The Alchemy of New Primal

0:03Welcome to the Brand Alchemist podcast, where we uncover the magic and mystery of how some of the world's most sought after and newest brands were started and continue to evolve. I'm your host, Taja Dockendorf, founder and creative director of Pulp & Wire, a CPG branding, marketing and launch agency. I'm also an investor in emerging brands and own a few of my own as well. Over the last 18 years, I have worked with, created for, and grown hundreds of companies in the CPG space, like Ryan's Snacks, Allagash Brewing, Ocean Spray, Petco, and many more. Now, here's today's episode.

0:44Welcome to the Brand Alchemist podcast. Today, I get to sit down with Jason Burke, the founder of New Primal. New Primal is one of the fastest growing brands redefining clean ingredient meat sticks. What started in 2012 as a side project after his homemade jerky became a hit around his office has grown into a category leader producing more than 3 million meat sticks each month. Burke's path to entrepreneurship started early. Growing up in Section 8 housing, he worked multiple jobs to put himself through college, building the grit and resilience that would later define his brand. His passion for healthier food took shape in 2008 after both his parents were diagnosed with diet-related chronic illness, sparking a mission to make better-for-you options more accessible.

1:27Seeing a gap in the market for convenient, high-quality protein snacks, he built New Primal to challenge the ultra-processed status quo. Today, the brand is helping reshape the category, moving beyond the traditional male-focused jerky audience to reach women and families through products like Snackmates. From early retail rejections to nationwide distribution, Jason's journey is one of persistence, purpose, and smart disruption. Now recognized as a 2026 Ernest & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Southeast Finalist, he's become a leading voice on clean label, supply chain resilience, and what it really takes to build a lasting CPG brand.

2:06Jason, welcome to the Brand Alchemist podcast. I'm really excited to be talking about New Primal today and chicken sticks and your growth And honestly, as a fellow EY finalist and podcaster, I think we're going to have a lot in common. And honestly, I'm a huge jerky fan. So this is going to be great. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. It's always a great honor whenever I get a chance to tell my story or talk about this thing that we've built. And congratulations on the EY finalists. Excited to be in Atlanta in a few weeks and going through that sort of final round of judging. So you're literally a finalist right now.

2:46I think I was a year or two ago. So you're just going through the whole rigmarole of it. I am actively a finalist. All right. You're going to love it. It's really fun. It's very nerve wracking. Okay, well, maybe I'll get some, maybe I'll ask you for some tips after this and you can give me, give me the download. I don't really know what to expect as I go into that final round of questions and judging. I will happily give you some tips and tricks when we're done. Well, welcome. Let's talk new primal. I mean, amazing growth that you've had, but let's start with where it started, kind of personally making the brand and we'll kind of just go through the lineage from there.

3:23Cool. You know, I never thought I would be in food or consumer products or any of those things. It wasn't like I woke up one day and said, this is what I want to be when I grow up. But I, you know, I grew up in a really blue collar family. um uh in fact for the first 12 years of my life we were in section 8 housing um and um my my mom got me into a uh a special assignment to go to a school in the most affluent part of town and um it changed my life at least from like how I viewed the world and you know where I grew up you know it was kind of an impoverished pocket of town and I went to school and all my friends were wealthy.

4:02And so it just created like a desire in me to like want the things that they had, the cars that they, you know, the parents drove, the houses that they lived in and all those kinds of things. And I didn't really play sports or, you know, join social clubs or do a whole lot, like in high school or anything like that. I went to work. And so I started a lawn business. And that was really like, how do I have money in my pocket? And how do I buy my own car? Because And how do I keep up with them? So I think the entrepreneur in me was born in that time. But, you know, I went to school in Tampa, went to South Florida and, you know, didn't ever think I would leave Florida.

4:41And then I left in 2008. And shortly thereafter, both my parents were diagnosed with chronic illnesses and both were and both were directly related to diet and nutrition. And so I just took a keen interest in food and its impact on our health. and I went down this you know a few rabbit holes and the one that really stood out to me with was this idea of like this ancestral model that you could follow a way of eating and you know really early trend called paleo circa 2009 that a lot of people were talking you know there's this like underground vibe of paleo and you know I didn't there was some real like dogmatic points of view back then I used to have a group of people I would call the paleo police that if you know if you ate cast you, they were going to come after you.

5:27But for me, it was like an interesting framework to follow. And it was really simple. And so what the biggest takeaway there is I learned how to cook, and I learned how to make my own food. And I started reading ingredient labels, and I started buying food from like the local farmers market. And I kind of went down that whole journey. I was working in software sales for a publicly traded company. And the I have a terrible sweet tooth. And so to overcome that, I would take all these snacks and keep them in my desk drawer so that I wouldn't go get the Snickers bar at three o 'clock in the afternoon.

6:02And the one snack that I would take was a homemade beef jerky that I was making and everybody would steal it from me. And so, you know, I was buying, you know, really premium cuts of grass fed beef from the local farmer. And I was using like a really simple spice mixture. And I was making like a little tabletop dehydrator that I put in my kitchen. And it took a long time and it was expensive and all my buddies would steal it. So I finally put like a tip jar out and on my desk and made this announcement. Like, if you're going to steal my jerky, like you guys need to pay me for this stuff, you know?

6:36And so people did, they would put like$20 bills with sticky notes on it, drop it in my tip jar and say, Hey, you know, make me some the next time you, the next time you make a batch or I stole some from you. So here's some money for the next batch or whatever. And, um, one dehydrator in my kitchen grew to six. And, um, I went, uh, one night my wife went on a girl's night out and came home and, you know, I'm just like in the kitchen, like flipping trays with dehydrators, there's smoke everywhere. You know, the house smells like a barbecue pit. And she walks in the door and she's like, what is happening?

7:07She's like, get this stuff out. Um, and, and there was this kind of like funny aha moment where, you know, I looked at her and I was like, do you think we're onto something here? Like, is there something to this? uh and at the time it was really funny she didn't really care she's like i don't really care just can't make this stuff here anymore just get it out and and so you know we i rented a um a lady's like she had converted her garage into a catering kitchen and i rented that part-time to be able to make beef jerky and on the side i i got it through the usda's inspection process and i set up a really bad website um and that was my part-time job for the next year and a half i I was exploring like the regulatory side of food manufacturing and people want this grass fed jerky stuff.

7:54And I didn't know anything about branding, packaging, supply chain, you know, manufacturing. I started to learn the regulatory side, as I mentioned. And for 18 months, that was it. And then, you know, we were selling a couple thousand bucks a month through our poorly built website. And I thought, man, what if I went full time and actually tried? Like, what if I went and like tried to sell to like major retailers? Like everything in the grocery store sucks. Like everything, all this stuff is like very gas station quality. So September of 2012, I quit the day job. I went full time into the meat snacks business, having really no idea what I was about to get myself into.

8:32And no one's really challenged me on this, but I do believe I commercialized the first ever grass fed beef jerky for retail. And so we were off to the races from that point. Well, congratulations. I mean, that's you're right. In 2012, the jerky market was very kind of old school, male dominated, dark, smoky pit master kind of vibe. Right. It was a very it wasn't I mean, that's really when we start looking at like Whole Foods coming into the equation and better eating. It seems weird that 2012 would be that timeline, but that really is where we started to see a lot of shift in natural and organic and better for you brands starting to come to market, seeing that switch.

9:11so grass-fed you were you were the early entrepreneur of it which is awesome to now think about because that timing really aligns but you also did something different beyond grass-fed beef I mean you've been focusing on chicken too which that has a whole stigma behind it how did I mean that's that's a different marketing play to get people to think about chicken jerky yeah you know the categories evolved significantly over time so what what without giving like every detail of the messy middle, grass fed beef quickly became table stakes in the category. It was, you know, people saw our early success and there were some other brands thinking about it and they kind of accelerated their path.

9:52And as that, as that grew the supply chain and the availability of grass fed beef started to grow. And you had this kind of broad consumer awareness starting to, to develop around like added sugar and added preservatives and, and things like that. And even like soy and jerky, like we just removed it. And so people started to think about that differently. We found that a lot of, a lot of our demographic wasn't typical of the category. And so we found that, you know, what, and we, we didn't think it would be, but we validated the idea that like very health forward and health conscious people would consume a product that historically has been really bad for you.

10:32I mean, if we cleaned it up and then we had women enter the category and people start to jump in. The challenge that we found though with jerky is one, it's very expensive. When you take out all the crap, it becomes really hard to make and make any money off of it. Like there's no margin in the business. And so it was really hard to sell like an$8 bag of jerky when, you know, as a trial offering, it was a new brand. And we thought, well, how do we get people to try the company and give them access to higher quality protein without all the junk. And so that's when we said, well, the next sort of the next segment of this category is the meat stick.

11:11And, and so we just decided to go into the meat stick side so that we could create something that still had the same attributes, still had access to the same quality protein, but at a lower price point where consumers could enter the category or try something different at a, you know, at two bucks versus eight. And, and so from there, what we found was like people really liked the meat sticks because they were easier to eat. You know, the flavors were mild. And, um, and then again, once again, we had women and then we had, we had this segment of kids and people would say, you know, I'm giving this to my kids, uh, because it's like, you know, it's good protein for them.

11:46It balances out all the sugary snacks that they eat. And we had this aha moment a couple of years in and we went, are we missing an entire segment that could want, that could participate in this category? Um, but just hasn't because it's been such trash. And so that's when we thought, what if we made like kid-friendly flavors? And what if we made something that was really great for the lunchbox? And we pulled some parents around like meat preference and so forth. And we found that obviously like mom wanted to give their kids poultry. It was turkey. It was chicken. They felt better about giving that to their kids over the beef, even though, you know, we can make a really, really strong argument that grass-fed beef is, you know, nutritionally dense and, you know, superior in a lot of ways.

12:28We just found that there was just a perception around poultry that, um, you know, think about like the lunch meat, um, moms were going to give their kids Turkey and chicken versus roast beef. Right. And so we, we just thought, well, let's create fun flavors that kids will actually eat centered around poultry. No one's ever done anything really centered around poultry. It's a very small portion of the overall meat snack category. Um, and let's just play the game where we invite an entirely new consumer to the category. Uh, and we'll still have some beef offerings, right. that kind of serve as that entry point for people who just aren't willing to take the risk on new protein types.

13:05And we saw the early groundswell. We got all of the early adoption. We saw this like early adopter mentality and people loved it. But still broadly, it was hard to get people to like try it. And it took a while and it took several other meat snacks brands entering the category, starting to create some groundswell around, hey, look, this isn't just one little niche brand doing this. This is a category undergoing intense disruption right now. And today, chicken is the fastest growing protein in the category. And we make the fastest growing, or we make the number one selling chicken meat snack in the category.

13:46But it's the fastest growing segment because moms and kids are here. And so what has happened is people have realized that it doesn't have to be a Slim Jim. doesn't have to be filled with all sorts of crazy stuff um it can taste good and the kids will actually not only will they eat if they'll ask for it and so we found that disrupting the lunchbox has been sort of the moat that we've built the brand around um so the evolution of the brand has gone from you know commercializing grass-fed beef jerky where that's now i think table stakes in the category to you know where can we as a company you know serve the consumer the best where can we basically build on our right to be in the category and then give our retail partners a reason to believe that we deserve space in the set.

14:30And we're not just another meat brand or beef brand or grass-fed beef brand, but we have an entire moat carved out around the lunchbox. And then from there, we graduate people up with other unique flavors and larger size, call them adult portioned meat sticks. But it starts with the lunchbox for us. that's fascinating because i mean disrupting a category is one of the hardest things to do and then getting people to adopt do it so i mean for you with chicken sticks i mean personally it's like yeah there's a stigma there like is it raw chicken when you think about how beef jerky is done so there's that natural kind of overcoming that space but it is really interesting that your disruption happened at the lunchbox level too to your point was there anything else that you did in that side, thinking about this disruption, a different meat when everyone else is used to grass fed beef that helped also change some of that stigma?

15:21You know, there's a lot of compound interest there. I can't say there was like one big flag that we planted in the ground. That was, this is the different thing. What we found was familiar flavors. So we didn't try to get too outside of the box or too cute with the core. So what flavors were already broadly adopted by the consumer when it came to things like chicken. And so there was a breakfast sausage that was made with chicken and maple flavor. And so we thought chicken and maple is already something that's broadly adopted. Let's make a chicken stick that has that same flavor profile. So people aren't guessing as much.

16:00Last year, we launched a full-sized chicken stick and I couldn't believe no one had done it yet. I was actually shocked when we thought about it. And I was like, we don't want to just call it original chicken because I don't think anyone knows what that means. I don't know that people know what that tastes like. And so how do you reduce and remove the friction of purchase? You create familiar flavors. And so we consume almost a billion rotisserie chickens in America every year. And so I thought, why don't we call it a rotisserie chicken stick? Everyone knows what rotisserie chicken tastes like.

16:35So if we want to encourage adoption of a new protein in this category, create the familiar flavor profile. And the rotisserie chicken steak, which again, we launched just last spring, last May. So it's been less than a year, has by far been the fastest growing, fastest adopted product we've ever launched in the last 14 years. And I think it's timing. The category is evolving. You know, we've stuck with it. There's a lot of compound interest, as I mentioned. and then this flavor profile just isn't something the consumer has to guess about. And so people know what to expect and then we deliver on it, right?

17:11You have to also deliver on what you say you're going to do. And I think it's the best tasting meat snack in the market today. Well, you know, what's really smart too is your flavor profile doesn't allude to raw chicken, like original chicken, to your point. You're creating flavors that are chicken sausage cooked in the home, right? Rotisserie chicken, that is a cooked chicken. So you're not trying to do like, you know, chicken and cranberry or something along those lines that could lead the consumer down to thinking it's raw. The flavors are based on seasoned, cooked chicken flavors that people are familiar with, which is really smart because that is a really easy way of taking that stigma.

17:46So they're not thinking raw. They're thinking, oh, I love rotisserie chicken. I buy one at the grocery store or I love chicken sausage. That makes sense. So that's really smart. So I can see how that alone helped drive those sales while removing some of that potential fear that consumers can have with a different protein. You summarized it perfectly, better than I could. So thank you. So your growth now with this number one selling rotisserie chicken stick, you've surpassed 100 million in retail sales and you're growing 40 percent year over year, which is phenomenal. I mean, that for a startup brand, when you start in your kitchen and you grassroots the whole thing and you build, I mean, that's incredibly inspiring for a lot of CPG brands.

18:27And honestly, I think that's what they need to be hearing these days when they're worried about VC and how are they going to get to that level. But what were some of the things that happened within? I mean, you didn't start there and you weren't gifted a company. So you built this from the ground up. But what were some of those like stakes in the sand that you said, yeah, we're growing, we're doing this. Let's let's keep going. Let's keep building on this 40 percent. You know, there's so many moments that we just there were so many moments that validated what we were doing. The belief was just so strong, even when there were headwinds and they're always headwinds.

19:01But even when the headwinds felt really intense, I don't know that we ever wavered on belief. And I think we just had all of these proof points that it was like, okay, we can hang on a little longer here. This is going to work. We know it's going to work. And I think that belief was just so intense that there was never a moment that shook us enough to think, you know, are we going to make it? Like, I don't think anything has ever shaken us to that point. We did take some bunny trails along the way. And, you know, we went into, you know, we went into other categories, you know, like sauces and marinades and seasonings and things that were kind of, you know, we thought we would call them meat adjacent.

19:41And, you know, I would say those were an extreme distraction. We did it better than I think most early stage emerging brands could do. But they became an extreme distraction over time from the core of who we are and what we do. So, you know, I would say that those were, that was something that we thought, hey, this is going to become a platform that didn't work out for us along the way. And that was all intentional, though. At the end, we went, we have to, we have to like create focus here. But I would say, you know, in the beginning, I went really wide, really fast, both in my assortment and in my retail footprint.

20:18I would not suggest that if I were to do it again, but we did. And in that process, I hung on to some really core key relationships that I just would not let go of. And so Whole Foods would be one a couple of beers in that we gained. And we just said, hey, listen, if everything else burns to the ground, we're not letting this relationship go. We're going to drive deep here. We're going to make sure that our core consumer is served here. We're going to test and try all new products along the way. And that was one of those, again, stakes in the ground that we just said, hey, we've got this. We're not going to let it go.

20:49and we did some pretty extreme things that, you know, we're not on camera, but I have a couple of tattoos on my arm. I got those with my Whole Foods buyers during like expos. And so it's like, I don't care if I got a tattoo with the guy, we're not letting this relationship go. That is commitment right there. So I think like, I think that's it, right? You find like, what is it that you can really grasp onto and hold onto whenever those storms are swirling? And for us, it was some of the retail relationships. And the other was just this, like, we could see the groundswell. I saw the groundswell 15 years ago.

21:24This category was so ripe for disruption. And if we just hung on, and if we, like, it was going to be something really transformative within the grocery store. And today, it is the fastest growing category in all of grocery. There's, I mean, people talk about functional beverage and people thought it is the fastest this growing category in the entire grocery store today, which is remarkable to think about. And, you know, we saw one example of this occur before we launched, which was Chobani disrupting yogurt. You know, and yogurt was a massive category in the store, you know, run by a couple of legacy players.

21:57And it really wasn't a good product. It's very watery, very sugary. And Chobani came in with this rich, thick, high protein, you know, nutrient dense yogurt and took 40 % of the category sales in five years. And we thought, man, meat stacks are in the same position, you know, run by a couple of big companies, haven't done anything refreshing in a long time. No new consumers, the same old kind of Bubba truck driving gas station, you know, consumer, like, what if we cleaned it up and gave the consumer something better? So we bet on that so long ago, and we just knew it was going to happen. But we just had to hang on to some of these like core beliefs long enough because, you know, the idea behind snack mates, which is the kids line, I was pitching to Kroger and Publix and Target in 2015, 2016.

22:42And they all went, man, this is great. But call me back when it's in 2000 stores. And, you know, Snackmates, I hate to say it, the lunchbox, like three years ago, we were just doing$5 million in sales with that line. And so it's just accelerated so aggressively. So I think if you can hang on long enough and get the timing right, that really helps. But you have to have like some flags planted in the ground, I think to endure some of those storms. And then for me, I'm just stubborn enough. My parents got sick. I want to disrupt this gross food system. And I had some investors who bet on me early that I was, you know, come hell or high water, I was not going to disappoint when this thing was all said and done.

23:22And so I think we've just always found a way to survive. And I think survival is a skill in startup CPG. I think a certain amount of delusional faith and optimism is necessary for an entrepreneur in this space. Like, Nope, we're not going to fail. Even if we do fail, we're not going to call it that. We're going to call it a learning opportunity. We're going to move on. So don't worry about it. But disrupting the category, that's huge. And that's what we talk to a lot of brands about is, yes, I know you've got this product, but are we disrupting an antiquated category? How are we building on what's there and how are we going to be different?

23:54Because a Me Too brand isn't going to help anyone. You're not going to have that same growth and trajectory. So it is really interesting, right down from 2012, right? Building up till now. And you went wide with product selections. You, you know, you built, which a lot of brands do. And I think that was right about that time where everyone's like, yeah, let's put the money into it. Let's do sauces. Let's do salad dressings. Let's do all these things until you realize that delusional optimism and faith is like, wait a second, we did one thing really, really well. And if we double down on this, that's our opportunity and kind of niche in, which, you know, is what I think 2022 and beyond is all about, like focus, where's the money?

24:32How are you going to focus? How are you going to get there? And you've seen huge success from regional retailers to national distribution. But you do have a big launch coming up this summer, too. That's really exciting. I have been pitching Target for a decade. And we are finally officially launching six new items in every Target store in America. And that is going to be extremely transformative for the business today. It's also where our core consumer shops. It's where people, you know, pantry stock for the lunchbox snacks. And we could not be more thrilled to finally be available nationally in a best in class retailer like Target.

25:16So that is a huge, huge win for us that has been a decade in the making. You're going to do so well there. I really do think the kids snack sticks are just going to, you know, be a perfect marriage for Target. So it takes a lot of time and planning. It doesn't I mean, for some brands, it happens overnight, but for others who just follow that path, it does happen. You just have to keep having faith. Yeah, look, and, you know, you can we can all look to those outliers. There's something to be said for those overnight successes, too. You know, there is. And there's all sorts of like nuance to like why.