Sababa Foods

0:00Welcome to the Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. This is the podcast to discover stories behind your new favorite CPG brands. Each episode brings you behind the scenes of the brand and founder story, learn what sets them apart in the marketplace, and their strategy going to market. We talk about plans for growth, practical advice for an emerging brand founder, and where to shop products that are making waves in food, beverage, wellness, beauty, and beyond. You'll also hear from industry experts, brand builders, investors, and operators you should absolutely have on your radar if you're building a CPG brand today.

0:44I'm your host, Kelly Bennett, a Brooklyn-based brand strategist with a front row seat of what makes an emerging CPG brand stand out. Whether you're building a brand of your own or love supporting what's next, you're in the right place. This episode was made possible by our sponsor, Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds is a platform that connects everyday small creators with brands that drive user-generated content, build buzz at specific retailers, and captures competitive market share. It's a tool that I recommend to all of my clients that you should absolutely check out. Head to hummingbirds.com for all the details.

1:27Now 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 on Amy Dell. She is the founder and CEO of Sababa Foods, which makes a very delicious Saturday sauce. Her Saturday sauce was first on my radar, I believe, finding it at Pop-Up Grocer, and And it stopped me in my tracks and was like, ooh, one, I love the name. It sounded delicious. And my girlfriend and I have used it a few times now. And we really do love the product. So Amy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

2:09Amy Dell:Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you. So first, I always love to kick off with hearing a brand story. I love hearing how brands started, the inspiration. You also have a great name of how that came to be. So can you walk us through how Sababa Foods came about? Yeah. So we created Sababa Foods to kind of launch a whole line of Middle Eastern pantry provisions. And we started with Saturday sauce. So Saturday sauce is tomato based Middle Eastern starter sauce. So it's used very commonly to make shakshuka, but also it goes well with fish, chicken, meat, veggies, grains, soup stews.

2:50Amy Dell:You can use it as a dip with challah or pita chips, or you can use it as a spread or a condiment, um, or marinade. So it really has so many different uses. And that's kind of why we call it Saturday sauce. Um, originally when I was thinking about naming the product, um, I was telling people like, you know, I'm making something, it's kind of like the base of a shakshuka and people would say, huh? Like what is shakshuka? And I was so surprised living in my New York bubble, I guess. Um, and I call it Saturday sauce. Cause it's kind of like the Jewish version of Sunday sauce. Um, we put it on. That's what makes me think of everything.

3:26Amy Dell:Right. Exactly. Yeah. Um, so yeah, this sauce is a family recipe. I grew up with my dad making it in kind of like vats. Um, he put quarts in the freezer, in the fridge every Saturday morning. He would be making shrek shuka. He still does. Friday nights, he'd be making Moroccan fish, um, or we would reduce the sauce a little bit more and have it as a dip with challah on Shabbat. Um, so yeah, I kind of just like, I don't know, this idea came to me as so many ideas do at like three in the morning. Right. And I'm like, I need to jot this down in my notepad and follow up on it. And then I sort of went down that path of discovery.

4:06Amy Dell:Like, can I make this manufacturer friendly? Can I update the ingredients and make get a little bit more, you know, health conscious. And so we set out to do that. And we actually launched in January of this past year. So yeah, we're about six months in. Incredible. I didn't even realize that you just launched this past January. We're super, super fresh. Amazing. Okay. So when you came up with the Saturday sauce idea, the first SKU that you are building out. What was your career or what was your life at that point? What were you doing? So my background is in hospitality, very specifically for marketing events and partnerships.

4:55Amy Dell:So prior to starting this company, I was with related companies. I was doing all the events and partnerships for our condominium residents in New York. So managing over eight buildings with, you know, a concierge staff that was sort of on the ground doing anything from workout classes to wine tastings to kids programming. So kind of, you know, creating all of the marketing around that and all of the programming. And then prior to that, I was with, you know, different private sort of membership clubs. And I was the experience director at a few of those places. So curating different experiences for people, whether those were events at Coachella or Halloween events at New York City, and sort of getting people into coveted restaurants and helping with their travel.

5:44Amy Dell:So it was all in the realm of like hospitality, lifestyle events, partnerships. But I was always really passionate about food. I grew up with my dad owning a restaurant in New York City that's still around. My husband owns a restaurant. Like I just love to cook. So it's always been my passion and my dream really was to open a restaurant. And my father and my husband were both like, please don't do it. Because it's so hard. As the restauranteurs say, yes. No, I was a partner of a restaurant and that's how I cut my teeth in food and beverage. It's so hard. Yeah, it really is. And I think like, you know, I don't know if it's a compromise maybe, but for me, this sort of came very naturally and And I was really excited by the fact that, you know, I have this connection to this recipe, to this, this sauce through my family and heritage and culture.

6:39And so sort of when I went down the path of, you know, exploring it, which took me about a year, kind of making, you know, the nutritional panel and, and working on my label.

6:50Amy Dell:Like I hand drew my logo and my label art because I had a vision for it and I couldn't quite accomplish it on Canva or, you know, I almost hired an artist to do it. And it wasn't, it's kind of hard to explain what you have in your head, right? Like this is what I envision this brand as, and I don't know, I wasn't articulating it very well. And so I kind of just one day it was like, all right, let me just do it myself. And I did. And I was like, this is exactly sort of what I envision is this like, you know, authentic brand, but a little bit more updated and funky and fun and modern. And we want to be approachable, right?

7:25Amy Dell:Like our whole thing is like, how do we make the sauce that's shelf stable? But also it tastes like it's homemade and like your grandmother made it and it makes home cooking really approachable and easy, right? Like if I just pour this sauce in a pan and crack some eggs in it, you have a shakshuka, right? So I think that sort of speaks to like who our demographic is, right? Right. Like we want to target home chefs, aspiring home chefs. Right. You know, like cooking doesn't have to be complicated. I think the other day I posted a Moroccan fish recipe and it's just the sauce and Moroccan fish and it takes and any fish fillet and it takes, you know, 15 minutes.

8:03Amy Dell:It's super easy. And I think for us, like with home cooking being on the rise and convenient solutions and of course, like global cuisines have been on the rise for a while. Like we're sort of at the intersection of all three, which is really exciting. Absolutely. Okay. So Moroccan fish, I'm definitely going to take note to make that, especially in the nights where I'm by myself. I love something that's really easy. That's delicious. Checks all the boxes. So I'm going to make that, make that this weekend. Okay. Note to self. So when you had the idea, and again, I love the background that you bring to the table as far as hospitality, curating experiences, understanding what people want to experience and making something interesting and something that people will remember.

8:53It feels like those are also touch points of the examples that you shared. And again, having a dad who owns a restaurant, having a husband that owns a restaurant, you were very much, it sounds like, immersed in food and beverage. what was the first steps that you started taking after refining the recipe to actually make it a viable commercial CPG product? I would love to hear what were those major steps that you took? Yeah.

9:21Amy Dell:So I think obviously getting, you know, our authority process letter, our UPC in place, the panel, having our label art, finding a co-packer, like that is not an easy thing to do, right? I would love to hear what, how you went about that. So we actually, um, my first First sort of step was scouring the Cornell website where they have just like a list of co-packers. I knew that I wanted to find one in the Northeast. You know, we make a tomato-based sauce, which automatically puts us in one specific category for co-packers. And for us, you know, there were a few sort of things that we wanted. We knew that we wanted to come out with a 16 ounce jar, but also when you're starting, right, like what was important to us was being able to do a small pilot because make it home doesn't necessarily translate always to what you're making with your co-packer.

10:09Amy Dell:So our first pilot, we did a 30 case run, you know, we do 12 pack cases and that was only to be given to friends and family. So I think we did our first pilot in October of 2024 and we were really happy with the way that the product came out. Um, but obviously we're a little biased. I'm like, we're, I'm a little biased. So, you know, I gave it to friends and family and everyone really, really liked it and had such great feedback. So we didn't need to make a ton of adjustments to our recipe. I think the hardest part is finding a co-packer that's going to work with you on small minimums to start.

10:44Amy Dell:And we're still doing sort of small batches. So I think we're in a place where we're trying to scale up, um, while still maintaining the quality of, the product. And then of course, like ingredient sourcing for us, it was really important to use olive oil. It was really important for us to use organic ingredients sort of in line with environmental working groups, dirty dozen. So I sort of like made the product the way that I eat and look at labels. Like I am a person that reads labels and make a clean label product. And we feel like we did because when we send, you know, when we sent our sauce to different sort of health-based influencers.

11:24Amy Dell:They were like, wow, look at this label. It's super clean. So we, you know, we wanted, I wanted to use fresh vegetables. Every single co-packer wanted me to use IQF instant, quick, frozen vegetables. Didn't want to do it. So, and, and also we use, yeah, like select organic ingredients. So I think that's the hardest part of it, but then once you sort of get over that hump, then you get to the next one, right? It's always like, how do I, how do I produce this product? How do I get it into stores? And now it's like, all right, how do we stay in stores? And get off the shelf. Yeah, exactly. So that's sort of, I guess, like those three major things.

12:02Absolutely. So were some of the early start, because again, I found you at Pop-Up Grocer. Was that one of your first specialty retail stores?

12:12Amy Dell:That was our first store. So So we wanted to launch sales in tandem with being in our first store. So in January, I think it was January 10th, we were in pop-up brochure and we were doing D2C. And then we quickly were just, our strategy with retail was sort of just to try and dominate sort of one area at first, which is, you know, we're New York City based. So we were, I was going around to all of the different specialty independent health stores in New York City that I could see the product at, dropping off samples, constant follow-ups. And eventually we got picked up by a lot of different places.

12:52Amy Dell:So I think now six months in, we're at about 25, over 25 stores. Incredible. Yeah. So we're mostly in, you know, we have a heavy concentration in the Northeast, but we're also in all Erewhon locations and we're also on Amazon. So we did sort of move into e-com as well. And then also have a little bit of food service on our roadmap as well. So that's sort of where we're at now. Great. How was it getting into Air One? I've heard so many different stories. It's interesting. Like I think you hear so many different, you get so many different pieces of advice from different CPG founders. Some will say really focus on one area, self-distribute as long as you can.

13:35Amy Dell:And I think that's a good strategy too, but then others will say, okay, but there's only so long you can do that. And you're going to get really burnt out. You should try to move quickly, get to the, you know, get to the West coast too. And so we sort of were like, all right, let's, let's try to be in the West coast as well. But I think we didn't have as much brand awareness in California when we launched as we do in New York, just because we're on the ground here. So I think that, you know, it just requires a lot of demoing. Right. And like, I would go out there myself and, you know, for us, we want to get the product in as many people's hands as possible.

14:10Amy Dell:Um, so it just requires a little bit of more demoing. You know, I think the first time we went to California, I would tell people, Oh, it's Saturday. Why is it called Saturday sauce? The Jewish version of Sunday sauce. And they were kind of like, what's Sunday sauce. So I quickly thought like, Oh, that's really an East coast thing, huh? Um, yeah. And I think that for us, we had to get a distributor as well. So that was an interesting and new process for us. Um, but I think eventually that's probably something we'll need to do in New York as well. So it was good experience and, and, and yeah, we have a heavy focus now, I think on getting into like more small independent stores in California, in the West coast to kind of support, um, that at Air One as well.

14:53Amy Dell:Do you also use fair? Yes, we're on fair. Um, so that's mainly what we use in, in New York city. Um, you know, when I'm in New York, I'll hand deliver my orders, but, um, you know, and we are in other States as well, Texas, Florida, aside from, you know, New Jersey, aside from New York and California. But, um, yeah, I would say most of our business is on fair. And how was it also moving on to Amazon? It was interesting. So many people ask me, they're like, who'd you hire to do it? I'm like, I did it myself. Yeah. I mean, listen, I think that it's kind of one of those things where you have to just devote so much time to being on the backend.

15:34Amy Dell:And like, it's a little frustrating, right? If you're uploading images of your product and they're not sized correctly, you don't necessarily have someone that you can ask about it. Right. So it's just a lot of trial and error. But we do pretty good business on Amazon and everything we've done so far has been organic. We had a press piece that was on the kitchen and syndicated by AOL and Yahoo the other day. And the orders that were coming in from Amazon, from Chicago, Massachusetts, Washington State, so many different places where we don't necessarily have a presence. I think that's the cool thing about Amazon is that you're reaching customers in places that you don't necessarily have a presence and you can easily fulfill those orders.

16:18Amy Dell:So it's exciting. I really like being on Amazon. I like how you started DTC, then like a pop-up grocer, also did like the West Coast version at Air One, Amazon, fair to like sprinkle that in, and food service. How was the food service piece? I mean, you have two great people to give you insight on food service, but how did that piece also come together? Yeah. So we make one gallon versions of the sauce. And I think we're trying to target mostly, you know, small cafes that serve breakfast, especially in New York, they might not have a lot of room, right. Small kitchen, right. Where we can just give them gallons of the sauce and they can easily serve shakshuka, um, you know, or, or for other things.

17:06Amy Dell:Um, so we have that on fair and then we have a food service client that is coming on board, um, that we're looking to produce for very soon. So that will be announced soon, but, um, that'll be exciting because we'll be helping a restaurant make their chili. So, um, the sauce serves as a great chili starter. It's, you know, all the things that you would put in your chili, but it kind of is like a time saver. And I think that's also the idea behind food service, right? Like, can we, um, help with cutting down, you know, time, labor, et cetera. Um, hoping to expand on that a little bit, but we've kind of just like dipped our toes in it.

17:43Amy Dell:I mean, also we try to do a ton of events. So like I'll pop up at a residential building in New York and do a shakshuka and PETA pop-up. And for that, I will use my gallon. So it's also kind of just easier for me to have on hand for events. I think a gallon is like about eight jars. So instead of me opening eight jars, I have kind of this like easier format. That absolutely makes sense. And also too, it connects the dots for me because when I went to Summer Fancy Food, your booth literally had a setup making shashuka and it really stuck out to me. I was like, wow, that was so clever and was so interactive and also really delicious.

18:26But it also makes absolute sense of just your background, creating experiences, making it really easy for someone to connect the dots of the use case of the product. How was also summer fancy food helping with like that next stage of growth

18:44Amy Dell:as well? Yeah, I think, I think that was great that we decided to make shuckshoot because so many people had said to us like, Oh, I've just been eating snacks all day. Like, I feel like I'm actually having like a proper meal now. This is so nice. I felt the same way. I was like, okay, good protein. It's like, it felt like a good nourishing meal amidst eating so many snacks. Yeah. And I think that for us, when we're demoing in grocery stores, we demo with a pita chip or a tortilla chip. And, you know, I prefer, I would prefer if we could demo with the sauce, you know, warm or hot, but that's not always possible.

19:19Amy Dell:Right. So it was kind of nice to be able to have our full setup and really show people the way that we would use the sauce if we were at home. But yeah, I mean, the Fancy Food Show was great. I think the best thing about it, I mean, for us, obviously based in New York, it was a no-brainer, I think, for us to be a part of it, even though we are really new in the CPG world. But I think the great thing about it is you meet with buyers, right, that are larger sort of chain grocery stores. And when you're doing small batch production, you're kind of like, should I do a bigger run? but is someone going to buy it?

19:58Amy Dell:Right. It's kind of like a chicken and chicken and eggs sort of thing. Yeah. Um, but I think after a show like that, if you're receiving the interest, you can kind of make a bet on yourself, right? Like I'm going to do a little bit more volume so I can get better pricing and I'm more attractive to these buyers. Right. And, and also hear their feedback. Um, you know, I think for us, our next step is we need to be kosher certified. And we heard that at the fancy food show. So that's like the first thing that we know we need to do for our next production run. Um, and so I'm working on that. So I think it's like for networking and meeting people, it's amazing for press for, you know, just, and then of course meeting the small independent stores.

20:39Amy Dell:Like we've, we've gotten some new accounts since then, um, in sort of new States. Um, and so just establishing, you know, a presence in additional places is great. Um, but yeah, we had so much fun doing those events at fancy food. Cause I feel like it did allow me to tie in a little bit more of my background. We did like a challah pull the first day of fancy food. And then we made shakshuka another day. And it was just a way to drive people to the booth. We had like a little farm stand set up that we made with tomatoes and peppers and onions. It was really well done. It was really well done. It genuinely stood out to me.

21:17Amy Dell:Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Now knowing more of your background and how your point of view what your point of view is with food. It totally makes sense. That's the vibe of your booth. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It's fun. We want to be fun and approachable and and engaging and exciting and all those things. So yeah. Well, you're doing amazing. Again, just launching this January to go to market and what you've built so far. Congratulations. That's not easy at all. You're doing it really well. Is there any piece of advice you would share with an emerging brand founder who's maybe where you were last December, getting ready to go to market?

22:09You're coming up with, you know, this is how I feel like or this is what I think should happen at launch or this is my gut feeling on how it will go and what I should do. But any advice you would share to that founder who's just ready, just getting ready to go to market?

22:31Amy Dell:So much advice. I mean, I think one of the most helpful things was connecting with other CPG founders. I think honestly, one of my favorite things about this new chapter in my life is connecting with all these founders and the community is like amazing. But just getting advice from people and hearing sort of like what their path was, because everybody takes a little bit of a different path. Right. And you almost don't really know what questions to ask. So I think even listening to this podcast, right. Had I done that prior to launching, right. It's like, you just learn so much like, Oh, distribution, like what, what should I be thinking about?

23:08Amy Dell:but you're kind of like, I think in December, I was really stuck in the place that I, that I was at. Um, I think in hindsight for us, you know, we decided to launch in January in, in our first store, but we hadn't, we didn't really have a brand presence before that. So I think I see some other founders, like really establishing a presence on social, um, before that, like we did a heavy influencer campaign after, you know, kind of post launch during launch, but had we done it prior, would that have been more effective, even though people couldn't have purchased it at that time? Maybe. So I think that's one route.

23:45Amy Dell:And I think that that has its pros, right, in terms of just getting off the shelves in stores. But yeah, just connecting with other founders and maybe establishing that presence before. And I think sort of as you start, you know, visiting all your different retailers, like, you know, it's a really sort of like getting your hands dirty, scrappy, process and you have to do that. Um, so I would say like getting, doing as many demos as you possibly can, getting feedback to inform those decisions and changes you're going to make on your product or label. Um, and then like not being discouraged because I mean, for me, I think one of the hardest things is like, I am not a natural salesperson.

24:31Amy Dell:Let's say I love my products. I could talk about it all day long. Right. You know, for a lot of these retailers, you drop off a sample November, they're picking up in April. Like how many emails have I sent you between that time? Right. It can be discouraging, I think, but you just have to kind of like just power through it. It's part of the process. And I think, um, it's helpful to hear other people say that. And yeah, that's a great piece of advice and a great reminder of you're going to need to follow up a few times, a lot of times, but that's part of the business and it's not personal or, you know, someone ignoring you.

25:09It's just people are inundated, but the founders who have the tenacity to keep following up and to build relationships and network, it really is a huge piece of cutting through the noise. Yeah, absolutely. And I love exactly everything that you shared on doing so. Okay. Last question before I let you go, where can people shop the products?