Roxana Saidi: Founder and CEO of Táche

23:34Roxana Saidi:Like what oil? And I was like, oh, rapeseed oil is used in oat milk and that is a type of seed oil. And so, you know, it was all three things, right? Like taste, sustainability, and health were this beautiful convergent I was lucky enough to have with the pistachio. I'm also interested about the journey of the creative side of the brand and brand building because you worked with a creative agency. And I'm so curious as to what made you want to do that when you had a lot of experience yourself. So I worked closely with two teams of designers to bring the visual identity to life while I was owning the DNA of the brand itself.

24:16Roxana Saidi:And so one was a girlfriend of mine who's so talented that I was so lucky enough to snag what I did. Her name is Ashley Combs of Smash studios. And the other is a agency out of Mexico city called Futura. And so it was sort of a beautiful marriage of these three POVs coming together, but me really leaning on Ashley and Futura to bring the visual identity to life. And we went down many different paths in the early days. Some that, you know, you look back on these things and you can't help but laugh. Wait, did you have a name at that point or no? I did. I did. Tash is the second syllable in pistachio.

24:57Okay. So you're working on all that. Are you consulting at the same time? Like, how are you funding all of this? I know that you bootstrapped it for quite some time. So

25:06Roxana Saidi:how are you making this happen? Tash was a five-year journey before we launched 2015 to 2020. The reason for that is because if you want to make a plant-based milk that is a barista product that's going to work in coffee, matcha, et cetera. At the time, and still mostly true to this day, there's only a handful of manufacturers who can create that product for you. And by virtue of that, they have the luxury of saying, you will produce a quarter of a million units on your first production run. And when you have the capital to do that, come on back and we can talk. So you're scaling the entire business before you have turned on a website, sold a single unit or anything, which goes against all conventional wisdom of how you start a food and beverage company or most company.

25:51And just to give some context for our audience. So like if you're starting a beauty company, oftentimes there are so many beauty manufacturers that you can find someone who will take a risk on a smaller run. Or if you're starting a denim company, there's a chance that you can find a manufacturer who likes your idea and wants to take a risk on you. But to your point, there weren't very many people who can produce this. So then they get to call the shots and they're less interested in taking a risk. They want something that's coming to them with like the money and the proof of concept before they'll even play, which feels very aggressive.

26:30I mean, like I get it, but also that's so limiting and then requires so much money up

26:35Roxana Saidi:front. In their defense, we're talking like 700 ,000 square feet facilities, like just to get that thing up, you know, we're talking millions and millions of dollars, right? So here I come and I'm like, hey, like, want to try my pistachio milk? And, you know, I was well-researched and I presented well, but they knew they were going to say no before I even probably showed them my first slide. Right. But our co-man, just co-manufacturer who took a chance on me is still our partner today, which I love. And, you know, they said, Roxanna, we were ready to tell you no, but we tried your product and we all think it's outstanding.

27:11Roxana Saidi:and we actually really believe that you're gonna see this through. Like we believe in you. And so it was a risk on their part that they didn't have to take, but I'm so grateful that they did. So, but going back, are you still consulting during this time? Like, how are you funding all of this? Because this feels very intense. So, you know, they said, listen, we're gonna take a risk on you. We're gonna cut down our normal MOQ from the typical quarter of a million. You're gonna do 60, 70 ,000. And I was grateful for that. Still a lot. But, you know, to be comfortable, I knew I needed at least one to two million dollars.

27:44Roxana Saidi:So at that point, it was no longer bootstrapping and I needed to go raise some funds. This was now about 2019. I was still consulting. I consulted all the way up until that last mile when I had to start fundraising and it was really like starting to be go time. So through all of the R &D, the brand development, the recipe development, finding all of this stuff. You're just funding it essentially from your day job. Exactly. And my savings. Do you remember the wing? Yeah, of course. I was at the wing waiting for them to open the door on Saturday morning. I was like, that birthday party, I would love to go.

28:22Roxana Saidi:But for me, it was all the time. When we were building Who, What, Where? Well, one, I got myself into credit card debt. Two, for a very long time, I couldn't go out to dinner with my friends because I didn't have any money. Like I couldn't do the things like Saturday brunch. Like, no, I was working on a story, but I also believed. So I was like, well, let's try. Right. Having that passion and that commitment and that dedication and willingness to make those sacrifices. I think a lot of the time it's what separates startups that can make it from ones that suffer or struggle or can't get off the ground.

28:57Yeah, very much so. Okay, so consulting, working all the time, working on your brand, you get to the point where like, okay, so I'm going to need to fundraise. And then have you taken it out to retail yet? Like, how does that process work? Or are you going to make all of this and just say like, hope and a prayer that this works?

29:18Roxana Saidi:Hope I have a garage big enough. The channels I wanted to pursue at launch were D2C. I bought pistachiamilk.com for$12 and I wanted to pursue food service, which is specialty coffee in our case. And I knew that retail was really expensive and really easy to get upside down. And I learned that through making one-to-one relationships with people who are a lot smarter and in the business for a lot longer than I, and also through podcasts, reading, you name it. And then I was also introduced to the founder and former CEO of Stonyfield Yogurt. His name's Gary Hirshberg. And he became my lead investor in my pre-seed round.

30:00Roxana Saidi:He did like a Shark Tank style pitch competition during the pandemic. And so myself and like, I think it was 20 other aspiring CBG founders, we pitched this very intimidating panel of like 50 VCs and operators and all that. And Gary selected Tash to invest in. And so I got to know him and he really coached me so intently on the potholes to look out for. And one of them was retail. So I knew I wanted to push that out after we got our footing through D2C and food service. And so in 2020, our first year, half of the business was split just down the middle. Half was online because we were all buying everything online at that time.

30:42Roxana Saidi:And the other half was through cafe partners. How did you get the word out? It was a combination of a number of factors, but we got a lot of great press that year, which felt a little full circle for me. I was like, okay, great. And, you know, being the first pistachio milk on the market at a time when, again, we were ordering so much, trying new things. The curiosity was there, was exciting. The inbound partnerships were great. Like half of our incredible cafe partners, they just found the product, you know, through word of mouth themselves, like mom on and like Ralph's coffee and all that. So there was this like natural adoption of it happening because the team was me.

31:22Roxana Saidi:I looped in my husband when he lost his job at the start of the pandemic. His background is in biz dev and sales. And I was like, Oh yes, come on over. I could use some of that. And, you know, we used like my background doing email marketing and social and trying like a first co-branded product with a brewery. We were trying all kinds of stuff. I would also imagine that those cafe partnerships would help boost brand awareness because, especially if you're talking about some of these like cool cafes, then it's a cool spot where cool people go who are already probably going to be at the forefront of early adopters for whatever the hot new milk is.

32:02And then they're going to tell their friends and figure out that they can buy it at home. So I would imagine that was like a really great strategy for building your D to C business too.

32:11Roxana Saidi:Exactly. Yeah. And to this day, it's still like a huge part of our business. And I think it speaks to what I absorb from my mom, what like I see among my girlfriends, what I myself love. I go to a new city and I love just like that third space coffee culture, your people watching, your having your alone time, whatever it may be, like those rituals and those routines, I find so fascinating, so special. And if we can be a part of that across any cafe setting, how special, how wonderful. And so I love that that's such a central part of Tash and how we build the brand. So talk to me about expansion.

32:49How do you know when it's time to try something new or to create something new because now Tash makes also a pre-made pistachio milk latte and a three-ingredient pistachio milk. And I'm curious about how you think about that R &D or market share. What is it that takes an idea from an idea all the way to market? And then also, I'm sure there have been ideas that have not made it to market. What is that vetting process like?

33:20Roxana Saidi:So usually it's the intersection of really three parts. So it's what our team believes deeply in, what we want to see brought to market next, what we think will make customers happy and will do well, whether it's at the cafe level, at the retail level, D2C, et cetera. The next is we do surveys. We do a lot of surveys. We try to learn from our customers as much as we possibly can. We just did one last week, which was so informative. And they always have some of the best ideas, to be honest. It comes from the folks who are consuming our product on a daily basis. And then the third one is from our relationships with our buyers, mostly at retail, also a little bit at food service.

34:01Roxana Saidi:But the retailers like to be a part of that process, some more than others. But we love, like with Whole Foods, for example, really being arm in arm with our buyers there to create a product. this most recent launch, our three ingredient pistachio milk, we launched with Whole Foods just a few months ago. And they were a part of that journey with us. We started about a year ago. And to have someone believe in something that's of course premium, but like sort of stripped back and this real emphasis and focus on quality and to believe in it and move quickly with us is really encouraging. And it's been great.

34:40Talk to me about that retail side, because as you said, like early on, you knew that could be a potential pitfall, but you are in many stores and many prestigious stores, to your point, Whole Foods, Sprouts, the Mecca of all things cool, Erwan. So your brand feels like such a natural fit in these places. But I've had a number of founders on who have talked about like what that process is like and that, you know, some people it's a straight shot, some people it's not. What has your retail journey been like? Yeah.

35:12Roxana Saidi:So our retail journey started in 2023. We gave the business like three years and that overlapped with COVID. So 320, it's all kind of like a blur what that really was. But in 2023, we were ready to set out and we really focused on the natural channel. So like Aeroon, Whole Foods, it's a much easier place to play from like a P &L perspective in the beginning. And what I mean by that is that the larger retailers like the Albertsons and the Kroger's, they come with a lot of fees. So you're paying to get on the shelf, the exposure, the visibility to really play within their much larger networks. On the natural side, they largely don't have those slotting fees.

35:57Roxana Saidi:So you don't have to pay to get on the shelf. You just have to earn your spot to stay there, which is actually the harder part. Getting on the shelf is not the hardest part. It's staying on the shelf. So we tried to be really intentional and thoughtful about it, right? We were building a brand focused on profitability, which also not cool at the time. It was the furthest thing from cool. There was this huge trend, ongoing trend, where folks were chasing scale, not profitability. And so I even went through that with Who What Where. Some of our competitors, who are basically not around anymore, got all the headlines because they were constantly raising these huge sums of money.

36:36and then we were like the little engine that could. We were healthy and profitable and growing and had great margins and that wasn't valued. And I kept thinking like, does the emperor have new clothes? Why is it that we think this is a good idea?

36:50Roxana Saidi:That mirrors my experience so much. I was like, oh gosh, is the pendulum ever gonna swing or am I just like over here on an island? But it does, you know, I think part of that is like also knowing that it's gonna come back around again and you gotta do what's right for you. You have to listen to your own intuition on it. Your own values. Yes, exactly. So we're still, little engine that could metaphor, right, rings true. Like we have to sit down and do an exhaustive exercise of can we afford X retailer? Does it make sense for us at this point in time? And, you know, wonderfully exciting things come in and they're like, put it in this form factor, put it in this pack and we'll do this many, you know, regions and this many doors.

37:30Roxana Saidi:And it's hard saying no, but a lot of times you have to, and you have to do what's right. Financial literacy is something I talk a lot about with aspiring founders, and it's maybe not everyone's favorite topic. I know it wasn't really mine, but it's so necessary. And to that point too, just because a retailer wants something because it's good for their bottom line or it's good for their story, it doesn't mean it's good for yours. And that can be hard because it's like the dream is to have some massive corporation come in and say like, we want to get behind this. But if it requires you to produce at a level that could put the whole company at risk, you have to look for your company's best interest.

38:11Roxana Saidi:Exactly. And that's such a great point too, because I think sometimes early conversations or early relationships, you want to build because you think like, this is what they want, making them happy as part of what I need to set out to do or whatever. And you get a little bit like backwards where you're like, hold on a second. I have to put the thing that I'm building first before this$2 billion chain. Or I think about like the specialty stuff, like we saw this in the fashion world in particular ahead of the crash, but where every major department store retailer wanted a one-off from this brand and a special bag from this brand and all of this stuff.

38:47So now all of a sudden this luxury brand is having to make their core line and then a special line for this retailer, a special piece for this retailer. a special piece for that retailer because they hold the cards and they want that point of differentiation. But ultimately, maybe it's not right for the brand. Maybe it's really expensive for the brand and then it becomes muddled. I can only imagine that there's probably somewhat of a similar process that goes on for you where it's like, well, it's great that TK store brand really wants this product, but if I make it for them, one, is it right for me?

39:20Two, then is that going to mess with my other relationships because you also don't want to get into a situation where you're chasing newness for each partner and distracting yourself in the process.

39:31Roxana Saidi:Exactly. I think that one good thing to come out of what was going on during the pandemic is that was like really widespread for a while. Oh, we need a special flavor just for Target. Oh, we need a special flavor now for Walmart. For us, luckily, that's really subsided considerably, right? And I think that there's more of an understanding and an empathy for the emerging brands that that is not where we should be putting our energy and we have limited resources. So let's focus on, you know, on time and full deliveries. Let's focus on doing the marketing to get it off the shelf and all of that. But it's such a good watch out because it's so easy to be like, oh, Net-A-Porter wants to do a capsule.

40:07Roxana Saidi:Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. So this podcast has resulted in a lot of really amazing manifestations. I'm curious if there are any places that you would like to see Tash sold that we can put out there into the universe right now. I love it. Okay. Dream partnerships. Let's think here. So I would, this is going to be like a little smattering because so many things are firing in my head right now, but like GoHardWorld is high up on my list. Just about anything they wanted to make, I'd be keen to do. I would love to do a cappuccino cup with Richard Janori. That would be amazing. I would buy it. There we go.

40:45Roxana Saidi:We've got two orders, people at Janori. I would love to do a pistachio pizza. I think we could even do it with somebody as big as like a Domino's. I love a high-low mix. Right? I would love to do an activation with like a Moda or a My Teresa, something like that. I love how much fashion has embraced like the cafe activation. It's just been so fun to be a part of so many of those and especially during like fashion weeks and stuff. So those are some of my wishlist brand partnerships. Watch this face. You never know. So I also want to talk about the fact that you donate a portion of your profits and product and time to the Lower East Side Girls Club of New York.

41:29Talk to me about the philanthropic element of your company and why that's also important to you.

41:35Roxana Saidi:Absolutely. So one of the other things that I leaned into while I was a publicist besides social media was I was volunteering as a mentor at a homeless shelter for teens in Hollywood. And I had a mentee who was 14 for about a year, and we grew really, really close. She had to move into the shelter when her sister became pregnant, who was 15 at the time, and there was no more space for her in the house. So through this experience of witnessing firsthand, just how much the most basic resources can completely change the trajectory of a young girl's life really stayed with me. And so while I was preparing to launch TASH, I knew that I wanted to partner with an organization that gave back to this group.

42:22Roxana Saidi:And after a couple of years of searching, we were connected to the Lower East Side Girls Club, which is a 20 plus year organization that exists to promote and encourage and foster young girls to become healthy, thriving young women right here in New York in the Lower East Side. And, you know, they've got incredible people who are part of their organization like Michelle Obama, Simone Biles, the list goes on and on and on. So we're just like a teeny tiny speck in the ocean of incredible people who make up the Lower East Side Girls Club foundation, board and all of that. And so getting to spend time with the girls, making healthy recipes and doing fun things with our product is literally like one of the best parts of my job.

43:09Roxana Saidi:And we love that the Lower East Side Girls Club also is really instrumental to helping the broader community as well. So a lot of our product gets donated to the surrounding neighbors and their families. And, you know, especially like we're coming up on the holidays again, which is crazy. But, you know, around the holidays, we love to be a part of their food drives and just programming around healthy holiday eating and things like that. I love that. I also love the fact that you were recently named one of Inc. Magazine's Female Founders of the Year for 2026, which is the second year in a row. looking back, what are you most proud of as a founder and CEO?

43:49And also what's been the biggest learning curve?

43:52Roxana Saidi:I love this question. And for me, it's so interesting because my greatest accomplishment also comes from my largest learning lesson. So early on in TASH, when we were first moving into retail and chatting with Whole Foods, for super valid reasons, they wanted us to change something about our packaging. And they are excellent partners, best in class. But I just didn't think we were ready to bring on this different change because we were so early in our own retail journey. And in hindsight, we were ready. We could have done this, but I waited. And luckily, an opportunity did come about just recently where we were ready to bring this product to life in the fashion that they needed it.

44:32Roxana Saidi:And so that was the three-ingredient milk that we just launched. I'm so proud of the product and I'm so proud of the nationwide launch with them, which is our first product to be nationwide with Whole Foods. It's been so amazing to see the reception and how it's blowing away our velocity expectations, meaning like how many units they sell a week. So in hindsight, I do wish that I had made the change earlier on, but in the end, it turned out wonderful and I've learned from it and that's all you can really do. So as the company continues to grow, what do you foresee in the next five years or in the next 10 years?

45:12Like what would a great exit look like? Is that on your radar? How do you think of the company in the future?

45:18Roxana Saidi:Since 2020, I've always been really passionate about so many categories. You think about like different sections of the grocery store being ripe for a pistachio player, right? Like almond yogurt, flour, ice cream, and oat too, right? Like all these different dairy-free options. And I really believe that pistachio deserves to be part of every category. And so with Cash, we are a pistachio company because we do have a roadmap to get into some of these categories, but we also do it in a really paced, intentional way. Because to us, the best thing that we can do is like own our core and be really great at our foundational products and then grow from there.

46:05Roxana Saidi:So we're on that path and we've got some more exciting launches coming up this year, but in 10 years, yeah, you know, hopefully you see like Tash sprinkled all throughout the grocery store. I love it. Okay. So we end this podcast with the same three questions for everyone, as I'm sure you know. So the first one is about mistakes, because I think it's really important for, again, women to hear stories of resiliency. And I'm hoping that you can tell me about a mistake that you've made at any point in your career and what you've learned from it. Yeah. So mistakes in these past five, almost six years of running TASH, there are plenty of them.

46:41Roxana Saidi:But I think one that is the most useful to hear as you think about embarking on a second life is that there's a lot of opinions that can come into play as you build a team. And the most important thing that I've realized over the years, and at one point we were a 10-person team, now we're a seven-person team, you really got to listen to your own intuition about how close you need to be to certain things. You know, what's working really well, what's not working really well. it's great to bring in the you know insights and opinions of others but ultimately i think that listening to yourself about what's working and what's not where to you know maybe let somebody go bring somebody new and you have to be like really in tuned with that and for me the way that i stay in tuned with that is i go on what i call a ceo off-site where i take two or three days and i get out of my environment i go stay somewhere and i really just get quiet and i like go inward and I do a lot of like journal work, manifesting work, all kinds of stuff.

47:42Roxana Saidi:But that's where I get in touch with like, okay, what's making the most sense? And you know, is there room for improvement? They say like, as women, I think it's really hard for us to let go of people who we really love. Yeah. And if I'm going to be really, really like pointed with some advice, it's try your best not to let something that you know, isn't working continue and go on and on and don't postpone things that you know need a change. Yeah. It's so hard. It's so hard. It's so hard. But it's also best for the person too. And I think that part's hard because like you never want to disrupt someone's life, but ultimately like if they're not working, they know, and then it saps away at them too.

48:21And I think ultimately there's like a really kind and thoughtful way of doing it where it's like, this is not really working for either of us and I will help you with your next step, but we need to move on in that process. But you get better at it too, right? I hope. Okay, so a lot of the folks who listen to this podcast are in their first lives and they wanna make a change. Maybe they wanna stay in their same industry but work in a different aspect of it or maybe they wanna totally change industries like you did. Either way, they're scared. What advice would you give someone who's standing there thinking about doing something else but just hasn't made that leap quite yet?

49:01Roxana Saidi:So I think there's two pieces of like tactical advice that I give. One, you've got to have a really honest conversation with yourself about your appetite for risk. What's your threshold? What's your tolerance level? Everybody's is going to be unique to themselves. What are you taking on? What do you have to give up? How much financial runway do you have? All of these things that builds your tolerance level. So that's first and foremost. And that really defines what you need to have set and figure it out before you take the leap. That's what that conversation should inform. The next one, have you read Atomic Habits by James Clear?

49:36Roxana Saidi:I have it, but I have not read it. Okay. He talks about this study in the book. And the brief overview is that there's a study about the concepts of motioning versus actioning. Motioning is you're prepping, you're strategizing, you're learning, you're doing all the things to prepare for the thing. Actioning is you've set deadline, you're doing it. You know, you're signing the contract, you're hiring the person, you're doing the action that has some finality to it. I think that especially for women, as we think about pivoting or making a life change, we live in motioning. And it feels good, right?

50:12Roxana Saidi:Because you're connecting dots, you're getting things like squared away. It's safe. But I try to encourage women to recognize when they're living and motioning too much and get to actioning. And again, that goes back to that first conversation you're having with yourself about risk and your appetite for it, because you've got to know what has to be true for you before you can move to the actioning. Because we don't want to get into a situation where you're actioning before you're ready. And listen, who better to talk about this than the person who spent five years? So let's just include that part, not necessarily by design, but you know.

50:46Do what I do, not what I say. But yeah, you did it so that you can advise, like learn from the experience. Okay. So my last question is my favorite question, which is if you could get into a time machine and go back in time and speak with your younger self, what advice would you give her?

51:02Roxana Saidi:So in those five years that I was preparing for Tash, I would have told younger Roxanna to relax. You've got this. I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself. I remember distinctly like waking up at 4 a.m. with like palpable anxiety being like, oh my God, how am I going to sell 60 ,000 units of pistachio milk. But again, to go back to motioning versus actioning, like I didn't need to have every single answer to every single question figured out. I needed the one that was in front of me, the one after that, and to be thinking about the one after that, not everything. And so Jen Atkin cut my hair for a number of years.

51:40Roxana Saidi:I was 20 and very lucky friends of friends, but she heard a lot about this idea that I was like cooking up in the earliest phases of it. And she said, you know, Rox, like Jessica gave me, Jessica Alba gave me some good advice when she was getting ready to launch Honest Company. And Jen was thinking about launching way. And she said, you know what? Don't keep pushing out your launch or keep, you know, thinking that it's not good enough. Get it to a point that it's a minimum viable product, get it out there and you'll learn. And it might feel a little bit counterintuitive or scary and it will, but you need to get it out there and iterate and learn.

52:20Roxana Saidi:And that's good advice. Jen knows. Just then, Jen. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. This has been such a huge pleasure. I really appreciate your time and congratulations on all of your success. It's been really cool to watch from afar for all this time. Hilary, thank you so much. I've been listening to this pod since day one. You are gifted at this. Thank you. You have to know that you really are. And I'm just so happy that you're still doing it.

52:57That was the founder and CEO of TASH, Roxana Saidi. For more inspiring interviews with women like Roxana, head on over to secondlifepod.com where we have so many more for you to peruse. If you like today's show, please subscribe on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review us. We love seeing you spread the word on social. And now you can tag us in your posts. We are at second life pod on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. We always want to know who you're interested in hearing from on the show. So send in your requests to hello at second life pod.com, or you can DM us on Instagram.

53:37I'm at Hillary Kerr. The show is at Second Life Pod. Our DMs are always open.

53:43Roxana Saidi:I'm Hilary Kerr, and you've been listening to Second Life. This episode was produced by Hilary Kerr, Summer Hammeris, and Natalie Thurman. Our production assistant is Grace Ingram. Our audio engineers are at Treehouse Recording in Los Angeles, California. And our music is by Jonathan Leahy.

54:09Thank you.