love it perfect I'll take it it eats like the cracker we grew up on that sounds perfect awesome Jason I really appreciate the time I think I think that's the pod that I think ultimately LED to to the wild product probably try to lean on co packer as long as possible structure look like was that you know lenders naming is such an important but look like for kind of nailing through that journey in terms of what have you found has been kind of key to look like that leads what's in their pitch in terms of the in the difference between raising