How Archer's Aim Helps It Generate $300M In Annual Sales

0:10Hello, friends. I'm Ray Latif, and you're tuned in to Taste Radio, the leading podcast for entrepreneurs, makers, and innovators in the food and beverage industry. Archer's journey to$300 million in annual sales has been driven by an unwavering focus on operational excellence. In this episode, founder and CEO Eugene Kang shares how disciplined execution, vertical integration, and precisely timed innovation transformed Archer from an upstart jerky rebrand into one of the fastest growing meat snack companies in the U.S. Eugene unpacks Archer's recent rebrand, how the company positioned itself ahead of the explosive growth of meat sticks, and the importance of building durable partnerships with retailers like Whole Foods.

1:02He also explains why patience and long-term thinking remain critical traits for CPG founders Navigating Scale.

1:39pitch slam in 2023. Yeah. Actually, one of the winners actually came up to me during lunch and we're like, it's been a while now, but you remember, I was like, of course I remember. Like, how are you guys doing? And she shared with me that her and Jared, I think her husband or boyfriend, I think husband, right? Yeah. They're launching their product in Costco now. Yeah. Cocada. Cocada. And I was like, amazing. That's incredible to hear. And so, yeah. Yeah. Wonderful people. Brianna and Jared, the founders of Cocada, which is a coconut spread, first of its kind. And I think that probably had a lot to do with decision because you got to be different.

2:12You can't just be a Me Too product. You know that. Yeah. Yeah. Archer, formerly known as Country Archer. The artist formerly known as Country Archer. Yeah. Yeah. When did you guys decide you needed to keep it simple? Like instead of going from, you know, the Facebook to just Facebook, like it's kind of similar. You guys went from Country Archer just to Archer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we dropped it this year with the launch of our rebrand. But it's been a journey, you know, that was kind of intentional. And, you know, everything that we built leading up to that was more or less going that direction no matter what.

2:42Because if you think back to like their first refresh that we did on the brand in 2020, you notice this kind of movement towards Archer being really big on the front of the pack, Country kind of shrinking down. And so that was like the first phase of like what eventually would be this move to hopefully one day drop Country. we weren't entirely sure but as we did research with the consumer and started talking to the consumer we realized like most people actually just call us archer anyway so it was just a natural thing for us to say okay let's just drop country it's also kind of lengthy archer just feels cleaner it's cleaner it's easier remember it's like this right and you know the the goal for us is to be a distinctive meat snack brand and so we figured archer just makes it easier Yeah, I mean, I always like simpler.

3:27And Country Archer, it gives it sort of a homey, classic Americana feel to it. But I think Archer gives you a lot more leeway to, and I guess, room to grow into other spaces, other channels, be interesting and appealing to other people as well. Yeah. And I also feel like it's more modern. And that's kind of where the brand has been heading. And frankly, where the category in the segment is heading. So it just made a lot of sense. Before we hopped on the mics, I talked about how this is not the first time you've been on Taste Radio. This is the first time you and I have sat down for an interview.

4:05But the first time you joined us for an interview for Taste Radio was actually seven years ago. And it was at Expo East, the former Expo East. There's no Expo East anymore. Baltimore. Yes, in Baltimore. It wasn't even the Philly version. That's right. You sat down with my colleague and Taste Radio co-host Mike Schneider. Yep. And you mentioned that to this day, there are people that talk to you about that episode. And I'm curious about what people recall or bring up about the conversation. Yeah, yeah. So the episode talked about, you know, how we kind of broke into the scene. Because I think in 2010 at the time, everyone was still talking about jerky and how crowded of a space jerky was.

4:41And I told Mike, you know, how we broke through was through real smart innovation and, you know, our partnership at the time with Hoifong Sriracha, which is the famous rooster bottle, soy sauce, or sorry, hot sauce, was our way into getting, you know, into the doors of a lot of large national retailers. And so that story has been kind of resonating for a lot of folks. And it's funny, like when I was telling you before we got on the mic, you know, even to this day, when I interview anyone that's accepting any role in the company, you know, I try to chalk up the last 15 to 20 minutes in an interview to ask them, hey, ask me any questions about the role, the business, et cetera.

5:18And they always joke about, hey, I heard that interview on Taste Radio about the Sriracha story. That's really cool. Walk me through that. And so, yeah, it's one of my like proudest moments, not the Taste Radio itself, but the Sriracha story. Well, I know. The Taste Radio should be your proudest. It does, for sure. Telling the Sriracha story on Taste Radio. On Taste Radio, yes. You know, we are the number one podcast for the food and beverage industry. So I'm not surprised that you're, you know, just daily getting people coming up to you and being like, tell us more about your experience on Taste Radio.

5:48You know, I think about the meat stick market and how much it's changed and evolved and most importantly, grown in recent years. And, you know, the old running joke back in the day was like, oh, we're going to create a better for you Slim Jim. Yep. And, you know, everyone's just like, OK, well, why does anyone want that? Who's going to eat a better for you Slim Jim? Clearly a lot of people, a lot of people just, you know, on a surface level. Where is this growth coming from? Who's eating all these meat sticks? Well, I think one of the things that we're really experiencing here is it's entirely new households.

6:26And it makes sense, right? If you think about the meat snack category, it was always a jerky and stick. You know, there was two segments with the meat snacks. It was jerky and sticks. And when you think of sticks, just kind of logically, just through like the most iconic brand is Slim Jim. And when you look at the ingredients of a Slim Jim, it's not better for you, right? And so I think when we launched Styx, it was a very logical innovation launch because it's directly adjacent to jerky. And if you think if you're going to be a meat snack brand, you have to be in Styx, right? So, you know, we started in Styx, as we talked about the Hoifeng Sriracha story.

7:07So when we launched Sticks in 2018, we thought it was a logical step to becoming the Better For You premium meat snack platform brand. But what we did not anticipate is the growth of the consumer and just the attraction of that portability meets protein meets satiety. And that's exploded in the last three years. Right. So and through data, we've now found out that's not only a new consumer, but they're coming from other categories like bars, puff snacks, popcorns, dried fruit, et cetera. Because of the protein. It's the protein. It's the portability. And yeah, it's the tighty. If you had to pick one of the three things, satiety, protein, or portability, I think for me, because I was a jerky eater, it would probably be the portability and the convenience factor.

7:55Because I don't, I'm going to sound like a germaphobe because I am one. I don't really like touching like the jerky. I don't think I'm alone in that. No, you're not. You're not. The thing I would say, though, it's as much as you want me to pick that one attribute, I honestly think you needed all three to experience what we're experiencing now. And I'll tell you why. A, we all know protein is just the most sought-out nutrient now for consumers. But you can get protein in other snacks. It doesn't have to come in at meat steak. Portability also could come in the form of bars, for example, right? Bars are portable.

8:26You can put it in your purse or your wallet or you can carry it in your backpack and you can snack on it. For a second there, I thought, and some folks in our audience I'm sure thought, you meant a meat bar. There have been those in the past. Yes, there is. Actually, I should have said on the panel that is one of my mistakes is launching a meat bar. But I'll put that aside. Okay. And then you have the satiety piece because all of a sudden you have this portable protein snack that's, you know, real protein, real animal protein. And it's zero sugar and it tastes good. And it's not like I'm eating a chocolate chip cookie dough bar.

8:59Right. And so all three just check the perfect box for that consumer and this new consumer. And that's why we're seeing this explosion. So within the last few months, I had an opportunity to sit down with the founder of a rival brand that is also growing quite fast. And just for context, Archer right now is going to do north of$300 million in sales in 2025, which is amazing. So, you know, between you and some of these other brands, maybe a couple of the other brands in this category, there's a ton of growth that folks are seeing. But he pointed to female consumers, women, as being a huge growth driver of their business.

9:42And it was interesting to me because I felt like that brand had a really masculine vibe to it. And I think Country Archer originally to me also felt a little bit more of a masculine kind of brand. With the rebrand, it's a little different. I think your logo skews sort of gender neutral. You have a color scheme of orange in this navy blue that I think is also very appealing to a large segment of the population. Do you see yourself as appealing to a wide range of people, wide swath of the population? Is that very intentional or do you really feel like you need to speak to a consistent target consumer?

10:21Yeah, no, we're definitely targeting the broader audience. And, you know, for us, we've always wanted to be, it's intentional on the redesign. We wanted to be, we were always a premium positioned brand because of our attributes, better for you brand, but we also wanted to be approachable. You know, there's a lot of premium brands that are sometimes unapproachable by the mass, you know, audience. And for us, we always wanted to be an approachable but elevated brand. And so we feel like the rebrand is achieving that. And to your earlier point about female consumers, absolutely, we see the same thing.

10:56The female shopper is the largest consumer base that's driving the growth, but it's not as if the male consumer is not consuming it. We actually just think it's more of like that is now becoming just the pantry snack and everyone in the household is consuming it. And look, for us, we don't want to speak to just one specific demographic. You know, that's why our campaign that we launched this year, our first, you know, our first national brand campaign of, you know, stick to real is kind of predicated on this like idea around. And if you haven't seen it, I'm sure we could drop a link later. But like it's around unreal moments that we see in our life.

11:31But then at the end of the day, you stick to what's real. And, you know, you've got the snack that's portable. It's real ingredients. It's real protein, animal based protein. And it just checks a lot of the kind of the need states for a lot of consumers. The rule of thumb for CPG brands is you can't be everything to everyone, at least when you start out. Yeah. When do you realize that you can actually become everything to everyone? When you have a product in a segment like ours that's growing at the rate that it is, I think you start to realize, well, why couldn't you, right? You know, I do think that there is some truth to when you're starting out CPG, you want to be very targeted and focused, specifically when you distribute it from a channel perspective, right?

12:08We all know that a lot of brands start natural or et cetera. Once we started seeing the broad adoption across grocery, mass, club, and natural, it was clear like this is not just a natural-oriented brand. It's a brand and a product that's frankly being enjoyed by a mass population. How do you know when you have permission to go from a channel that you're doing really well in to a channel where you don't really have that data yet? Because the typical or at least the prototypical place where you would see meat snacks and specifically meat sticks was convenience stores, right? Yeah. Now you see them everywhere.

12:47Yeah. You know, when you're talking to those retail buyers, is it a data story as much as it is a trend story? How do you convince them that this is going to bring incremental value to their stores? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a data story. And it's also a macro story, too. It's beyond just the consumption at the store level. But it's also, let's just face the facts and look at the data and where consumers are coming from, from other categories to ours. What are they seeking? They're seeking protein. And so as you kind of lay out this broader consumer story as opposed to just like, hey, I'm kicking butt over at, you know, X retailer, you should bring it in, you know, Y retailer, right?

13:23It's more like there's a general shift that's happening at the consumer level. And we're trying our best to educate our retail partners on that, right? And look, it doesn't hurt that where we were doing really well at are kind of marquee retailers where a lot of people look to and go, okay, if it's working over there, I don't want to miss out on the boat. So it's a holistic data story as opposed to saying, here's some great data that we have, but it may not necessarily apply to every aspect of a retailer's business. I mentioned that you're going really fast. You know,$300 million plus in revenue is just spectacular.

13:56So congratulations on that. And what's even more impressive is that you're outpacing the category as a whole. given that there are some pretty serious players in this business who are continuing to press on the gas. I'm curious as to how you're moving faster than they are. Yeah, I mean, look, I think the category is growing. Frankly, us and one of the two brands that are actually driving a lot of the category growth. So if you removed one of us, it would actually show not the same growth rate that you'd see in the category overall. and I'd say how we're kind of keeping pace or how we're kind of outpacing the category of is, look, for us, we're incredibly disciplined about how we think about our innovation pipeline and where we go actually after distribution.

14:46And for us, we try not to go too wide. We try to go really deep with our retail partners. And when we kind of exercise that, we see great results, right? For us, our retail partners that we launched with back in 2018, we're still continuing to work with them on how do we go deeper with you and how do we continue to grow in the category. What's an example of a retail partner that you had in 2018 that you still have a good partnership with and making it work? Yeah, I mean, Whole Foods is a good one. I mean, when I launched with Whole Foods, we got two items in there, two bags of jerky, right? And we've expanded that to now, I think we're up to 15 SKUs now.

15:24Well, I see a lot of Archer at Whole Foods, like way more than I used to. Did something happen this year in particular? Or maybe it's just the... The new branding. Maybe it's the new branding, but we've had a pretty good depth of distribution year over year, and you have a great team that does a good job at that. But I think that's a good example of the partnership of where we were in 2018 and it being, ironically, just a jerky business to where we are today in 2025 with 15 SKUs and all ranging from bags jerky to single serve to family-sized offerings to multi-pack sticks to individual sticks, right?

15:56So, you know, we're really trying to continue to, like, master our own category. And we're constantly thinking about, like, what are the need states for the consumer? And we've learned, like, look, the consumer that consumes jerky is different than the consumer that consumes sticks. And so we're just constantly just trying to understand that need state and try to educate our partners. By the way, you just reminded me, I need to go to Whole Foods because your multi-pack minis are on sale. They're on promotion right now. Are they really? Yeah. Eugene. gene of course they're on you should know this i know you're like arm's length from but no in all seriousness i think i mean i love when i see it on promotion because you know meat sticks are not inexpensive i mean they're a premium product and i feel like in this day and age everyone's always looking at prices no matter if you're you know live in an affluent area if you if you're part of an affluent family or otherwise and i think it's really important and incumbent upon food brands to make their products as accessible and as affordable as possible.

16:58And you can do that a lot more easily, I think, if you have your own manufacturing facilities, right? You've operated vertically for a long time. When did you think about the importance of doing so and how have you scaled that vertical integration over the years? Yeah. Yeah. When I bought the business, when I started the business in 2011, it came with a factory. Now it was a small factory. It was 2000 square feet. I call it a glorified commercial kitchen. I mean, I stumbled into vertical integration because, you know, my family background is, you know, they're immigrants from South Korea. They own gas stations.

17:34Right. And I was always taught as a young kid from my father, like own the real estate, own the real estate whenever you do business. And so it just inherently in my DNA, I was, you know, just thought you have to have an asset. You can't just build a brand. Right. So, you know, I stumbled into it, but then as I continue to grow the business, I've learned like, A, all the big players in this category, right, the conventional guys are all vertically integrated. B, the co-packing landscape is actually not robust, right? So there was actually an inflection point for our business where we could have been a co-packer and just stick with that business model.

18:07But I had such high aspirations for the brand and pushing the brand. So for me, it was like very obvious, okay, like we stumbled into it, but we're going to stick to this vertical integration over time. And that 2 ,000 square feet went from 2 ,000 square feet initially to 14 ,000, and we tacked on another 16 ,000. Fast forward today, we have two facilities, one that's in San Bernardino, California, that's over 70 ,000 square feet that produces all of our jerky products in-house. Used to produce cold-pressed juice, from what I hear. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it was the old Evolution Fresh processing facility.

18:39Yeah. Yeah. You know, that facility produces all of our jerky products and a little bit of our sticks. And then we just opened up our second facility in Vernon, which is about like 15 minutes away from downtown L.A. Vernon, those that don't know, is like kind of the, you know, industrial capital of the West Coast. If you've ever watched season two of True Detective, there's a Vernon type city. That's a big part of that season. So Vernon is a city. It sits outside of L.A. It's its own city. They have their own police, own fire department, etc. And there's only like 30 people that actually live in the city.

19:14Like it's purely industrial, right? And so you've got massive legacy companies that build there that they're still processing. Like GT is facility. GT Day's facility is in Vernon. So we found the old former Farmer John facility that made the famous hot dogs and bacons. And it was vacant. And so we took that over and just opened up that facility to produce all of our sticks. You know, when you own your own assets, there's a lot that goes into it. I mean, there might be long-term debt. There's the actual cost of owning the equipment and maintaining that equipment. And so, you know, outlaying the money to operate, own and operate your own manufacturing facilities is not necessarily something that a lot of entrepreneurs can do, but it's proven to be such an important part of your business.

20:05Did you realize, I think, at the time in 2018 that you would be here? I guess, how did you assess the potential for your business such that you lined the company with the ability to, at one point, own what you own right now? Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Like, kind of like, how did we see seven years out and kind of where we are today? Yeah. I guess I've asked this question of entrepreneurs before, which is how do you balance ambition? And I can tell you're an ambitious person, Eugene, with potential. Well, first of all, you have to give credit to a good team. We've got an incredible operating team from all the way from operations down to finance to sales and marketing.

20:49And look, what I would say is back in 2018, when we first launched Meat Sticks and we did that interview, we had no idea what Sticks was going to become. And so you have to be incredibly disciplined on what you know and what you're good at. And so when we launched Stix, we didn't launch it making the products because there would be a whole new set of equipment. So I said at the time, look, we're going to work with this co-packer and launch it because they make Stix. They do a really good job at it. We make jerky. And so it's too early in the game to start investing in equipment. So you just got to be disciplined on that front.

21:22And when we launched Stix, we stayed nimble. But when it quickly started taking off, we had to start laying down the pathway of like, okay, eventually we're going to have to vertically integrate this product. Now, along the way, things change and evolve. Like the co-packing network just got consolidated and consolidated and all of a sudden like became this big behemoth. And frankly, without them, we will not be here where we are. And look, along the way, you have an honest conversation with your partners and say, look, as you know, I'm not just another brand that you produce for. I do have vertical integration capabilities.

21:54I do make jerky. And so like, eventually one day, like that is probably going to be the pathway for us. So you might not want to need to build more additional capacity for me because I'm starting to start laying down the brick. So it's, it's as much as I like to say that, you know, it was this mastermind plan from 2018 to now it wasn't, it was more like, we always knew that at some point we want to vertical integrate, but timing is always the question mark. And, and when is the right time? And look, it doesn't hurt when you have, you know, when you're scaling your business and you've got, you know, uh, your north of a hundred million, all of a sudden you start to see, okay, like we're in a much different financial position, right?

22:27Our balance sheet is in a different position. Now we can actually start entertaining a bigger capital expenditure, like building your own stick facility. Do you see more value in your manufacturing capabilities or in the brand itself? Because earlier you had said, you know, we could have just been a manufacturer of jerky and meat sticks. And you said, no, I really believed in creating a brand. But where is there most value in your opinion yeah i'd say our biggest value leading up to this year was our operational chops you know and i don't think just manufacturing i think broadly speaking like i think we have a master class team in terms of like logistics and like how do we think about saving money on like everything range from packaging to to ingredients and we're just a really good operating team and i would say that we always were strong commercially right like we always thought about like what's the right products what's the right attributes what do consumers want but we never really put a big emphasis on the brand.

23:23And I'd say the team that we have today, their goal has been what's the one? It's the one goal. It's like, look, you guys now got to get the brand to get to where it needs to be, given that we've done all this upfront work around the commercial and operational side of the house. Right. So I'd say up until this year, I'd say our biggest strength has been our commercial chops and our operational chops. Moving forward, I'm incredibly bullish on our marketing and our brand advantage. Operations, if you have a good operations team, it can make a humongous difference in your brand, but I've never really dialed this down to a specific strength, right?

24:00And you mentioned something just now that I think probably answers my question or my query here, which is when you're talking about operations, essentially you're talking about saving money and not wasting money and making sure that you can bring costs down where you can as often as you can. Is that essentially what you see in terms of the vision for and the reason for being for your operating team? Yeah, I'd say saving money for sure. Productivity is always there. But I also think just execution too, right? Ultimately, the goal is to save money. But even something as like getting logistics. Logistics is completely understated in the early days of building a CPG business.

24:43But as you start to scale rapidly, you won't know it. And then you realize your logistics is a nightmare. But having an incredible operating team to start thinking about your routes and your truck lanes and where your 3PL warehouses are located and thinking about those inner transfer. Like those are the little details that like we just are. They're pretty big details. They're big in hindsight. In hindsight, but I think in the moment, when you're busy building your business as an entrepreneur, you're not thinking about those things because you're just constantly trying to move from point A to point B.

25:14But as you start to scale the business, you start to realize that point A to point B starts to get really taxing if you don't start really fine-tuning that piece. Do you know everything about your operations business as much as you feel like you need to, or do you feel comfortable delegating those responsibilities? You know, I hate to say this, but honestly, the operational side of the business is one where I still am heavily involved in. and to a fault, right? Like I'm still the guy like making deals on all of our protein procurement purchases for the year, the contracts. I don't think you need to be sorry about that.