A Taste of Pan-Asian Street Sauces

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1:47it.

1:50Carol Massar:Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Sometimes we get the stuff ahead of time to try it and just like see or just like check out the product. Scarlet food. Yeah, she gave me, she gave me some of the chili crisp. I didn't get any. It was on his desk. It was on my desk and it said you don't need to refrigerate it, you can just open it and then so every day I just take a little bit and put it on my eggs. Yeah. And then suddenly I ate both of them. But fortunately, Brian Goldberg brought more.

2:23He's founder and chief chief growth officer over at Mr. Bing Foods. He joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. I'm glad you brought. I'm very relieved you brought more because I was really worried that I had, you know, really messed this up. You have a really interesting story. You had this food truck. You spent some time living abroad where you had this love of street food. You wanted to bring this back to the U.S. How did you end up with a project line that looked like this? So it all started back in the late 90s in China. Study abroad with my co-founder in Beijing. Ate these amazing street foods, in particular, jenbing.

2:56It's like a savory Chinese crepe that we would have for breakfast every day before school. And then one day we decided to bring that to Hong Kong and then to the U.S. And the sauces in there is what our platform is now.

3:11So Hong Kong and then in New York for almost 10 years, where the brand really built itself up as a street food forward, Pan-Asian street food brand. The sauces, basically, we were doing pop-ups inside a lot of the corporate office cafeterias in New York pre-pandemic, partnering with Compass, Aramark, and Sodexo. And the chefs noticed that we had this chili crisp that we had created. Chili crisp has existed for a long time, right? In Laogama, in China, basically, we wanted to They make a version a little more accessible for the American market and our own, the right particulate size to spread in the food, a mild version of it, a little bit of a different flavor profile, a little more versatile with Mexican, Korean, Chinese flavors to make chili crisp more adaptable to so many other cuisines.

3:57The chefs at those places, like at Goldman Sachs and at Morgan Stanley and at Google, LinkedIn, where we were doing all these Bing pop-ups, loved it and asked us to put it in a big size that they could use in other foods. So I'm holding a, there's a big size here. This is, I don't think they have the actual, oh, 64 ounce version of this.

4:18Carol Massar:That is a big size. Which a typical is seven ounce. So yeah, that's a big. So for their use in their kitchens. Yes. They wanted to use it like to mix with ranch, to mix with mayo, to make what they call plus ones or sauce hacks. Where you, I mean, you can use it straight up, like on eggs, rice, pizza, pasta, burgers. It was a big trend. I mean, it trended a lot during the pandemic, right? It's become much more mainstream now when it was much more niche before. Well, it's interesting because I see it everywhere now. Just Chili Crisp. A lot of different companies make it. And it was first on my radar, I guess, maybe two years ago.

4:50My wife bought it at the store, brought it home. And now Chili Crisp is a condiment that we always have in the home. And we have bought – there are a lot of different versions of it. I mean, Momofuku does a version. There's some classic versions as well from other companies. It's a really crowded space at this point. Well, Chili Crisp definitely saw a massive growth during the pandemic. It's grown over 700 % on menus nationwide in terms of the mention of Chili Crisp, which is sort of our real strong forte is on the food service side as well. We're basically the leading brand in the country in food service Chili Crisp.

5:25If you go to a restaurant, hotel, college, stadium airline, if they're using Chili Crisp. They're using your stuff. That's so interesting. Most likely it's ours, not necessarily. Is that like 70 % or 80 % of your business? Chili Crisp itself is about 85%, but within our overall business, almost 50 % of our revenues is food service. Okay. Right. Interesting. So our products are very chef-driven. I mean, like it was kind of created by the rest by the kiosks, right? Right. And then the chefs that started buying it in big size wanted it a certain way, and we really had that dialogue with a lot of chefs about creating it, how to create it.

6:01And then that's what led to the barbecue sauces, a more squeezable sort of format of a chili crisp. So we've been very involved with the chef community around the country. We've been very fortunate to have that opportunity. And there's a flywheel effect between being on restaurant menus and then how your sales are in the stores and also the e-commerce piece. All three of these things impact each other.

6:27Carol Massar:Where's the growth? I get it. Like in a restaurant, you do it, and then you want it for home. Where's the growth in terms of your businesses? Is it to the restaurants or the business side of it, the corporate side, if you will, or is it in retail outlets? Like where's the growth? It's really across the board. It is. All of it. I think we've been very fortunate to have the opportunity, the relationships, and the distribution. Frankly, getting distribution is really hard. You really need like anchor customers, anchor clients, anchor restaurant chains, anchor retail. once you have that then you can really go out and sell to everyone everyone else but the growth right now is in our squeezables like chili crisp is awesome don't get me wrong people love it but you gotta you gotta stir it up spoon it out scoop it out it's a little bit you take that extra step you get a little oil on the on the counter which is fine it's just the nature of it right because of the texture and how the particulates are but a lot of people just like to reach for something and squeeze it and squirt and put it back right and that's what these are this takes chili crisp There are about 10 % Chili Crisp bits in them.

7:27So it's a line of Asian barbecue sauces, Chili Crisp barbecue sauces. They're the first ones on the market that are a Chili Crisp-based barbecue sauce, right? And that was developed because chefs wanted to squeeze the Chili Crisp. They wanted to be able to apply it to pizza or to wings more easily. You needed something sticky, like a binder, right? And that, like Topper's Pizza in Wisconsin, was the first one that really did that with us. And that led to the OG Sweet and Spicy. And then that worked so well in a large format that we decided to go a little more Pan-Asian. And that led to the Thai, the Thai hot honey, which has more like lemongrass and could fear lime leaf in it.

8:06We have a Korean gojujang forward one that has more yuzu and ginger. And we have a mild. So don't forget, like our mild chili crisp is actually more than half our sales of chili crisp because almost half of Americans don't like spicy food.

8:20Carol Massar:I'm a mild kind of gal. The rest of my family is going to bring out the spicy food. when you take them out. The things you just held up, those small dishes, what are those? These are samples. These are just, we'll call them hockey pucks. Basically, these little baby guys. TSA compliant? They are TSA compliant. They are. And I'm sort of infamous for always having them in my office. So now I know what he's going to be traveling with. Yes, exactly. So basically, I mean, food service is so relationship driven. And Chili Chris, to your point, like a lot of people don't know what it is. You have to taste it to kind of understand what it really is if you've never had it.

8:55Carol Massar:I've never had it. Oh, it's so good. I'm sorry I didn't share it with you, though. No, you're absolutely not sorry. But honestly, I have a real question about the serving sizes. Because these little jars are supposed to have 40 servings. That is not typical for me in terms of serving. But it's a teaspoon of this as a serving size. That seems like a small amount to include on it. How much do you take, Tim? A few teaspoons each time. Yeah, quite a bit though. But I mean, I think it's kind of regardless. I don't know. It just seems like. I'm sorry. It just seems like a small serving size. I don't know.

9:31Do you find that chefs.

9:32Carol Massar:You know you have a big appetite. I do. But do you find that chefs are actually adhering to like what is like that actual suggested serving? I know that's just the nutrition information side of it. But is that meant to be like to flavor an entire piece of pizza or flavor like three eggs? It's a good question. So like in food service and according to like food labeling rules, there is a standard serving size for different types of things. Barbecue sauce is a particular standard serving size. I guess that makes sense if you want to compare labels across the board. Yes, exactly. And chili oil, because it's pretty potent or can be pretty potent.

10:04You know, ours is not. It kind of builds up. It doesn't overpower you. It's more about the texture, the flavor. But there is a standard serving size that you put on there for chili oil. Now, chefs will use as much as they want. Right. I mean, the Tyson chef was covering an entire turkey with the Chili Crisp turkey as a new concept.

10:22Carol Massar:Oh, that's cool. Right. That's really cool. And so that totally blew away the portion size. Tim, did you hear Brian said standard size? Yeah, standard. Yeah, that's okay. Just going to put it out there. I'm just looking at it. So you guys are in 10 ,000 retail doors nationwide? Yes, over 10 ,000 on the Chili Crisp, over 2 ,500 on the barbecue sauces. Yeah. And I don't know how many thousands of restaurants, hotels, colleges, stadiums. Does it sell in terms of the retail across the country equally? Or do you find there's certain metro areas where you really, that's where a lot of the demand is?

10:55I mean, it does tend, it used to be very strong in the more international coastal cities, right? But it's really spread just because, you know, TikTok and social media, people see these things all over the place right away. It doesn't really matter. But yes, we have had a stronger, a little bit higher numbers, I guess, you know, East Coast and West Coast, Pacific Northwest where we manufacture it, California, obviously large Asian population. It's all manufactured in the United States?

11:18Carol Massar:It is. We make everything in the United States, which has been really great, especially to avoid. You know, we haven't had the really tariff issue come up. It makes it a lot easier for us to work with our manufacturers to adjust things in terms of supply chain. But yeah, it is. We put Made in USA in pretty big letters on there. So Asian-inspired but made in the USA. You know, McCormick bought Cholula hot sauce for$800 million back in 2020. Things have changed a lot in the last six years. You're an independent company now. What's the plan for acquisition or the future? So we're very focused on our current products, growing them, getting them more into more chefs, more stores.

12:03We do work with some other big brands. we've been very fortunate through the food service industry in particular right with kikoman for example we do a chili crisp poison sauce together which is awesome a little bit of ponzu a little sriracha in there and we sell that in food service together uh with hormel we work with them with their proteins like really complementary uh companies where they'll use it to ideate with big the biggest restaurant chains in the in the country right on how to integrate our sauces with their products and you know we'll see where things go but right now right it's really focusing on growing the products, getting the new products out there.

12:38Carol Massar:So there's more expansion that can come off of this. Absolutely. A lot more. Like what? Well, when you talk about numbers in retail, there's roughly 30 ,000 supermarkets in the country that you kind of judge in terms of your percentage of penetration in retail. We're just over 10 ,000, right? So we have definitely a ways to go, and in food service as well, and especially with the new products. So we're at about a 12 million run rate right now we're profitable and there's um a lot more growth so so brian how much should tim eat of this regularly i think that's personal like one teaspoon is a normal a normal person big chili crisp guy one teaspoon that's a suggestion should he share with his colleagues maybe he should come on yeah i will share it's on the record everybody brian brian goldberg founder and chief growth officer over at mr bing foods joining us here in the bloomberg interactive brokers studio If you follow markets, you know the value of long-term thinking.

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