The Tito's of Snacks? How Mi Niña Is Building a Big Small Brand.

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0:51Hello, friends. I'm Ray Lateef, and you're tuned in to Taste Radio, the leading podcast for entrepreneurs, makers, and innovators in the food and beverage industry. After decades in fine dining, renowned restaurateur Jamie Mamano turned his attention to a new challenge, reinventing the tortilla chip. In this episode, he shares how a small tortilla bakery experiment evolved into Mininia, one of the country's fastest-growing premium tortilla chip brands, now sold in thousands of retailers nationwide, including Whole Foods, Target, and Wegmans. Jamie discusses how Menina's clean label, Organic Positioning, helps it stand out in a crowded snack aisle, why innovations like olive oil and protein-enhanced varieties are driving its next phase of growth, and why he's choosing to forego private equity as he builds the company on his own terms.

1:56Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I'm honored to be sitting down with Chef Jamie Mamano, the founder of MeNina. Chef Jamie, it's great to see you. Great to see you too. Thank you for having us on the show. I always wonder when I talk to chefs if they prefer the introduction of them as chef or you just prefer your first name. Which is it? Jamie's fine. I've been introduced by many other different names. I can't really recite on the radio program right now. So anyone's fine. I've heard stories about hospitality in the back of restaurants and they can be pretty crazy. Well, that's why they keep chefs behind closed doors.

2:38Your restaurant group is renowned and really well-respected, particularly in the Northeast. And when I visit your restaurants, I always think about how the fine dining experience is such that you couldn't replicate it at home. And I think that's one of the most beautiful parts of restaurants, right? Is that's where you go. You go there for the ambiance for sure. Of course. But you also go because you can't necessarily make the same food at home, which is why I love the fact that you got into CPG because you can share these delicious foods with people at home without them having to do much except for rip open a package.

3:15Very much so. And dip their tortilla chips. And that's what you make. Me Nina is a maker of tortilla chips and salsas. When did you start the business? Oh, we started my business partner, myself, Paul Reif. We started a business 15 years ago. So we're entering our 15th year. It's been quite a ride. It's been quite an education. We're really having a lot of fun with it right now. It's becoming a natural product, strictly on the accolade, you know, the qualities of the chips we've been doing. You know, we created, you know, all natural chips in the very beginning. There's never been any additives or preservatives in it.

3:47All the flavors are essentially myself and my chef jacket and the stainless steel bowl developing the flavors. You know, mostly organic corn. We're using organic oil. Mostly organic seasonings. and from the very beginning just wanted to create the best possible tortilla chip that we possibly could you know with the experience that we had in the food industry and applying that towards a snack has been quite a lot of fun and over the years it's resonated so much in the fact that it's become a very strong product in the northeast and very you know and now we've taken that down the east coast we're going west we're on the west coast it's become a national product you know it's been a lot of fun.

4:26We've made a lot of adjustments with it. We're doing a non-seed oil now. We're doing olive oil. We're doing protein-enhanced chips. We're developing right now. It'll be on the market very, very soon. So it's been a lot of fun. It's been a really lot of fun, and we've enjoyed this ride. You could have gone into any packaged food category, especially when I consider some of your restaurants are Italian-focused. I mean, you could have gone into pasta sauce. You Why tortillas, chips? Why salsa? Well, it's interesting. I married a Mexican girl 25 years ago. And you should come home and say, you know, I can't find any good quality tortillas in the market.

5:05So her mother used to send them from Mexico and FedEx packages because we'd have tortillas four or five days a week with dinner. You know, it's a company that would be the bread service, basically the bread service with dinner. And it was, you know, we're doing moles and all different types of products. But it was a great, incredible fresh corn tortilla. and we just couldn't find that locally. So I was looking at it 15 years ago, I was like, I mean, there's nothing in the market. Why don't we just try to introduce a fresh, natural, all natural, best corn tortilla possibly could? So we decided, I spoke to my business partner, he's got a little, started a small storefront in Chelsea.

5:41And we decided to open a small little tortilla bakery, meaning we brought the corn in, we cooked the corn, just a little filtered water, a little bit of ground limestone. And we were making fresh corn tortillas every day in 100-pound batches. And a customer could walk into this tiny little storefront and get warm, fresh corn tortillas. You could walk in there, smell the corn being cooked and the tortillas being baked. It was very, very cool. Fortunately, for some reason, it didn't resonate with the neighborhood. It was a mix of, that's mostly a Mexican staple, but we had Puerto Ricanos in there, we had Colombians and a lot of El Salvadorians, and they didn't really embrace tortillas as much as the Mexican culture does.

6:23So we pivoted. We took day-old tortillas. We took the tortillas that didn't sell. The next day, we cut them up and fried them in sunflower oil. And after a very short period of time, we realized people were coming in for the chips. And then we were coming in for the tortillas. So we go, okay, this is interesting. So, you know, it was a great chip. It was nothing like anything you had in the market. Great flavor profile, beautiful fresh corn, organic white corn. And then we walked into Whole Foods 12 years ago. And, you know, we created a bag. and just so happens the logo on the bag is actually a picture of my daughter making tortillas with a grandmother in Mexico City when she was three.

6:58It was a family-based business and we're very proud of it. So anyway, we walked into Whole Foods and they're like, sure, we'll take them. I'm like, oh my God, what do we do now? So it was one of those things. So we developed a bag, we developed a logo, we made it happen. And they said, yeah, we'll take it. So within And about six months of that, you know, walking in there, we were in seven or eight Whole Foods in Massachusetts. And they were selling crazily, hand over fist. They were like blown away. So over the first couple of years, here we are, you know, 14 years later, and we're probably around 7 ,000 stores around the country, you know, concentrated in the Northeast.

7:35But it's become the biggest selling premium ship in the Northeast. And it's not a matter, it wasn't a matter of marketing. It wasn't a matter of anything. It was just a matter of word of mouth. and the customers come in and try the product and they realize how different it was. You know, the quality was there. Looking at the ingredient panel, looking at the nutrition panels, it was all natural. It didn't have, you know, a dozen things on the ingredient list that you couldn't pronounce. It's basically corn, water, and salt and a little bit of lime. When I first encountered the brand, the first thing I thought or the first word that came to mind was authentic.

8:09There's something about the logo in the bag and you mentioned your daughter is the inspiration behind the logo. I think the name Menina, where does that come from again? That's my girl. My girl. Everything about this looks different than sort of the Americanized version of tortilla chips. If there is a parallel to Menina, I feel like it's Tito's vodka, right? Because one of the genius aspects of Tito's is that it looks like a low production, true to its roots and its ingredients type of vodka. Now, even though Titas is probably one of the largest vodka makers in the world, it still has that cachet.

8:52I'm not saying Menina is this mega brand that's trying to make it seem like they're authentic when they're not, because you just talked about this. The sourcing of ingredients, the quality checks, the quality control, the emphasis on tradition all really plays into what this brand is all about. But, you know, for your customers, your retail customers, and then your consumers, what really rises to the top? Is it the packaging? Is it the ingredients? Is it the taste? If there was a hierarchy of importance for your retail customers and then your consumers, what would it look like? Well, the most important thing for retail customers are the cells, number one.

9:32OK, sure. First and foremost, we could have went to a different packaging, you know, aluminized bag that a Lay's Potato Ship would be in, you know, get another week or two of shelf life. It's not something we wanted to do. We stuck with the bag. We're trying to change the game a little bit. And just to interrupt you real quick, I mean, that's an important point because the bag I'm holding, the single serve bag is white, but your multi-serve bags are brown. The texture is almost like... Like a craft paper, craft paper, yes. Yeah. You know, the mini bag, it was impossible to do the craft paper. It'd be impossible.

10:04But our typical bags is a flat bottom paper bag. And what we're trying to stress to the buyers and these companies is to say, listen, try to think about you going to a bakery, buying a loaf of bread. It's about freshness. And that's what it's all about. We didn't want to create anything that lasts for a year. Anything that lasts for a year is not good for you. Anything that has a very short shelf life is better for you. So if, you know, we have a four month shelf life on it, that's what the corn does. You know, our biggest challenge is like, listen, this is a fresh product. We need you to handle like such.

10:36We're making it to order for you. We're not inventorying this product. We're not building inventory, nothing like that. That resonates with the buyer, right? I mean, on top of they want to see it sell, but also the bag is a... We've got to get trials. So the bag stands out. There's a mile of different ships in the aisle in the grocery store. They want it to stand out. We want it to get the potential customer to see the authenticity of it. And then all we've got to do is trial. Once you get a person to open that bag with a scissor and chase that ship, it's a game changer that is our biggest thing you know we don't have the we don't we're not doing a Super Bowl commercial next Sunday when you know that's not us but if we can get trial you know we're doing we give out samples we're doing demos we go buy and taste the chip in a grocery store once we have a potential customer try it more than likely nine times out of ten eight times out of ten they said oh my god this is different this is what I want to bring home this is a healthier version of a chip I want to feed my kids so this is what I'm a snack on if I decide to snack, this is something I want to snack on.

11:36So the combination of all those things and what you reiterated, you said about being authentic, family-oriented company that resonates with people. And the bag itself, we hope to market it enough on the bag and the person will see it, try it. It's okay. This is different. I want to try it. And usually that's how we built the company is basically just trial. People taste it and it's worked out pretty good so far. This episode is brought to you by BioBotanica, a U.S.-based manufacturer of functional botanical ingredients and alcohol-free liquid extracts. BioBotanica has been family-owned since 1972 using a proprietary cold extraction process.

12:19Learn more at bio-botanica.com forward slash BevNet. From supply chain savvy to smart scaling, Baystate Milling's Jessica Wellnitz breaks down how emerging brands can grow from scrappy startups into long-term partners. Stay tuned till the end of this episode for a bonus interview where Jessica explains what separates brands that scale successfully and how founders can become the ideal supplier partner. A crowded trade show floor is the hardest place to tell your story for the first time. Give the industry a head start by sharing your news early. Download the guide from BevNet CPG Media to learn how to reach buyers before the big show.

13:06Visit BevNet.com forward slash trade show. You're absolutely right about retailers. Velocity is so important for them. They don't want to bring anything into their stores that's just going to sit on the shelf. They want things to turn. Yes. They want to bring brands in that are going to bring incremental value to their stores. Because if it's just, I mean, if it's, they might as well just bring in some of the big brands because they know those are going to turn. So unless your brand is going to turn as much or more than those brands, why would they bring it in? And I think in terms of communicating the value to consumers, getting them to trial, again, I think your package does so much for you.

13:45It does look different. It looks like a bag you would see or a product that you would see in a small specialty food store. Yes, exactly. More than you would a big box retailer or even a Whole Foods. But of course, you're in both. Going back to flavor for a sec, I think you touched on this earlier when you talked about the different types of flavors that you offer versus your competing brand. So a jalapeno agave, I don't think I've seen any other brand offer this type of product. Nobody. Other than Mignogia. Even Pico de Gallo. I think I've probably seen a handful of companies do that. And you have a ton of flavors.

14:19I mean, you have, I don't know, what is it, nine or ten different flavor varieties? Well, yes, it's almost there. We're developing two right now. So we have the sea salt and white corn, fully organic, certified organic. We're certified organic in blue corn. We have the jalapeno. We have the pico de gallo. We have the churro, the cinnamon, sugar, sweet and salty cinnamon. We have 100 % olive oil, organic corn olive oil for the non-seed oil. That's on the market currently. That just got introduced about a few months ago. Fabulous chip. I mean, it's arguably as good, maybe a little better than the sunflower.

14:53It's really, really good. So we're very happy with that. The sales are off to the Rattata Gate is tremendous with the olive oil. That's great. I've always wanted to do a Dorito. That's the biggest selling chip on the planet. So I always wanted to do a Dorito. A nacho cheese flavor you're talking about. Nacho cheese flavor. Yes, exactly. So, you know, I was concerned about, well, you look at a Dorito. There's a lot of stuff in there you can't pronounce, right? So I wanted to do something like that. We've been working on it for a few years, actually. We tried a bunch of different things. I came out with some great ones.

15:21But, you know, we're just a small operator. I don't want to bring cheese into the plant just for allergens. I don't want to get, you know, be cross allergens. I don't want to be concerned about that. It's a very dangerous thing. We do start playing with bringing dairy into the plant. So I decided against, we decided against using dairy in the plant and just keep it as clean and natural and safe as possible for everybody to try it over chips. so we actually came up with a dairy-free nacho is very very cool so working on that and they're working on we played around with chocolate a chocolate cinnamon churro which is outrageous so about three weeks ago we got a call from what a major retailer said listen can you guys do some protein chips for us i said sure not a surprise these days everyone's protein and everything right huge every shirt so like okay well i'm thinking about it it's like we did a little research, we get the best protein and we got a really, we got a pea protein in.

16:13Since we didn't go to market with the dairy-free nacho or the chocolate yet, we thought those two best flavors would take on that protein, additional protein, and still have a wonderful tasting chip. And literally, like literally last week, we did a testing on the protein chocolate churro chip and the protein dairy-free nacho chip, and they're freaking outrageous, both of them. So we're going to market with that. We're working on bag design right now, but they're both going to be non-seed oil, protein-enhanced chips, doing a thin version of chip. We also have a thin and crispy chip. So those are coming to market probably sometime in the early spring.

16:54And they're simply outrageous. And we're presenting them right now and the feedback has been tremendous. We have some major players looking at taking us on right now. Our olive oil chips, our protein chips. So there's a big demand for it and we're responding very quickly to it. It sounds like if a retailer asks, you are happy to deliver when it makes sense. But innovation is a slippery slope, right? I mean, you have a flagship variety, your sea salt variety that sells really well. I always have a bag of it in my house. Yeah. But when you are introducing new flavors or introducing new varieties, say one that includes protein, it might be a little bit of taking your eye off the ball.

17:34And some founders have admitted to this. How do you consider introducing new forms of your tortilla chips while staying true to what the original vision is for Menina? Well, the original version of Menina, the culture of Menina put the best in category, best in class on the shelf in the grocery store. So in addition to protein, there's natural plant-based protein. it's still changing it's staying traditional to the product very high quality product that's what our customers are looking for that's what you know that's what our buyers are looking for that's what the customers are looking for um we got to respond to that same with the you know all the press about the non-seed oils i mean adapt or die i mean you gotta you know it's a very competitive competitive field here you know interestingly enough you know we we read about the non-seed oil and then we're like well we go to the avocado oil everybody's going everybody you see all the snacks now they've converted to avocado oil and um you know we're looking at that we tried we got avocado and we tried it and let's let's let's try some olive oil too we tried it as well and we felt the olive oil flavor was better so we decided to go with the olive oil because now now we're in a white space as they say in the in the industry so actually you know we met with a major buyer a couple weeks ago and that's where i heard the term for the first time because jamie you got into white space with your olive oil, it tasted absolutely delicious.

18:58So we're not sacrificing quality. We're not sacrificing anything. We're just giving it with the customers, the buyers want for the stores. And you think about it. If you walk into a store, Whole Foods, we have two flavors. We have salt and pico de gallo. If you walk in a different store, they have two different flavors, salt and another flavor. So depending on who the customer and depending on what region in the country you're at, there are different flavor profiles. The buyers are different. We're not going to do 50 flavors. We're not going to do late July thing. We're not going to do 12, 15 different flavors.

19:27That's not us. But we're just responding to the requests, the demands of the buyers and what the chip eating public are looking for.

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20:42Jamie Mammano:today at tasteradio.com slash cannabis. Have buyers asked you about non-GMO and organic? I think when I see your chips and I see MeNinia next to a competing brand and MeNinia is organic, I'll just say what it is. I mean, I shop at Wegmans a lot and I'll see one brand and then I'll see your brand. And both brands look appealing, to be honest. But Menina is more appealing to me because I know what the chip tastes like. And it's organic. It's USDA certified organic. Yes. When did you decide to go organic with some of your products? And how much does it matter to your customers? Well, it matters to us, number one, and it matters to our customers as well.

21:28I mean, we pivoted to organic three and a half years ago, 100 % organic. So we both the current plant in Brockton, we decided to go fully organic. We were spending three times the amount of money on oil, substantial increase on the corn. We decided to commit ourselves to that. It's all about the chips and, you know, giving what our customers want and, you know, responding to the press out there. And, you know, we have to pivot. I mean, you can see the PepsiCo and Lay's are pivoting quite crazily right now. Everybody's pivoting to cleaner label and all this other stuff. But we did that. We started that 14 years ago.

22:04You know, we feed a lot of people in our restaurants every week. And for many, many years, Mistral's open almost will be 30 years next year. The focus on quality has always been there. It's my entire life. That's what I do is, you know, I think about food all day long. If I go traveling, my wife, she's going to museums and churches and stuff like that. I'm like, you go, I'm good. I'm going to go get a couple of restaurants, have a couple of snacks. That's what I do. I mean, that's, you know, that's what I think about all day long. So it resonates. with the product here. So it's pretty cool. And I have my daughter's working in now.

22:33She's in the office next door. She's assisting, supporting Mark's sales and marketing. And she just graduated college last year. So she's, you know, it's great. Having her in here is awesome as well. So it's fun. That is fun. It's great to be able to work with your family and especially be able to provide them with jobs, especially right out of college. But daughter, I'm not going to be around forever. You know, maybe you can run this, run the company for us down the road. But we'll see. You know, We love what we're doing. We really enjoy coming here every day. And one day is always something.

23:04Well, let's talk about the future for a second. Sure. One of the challenges of a fast-growing brand is that you think about how much you can produce. You think about forecasting demand, not just for this year, but for the following. And what you might need to expand your facility, what you might need to expand your sales force. and it really, I think, depends on your ambition as an entrepreneur. What do you want to do with this brand? How far do you want it to go, especially for one that's as established as you and has such a following here in the Northeast? You don't need to be national, in my opinion.

23:40You've built a great regional business here. But how do you think about ambition and the future of the company? Well, from the very beginning, I mean, it's kind of audacious to make a statement like this. But I want, you know, the audacity to have this. I wanted to change the snack game. I really did. You know, once we got into it, I said, we got something very, very special here. Why can't we? Let's change the snack game. You know, let's put a clean ingredient, no preservative, organic corn, organic oil, really put an effort into putting the best, healthiest version of a snack we could possibly do.

24:15And we've done that. And as far as long term, let's see what we can do with it. I mean, you know, there seems to be a demand for it. we're doing well in other regions where you know we're not in new england yet i mean it's you know we don't have marketing crazy budgets for marketing and all this other stuff we have a great sales team we have a great new sales vp here is amazing john gentile we have a regional sales people we've handpicked some very small sales teams around the country and uh they're all excited to work with us and we're excited we're just excited to see what what can happen with it There's no real end game.

24:51There's nothing. Let's just continue to have fun with it. And it's kind of cool after being in the restaurant business for 50 years, you know, close to 50 years, it's nice to do something different, you know, it's fun. You seem pretty relaxed, which is great because typically CBG entrepreneurs are pretty stressed. They've got a lot of things going on. But having been in the kitchen for 50 years, I imagine that the stress is like, yeah, the The stresses of being in the back of the house can be pretty mind-numbing. Yeah, I'm pretty good with firemen. I've put up plenty of fires in my day, so it's fine.

25:23You know, it's fine. And we have a great group of people here. And many people have been with us from the very beginning, 14 years. You know, small. We're cutting tortillas by hand and frying small batches. You know, so we have a great group of people here. Everybody cares. Everybody cares what's going on. What's tougher, the restaurant business or the CPG business? Oh, CPG. CPG, much tougher. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. But it's very competitive. It's very cutthroat. It's very competitive. We're like a baby David going against Goliaths here, right? It's challenging, but for some reason, the customers have tried our product and it's resonated with them.