From $7K To 10,000 Stores. The Protein Pints Playbook.

13:40Michael Meadows:And you were doing it at, I'm sorry to interrupt, but this is important because I think sampling is such a critical part of getting off the ground and getting people to understand who you are and then also getting the good feedback from them as well. Was it universities?

13:51Paul Reiss:Was it at retail stores? All of the above, you know, it was university retail stores, It was athletic events. It was charities, foundations. We were doing every and every event, farmer's markets. And this was before we even launched in our first store. This was all part of the product development phase. We sampled with the consumers we knew who would be eating the product. That's how we got the feedback for the recipes. That's how we got the feedback for the packaging. We developed it with the consumers who would ultimately be purchasing it.

14:18Michael Meadows:How long was this?

14:19Paul Reiss:Was this a year, a few months? Year and a half. Year and a half. And that was just until we got in the first store. And then we continued to do it. So, you know, we've never stopped sampling and getting feedback. We're still doing it to this day. I would say that's a core cultural pillar for our company and how we've chose to let it is this process of continuous improvement.

14:37Michael Meadows:I think it's so important and it's pretty wise on your part to come out with a product that you can stand behind and say, this is a product that is great from day one. I don't know that enough founders do that kind of testing, that kind of demoing, that kind of planning as far in advance as they need to. I think sometimes the idea is, oh, we're just going to test and learn, test and learn, test and learn. By the time you're done with the actual product and the brand and everything you want that you describe as quote unquote right, you might be two or three years in and then it's too late.

15:08Paul Reiss:It's exactly right, Ray, because we were in 14 stores, but we had a product that could scale nationwide because we spent two and a half years developing that product, getting feedback. So everything else falls in line. But the most important thing is the product.

15:25Michael Meadows:Did you raise money from friends and family? Did you find early investors who helped you get off the ground to start?

15:31Paul Reiss:I think it'd be fun to rewind a little bit here. When we started the company, obviously, we talked about Paul and I being in college. We dropped out, you know, two broke kids who are kind of taking another path. And we actually started another company, a deck staining and power washing company initially.

15:45Michael Meadows:Deck staining and power washing? I know, it sounds so random. Totally different from ice cream.

15:48Paul Reiss:Don't knock the hustle.

15:49Michael Meadows:I don't care. I mean, if you're making money, that's great.

15:50Paul Reiss:Yeah, we were knocking on doors and we, you know, hired a team of people locally. And I was out there running it with them. And we ended up making$20 ,000 that summer that helped us pay for our samples, pay for our first store. And then after that, we went back to college and joined Michigan State. There was a whole kind of path before we even went traditional VC funding. Yeah, we were doing the deck standing company, and then we needed more funding. So we were applying for some local pitch competitions. We did one, and I think we won. It was our first one. We won$3 ,000, and we got third place.

16:25Paul Reiss:And we were like, wow. You hit the lottery there. We might be able to make some money. But what we found out was a lot of these pitch competitions were specifically for students. So what I did was I went back to Michigan State as a student and basically got student status, started us part time. So I was only taking a few classes, but I applied for every single pitch competition I could find for students in the United States. and that began a year and a half journey of learning how to tell our story and pitch the business and ultimately becoming one of the all-time most winning student teams in pitch competition history.

17:02Michael Meadows:Was this in tandem with the development of the brand? Were you raising money via pitch lamps and developing the brand at the same time?

17:09Paul Reiss:Yeah, right around the time that that was happening, Michigan State actually has what they call the dairy complex and the dairy store. they had an ice cream manufacturing facility that was largely unutilized and had shut down previously during COVID. So when Paul transferred to Michigan State as a student, I actually became employed at Michigan State as an employee at the dairy complex. And we kind of helped revive that center where we could, we need to scale up our manufacturing. We're in one store. We are quickly expanding to another 10 Meyers stores. And it was kind of hard to do on weekends, you know, at our partner's kitchen.

17:39Paul Reiss:So we were able to utilize the dairy complex to kind of scale up our first manufacturing at the same time that Paul was doing all these pitch competitions as part of being a student. Do you want more repeat buyers on Amazon? Well, this free resource in collaboration with Straight Up Growth will help your brand turn first-time buyers into long-term subscribers. Download Winning the Repeat Purchase Game on Amazon now at tasteradio.com slash sug. That's tasteradio.com slash s-u-g to start building retention-driven growth for your brand on Amazon. Scaling a beverage brand into major retail comes down to operational readiness.

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18:39Michael Meadows:so how much money did you actually have as your startup capital how much did you start out with and was that enough to really get the ball rolling yeah day one when we first started the company

18:52Paul Reiss:i think it's helpful to share i had seven thousand dollars in my college funding put all of that towards the business so we had seven grand to start out with then we did our deck staining and power washing company,$20 ,000 in profit, put it all back into the business. And then with pitch competitions, we won around$250 ,000. Wow. Okay. Put all of that back into the business. And then we ended up raising money in a more traditional sense. We raised roughly$3 million to scale up from those 14 to 9 ,000 stores in a single year.

19:26Michael Meadows:What convinced investors that those 14 stores, the data, the revenue generation that you were getting from those 14 stores could turn into potentially a brand that was in 10 ,000?

19:39Paul Reiss:The thing that convinces people the most is your traction. So if you're successful today, that's the best indicator that you'll be successful tomorrow. So when we went and presented this data to the retailers, it was only 14 stores of data, but we could show that we had double the sales of the next brand, Ben & Jerry's. I think that they realized, you know, these guys are already so successful. This is promising. Let's give them a shot. You also have to remember this is at the beginning of a huge cultural shift in kind of the way Americans are looking at food. You know, the food pyramid just got flipped upside down.

20:20Paul Reiss:That was more recent, you know, not around the time we went national, but even, you know, introduction of GLP-1 drugs. you know we don't necessarily market our product as uh glp1 but that consumer base you know finds this product really meets their needs because they need more protein in their diet but when you look at there's so many different segments of people that can benefit from protein and i think you know 2025 was right when you know the industry became very savvy to that it's a combination of great product great timing and then you know we have a great team behind us too it's not just Paul and I, we got 12 full-time individuals on our team that we could not be doing this without.

20:57Paul Reiss:I'll add to what we kind of left out here is Michael and I got jobs at every step of the way to learn how to make the ice cream. So day one, you know, we were making it at home in our kitchen, Michael and I, then we moved production to the local ice cream shop. We got jobs there. Then we moved to Michigan State Dairy Complex to scale up. We get jobs there. Like every step of the way, Michael and I were learning hands-on to make sure that the product was the highest quality it could be.

21:29Michael Meadows:So if I were an investor, I think that would sell me as much as the product and the brand itself. The fact that you have two guys who are willing to hustle as much as you guys did, traveling the country to raise money via pitch slams, learning about the business, learning about how to make the product. I've talked to a lot of investors. And when I ask them, what are they looking for in a brand, they always bring up the founder as one of the first two things. They say, if I believe in what the founder is doing and their ability to scale this brand, that's really what I'm investing in. And I imagine when you raise$3 million, your investors are saying, hey, we got Paul and Mike here, they're going to bust their ass to make sure that this works.

22:12Michael Meadows:Was that the case? Did you feel like you were selling yourself as much as you were selling the brand and the product to your investors?

22:17Paul Reiss:Yeah, absolutely. I think you're totally right, right? Like if you're in 14 stores, no matter how well you're doing in those 14 stores, the investors are going to be looking at who you are as a person, what you're doing on a day-to-day basis. Like, are they all in? That's the question that I would be asking.

22:33Michael Meadows:Yeah. And Michael, I mean, just the fact that you were willing to take a job at the Michigan State Dairy Complex, I mean, And it just seems like, again, you have the experience, you have the know-how. You're not just doing sales and marketing. You understand operations.

22:48Paul Reiss:Absolutely. Yeah, it taught me everything I needed to know about how to make ice cream and how to get to that next step. And I would say it's not just taking a job. It was a necessary and valuable learning experience.

22:58Michael Meadows:Yeah. I spoke with the founding member of a network, an investing network called the Angel Group. And you guys are familiar? Adam Spriggs. Yeah, Adam Spriggs.

23:08Paul Reiss:Yeah, we met at one of the pitch slams that we talked about, University of Michigan. I remember him and Jamie Bortek were some of the first two industry people who sat us down and said, you guys got something here. And this was right after we won the competition, too. But they kind of like opened our eyes. It's very memorable. Sit down with those guys.

23:25Michael Meadows:Did you raise any money from the Angel Group? No. We talked to them. We'd love to work with them. I don't know if they do Frozen. Yeah, I mean, Frozen's tough, and we can talk more about that. But I was thinking about Adam because I sat down with him about a month ago. And I mean, just brilliant. And it was such a good conversation. And one of the things that really stuck with me was when he said, as long as they're willing to run through a brick wall and learn on the fly and hustle every day, I think we can work with that. And I was just like, okay, well, that sounds like these guys.

23:51Paul Reiss:I would say that describes us.

23:54Michael Meadows:Yeah. The difficult thing about scaling quickly is that you don't necessarily know if it's a good idea. I hear from folks all the time who said, we scale too quickly. We move too fast. If I could go back and do it again, I wouldn't have gone from, you know, one store to a thousand. I wouldn't have gone from a thousand to ten thousand. But you guys clearly hungry and ambitious and ready to press on the gas pedal.

24:15Paul Reiss:People told us not to. When we told people we were going to do what we were going to do, they said, you're crazy. You're going to fail. For as many people who were supportive, there was the other side of the coin. People who were cautioning us against that fast of expansion.

24:27Michael Meadows:So why'd you do it?

24:29Paul Reiss:Faith. we believed in the product, our team and ourselves so much that this was going to succeed. And that's, you know, as a founder, you have to believe in what you're doing. Yeah. And people have done harder things too. I think it's always good to remind yourselves of that, right? Like, yes, we went from 10 stores to, you know, 9 ,000, but people have done harder things, right? So just context and perspective. Context, perspective, having faith that we could pull it off and believing in ourselves. And then also knowing that this product could scale to that level and succeed. Because some products, I 100 % agree, they should not do what we did.

25:07Paul Reiss:Actually, most people should not do what we did. It came with a ton of risk.

25:11Michael Meadows:Well, clearly buyers liked what you were doing, retail buyers. And they're saying, we're going to take something out of our freezer set because the freezer set's packed, just like every other part of the store. To put protein pints in there, they're going to take something out. And they're going to make sure or they want to make sure that this product, this brand is going to sell more than what was previously on those shelves. So the belief was on their part too. How did you make sure that once you got on shelf, you would actually sell? Because Velocity is the name of the game. And I always remember a quote from one of the brothers who created Super Coffee, you know, the brand Super Coffee.

25:43Michael Meadows:It was Jake DeSico who said, you know, getting on the shelf is the easy part. Getting off the shelf is the hard part. So how How do you make sure that once you're on there, that's cool, but how do you make sure that customers are pulling it off in the next step?

25:57Paul Reiss:It really came down to the two and a half years of development and prep we had in our local Michigan markets because we were in those 14 stores and we used those as testing grounds. So those stores were blowing it out of the water with a little bit of marketing support, but not really that much. So we realized that if it's working here, there's a very good shot that if this goes nationwide, we're going to have very similar results.

26:24Michael Meadows:And the package, I imagine the package does a lot for you, right? Because it is a black container, which you don't see a lot of in ice cream. Again, clearly, the first thing you see, the first thing you think about when you see this brand is protein. That's a key differentiator. So did you feel like the package was going to be, you know, your best form of marketing, at least at the outset?

26:45Paul Reiss:Yeah, absolutely. We did over 100 different iterations on our packaging with these little tweaks, obsessing over every little detail. You know, what is the consumer thinking immediately when they see it? How can we improve that? You know, how can we make this call out slightly bigger so that the consumer will get it half a millisecond faster? just these very small details based on psychology that would get someone to pick it up and take it home and purchase it i gotta add to that too just for context you know we're talking in march 2026 right now last summer in 2025 while we were in target stores after less than six months on shelf our cookie dough skew was the number one dollar selling pint of ice cream in target for 12 weeks I'm not surprised.

27:31Paul Reiss:It's really good. Beat Ben and Jerry's. That same 12 weeks, we contributed 70 % of category growth. Wow.

27:37Michael Meadows:And what's the price point for a pint?

27:40Paul Reiss:$6.99 to$7.99 on average.

27:43Michael Meadows:And so people are willing to pay a premium or somewhat of a premium because of the fact that this has extra protein in it.

27:49Paul Reiss:Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's a dollar or two more depending on what brand you buy, but the value is there. Okay.

27:57Michael Meadows:Beyond the package itself, what else has worked in terms of marketing and promotion?

28:01Paul Reiss:In our first year, we invested heavily into shopper marketing tactics, you know, point of purchase type things, whether that be with, you know, third party platforms or directly with the retailer. You know, we saw our product really resonating on search. You know, people are looking for protein ice cream. Actually, protein ice cream wasn't necessarily a new concept. You know, there's these things called the Ninja Creamy. That was one of the first things that we used when we were making it at home. I mean, protein ice cream was like this viral trending thing already that people were making at home.

28:28Paul Reiss:It just wasn't commercially available. So we saw a lot of success and are still seeing a lot of success with digital media and online marketing, especially via shopper platforms that are, you know, encouraging, you know, point of purchase sales.

28:41Michael Meadows:A year ago in this very room, I sat down with the founders of a brand called SAUZ, S-A-U-Z. And I just keep coming back to that interview because I feel like it's kind of deja vu. I'm talking to two young guys. And I asked Troy and Winston this last year, and I apologize if it offends you. How old are you guys? I actually turned 25 today. Okay, Paul's 25. 24. And you're 24. Okay, incredible. And I say incredible because you guys are way savvier than you should be about CPG. It feels like you know this industry. You're already gristled veterans of this business. Clearly, you know, there's a lot more to learn.

29:16Michael Meadows:But how did you learn about CPG? I mean, did you have mentors? Do you have folks that you rely upon, you know, to get you through the questions and answer those tough questions that, you know, you need help with?

29:29Paul Reiss:It always goes back to the team. And again, major kudos to Paul here because he really has a great eye for finding the right talent and advisorship that we needed to learn throughout every stage of this business. You know, I go back to a lot of those full-time team members we have. You know, we couldn't do that without them. And we do have some CPG veterans on our team who have taught us and helped us avoid a lot of the pitfalls that early brands would have, especially when you're scaling this fast. Yeah, I appreciate that, Mike. I probably meet with someone new almost every single day is kind of the goal, even just for 30 minutes.

30:03Paul Reiss:It's so invaluable to ask them, you know, what would you do if you were us and ask for that mentorship because it doesn't cost you anything. Most people will give you their time for free if you ask in the right way. I will say Paul does a great job of paying that forward to founders who are in an earlier stage than us.

30:20Michael Meadows:Well, you're paying it forward right now. So thank you for that. How do you ask though? Sometimes the ask is the hardest part because sometimes you'll send a cold email. Sometimes you can send a LinkedIn message. Sometimes you run into someone at an Expo West and say, hey, can I have half an hour of your time after the show? But what is it about your ask that's been most effective?

30:38Paul Reiss:Usually I just say like, I'd love to learn. I'd really love to learn. Do you mind if we could chat? And then when I was a student, I would play that card. I'd say, hey, I'm a student. I'd love to learn from you. And I think that's something that students should utilize more. But even just not being a student, I'd love to learn. And you'd be surprised by how many people, not everybody says yes. People want to coach people who are receptive to feedback. And when you're young, like we are with no experience, that's the best thing you can do is listen, learn from others, take the advice.

31:09Michael Meadows:I love what you said, Paul, about I would love to learn from you because it's sort of indirectly saying you're a smart person and I could use your help. Yeah. And you're praising them without necessarily saying, hey, you're awesome. You're saying I want to learn from someone like you. Yeah. And I love that approach. Recruiting people to work for you might be slightly different in that it sounds like a lot of your employees are older than you guys. How does that work? I mean, what's that dynamic like of people who might be 15 years older than you calling you boss?

31:38Paul Reiss:Yeah, I think it's partnership. It comes down to partnership. It doesn't feel like a traditional boss and employee relationship. It's more like we want our employees to feel like they're partners in the business. You know, we've given everybody some amount of equity. So we want everyone to feel that ownership and feel like they're a core part of our company. So it comes down to the partnership aspect.

32:06Michael Meadows:You've said this a number of times, Mike, you know, the team, the team, the team, it's so important. And the folks leading the team and, you know, setting the tone for the culture, for the ambition, for, you know, everything that you want and have laid out as your vision is so important. And I think just in the, you know, 35 minutes that we've been sitting down, I'm just getting that. I would believe in you if I were an investor, if I were a retailer. I'm, you know, in belief of you as a podcaster and as a journalist. And I think, you know, your brand is on a great path and has the potential to go even much further.

32:38Michael Meadows:So, you know, congrats on what you've built at this point. Really excited to see where it goes from here. I have a feeling we're going to be sitting down again relatively soon and talking about the next evolution of Protein Pines. We'd love to. You got something. You really do. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Paul. Thanks again, Mike.

32:54Paul Reiss:Thanks for having us.

32:59Michael Meadows:That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. Taste Radio is a production of BevNet.com Incorporated. Our audio engineer for Taste Radio is Joe Cratchy. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt. And our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smirlinski. And our designer is Amanda Huang. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Check us out on Instagram.

33:33Michael Meadows:Our handle is BevNetTasteRadio. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at tasteradio.com. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.