Banza: Brian Rudolph. The Chickpea Pasta That Nearly Turned to Mush

29:47And I was like, we need to go to the emergency room. So go to the emergency room. They ask me on a scale of one to 10, how much pain I'm in. And I'm like, well, I didn't get shot, but I know I'm in a lot of pain. So I want to say 10. I said nine. And I'm thinking about this last production run. I felt like I'd put everything into this business, even though it had been less than a year. I'm thinking to myself, this company is not going to survive before it even launches. This is the end of the world if this doesn't work. When we come back in just a moment, Brian comes up with a fix for the mushy pasta problem and chooses a bold breakout color for the box.

30:25Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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34:43Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2014, and when we left off, Brian was at a real low point. His chickpea pasta recipe was not working out. And in the middle of dealing with all that, he got an incredibly painful kidney stone. That problem eventually went away, but the pasta was still coming out mushy. So we went back to the plant, just keeping our fingers crossed that the production run has gone well. and I can clearly see that it has not gone amazingly well. Not a product that we were going to be proud of. And I think it was that day where I was like, something's got to change.

35:25They can't just keep making this product that's this bad over and over again. And going in, despite them asking me not to, going in and talking to the press operators and saying like, what's going on? And they're like, yeah, this corn smells funny. And I was like, that's because it's not corn. You're not making a corn pasta today. It's chickpeas. And I was like, oh my God, the communication here is horrible. And that was when they kicked me out of the plant. And they're like, you got to get out of here. And you got kicked out because you were there too much or you were like poking your nose and things too much?

35:55A little overzealous. Yeah. I really wanted to see what was happening on the line because this was everything to me, right? Yeah. Time was running out. I mean, we had a P.O. due because Meyer and Eataly were both going to have product available. And so we were running out of time, running out of money. And we also had the distributor at the time basically threatening us. They're like, if you don't fulfill this PO, you're never going to work with this retailer again. But you had to, so you basically, even though this, what was coming out of this manufacturer wasn't great, you had no choice but to use it.

36:32Is that what you're saying? That's how it felt. I was hearing these threatening messages from the distributor that was basically like, if you don't fulfill this, you'll never work with this company again. And I don't know any better. And how much, I mean, how much money was this going to cost you? Like how much, most of the$100 ,000 you had at that time? Yeah, we were basically out, I mean, at that point. Okay. And this was going to be for all the Meijer stores and some Eataly shops. Exactly. And it was something like 20 ,000 boxes for the initial PO. It wasn't a crazy amount, but at the time it was a crazy amount.

37:06Yeah. So it just felt like the most impossible to fulfill order. And so we sat there and we were like, okay, what if you boil it for one minute, two minutes, three minutes? And then it was like, okay, what if you don't boil it at all? What if it just sits in hot water the same way that you steep tea? Huh. So you would basically just boil water, let it stop boiling, and you put the pot, turn the heat off, and let it sit there and see if that changed the mushiness. Like if that made it more like a wheat pasta. Making it more like a wheat pasta is definitely a stretch, but at least making it not fall apart.

37:46And we found that that made it okay. It was okay. It was good enough. If you didn't boil it, if you just put it in hot water and let it sit there. It cooked better. I was still, listen, I was not proud of it. I felt really bad about having to sell this under our brand, but I also knew it was a matter of survival. So we then already had the packaging printed. So in order to get through it, we had to get stickers. What did the stickers say on them? Bonza is even easier to cook than regular pasta. Steep it like tea. So you had to physically put that sticker on 20 ,000 boxes? 20 ,000 boxes. So we ended up finding some people who worked at that plant to help us.

38:38And it was brutal. And I'm very grateful to the folks who were willing to take on that job because it's pretty mind-numbing. And we shipped it. Yeah. And we then got the heck out of that facility, went back to the small manufacturer and said, you know, we're going to try to work with you for as long as we can. And it was immediately better working with them. They seemed to have more of an ability to adjust because it was a smaller run. So you could test, you could learn, you could try something else all pretty continuously. So, yeah, we retreated. All right. So now it's the summer of 2014 and the pasta is about to roll out in 192 stores, which I think are mostly Meyers in the Midwest.

39:27And at the same time, the reality TV show that you're part of on CNBC is also about to come out. So this is a pretty big moment for you. What happens? The show aired on August 5th for the first time and it crashes the website. OK. And there was real interest. We were getting tons of emails and people were frustrated they couldn't buy it. And the show itself, it really highlighted a lot of the points that I would hope would be highlighted, that it was higher in protein, higher in fiber, gluten-free, vegan, all these great things. Like it actually, it told the story to a lot of people really fast.

40:05So even though it was it had a lot of fake drama that didn't really happen, it also net net was a dream way to start to have that kind of exposure. And did you have any feedback on flavor, right? Because wheat pasta is fairly neutral. I mean, maybe it has like a slight salty flavor, but it's very, it really is like a canvas for sauce. But once you're using other non-wheat flours, you're introducing flavors that our palates aren't used to, right? I think what we found is in a red sauce, it was a pretty similar experience. But when you started going to the lighter sauces, it has a different flavor.

40:50And some people like that flavor, but a lot of people do want the experience of wheat. And so it was a work in progress. I'll say that. Yeah. But people really did love it. Like that was one of the cool things is even with recognizing the product needed to be better, it just solved such a problem for people to have pasta that could be so nutrient dense. And the nice thing about pasta is it's a vehicle for your sauce. So even though it had its flaws, that would often be hidden by the sauce itself. And I imagine, I mean, in a sense, it's like even though it's not yet perfect, you know, because a lot of times that can sink a brand, right?

41:32If people try it once and they just don't like it, they're not going to go back to it. But I think in this case, it was just so different. It was like chickpea flour pasta. And probably there were a number of people kind of excited about that because either they were gluten-free or they were already looking for high-protein foods. So imagine you had people like that who, even though it wasn't perfect yet, were still psyched just because it was different than anything else out there. Yeah. You know, when I think about even the earliest days, I would ask anyone in a room, you could eat pasta, but have it have more protein, more fiber.

42:11Almost anyone would say, absolutely, I would love that. And so I think just for a beloved food, people love pasta to be able to eat it and have it be that healthy. was really a novel thing. Brian, tell me about the packaging. I mean, how did you design it? Because I've seen the early packaging. It looks quite different than what it looks like now. I had a window, so you could see the pasta that says chickpeas, and the logo was different. Did you hire somebody to design that for you? We did. And there were so many iterations of design. And we quickly, through farmers markets, learned what people liked, what they didn't like.

42:49And it really did shape the messaging that we felt like would most resonate. And saying chickpeas as a lead actually scared a lot of people. So and as did gluten free. Gluten free was very much so not on the front of our packaging. We didn't have a gluten free certification on the front. It was on the side. We really wanted people to think of this not as a product that's not for them, but a product that could that could be because it's high in protein, high in fiber. And we definitely started to notice that people appreciated that the pasta was high in protein. I also thought it was sort of like you're putting together these two ideas that usually don't go together, which was somewhat shocking, right?

43:32To have a pasta that has protein, it's sort of like you don't expect those two things together. So there was – I think it also built intrigue. Yeah. It's interesting because it really jumps off the shelves, right? I mean, I think one of the reasons why this has been successful is because you see it. It's an orange box. Yeah. Orange is my favorite color. So I grew up on Nickelodeon, always loved it. Oh, yeah. That's right. That's a great orange. Yeah. Yeah. And when we were thinking about the color, we also thought about what would stand out and saw that at the time, almost all pasta was blue. It was crazy.

44:12You would think that they were all in cahoots because every single one would look the exact same. And nothing contrasts more sharply with a blue than an orange. It's distinctly Bonza. I will say that at this point. All right. So you have packaging and you've got now some momentum. But you still need to, I mean, to scale now, and this is already, you know, 2015. You still have this issue with production, right? Like it's being produced in a small facility in Michigan. And I imagine that you and your brother are talking about like we got to figure this out because this is going to be a problem at some point.

44:53Exactly. We started to recognize that the facility we were working with was not ready to invest in growing with us. And we had the place bursting at the seams producing as often as possible. And they were not willing to buy a new line. So, funny enough, at that time, the person from that other facility who kicked me out of the plant, his name is Manoj, he sent me a message on LinkedIn, said, Hi, Brian, I'm thinking of starting my own facility. Would you be interested in being a customer? And I hated him. I hated him so much because he kicked me out of the plant. So it took every ounce of swallowing my pride to answer that message and say, sure, let's chat.

45:45We talked with him and there were some mutual interests there. And we said, hey, you know, we instead, would you want to team up with us and help start a facility together? And we worked through the details. That you would own instead of instead of him. So he was thinking about starting his own anyway to make gluten-free pasta. And you're saying, well, maybe we team up and own it together. Exactly. And it was a nice opportunity for him as well. A little bit less risky than starting his own plant. But how are you going to finance that in April of 2016? Yeah. So that is part of why we ended up raising a seed round for the very first time.

46:27And at that point, we had been in a few thousand stores and we were starting to see some good momentum. I believe our orange packaging was starting to hit shelves. But a lot of our customers, in theory anyway, were not shopping the pasta aisle. But they'd see it when they were walking around the perimeter of the grocery store on the end cap. And they'd say, oh, I'll try that. That looks different. And then they'd come back and buy it more. And it was this like really cool line graph where it would be like line up, new line, new baseline up every time it was on display. And we were able to raise money based on some of that early momentum.

47:06But we were very nervous about setting up our own facility. We really didn't want to. It was only after exhausting all the other options. We spoke with pretty much anyone we could and just continued to have bad luck or there just wasn't enough capacity. So after everything we went through with the first production run, we were very, very focused on de-risking. And that felt like the lowest investment way to get started. Okay. So one of the things that I think really is going to be pivotal is getting into, I mean, being Italy and Meijer is great and even Whole Foods. But you got into Target, and this is like about two and a half years in.

47:51And Target's critical, right? Because if you're in Target, then you can really become a big brand. Like you can become a significant brand if you're just in Whole Foods. But to really scale, you've got to be in Kroger's and the Targets and Walmarts. And so they agreed to pick it up in May of 20th. Not in all the stores, but I think in a few stores, right? Test run. A couple hundred stores to see how it would go. And we watched it like a hawk. We did everything we could to try to support it. And it got momentum. How? I mean, they used to give you one chance, right? So how did it, I mean, there has to be a reason why people noticed it there.

48:28I think it was a combination of the bright orange packaging, I hope, right? We had started to really learn what was resonant on social media, probably before a lot of brands were taking it seriously. And people loved pasta content. I remember it wasn't long before we were able to say we had more followers than any pasta brand. And that was meaningfully helpful in also sales conversations, but I think building resonance. And we would see these people who would create amazing recipes and we would just reach out and say, hey, would you like to try our pasta? And we would ship them anything. So I have to imagine if I look in retrospect, the things that worked, very different product, first of its kind, but also the relentless pursuit of just saying like, please pay attention to us, right?

49:21Yeah. And I mean, the momentum of this product is amazing. I mean, you I think by 2022, you're in 21 ,000 stores. And at this point, you've got pizza, you got mac and cheese, got rice, and you'll eventually create more products. But I want to ask about, you know, a challenging period for because this is and I should mention you were on the show very briefly a couple years ago, just a short episode with a few other guests. And we talked about this and it's a really important story because, you know, in a sense, at this point, anybody could hear this episode and go, oh, Bonza, you know, they just like jumped from success to success.

50:03The guy was in the startup lab and people are like, where's the failure? Where's the setbacks? You know, that's how I learned from how I built this. And there was a very significant setback. Let me tell you the story that I know and then you can chime in. But the story is there was a report. There's an organization, influencers, moms across America, and they talk about healthy food. And I think they were very much supporters of organic, et cetera, right? Like they tested a bunch of foods and they found that in your pastas, including other products, there was a trace elements of an herbicide called glyphosate, which is like one of the most widely used herbicides on the planet.

50:53It's in Roundup. And so, again, I don't know if this is, you know, whether the testing was fair or not. But did they come to you first or did this just come out of the blue? One day you opened the Internet and people like, dude, what's going on with your pasta? I still remember when I saw that press release. Okay, so they didn't come to you first. They didn't ask for anything. No. I was sitting in a one-on-one. I saw a Google alert and my heart sank. It was terrifying. And I remember my brain just jumped 20 steps ahead. I don't know if I could have predicted how bad it actually was, but I knew it was going to be bad.

51:36When we come back in just a moment, Brian is absolutely right. It is bad. Really bad. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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53:36Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2024, and Brian is dealing with a nightmare scenario. A viral report from a food safety group claims that bonza chickpea pasta has high levels of a harmful pesticide. I mean, honestly, we were shocked to see it. I think it was not something we ever would have expected to be the case. The majority of our supply chain at that time was already traceable. And we had relationships with many of the farms that were growing our chickpeas. And most of them were coming from the U.S.? Correct. And none of the farmers that we have a relationship with were spraying glyphosate.

54:19So I was so shocked and confused. And then it quickly turned into, oh, my God, I'm getting a lot of threatening messages. People are really scared. They don't know what this means. They don't know how to contextualize it. And we didn't have a prepared response because we never would have expected it. Who are you hearing from? Are you hearing from, I'm assuming consumers, but also from like the big companies like the Whole Foods and Targets of the world? It started with the advocacy group. And then the advocacy group has a very strong network of influencers that they work with who promoted the message.

54:57And frankly, fear and food is a very compelling message on social media. And it was a game of telephone where by the time it made its way to some of the largest accounts who were sharing it, they were saying things that were even more extreme than the initial very extreme message. And I think we were paralyzed by this moment and wanting to verify whether or not it was true as a first step. Right. So on the one hand, like you want to release a statement, but you can't necessarily deny it until you've tested it. I guess you could recall all your products, but it's not – that would be maybe overkill.

55:45What did you decide to do right away to stop the bleeding? Because I imagine – am I wrong? Did it instantly affect sales? For absolute clarity, our sales went down 30 % week over week. Wow. Wow. Wow. I mean, honestly, I was more concerned with people's fear and trying to figure out how to address that. I had people who I've known forever calling me and I had someone call me crying because they were so scared. And they didn't know what it meant. They didn't know how to contextualize it. And they love Bonza and they give it to their kids all the time. I was also sitting with the fact that I've spent all this time only caring about trying to make healthy food.

56:27And now I'm in this position where people are of the belief that we are doing something extremely nefarious or intentional. and you know it's like maybe more than I wanted to admit my identity had been wrapped up in this idea of I create healthy food and to then be told and get messages from people on the internet who don't even know you that are accusing you if you're trying to kill them exactly and and I just I started to feel so terrible every day and it got to a point where a video would go online my whole body would start shaking from the adrenaline and the fear. I legitimately lost like 10 pounds during that time period because I was just walking nonstop trying to work through the stress.

57:14And it was sort of like waiting for the shoe to drop that another influencer would post, another influencer would post. So what were you doing in those first few days? Did you, anything? Like, like what did, what did you do? My hope was that we would get test results back quickly. So you didn't release a statement? You didn't do anything like that? Well, we did that. We did that. But that's not enough to quell people's concerns. So we put something on our website very quickly. But it was along the lines of we were going to look into this, which is, you know, for the people who are most concerned, maybe not what they want to hear.

57:53I just I wanted to make sure we handled it the right way, not the rushed way. I was trying to do the right thing where we would not say something out of turn. And it was like you couldn't have made it up that the lab would just take longer and longer and keep delaying and delaying and delaying. And next thing you know, it's been three weeks. And what did the results tell you that you guys got back? Very different. And for many reasons. And what we published was ultimately 98 % lower than what was claimed. But it wasn't zero, right? There was gray. So what I had to sit with was that's not great either, right?

58:33Like it was a very low level that would still be considered low by most standards. It was below EWG's benchmark for risk, which is already very, very conservative. But I just sat with it and I said to myself, I know we can solve this because the majority of our supply chain is already this way. So we're just going to make sure that we get to 100 % compliance. And we were able to do it within just a few weeks. This is in June, right, of 2020. It was a bad summer for you. And you're seeing sales just really collapse. But you now have data and you now have had some breathing room to kind of think about what to do.

59:15So what do you what do you decide to do? In the span of a few weeks, we gained a better understanding of how to get our supply chain to a place where every farmer we would know. And if we didn't know them, for example, for our pasta made in Italy, there would be a tremendous amount of testing to confirm that growing practices are as they should be. And a lot of people worked with us to make sure we could get that over the finish line given the circumstances um so that was one component and then the other is um working with a certifying agency uh called the detox project who created the glyphosate residue free program so if you ever see a product that says glyphosate residue free uh they are the ones who created that certification and they have a new certification then new now many are using it called CleanScan, which is intended to be not just focused on glyphosate, but also a standardized panel of pesticides, over 400 pesticides.

1:00:25And, you know, we don't choose them. It's just these panels are designed by lab testing companies. And they basically certify that a product is free of these ingredients. Correct. And you also commit to publishing test results. And what I loved about it is it's all focused on transparency. It's meant to be a form of accountability that is very public. And I just wanted to rebuild trust with people by just saying, you know what, we may have a test result that shows a positive on something. Like there is drift from nearby fields. The reality of farming is messier than most people think. And if that does happen, we will publish it and we will make a public commitment to solving for it.

1:01:21We will do a root cause analysis. We'll figure out where it's coming from. And I think you've got a QR code in your box right now that you can scan and you can see those test results. Yes. And that said, good news does not travel as fast as bad news. And again, I think there are things we could have done differently. I wish the lab testing came back sooner. But in lieu of that, a more quick, obvious, easy to find statement that just acknowledged what was happening and that we were investigating and surprised. That may have helped a little bit, but honestly, it's hard to say. So if you were a crisis communications expert now, which you are, and you were giving advice to somebody in the same situation, would you say, no, you want to over communicate?

1:02:04You want to just talk and talk and talk and talk until everybody hears your message? Is that what you would say? Basically, yes. At that moment, I'm not going to blame anyone but myself at this point, right? Again, I don't even know if this would have helped, but my hope for anyone else who's listening to this is to say if you respond with an earnest assessment of the situation, show what you care about, what you intend to do about it, I think that that can be well received. It's hard to do. How long do you think it took before you know? How long did it take before the sales recovered? it's been a mixed bag.

1:02:47In some accounts, sales are better than ever. And probably not surprisingly, the natural channel has been much slower to recover. And it's crazy because those were, in many circumstances, originally our best accounts. And maybe not best by total dollar sales, but like repeat customers. Correct. Per store sales. Per store sales, exactly. And it actually does make sense. The people who shop in the natural channel are most likely to be affected by this type of messaging. My hope in all of this, as I sat with it, was to assume positive intent with anyone. so um i truly believe that the moms across america team is extremely well intended i think that they are uh fighting for what they believe in and everyone was doing it from a place of i want to help people and that honestly made it so much more tolerable to get through it assuming positive intent.

1:04:02And, you know, it's going to take time, right? Like the Whole Foods customer is going to take a while to, you know, believe in us again. And I will say like, I have alerts turned on for any mention of Bonzo and glyphosate. And I personally respond. I jump in on Reddit. And my hope is 100 % of the time that there is a mention of Bonzo and glyphosate. Someone is responding and contextualizing until it's impossible to see a version of this story without context, which is exhausting. It's exhausting. You got a vibe code of Claude Agent to do that for you. I mean, despite that challenge in 2024, you are, I think this year, you became the fifth biggest pasta brand in the US.

1:04:50You also started to sell a wheat-based pasta, protein, right? Right. And so you've got and I think it's made a different facility, but you have that because of the high protein content. And as I say, you've got frozen pizzas and protein waffles and mac and cheese. Where are you seeing the most exciting growth right now? Because now we're in a now in a world where there's lots. You've got competition that you didn't have before. Right. You've got, you know, Lupini pasta and other brands that are making chickpea pasta. And even Barilla, the huge Italian brand, is making, you know, chickpea pasta now.

1:05:32So but where are you seeing real like velocity in all of the different things that you now make? At the end of the day, our most important product is still our chickpea pasta, the very first. and we are, despite some challenges still, by the way, in the natural channel, we are seeing great growth in some accounts outside of that. But it's our core focus has to be and remain our chickpea pasta for every reason. So for all the, it's fun to make new stuff. It's really fun. But continuing to challenge myself to do less in the face of a lot of enthusiasm to want to do more. When you think about, you know, where you got to now, how much of this do you attribute to the work that you and your brother put in?

1:06:25How much do you think had to do with luck and circumstance? I mean, you did, you know, you arrived at the, you know, the beginning of the protein boom. There's going to be a fiber boom. There's still a lot of people who are gluten-free. You had early luck with that reality show. And so there are all those factors, but how much do you weigh those two things, luck and hard work? I think when we're at our best, we are doing anything we can to increase the likelihood of luck. So if it's putting ourselves out there and doing a reality TV show and going through all the chaos that comes with that, but knowing that it increases the likelihood that something might go right, that's where we should be.

1:07:09there's just so much that I think has been a tailwind if we're doing it right we're just increasing the likelihood of a tailwind that's Brian Rudolph co-founder along with his brother Scott of Bonzo thanks so much for listening to the show this week please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode and if you're interested in insights, ideas and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs please do sign up for my newsletter at guyroz.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Catherine Seifer with music by Rumtine Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Kerry Thompson.

1:07:51Our audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Alex Chung, Sam Paulson, Carla Estevez, JC Howard, John Isabella, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. Thank you.