How CHOMPS Bootstrapped to $500 Million in Sales

25:25And I love that. How did that kind of, was that kind of an eye-opening moment when it comes to the Whole30, since that was targeted more towards, you know, women or actually getting that certification? It was maybe opening up like your customer base to women. Did that kind of affect or made you rethink their branding for Chomps? Yeah, absolutely. And so we already had great data from, you know, being a D2C brand. And you had a pretty, you know, a lot of good customer data. And so we were already aware that despite all these, you know, this big uncreate email, which we know is leaning heavily guys, right?

26:03And then all these other influencers we worked with, if you looked at our customer base, it was heavily leaning towards female. Like it was like 70 % to 80 % of the time. And we were like, what's going on? Like we didn't quite understand why. And then it really wasn't until, honestly, years in, we got to 2018, when we had enough money to actually do some real panel data and do an attitude of usage study and figure out who's actually eating the product, who's buying the product, then also who's consuming the product, right? And that's when we got really smart about it. And we're able to put that data together with our e-com data and realizing, yeah, we've got about a 70 % female customer base and consumer.

26:43and yeah, really realized then that, well, first off, if you saw our packaging before this period of time and the packaging that we launched in D2C and in like in the retail, we launched in Trader Joe's with this packaging that I actually designed it myself, which it's embarrassing to say, to see it, but it was actually, it was masculine. It had cowhide background and the Chomps logo didn't look like what it does today. It was like a cow brand, like a rusted cow brand, essentially. I'll shoot it over to you, Athens. You can take a look at it. It's hilarious. Yeah. But I mean, the fact of the matter is that women were still buying that.

27:16And it was a lot of women, right? And once Trader Joe's came on, it was millions of women buying the product, right? So in 2018, we realized, okay, we're not speaking to our customer the right way. We do need to do things from our branding, messaging, packaging, all of these different things to make sure that we have a brand that would resonate with our core customer. And so that's when we did our whole rebrand and created packaging, which looks much similar to what we have today. How did you approach as well, like at what scale DTC or online, then did you feel like, okay, let's actually now go into retail?

27:53When did you kind of make that choice? And roughly when was that period? So we didn't make that choice. Actually, Trader Joe's made that choice for us. Oh, okay. The idea was always that we were going to, we really had no aspiration to go into retail. We thought we were just going to be able to build this thing as a side hustle. And we had onesie-twosie, like CrossFit gyms or chiropractic offices that were all ordering from us. But all we did is create a separate instance on our website, which was basically a wholesale portal. Password protected and all of that. So people can kind of go on and order.

28:27But they were just placing e-com orders. It was on a different portal and with different pricing. So really, we had no, especially national retail. We had no presence there. But when they reached out and said, we'd be interested in putting your product on the shelves, we obviously jumped at that opportunity. For sure. I'm just kind of curious, because there's so many private label brands in Trader Joe's, very few brand brands or independent brands in Trader Joe's. Why do you think that Chomps stood out in terms of actually them wanting, rather than launching, obviously I know you're not Trader Joe's, But like, why do you think that they kind of wanted you all chomps to come to Hater Joe's versus them building their own brand?

29:10It was actually pretty simple. So they, the buyers there, first off, are amazing at spotting trends, which I think is probably obvious just based on how well the stores do. But they, they were seeing what was going on with Whole30. It was taken off like, you know, like crazy. They called up us, they called up RX Bar at the same time. And I think there was a couple other Whole30 approved brands and they wanted to make sure they were offering those at the store. Um, so that's literally what happened. Um, so they, they wanted to put that in. They, they thought that that would resonate with a lot of people and their core customer.

29:42And it did. Um, and we've actually replaced a private label stick that they had, um, they had on their shelves. So they kind of just, they said, we're going to stop the private label. We're going to put chomps in test this, see how it does. And we did very well. That's amazing. And did that start and the raw for, for Trader Joe's, was that first by region or was that all, all national to begin with? Yeah, I mean, as far as we know, like it's all or nothing. I don't think they necessarily have a regional strategy. Every store gets the same truckload in. It's the store captives that then determine how do you merchandise it.

30:15But yeah, it was everything. It was a massive volume shift for us to be able to execute from just doing a DTC model to DTC plus Trader Joe's. And what was revenue at the time before Trader Joe's comes in? Or in terms of how many units y 'all were moving DTC monthly? top line was about 400k 400k annually that first year was about 4 million so we 10x the business wow holy smokes so when the fair joker's order came in and it's kind of like a holy sh** moment right just in terms of that you're actually expanding the business to you know 10xing the business over 12 months but it's also a holy sh** moment in terms of how are we going to manufacture all of all these sticks did you have to switch manufacturers did you have to what was that process like when you have actually 10x the amount of cards you have?

31:06Yeah, I still remember. So at the time when we received these purchase orders, they would come via fax, but then the fax would get converted to an email and you'd get this text notification. So I was in my condo in Chicago. And for whatever reason, my parents were in town and we're sitting there playing spades. And my phone went off and it kept going off. And I look And I'm like in my I'm doing some quick math in my head, like adding up these totals. And I'm like, this is a lot higher than what P and I had discussed. Right. So I go to the back room and I call P and he's like stoked. He's so excited.

31:36He's like, you see these? I'm like, I see them. But like, this is not what we aligned on. I'm like this. I like I had I had already set up like what I thought we could execute on. And this was by far a lot bigger. And so like I was like, you got to give me a second. I got to refresh my model. So I had an Excel model built. I refreshed it and it was like we needed a million dollars to support that those that first round of purchase orders. And we didn't have that. And so from a Friday to the next Monday over the weekend, we were able to get friends and family commitments that only to be able to fund that purchase order.

32:07And that was like, honestly, that was the easiest part. The harder part was then saying, how are you going to get enough beef? How are we going to get enough packaging and ingredients? It's how we're going to convince our co-man to go from, you know, five or 10 ,000 pound production to 150 ,000 pound production, right? Are we going to be able to get enough lead time from Trader Joe's to give us a lot of time to build the inventory required to support these? So it was the biggest undertaking we have experienced. And there were a ton of risks. The way I describe it, even when we were asking for money was, you know, we've all cooked steaks before and we all overcooked them or undercooked them.

32:41Like food is not a perfect science, right? You're not making a widget, right? You can mess it up. And we had messed up production runs over the time. So it was it wasn't like a slam dunk. But our manufacturing partner at the time, well, he said no to us about a dozen times. And so we just asked the same question a few different ways. And eventually, eventually he agreed to it. And even a year later, he regretted it because it put so much pressure on his business. But he's like, I can't believe I agreed to this. I can't believe I agree to it. But I think he's pleased at this point that he did because he was able to build a pretty significant business around it.

33:13But yeah, it was hard to grow at that pace in such a short period of time. Yeah. And Mike, we were talking about how when you take out some of those other ingredients, sugars, all those different things, it creates a really, what's the word? Fragile product, I guess I would say, right? So, you could have a lot of these like cosmetic defects and those types of things. You have to level up your quality control. And so, we were already hand inspecting every single stick that we manufactured at the time and realized like, We have to figure out how to scale this and fast because we can't do this anymore.

33:46This is like 1.1 million sticks or whatever the number was. This is a lot. It's like pallets and pallets of product. So we ended up finding a warehouse space up in Chicago. We hired a couple of temp agencies to get temp workers out there. So we would have like 40 guys, 40 people around and we build up these tables. And so she would actually come in. He was still traveling for work. He was still an operations consultant. And so I'd fly up there. He would meet with me on like, I think a Monday morning. We would get these like kind of pods set up and we would just, you know, kind of between the two of us figure out the strategy and he'd be like, all right, I got to go.

34:21And then I'm running these, uh, like 40 people trying to break down and build up pallets and get them ready to ship. Um, look at his wife at the time too. Nessar was, she was pregnant and she ended up having to, like she would hang out in the warehouse with me and trying to help me like keep track of things. But yeah, it was like, you literally just, we just did what we had to do to get it done and deliver good quality product that, you know, because without doing that, without doing the inspection, we would not be on shelves at Trader Joe's today and without doing all the other things that we did to make sure that their customers were happy and obviously they were happy.

34:54So, um, was this, was this also maybe the moment that you both thought, Hey, let's actually go full time with this. Oh yeah. I had already kind of started. Okay. I was like, yeah, I, I was like, I'm, I'm already done. I guess this is, this is my thing now um and then uh yeah that was that was probably 2016 and then um i think rasheed started he went full-time on january 1st of 2018 so wow um amazing amazing um how did you also think um from after trader joe's and how did you also because what i've heard from um from founders as well is getting the order getting into um getting into a big retailer i mean trader joe's is obviously like incredible and so hard to do.

35:37But it's one thing to get into a retailer. It's another thing to actually sell the product. Obviously, a lot of sample for new brands, that translates to a lot of sampling and making sure that people have the opportunity, customers have the opportunity to try the product before they buy. How did you also approach, since you went into Trader Joe's nationally, which it seems like the only way to go to Trader Joe's, How did you feel like you also had to support that when it comes to making sure that obviously people are buying and you're getting the right velocities that you set out for? I'd say like this is a testament to Trader Joe's.

36:11Like we we believe we are on the right side of a bunch of trends. Trader Joe's sought to and that's the reason they brought him in, brought us in. They know how to price product the right way. They know how to merchandise it the right way. And they bring in product that their consumers want. Right. They're not going to bat a thousand. Right. There's a likely instances where they've taken a shot at something and it hasn't materialized. But that wasn't the case with Chomps. It was the perfect product at the perfect time. And it performed far better than anyone would have expected. And it didn't require any trade investment or marketing or demos.

36:41Like it just flew right out of the gate. And to the point where when Trader Joe's brings in a new product, they have like a new product aisle. It's like the first aisle when you turn in the store. So we had two points of distribution. We have the normal set, which was randomly spread throughout the store. And then on that turn. and I think within eight weeks or six weeks, we got a second round of POs because it was turning so quickly. And so it was like a foregone conclusion. We're like, wow, we are crushing it. We launched with a single product. Six months later, we launched a second SKU and now we have three.

37:12But it was, again, it was the right product, the right place at the right time. And it's a testament to Trader Joe's being able to merchandise it and price it the right way. Because if you think about it, it was a pretty low entry price point. I think at the time they were pricing it at$1.59. And so it was like, it was a low risk for consumers. A Trader Joe's consumer was always excited for the new, new, like what is the new product they're bringing in? And so they have these diehard loyalists that were willing to try it and they tried it, but then they came back and bought more and more. Yeah.

37:39The one thing, I just want to correct one thing here. So you said the next order came in like six to eight weeks after. That's not at all what happened. So we came out, we launched August 8th of 2016 and the product, so we got the initial day, 2 days worth of data. And the buyer kept us abreast of what was going on and how it was performing. And she kept saying, these numbers are really, really high. But we always have this when the product's on this new item shelf that she was talking about. She's like, when it comes off, it's going to definitely dip back down. And that just never happened. It just kept going and growing and growing.

38:15And so within 5 days, though, she realized that could be based on our lead time. We had 17-week lead times when we launched with them, by the way, which I don't know how we got to approve that, but they did. So yeah, she realized if this keeps going, we're going out of stock in five to six weeks. So she had to give us a PO now so we could get the wheels turning and get the product made so we could limit that out-of-stock period. So we ended up going out of stock, I think six or seven weeks, like Rasheed said. but then there was a period of time we weren't on the shelves anymore until we were able to deliver new product and then we realized then okay these are the real velocities that we have to plan for so we just continued building the business around that so it was then we got you know monthly po's from them ever you know and that's never stopped since you know that that second round uh we try not to going out going out of stock anymore but it's sometimes still just happens so if you're enjoying this show hit the subscribe button on whichever platform that you're viewing this on whether it's YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and sign up to the newsletter at theconsumervc.com.

39:23The newsletter gives you a weekly roundup of the latest fundraisers, product launches all around consumer and new episodes of this podcast. So how, and in terms of placement, there's kind of two placements you were first on, you were on this new product shelf. And then also it seemed like Rashid, you were saying you were kind of scattered around the store initially. When did traders decide to put you at the checkout? I would say like pretty early on, we started just noticing it, right? So again, corporate doesn't decide. I think the store captains decide where they want to merchandise. And I think a few of them realized that Chomps took up really little real estate and let's put it on a couple of those cups at the register.

40:03And I think these captains talked to each other and I think they figured out that it was a great product. So like pretty early on, we started noticing that it would show up on front end. And now I would say majority of the time you would find us both somewhere within the store and then also across each of the registers. Got it. That makes sense. How did you approach like SKU expansion and actually launching new flavors? When was the appropriate time where it made sense to actually launch new SKU? Because sometimes we talked to some founders where they launched quite a few SKUs up front, which Chomps took a very different strategy there.

40:39How did you think about new flavor profiles and as well as that kind of R &D process? So out of the gate, we just launched two SKUs. It was the original beef and jalapeno beef, the spicy version. And Trader Joe's was really wanting a poultry option. They originally wanted a chicken stick, which we were working on. And it was just we struggled without the sugar to make it. And so we pivoted to turkey. And so, again, I think part of the innovation was a pull from an amazing retail partner saying like they wanted this. And that was the that was the kind of the original catalyst to launch with a turkey.

41:12And then since then, I mean, again, over the course of 13 years, I think right now we have 11 recipes, maybe, maybe 12. I can't I haven't counted them lately. But again, it's not done. We still have our three heroes. Excuse three of those three recipes I mentioned, the original beef, jalapeno beef and original turkey that makes over 90 percent of our sales. The business is still very straightforward and simple. We have our heroes, we have our horses that really drive the volume of the business. And so I think there are little stories on each reason why we launched the SKUs that we have. But again, it's still those three heroes that are driving the core business.

41:49And those were the ones that we launched initially retail perspective through Trader Joe's. How long outside of those three heroes skews, how long, how do you think about whether a skew should kind of stay on or, or, or be part of the part of the portfolio versus being discontinued? We've only discontinued one SKU to date. And it was really because there was some operational challenges in producing it. It's a low lift because we have the e-commerce business and we have a lot of subscription on certain products. It's a low lift to keep a SKU active. If we push it through retail distribution, we have to have a decent case.

42:26There are certain SKUs that we haven't pushed into retail. But again, we have a pretty straightforward business. And so there's known even need to go through like a skew rationalization exercise because it's such a small, simple business. Got it. No, that makes sense. Beyond Trader Joe's then, and once you kind of had your Trader Joe's doing really well, what did you next think about when it comes to retail expansion? We always really wanted to focus on stores. We were like, okay, what's the next, like what's the closest to Trader Joe's, right? Because clearly our product resonates really well with that core customer.

42:59Where else is our core customer shopping, right so it was the the natural evolution was natural channel right um and so we wanted to go to these um it's fresh time up in the chicago area it's you know um sprouts and whole foods would have been nice but they waited like five years to finally take us on um but we started with these kind of smaller regional natural foods um retailers and continue just building up our uh you know the data and the story and then and building a name for ourselves so that's kind of We would go chain by chain. We never went just gangbusters trying to add thousands of doors in a single year.

43:39We took it so slowly, methodically. We wanted to make sure when we launched anywhere that we were very quickly the number one on the shelf there before we went anywhere else. So our team was like, all hands on deck, make sure we're successful here. What do we have to do? Is it demos, sampling, what other type of digital marketing? You name it. We did everything we possibly could to figure out how does this product become successful in this specific retailer. And so kind of just built up the playbook from there as we continue scaling. No, that makes sense. Also kind of scaling slowly as well and making sure, as you say, once you actually launch in a store or a region, to make sure that you're the number one before you kind of expand from that and making sure the velocities are where you want them to be.

44:24What's your decision-making process between you, Pete, and Rashid? Because you talked at the beginning of this conversation about how, Pete, you just kind of want to run through walls and just kind of start and then just learn and execute and learn from execution. Rashid wants all the information first before kind of taking a step. How do you both balance that as co-CEOs? So we're not co-CEOs anymore. I've stepped back in February. So he's the only CEO now. I'm the chairman of the board. but you know i think you know i think timing wise makes a lot of sense just based on where the business is right now and like our polar opposite personalities like the business needs rashid as the ceo right now not necessarily me um in my point of view because i feel like you know what my mindset is tip is is constantly about like what's next how do we continue growing it's all about like demand generation where the business right now is supply driven he's all ops and finance and this is his strong suit and this is what the business needs right now.

45:25So, but I could kind of, I think maybe talking about our brainstorming, how that typically works. And I'm the idea guy. I've got a plethora of ideas, way too many actually. And most of them are not good. However, what will typically happen is I'll get fired up about something and I'd be like, Hey, Rashid, you got a second? Like, I want to tell you something. So I'll pitch him an idea and he'll just sit there and think about it. And he'll be like, no, well, that doesn't work because of this. but you could do this, this, and this. So like, this is one good thing about Rashid is that, and even though I have so many ideas, I don't bog them down with it.

46:00Most people might eye roll and just be like, oh, God damn, he's got another idea now. You know, but Rashid doesn't do that to me. He actually would listen to it and think about it and say like, what could we potentially do here that Pete's original idea doesn't actually work, but we can actually do this and fix it and make this work. So that's kind of how our brainstorming has been like over the years. And it's, you know, and we never had a board up until the point where we, or we, we did our private equity raise in 2021. So that's really how our board meetings, like quote unquote, would go for whatever, almost 10 years.

46:35So. And I would say like in early days, we didn't work as well as we do more recently. I think a lot of times early days, Pete could have a strong point of view or I could have a strong point of view. And we would really like argue until either one side would give in or compromise, right? And so I think we started investing a lot in like personality assessments and leadership coaches, kind of like almost like a marriage counselors because it's like we would butt heads a lot in the early days just because we were so competitive. We're so passionate about the brand. We just wanted to win and we didn't know how to communicate the right way.

47:11Pete and I are wired really differently on the way we approach business and look at the world. we're very similar when it comes to our values um and so i think now when i am asking questions to p he understands it's not because i don't trust him or i and i don't believe what he's trying to do i process through questioning that's just how i do it and now p gets it and so he doesn't get defensive when it happens and when p's just wanting to run and not look at details i don't think it's because he's being reckless it's just it's the way he's wired he gets so excited and so like we found a way to work together um which again i always say like the best partnerships are the ones that bring diversity of thought.

47:46Because if you both think the same way, while it will feel great, because you guys are thinking the same and you'll run into the wall together, right? You want something that's thinking differently and has your back for blind spots that you may have. And so like Pete and I definitely think about things differently and it's allowed us to get to where we are today. Was there ever a debate or argument early on about the direction of chomps that you actually felt like whatever compromise happened or whoever kind of which direction you went was was really impactful on how chomps is today. I would say you had you had mentioned when Pete went full time and when I went full time, obviously there was a two year gap.

48:23I think that in itself was one of the biggest points of contention. I think I was a little bit more hesitant given I had just got married. I had a kid like I was the only one working. I met my wife when she was in London, so she wasn't able. So there's factors that required me to work. And like Pete sometimes thought that it was because I didn't, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but anyway, that was, that was a point of contention. I think early on as to like, why won't Rashid go full time? Why won't we go all in? In my mind, I had, I had really clear reasons and it was black and white.

48:53Pete thought it had something to do with maybe I didn't trust him. I didn't believe in the brand or something else. So I think in my mind, that's the biggest point in early days of the business. For sure. I mean, that's absolutely. We, we actually, I think we had the emails to, uh, to confirm that, but yeah, It used to get colorful, to say the least. Yeah. I mean, you know, he waited until you're doing 20 million in revenue to go full time. So that's, I mean, I still like, what's going on, dude? No, I think the last conversation we had about it where I was like, you know, the value creation here, like it's going to take you, we're doing 20 million in revenue right now.

49:34If you just put out a multiple on what some of these other brands were selling for at the time in terms of for exits, it's like it would take you 150 years to work and to create that type of value. So I think that maybe helped get him over the edge. But yeah, it was the right time though. I think 2018, we made our first hire too. And we got an office. We kind of like professionalized the entire business. and I think it was all right around the same time that we figured out all that branding we talked about before, kind of zeroing in on what the brand's about and our brand DNA and how do you message and speak to the customer and all those things came together at once and the rest is history.

50:17Why? No, I really appreciate that and both how good you are about that. Why did it make sense to bring in a private equity? Before you brought in private equity partner in stride, you all were bootstrapped I believe. So why did it make sense at a time to a few years ago to bring in, to raise around and bring in strike consumer partners? Yeah. One thing, one, one thing just for the facts, you know, here, so we did, we brought in, we had a couple investors slash advisors that brought, we raised a total of 600 ,000. It was at a time when the business was already doing 10 million, I believe in revenue and we were already profitable.

50:57We didn't need the money, but what we were looking for were people that have been there and done that. And one of the things about Rashid and I that we both align on is we realize that we don't know everything, right? And we always want... We're continuously learning. Even today, we're still trying to push the envelope and figure out everything that we possibly can about this business and how to be successful. And so we knew that we needed to have some people around us that have been there, done that, that we could lean on, right? I think, you know, so anyway, that being said, it wasn't because the company needed money.

51:32It was still already profitable, but we just did that as like a formality to kind of keep these advisors interested in what we were doing. That's kind of how we were thinking about it then. Same thing. We did this. It was the same kind of mindset when we did our private equity raise in 2021 with the caveat, it was a very different because we were trying to figure out, okay, how do we de-risk the families now too? So when we raised money, it was all secondary. the business did not need the money. And so none of that money, you know, it didn't know it was no to this day, we've only raised we've raised$600 ,000 or 700.

52:03I can't remember the exact number of primary capital. So that's kind of the way that we've, you know, ran the business from the beginning. Amazing. But Mike, so and the reason we felt comfortable at the time doing the minority investment we did at the end of 21 was exactly to Pete's point, we're coming out of COVID, right, there was so much uncertainty, like it puts so much stress and pressure on the business. And And it was really just a chance to say, like, we've taken the business this far. Let's put at least some chips away and feel comfortable. And it actually gave us kind of this renewed energy and spirit to be able to say, like, now let's take it to the next level and look where the business is now.

52:37No, totally, totally. Why was it important also for Chomps to become a B Corp? I would say, like, we're always trying to find ways to make ourselves better. And we just appreciate the B Corp structure as far as like really thinking about accountability and how you're impacting the environment, how you're thinking about your people and growing the company. And so we were excited to sign up for something that's going to force us to continue to be better. It was a year long process to go through it to make sure that we were really more qualified to meet the B Corp requirements. But again, it was just kind of part of our culture on challenging ourselves to be better.

53:17And it was a program that we got pretty excited about. Our president and COO, Liz Carter, had gone through a similar process with a prior company. And so she helped us shepherd us through the process as well as some key folks on the team. And it was a long process, but we're pretty excited to finally get that certification. And we just announced it a few weeks ago. Yeah, Mike, I think one of the things and the reasons that we went with and did B Corp and specifically is because, you know, I think there's a whole lot of like, I guess, greenwashing and things being said that aren't quite true and a lot of gray area marketing, right?

53:51That you see, especially in this food industry, which is sad to see. I think for us, like anything that we do, we want to make sure that there's some level of accountability, like Rashid said, and this like third party, just verification and making sure that, you know, for one, just to challenge ourselves. Then two, just so anybody like looking at us from the outside knows like, yeah, these guys are doing things the right way. And here's the proof. And so that's kind of, you know, we feel really strongly about that. It is an issue, especially in the natural foods industry. It's sad to say, but that's just the way it is.

54:21No, that makes a lot of sense. I commend you both in terms of getting that certification. I know you also released, which I really enjoyed reading, about your protein snacks guide, or rather the study that you revealed about protein snacks, and about how protein it's been. I mean, I went to Expo West this past year and just seeing the amount of brands and protein, it seemed like the real mega trend that kind of emerged out of Expo West. Not just Expo West, it's been percolating for years. Outside of beef sticks, which of course is your main line of business, are there any other snack categories that you think that there's opportunity in when it comes to protein that you haven't seen yet?

55:10No, I don't. And to your point, I think that maybe there's a little bit of like over proteining going on, if that's a word. Yeah. You know, and I think, you know, listen, like the reason we created this brand in the beginning, you know, was because we wanted I wanted to find a way to make my lives easier for my my clients and all that. So they get they get enough protein in their diets. Most people still don't get enough protein in their diets, despite all of the crazy amount of protein out there. And this is me speaking about my own chain of thought on it. I feel like there's protein being added to literally everything you could possibly imagine.

55:43I think things that you just don't need added protein. It might be a bit of overkill at some point. However, I do understand why it's so important because still, despite there being so much protein everywhere, people are still not getting enough of it. So I think that's, you know, again, maybe it's a good thing. Maybe it's a bad thing. Maybe it's more annoying than anything. But but that's kind of the way I feel that the one thing I like about our product is that it's where protein is supposed to be. It's actually meat. Yes. And this is what it's made for. It's naturally protein and I'm not adding not adding additional protein to it because it doesn't eat it.

56:18Yeah. And I think, you know, the protein trend is getting magnified by the GLP one situation. Right. Where folks are becoming more aware of, you know, the drug can work really well. But if you don't consume enough protein while on it, it could have pretty negative effects. So I think that's also kind of magnifying this need and desire for convenient, convenient protein. As far as Chomps as a business, we've got a lot of work to do with our core. Now we have a pretty, let's say, robust innovation pipeline. And we're trying to think about where Chomps has permission to play, whether in category or at a category.

56:53But honestly, we don't need anything until like 2027 or beyond. There's a lot of opportunity with our core that we're and look, we got this far being focused and disciplined. and we're not going to change from that core mission. Yeah, I completely agree with you both when it comes to what's out there. I mean, it seems like there's a bit of a bifurcation when it comes to protein, where you have one group that's maybe protein everything, where, oh, if it has, I'm just looking at like the protein label and seeing how much protein it has on this product, even if it is, you know, ultra processed or whatever, but like the fact that it's protein.

57:24And of course, and brands are using that as a selling point for the product itself. And then you might have another group that's like, okay i actually want whole foods i want kind of um that's what i what i when i actually really want protein that's actually the protein that i want um so i do think that you maybe seen like some sort of bifurcation when it comes to uh how people are are thinking about protein and um yeah my final question for you both um what's one book that's inspired each of you personally and one book that's inspired each of you professionally okay you want to start i'll start um okay so So this is one actually I'm just starting on right now, but I do want to just call it out because I think it's awesome.

58:01Like the concept that when I'm trying to get through it right now, but this is, I don't want to butcher his name, but it's like Sahel Bloom. And it's the five types of wealth. Yeah. And I think it's like the, it's an awesome, I honestly don't even think that way. And before reading this, I was like, oh my God, you know, I've heard of like things like the four quadrants and these types of different things. And that's like just such a good concept to think through, like think about time as a bit of wealth. Like that's like a version of wealth, right? And so, you know, you think about your social health, your mental health, physical health, financial.

58:34And that's, you know, to me, it's like, okay, you can't have any of those without the other. And if any one of them is lacking or you're missing, all the other ones are going to suffer. So you need to be focusing on all five to be truly, truly wealthy, right? That's a great one. That's a great one. And then I think for me, professionally, Shoe Dog, the Phil Knight story is when I was reading it. Well, first of all, I couldn't put it down, but there were so many parallels in like how we built Choms and like the challenges they faced early on and raising capital and like thinking about the brand and the adversity.

59:08And it was like, I don't know, I was just so energized to be able to draw any parallels with a brand as iconic as Nike. and then just really the legacy that Phil Knight was able to create and the stories like you on how some of the athletes were like thanking him for what they accomplished right when the athlete think about these athletes that were under his under his banner they were thanking Phil Knight people like Tiger Woods right and Bill Jordan like it's just it was such a fantastic story and such an iconic brand I really enjoyed that personally I recently read uh Die With Zero And I really enjoyed kind of thinking about that concept where it was really around investing in experiences and you invest in them early on because those memories would actually pay dividends in your life.

59:50And thinking about, you know, life in three buckets across your time, your wealth and your health and earlier days versus mid-age versus old, how that shifts. It was pretty interesting as we start thinking about how I think about wealth planning for my family and where we want to invest our time and efforts. It was a really good read. No, I appreciate all this. It was great. I think I missed my professional. Yes. My professional book was Rocket Fuel. And that one was actually, I just may have actually been more of a personal, had more of a personal impact than anything or just the way I think about myself in this business in particular, but overall.

1:00:29And so, Rocket Fuel is awesome because it's talking about visionaries and integrators. And I never really consider myself a visionary, but when they go through the definition and explanation of what they are, I'm like, oh, wait, I actually am that guy in this role. And that's the role I play with Rashid and I. I feel like maybe I always kind of got down to myself kind of thinking like, oh, Rashid's the... He's the great business mind and I'm just like this idea guy or whatever. And then realizing when you read that book, just like, no, the reason we're so, we are so successful is because both of us brought a lot to the table.

1:01:04And so that's kind of, it was a book that I liked. Love it. Love it. Love it. No, this is great. The only one that's previously been mentioned, which is the most mentioned book on the show is Shoe Dog. Well, Shoe Dog's by far the most mentioned, but this is all, this is all great. These are all, this is all new. This is, this is great. Pete and Rashid, thank you both so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate your time. Sure. Thanks. Bye. I appreciate it. Thanks. And there you have it. Thanks for listening to the episode. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe to the newsletter at theconsumervc.com and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to this content.

1:01:36Thank you, Glimpse, so much for sponsoring this episode. Until next time.