How Freestyle Snacks Won Over The 'Sharks'

0:09hello friends i'm ray lateef and you're tuned into taste radio the leading podcast for entrepreneurs makers, and innovators in the food and beverage industry. She made olives fun, and the sharks noticed. Nikki Seaman, the founder and CEO of Freestyle Snacks, landed a$300 ,000 deal on Shark Tank after turning her pandemic frustration over shuttered olive bars into a modern snack brand. In this interview, Nikki explains how she disrupted the trusty but dusty olive aisle with bright packaging, tantalizing flavors, and convenient brine-free pouches. Bootstrapped and profitability-focused, Freestyle has grown strategically.

1:01Brand is now sold in over 5 ,000 stores, including Whole Foods, Target, and Central Market, and has also carried on Delta flights. Nikki also shares how Freestyle recently expanded into pickles through a data-driven collaboration with Whole Foods, and how the brand's viral TikTok buzz combined with a disciplined retail-first approach has fueled growth with the perfect mix of insight, agility, and joy.

1:34Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I am supremely honored to be sitting down with Nikki Seaman, who is the founder and CEO of Freestyle Snacks. Nikki, It's so great to see you. It's great to see you too, Ray. I always love chatting. Freestyle Snacks, one of the fastest growing brands in the food space and just has grown by leaps and bounds in that time. And of course, caught the attention of a very well-known TV program that's called Shark Tank. You're scheduled to appear on the show in about a week's time, a week from this recording. I know we can't talk about any of the details or the results, so to speak, of this show.

2:14But based on your glow, I hope this is going well. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It was an incredible experience. The whole producing team, casting team of Shark Tank, they are all awesome. And then I personally had a really great experience with the sharks as well. They offered some great advice and feedback. And overall, it was a once in a lifetime experience. So very excited to see it air live. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's go back in time for a sec. I remember sitting down and talking to you about the potential for a brand like yours, which markets packages of or pouches of olives and now pickles. And this is not the first time we've seen a brand get into, you know, single serve pouches or sort of that snacking format.

3:06But it was certainly the first time I had seen a brand make olives fun, make olives a snackable treat more than anything else. And if you could just share with our audience some of the inspiration behind the brand and how long you've been working on it before its launch. Yeah. So I, you know, taking even a step back further, had always been a big snacker and very interested in the food and bag space. So I actually did an externship with Wisps, the cheese crisp company. And that's really where I first cut my teeth in CPG. It was a boot camp of everything from commercializing new items to working with co-packers, enhancing pitch deck.

3:51And it really gave me the confidence to go out and start my own food brand. And at the same time, I got the idea for Freestyle Snacks because it was the pandemic. And if you recall, olive bars, buffets, anything shareable in a grocery store or really any setting had to shut down. You know, everything went to single serve. And because of that, I could no longer stock up at the olive bar and get my fancy marinated olive. Can we pause there? I mean, I'm still terrified of the salad and olive bar right now. I mean, like it was already kind of weird pre-pandemic. And now it's like, you know, everyone's touching everything.

4:31And they still have the sneeze guard, which is really gross to think about. Have you been to an olive bar since? Of course. Got to check out the competition now. And, you know, the olives do, you know, they're sitting out all day, day and night. So it's definitely a different experience than freestyle offers. So we wanted to take all the good of the olive bar and put it in a pouch, essentially. No sneeze guard needed. That could be a tagline. Exactly. And the traditional olive products on the shelf, you know, they just don't really jump out at you from a branding perspective. And then when you actually do get to taste some of these products, they're just a bit watery and mushy, bland tasting.

5:13There's no real flavor infusion. And so I wanted to change that and create a product that really bridged the best of both worlds, solved the taste pain points that I was finding in the category because I knew olives could be so much fresher and more delicious tasting. and then also solving the pain point of the mess and inconvenience of jars. Personally, I was eating the jars over my sink or else the brine would spill everywhere. And I was losing olives down the drain. And, you know, there just had to be an easier way to eat such a delicious and healthy snack. And that's how I came up with Freestyle.

5:51The portability, the convenience, certainly key aspects of the brand. I want to go back to fun, though. You know, I have a pouch of your pickles in front of me here. Awesome. These are your mini pickles that are garlic dill flavored. And I'm looking at this as a purple bag dotted with green. And Freestyle Snacks just is written in this fun, cute font. And again, you know, there are other brands that sell olives and pickles and pouches before, but they're very serious and stayed. And it's like, you should eat our olive or our pickle because it was brine for eight years or olives come from this special part of Greece.

6:31And it's like, you should bow down and worship upon the altar of our sources. And it's like, come on, I just want to snack on some pickles and olives here. And I think that's the brilliance of your brand is you turned it into something that can be an easy experience, a fun experience, and it doesn't have to be part of a charcuterie board. I mean, it could be, but it doesn't necessarily need to be. How much of that drove the brand's development, this idea of sort of fun snacking? Yeah, so I did a lot of research on the olive category and the use cases of olives before launching Freestyle. And we found that actually 70 % of people eating olives were already eating them as a snack versus, you know, a side dish or a recipe addition.

7:18And so we really wanted to lean into that snacking use case. And to your point, launch with really fun, bold, eye-catching colors. The olive category is not very sexy. It's trusty but dusty, as I like to say. And it just needed something fun that would really pop on shelf. and make people say, oh, what's that? I think we all know the rule. Consumers have about five seconds to decide and figure out what a product is once they see it on the shelf. And we wanted to make sure to make a statement with that. Your background is in finance and you're known, at least I've read quite a bit about you, that you're very detailed when it comes to research.

8:04You do a lot of research. You study Mintel reports, among other. data provider companies. And I think there's some importance in doing your homework. How do you align the research that you do with the information that you're getting on the ground and just the feedback you're hearing from consumers and retailers about the brand's direction or where to go with the brand? Yeah, I think research is really helpful as a starting point. And that's how I like to frame it up. So we recently launched pickles. We did a lot of surveys and studies there to see what claims we want to have on the bag, which flavors we want to launch with.

8:46Then once we had the product, we did actual product seeding to see, oh, is the thickness good enough? How's the flavor? And I think then you use that research, but at a certain point you just have to launch. And I am a big believer in done is better than perfect. And I'm also not afraid to pivot and continue making changes. So for instance, on our pickles that we just launched in the last month, one piece of feedback we started to get from consumers once it was in the market and people actually had to purchase it was that they didn't know kick and picks meant it was a spicy product. So already we have changed the name of that product to spicy dill.

9:27It's going to start rolling out soon, but you just have to be really open. You know, your product's not going to be 100 % perfect when it launches. And as long as you're open to receiving that feedback and making those positive changes, I think you'll really be set up for success. Yeah, that's a great point. And I think kick and picks, I get it. But at the end of the day, spicy is probably an easier word for most people to understand and appreciate. I want to talk about the packaging. this pouch format is now, I think, generally understood as being a good format for olives and pickles. And you had a lot to do with that.

10:03Freesales X has a lot to do with that. But at the time, I wonder how much education you felt like you needed to do, certainly on the retailer front, because there weren't a lot of, I would assume, merchandising opportunities for a package like this in that olive section. Did you receive any kind of pushback? I mean, what was the general feedback? What was the response like from retail buyers when you approached them? I would say it was mixed. Either retail buyers absolutely loved the concept. And I think that really helped to get our distribution. You know, we're in over 5 ,000 stores to date, hoping to double that next year.

10:42And I think the packaging, the colors, the fun elements of the brand really resonated with these olive buyers, you know, who are used to seeing these same products over and over again. There was a small percentage of buyers who have said, like, oh, maybe we've tried a type of snacking olive in the past. It didn't work well. There's too much education needed around, you know, is it a dry olive? Is it a fresh olive? Is it a chip? What are you actually getting in the bag? But what's been really incredible is over the last year, we have had several viral TikTok videos. So we've been able to reach over 18 million people and tell them exactly what is Freestyle Snacks, how do we put olives in a pouch without the liquid, and this is exactly what you're getting.

11:30And I think that's really helped to start the movement on Olive Snacks and making sure people know, like, this is brand new, I've never seen it before, but now I know what it is. I think there's another question about where it belongs in the store, right? Does it belong next to the traditional olive brands that you see in grocery stores? Does it belong next to other snacks like chips, perhaps? How do you put it on shelf? Does it require clips? Do you need a box? And so all these questions, I'm assuming you had to tackle one at a time or maybe 10 at a time. When it came to where in the store this brand belongs, how much of a conversation was that with merchandisers?

12:11Was that something that you could convince them via data, via success in other stores? At the end of the day, I mean, this is always a big question for entrepreneurs is how do I get my product in a place where most customers are going to see it and want to buy it? Yeah, it's such a difficult question and something that we still work through really on a retailer by retailer basis. Because, you know, For instance, when we launched, we had our olives in the traditional olive aisle at Central Market. And then we also had our olives in Fresh Thyme in their deli section. And it's just really hard when retail stores have such different layouts to do an apples-to-apples comparison of where we're going to perform better velocity-wise.

12:58As of today, you know, our rule of thumb is we'll merchandise in the olive and pickle aisle, which bodes really well for us with our new pickles because we can get a really beautiful brand block of six plus SKUs all next to each other. It's the same buyer. And then secondary displays and placements have also been fantastic for us. You know, in the cheese section, on top of the salad bar, those kind of impulse locations, maybe shippers. but we have found the traditional olive aisle is where our product stands out the most. And it's where olive lovers are going to pick up olives. So. When you are getting this product into people's hands and getting them to eat it for the first time, what's been the most successful part of that demo strategy?

13:44Is it the packaging? Is it this notion that you can, you know, take olives on the go and not have to put a jar in your bag or your purse? I mean, what's gotten people really interested in this brand and getting them interested in not only trying but buying it? Yeah, I mean, I really think it's the packaging that jumps off the shelf and first kind of gives that consumer intrigue. And then I would say, after that, you know, easy is the number one word people use to describe our product. Like, this is just so easy. I can throw it in my bag. I take it on a travel day. It's perfect for on the go. And then I think people also have this element of surprise and delight where they're like, oh, you know, I thought the olives would be good, but they're actually amazing and super high quality.

14:29And so we continue to deliver on that quality piece. And that's why we're seeing such great repurchase. So I think it's more of a flywheel of those three main elements working together. I love speaking with you, Nikki, because it feels like you have a good sense of who you are and what your brand is all about. And certainly that takes time. But at the outset, when you're launching a brand and you're a brand new entrepreneur and all these people are giving you advice and you have some consultants that are like, hey, give me$40 ,000 and I can take your brand to the top. How do you cut through the clutter?

15:03How do you make sure that you are in control of your own destiny and able to take the right advice and block out the wrong advice? It's really difficult and a learned skill. It's funny, I remember when I first launched, I would take a call basically with anyone who reached out to me. And you really just have to learn the power of know and preserving your time and figure out where your time as a founder is really going to be best spent. So I've worked on building that over the last couple of years. It's tough because everyone is a potential customer, right? And I want everyone to have this really great perception of freestyle, be super excited about the brand.

15:43But at the end of the day, there's only so many hours that you can devote to some of these conversations. So, you know, being able to say no, I think, is a really important learn skill. What's the worst advice you ever got? Well, I would say the worst advice is don't do it. Don't don't launch freestyle snacks. You know, a few folks in my life, they said, I don't get it. Like olives, they come in a jar, like no one's snacking on them. I'm like, I just don't see this as a business model. And I just kind of ignored them and kept marching forward. I also got the advice in the beginning to focus on D2C versus retail.

16:23I really took the complete opposite approach. And now our D2C site is growing. Amazon's been fantastic for us, same with TikTok. But the core of our business is really being in stores, being on the shelf and getting people to discover us that way. So that was also another piece of advice that I just did not listen to. Well, if you recall back in 2021 and part of 2022, everything was DTC. Everyone was like, DTC is the future. You have to be invested in DTC. If you're not in DTC, then might as well just stop doing what you're doing. And of course, that changed because people went back to grocery stores and not everything was e-commerce.

17:02But it's great to hear that you're doing well on Amazon. Really interesting to hear that you're doing well on TikTok. I feel like TikTok is a really fast-growing platform, but it's one of the most confusing, I would say, or one of the most understudied platforms. How have you navigated TikTok, and not just from a social standpoint, but certainly from a sales standpoint? Yeah, we had a team offsite with our very small but mighty team last year, and we decided we're going to invest in TikTok Shop, and how do we get on this channel? and I kind of treated it like almost having a trainer and a workout and you know you had to just commit to making these videos pulling everything together writing these you know scripts for the videos and you know it took a little while for the algorithm to start picking us up but then all of a sudden they started pushing out our videos and TikTok is incentivized to push out your videos as well because they're getting a small commission on it and from there you know, we just saw the revenue potential and realized like it's worth spending our time on this channel.

18:10And to date, we've only posted organic videos, which is great. We haven't utilized their ad platform, but we run a bunch of sales on TikTok. And there's definitely some tricks of the trade that we've figured out. And it's really just been a big test and learn process. But the revenue potential on the platform, especially during this time of year, you know, the holidays, Black Friday, Cyber Monday is huge. I know I'm going to get an angry email from someone if I don't ask you, Nikki, you know, you mentioned tricks of the trade. Well, what's one trick of the trade? Because I know I'm just going to get it.

18:44Someone's going to send an email to askatasteradio.com being like, man, that was a cool interview with Nikki. But if you'd ask for one damn trick of that trade that she mentioned. So if you could, I mean, is there something specific that you could share with our audience? Yeah, I would say one of the things that has made our TikTok shop successful is our best-selling item, which is a sampler pack. So basically having a really low-priced entry item to the brand so that people can get a taste of it. And then if they love the product, they're gonna go back to TikTok shop and buy your bigger full-priced pack.

19:17So that pricing architecture strategy, once you get that right, I would say like pricing somewhere$10 to$15 is palatable for that channel. And then making videos, really pushing that starter pack. has been what's most successful for us. So interesting that you can drive trial on TikTok. I think, you know, two years ago, no one would have ever thought that that was at all possible. And trial is really important. And I think about freestyle snacks on Delta Airlines and that opportunity, which a lot of folks listening would love to have their brands on an airline, any airline. Is that relationship as much about trial and awareness as it is about revenue.

20:01Could you talk about how you first got connected with Delta? Was it a sort of a cold pitch on your part or did they come looking for you? Yeah, it was a great story, actually. It was, I think the last year, or maybe the second to last year of Expo East, it was the last day of the show. We're packing up our booth a little bit early and the Delta buyer came over. She's like, I've been looking to talk to you this whole time. And that was when we first made a touch point. And then from there, it was about two and a half years of just me checking in with the Delta buyer, giving her updates on the brand, our operational capacity to support Delta, our new flavors.

20:42And it really came down to timing. She's like, hey, we're looking to refresh our boxes. We have an opportunity for an olive snack. Can you meet this demand? And we were able to do it. And it was an easy yes. And, you know, it definitely took a lot of chipping away at that relationship, but ultimately came down to timing. And I think to your other question, whether it's a marketing play or a revenue play, I mean, the volumes are huge. And if you can make even, you know, a couple cents per pack, then it's really worth it. But I would view the airline channel more as a marketing expense, but, you know, definitely encourage trying to get as close to break even as possible.

21:27That must have been a trip when you're ready to pack up early and you're like, we're just going home. And the fire shows up like, hey, we want to put you on all of our flights. You're like, okay, stop packing up, folks. Yeah, it was awesome. Yeah. Well, I love these stories about being prepared for an opportunity And getting into a retailer like Target is one where that seems to be, you have to be in the right place operationally and at a relatively mature stage of your brand's development. But when that opportunity comes, it's pretty hard to say no. You talked about saying no, but in sort of a different context.

22:10But when it comes to Target, how did you know you were ready for that opportunity? How did you make sure that you were so buttoned up that you could come out of the gate really, really strong and say, oh, yeah, they're going to want us in a few hundred stores now, but we want to be in a Target nationally in a few months? Target is one that I, again, had been chipping away at since I launched the brand. I had chatted with probably three or four different buyers that had gone on either the Olive Desk or the Deli Desk. And, you know, finally, I think they were really excited about our success on social media, specifically with TikTok.

22:49I think that definitely has gotten a lot of buyer attention. I've actually had buyers DM me on TikTok from very large retailers like, hey, I must have missed you at Expo West, like would love to chat. So again, like TikTok has just been an incredible channel. But going back to, you know, how we were ready for the target opportunity, I think just making sure your supply chain is in a really strong position. So making sure our co-packers are buttoned up, the product quality and taste is exactly where we want it to be. And then just really rigorous demand planning and making sure, you know, we would be able to fill that need.

23:28And I actually took the target meeting by myself without a broker. And then once, you know, they seemed like they were interested in bringing us on. I was like, okay, I do need a broker to help me navigate all the promotions, their systems, really speak the language just so I could be buttoned up and make sure that we, you know, over deliver on the opportunity for them. Quick break. If this episode has you thinking about what's next in food and beverage, explore BevNet and Nosh Insider, our subscription platform with deeper insights from the BevNet team. Visit tasteradio.com slash insider to learn more.

24:05How much of your contact and interaction with those buyers from Target really helped lay the groundwork for you being in their stores and them knowing who you are and what you're about? Yeah, I think, you know, buyers, just like consumers, want to know who is behind the brand, what is the brand mission, the brand values, and can they align themselves with that? and so I do think it is really helpful. I'm a big believer in planting seeds and three years later when, again, the timing just seems right, then they know me, they know the brand and they're like, yes, like, okay, this is now the time to bring freestyle into our stores or onto our flight.

24:49So I do think it's really helpful and then I'm not afraid to ask for help to the point about brokers, bringing in other experts to really help me excel on the opportunity and make sure, you know, we can shine and grow within retailers like Target. How many experts have you talked to about tariffs? Not enough, honestly. I think everyone's just a little confused there and rolling with the punches. So, you know, doing all they can. I mean, I doubt tariffs had much to do with the launch of the pickles. But, you know, having a secondary line means that you don't need to be. Well, I know these pickles are basically brand new, but it might mean that you don't need to rely on your primary line of products as much as you do.

25:37But how did the pickles come about? How long have you been thinking about adding a second line of products? Yeah, you know, I am always just thinking of different innovations. Where do we want to go with the product line next? And pickles have always been in our pipeline. We've had some other types of pickled foods also in the pipeline that we've done some R &D on. but it actually was a meeting with Whole Foods and I had a slide you know here's our innovation pipeline what are you looking for like what do you need to see on your shelves what's missing and how can freestyle fill that gap for you and it was a really incredible conversation and they said if you can make pickles happen we would love to take them and so from there it was off to the races like okay this was just you know a concept on paper now we have to commercialize this for the timing for the next reset.

26:29And it came down to about a six month commercialization timeline, which was crazy, but I'm really proud that we made it happen. And, you know, it was probably a little earlier than I would have wanted to launch another product line because we have so much ground still to cover with our olives, but pickles are so strong. They're a way bigger market size. We've already had so much demand and excitement around it. So I'm very excited to see where we can take it. Yeah. You know, when retailers like, hey, if you create this product, we'll put it on shelf. That sounds like a pretty good deal. Was it sort of a handshake agreement or was it a contract or?

27:06No contract, just a, you know, a conversation like we would be really excited if you had this to present to us in the official review. So, you know, started working towards it then and then made up some samples, sent those over to the team. They love the taste to the product, the look and feel. And then it was really off to the races. Like, okay, now how do we scale this? You know, what investors love to hear is they love to hear you have a relationship with Whole Foods, that Whole Foods asks you to create products for them, that you have a relationship with Target, that you're killing it on TikTok.

27:40All these things sound really great to an investor's ears. Certainly a lot of them want to also hear about gross margin and supply chain and want to believe in you to be the person who's going to be able to lead the company going forward, which is always an odd thing to ask an entrepreneur. Are you the right person to lead this company going forward? Yeah, of course I am. Anywho, when it comes to raising money, what's that process been like? I know you bootstrapped and you funded the company at the outset, but how do you talk to investors about not just where Freestyle is right now, but the potential for the brand going forward?