Bowl & Kettle

0:00Brett Bowlin:Welcome to the Emerging Brands podcast. Sharing the stories behind brands you'll want to shop next. I'm your host, Kelly Bennett. I am a New York City-based brand strategist for CPG Food and Beverage Brands. In each episode, I'll take you behind the scenes of founders that are building better-for-you products and bringing them to market. it. Also, I talk to brand builders, retailers, industry experts, and tastemakers who help bring

0:28Sarah Bowlin:those cool products to your shopping cart.

0:30Brett Bowlin:You will hear stories of real-life founders, their launch strategies, and practical advice you could use to grow your own brand or simply discover what's next on shelf. And the best part is you could shop all the brands featured on the show. This podcast is brought to you by Glimpse. Glimpse is an AI powered deduction management tool that disputes and recovers invalid deductions, winning brands, thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours back to founders so that they can focus on what really matters most. If you're a brand selling in retail, go to tryglimpse.com backslash trial for 30 days free and let them know I sent you.

1:17Brett Bowlin:Now let's dive into the new episode. Hi everyone. Welcome back to a new episode of Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. Today I have a founder who is helping move forward, pioneer how we could think about freeze-dried food because this tends to be, well, the old way of thinking about it was kind of boring or not very elevated at all, but there are some very cool brands coming to market and expanding how we could bring elevation in very convenient forms. So Sarah Bolin, she is the co-founder of Bowl & Kettle. And Sarah, I'm so happy to have you on the show.

2:04Sarah Bowlin:Thank you so much. I am so happy to be here.

2:07Brett Bowlin:Cool. And I got connected with you because I've been working on Nomi, which is bringing Just Add Water meals to kids. The founder, Rupa, is incredible. and she brought me into this niche community in CPG that is the freeze-dried food movement and how we could use technology to bring elevation and really great clean ingredients to people with ease. And that's how I came across your brand and I was so excited to have you on the show because I think this is a really interesting niche within CPG. So before we dive so much into your brand, I would love to hear how you got started down this path. And what was the moment that this product came to you of seeing, wait, I can't find anything like this on the market.

3:03Brett Bowlin:I have to create something.

3:06Sarah Bowlin:My husband and I are huge backpackers. We love to spend time outside. And so we really ate a lot of freeze-dried food. And I think freeze drying as a preservation technique got started for, you know, outdoorists and people who are away from a kitchen for a long time. Right. And that's where we started eating all of our food was on backpacking trips. And we kept having these experiences where we would plan these epic, beautiful trips. There's so much intention behind our gear, where we would camp, the places that we chose to go to. And then we would sit down at the end of the day and eat our meal.

3:40Sarah Bowlin:And it was disappointing or made our stomach hurt. we were like this doesn't track like why is your food not at the level that every other piece of the trip and the experience is and that's really what got our gears starting to turn that's a

3:55Brett Bowlin:really good point because I'm sure there's so much prep I am very much not a hiker but I respect those who do of like how much work goes into it the gear the travel expense and then yeah to to do all of that work to be in a beautiful environment and not to have good food. Yeah, that would be a pain point for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

4:21Sarah Bowlin:So what were you doing professionally before starting the brand? My background is in consumer research and I mostly worked for tech companies trying to understand how people were interacting with the internet and tools and apps and things like that and understanding those pain points. So yeah, I had this kind of like unique background and being able to sort of think about something that I was experiencing and sort of wondering how that could be better. I still practice research today. Actually, I'm not full time on Bowling Kettle. I have a freelance research practice. So a two in addition. Love that.

4:58Sarah Bowlin:Not far away.

4:59Brett Bowlin:Okay. So what was the initial first steps? I mean, you have a great background going into a startup. I mean, one of the biggest things that I hear from founders of emerging CPG food and beverage brands is that they really get stuck on that research part because they're not quite sure, like, am I onto something? Is this a valid idea? Is there a demand for this? So just leveraging your background, what were some of those early next steps that you took of like, okay, my husband and I have this pain point, but what is this actually look like as far as a market to serve?

5:38Sarah Bowlin:Yeah, we, I think we took a little bit of an intense route. Okay, please share. As this idea was forming, this was like in the pandemic era, and we already had this kind of mini goal, sort of in between starting a business where we wanted to through hike the Pacific Crest Trail, which is this almost 3000 mile trail from Mexico to Canada through California and Washington. And, um, we had the name, the LLC, like all of those things. And we were like, you know what, why don't we not start the business before we hike this trail and instead teach ourselves how to freeze dry. And so we ended up making 200 of our own meals, 12 different meal types.

6:19Sarah Bowlin:And, um, that's what we ate for our entire PCT track was our own food. And we really just like put it to the test and figured out what we liked and didn't like. We had our friends that we were making on the trail try it. We really tried to pay attention to what other people we were sort of camping and trekking around were eating and what those common themes were and also what those frustrations were and brought all of that back to our sort of formal R &D process when we were ready to actually finalize our three go-to-market recipes and take the whole business to market.

6:52Brett Bowlin:Okay. I have a huge question. How did you learn how to freeze dry food? Trial and error. Wait, what did that look like?

7:01Sarah Bowlin:That's wild. We bought a small freeze dryer from kind of like the sort of more, you know, residentially available brand Harvest, right? We bought just one of their small, small models and we just started freeze drying things. One of the most disappointing experiences I've ever had with freeze dry food on a backpacking trip was a guacamole. And I thought that's so crazy because guacamole is purely fresh ingredients And it's like, surely that can be great freeze dried. And we started playing around with that. Then we started playing around with pastas and we just literally kind of tested and learned our way through things.

7:36Sarah Bowlin:One of our earliest mistakes was freeze drying pasta in a sauce, which makes sense when you think about it, but actually the way water gets sort of sucked out of the food and the freeze drying process actually ended up sort of sucking the sauce almost into the pasta. and the rehydration experience was more like pasta that kind of tasted like the sauce, but didn't really have a sauce component around it. Like, oh, maybe we should componentize things. So yeah, really just test and learn.

8:05Brett Bowlin:And for anyone who isn't familiar, and I should have started with this question of what is freeze-dried food? Because I think a lot of people, and I had this perception before, know me of like, is it like astronaut food? or like is it ramen that you're adding water to that you ate during college? I just think that what exactly it is is also a bit unclear to most consumers.

8:30Sarah Bowlin:Totally. And it's also often confused with dehydration too, I think. Right. They're two separate processes, but basically freeze drying and also dehydration, they're both preservation techniques of food. Freeze drying uses a process called sublimation. so essentially you freeze the food you put it in this machine it brings the temperatures down to roughly minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit then the vacuum pump sort of turns on and at very cold temperatures in a high pressure high vacuum environment the boiling temperature of water actually goes down very very low so essentially you're kind of boiling water out of the food it's then getting sucked onto the edges of the machine and then refreezes as ice.

9:17Sarah Bowlin:And that process takes a long time. There's actually evidence of indigenous populations freeze drying food at very high altimes sort of tundra sort of landscapes over the course of six months. You can just kind of leave food up there. If you've ever left food in your freezer for six plus months, like that's a form of freeze drying. It takes a long time. Freeze drying with an actual freeze dryer takes 48 to 60 hours, depending on the water content of the food that you've put in. But yeah, that's roughly how it works.

9:49Brett Bowlin:Very cool. So what were then those next steps of you went ahead and started freeze drying your own food, which I love. You also had a very clear use case of who your target audience was, when they would be using your product, how would they be using your product? You were able to ask real life people, not just you and your husband for feedback, which is huge. Then going back home after that hike and getting that assessment and really, I'm sure, being fulfilled in a way or getting that sense of like, okay, we're onto something here. What were some of those next steps then to bring the product to market?

10:38Sarah Bowlin:We ended up, um, so I told you, we started with kind of 12 different meals. We actually scrapped 11 of them and only checked one, our crawfish etouffee. And, uh, we started,

10:49Brett Bowlin:why was that?

10:50Sarah Bowlin:Our, we just didn't feel like we got it right. Um, we started looking at the market and what else is out there in terms of kind of outdoor focused meals. And a lot of them really revolved around pasta. And, uh, one thing that we learned on our hike is that pasta and grains just didn't sit that well with us. And so we thought our angle is more, um, rice-based sort of grains that are just a little bit friendlier to most people's stomachs. Um, but we kept our crawfish at Tufay because that was one that we would fight over, uh, when it would get nailed to us. And it was just delicious. So we were like, this is one that we think we can, you know, refine a little bit, but bring to market.

11:29Sarah Bowlin:And then we started working on our other two recipes, a chicken tikka masala, which is a meal that when I was training for my Ironman many moons ago, I would eat that at the end of my training week, every week, it was just so like comforting and fulfilling to me. And I thought that would be delicious to have at the end of the long day on trail. And our street corn grits came out of a desire to launch with a vegetarian option and kind of round out the types of dietary preferences we were meeting. Got it. My husband's the chef and he's, um, he's very meat forward. So cooking a vegetarian meal was difficult for him.

12:07Sarah Bowlin:So he really started with a flavor profile that he liked and enjoyed. And that was a lotte and, um, kind of built the dish from scratch using things that he really liked and just kind of jammed it all together into a very unique meal.

12:21Brett Bowlin:Very cool. So the flavor skews is more like globally inspired comfort foods or grain base you were saying of and not going so heavy into the pasta, but more rice dishes.

12:34Sarah Bowlin:Yeah, I would say that that's our bent. We really want our food to rehydrate to kind of take out restaurant quality. Got it. Not be your kind of traditional American dishes. That's another thing that is a pain point for people when they're out hiking for a long time is the flavor profile of dishes that you get is really bland and there's not a lot of variety. So we really tried to bring variety and also spice to our dishes.

13:01Brett Bowlin:Was there anything else out in the market like this or was it really genuinely a white space when you all started bringing this to especially the hiking community?

13:13Sarah Bowlin:We were kind of on the uptail, I would say, uh, what's kind of been an explosion of smaller brands coming to market over the last five years. Um, the brand that launched in 2022, when we were hiking, the PCT is called farm to summit. And that's one that we really looked up to. And we thought, oh my God, this is doable. Um, somebody can sort of bring a product to market and people can look beyond the mountain houses of the world, which are so readily available. And that's typically the brand you think of when you're going to REI to buy a meal for your trip. Got it. A question that we had was, You know, will people look for and shop for small brands when typically the outdoor community is going to a store to pick up food for their trip versus shopping online and things like that?

13:56Brett Bowlin:Got it. And so what was your strategy to really get in front of your target audience and bring them something totally new that they hadn't yet experienced?

14:08Sarah Bowlin:Oh, my gosh, Kelly, we are test and learn people from start to finish, like super MVP. we did not have a robust market strategy. Our entire ethos has been kind of test and learn from the beginning and mitigate risk wherever we could. We ended up launching literally illustrations of our bags. We didn't even have our bags in hand to our 300 Instagram followers. Just like one day in March, we were like, we're going to put these into the world and like see what we can do. And because we are our customers in a way, and we're very connected to the outdoor community. That was actually something that really worked in our favor.

14:45Sarah Bowlin:And we've been able to grow our following on social media, just from organic outreach and working with creators that we like literally met on trail and our friends with. And then I've just hustled wholesale relationships with independent specialty outdoor retailers myself through email. It's been a very grassroots effort.

15:04Brett Bowlin:Which is cool. And I think it's important to highlight and really hone in on that organic outreach and something that you are touching upon that I always emphasize with my clients who are pre-launch, emerging CPG, food and beverage, usually bootstrapping to bring a product to market, leaning into a community and doing it authentically and genuinely is such a huge unlock that people can often overlook or not even maybe think that it's super valuable because they're like, well, yeah, I'm already connected to X, Y, and Z people or community. But that is genuinely, I think, how you start a brand that has deep relationships, great returning customers, people who are advocating, who want to talk about you and post about you, because it feels like it's genuine.

16:02Brett Bowlin:It's not just some random big company who came in to get, you know, profit share from their community. It feels very genuine. And I feel like what you bring to the table right off the bat really speaks to that.

16:16Sarah Bowlin:Thank you. That's exactly what we've been trying to do. And also our, you know, philosophy, if you follow us on social media, it's kind of built in public. and just kind of talk to people about what it's like to build a brand as people who are really passionate about the outdoors and foodies, passionate about food. And I think that's helped people feel connected to us and cheering us on as we've grown. It's been really cool to see, actually.

16:40Brett Bowlin:And so when did you officially come to market?

16:43Sarah Bowlin:March 2024. We just turned two years old.

16:46Brett Bowlin:Amazing. Okay, so what does the company look like now? What's on the radar right now?