765 Jason Wright: Founder & CEO of WILDE

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Kira Golden Show.

0:44Kara Goldin:Today, I'm joined by Jason Wright, the founder and CEO of Wild. It is the Nashville based company shaking up the snack aisle with a bold twist on everyone's favorite crunchy indulgence, chicken. So instead of potato or corn, wild protein chips are made from real chicken breast, delivering that classic chip crunch with 10 grams of clean, complete protein in every serving. And since launching in 2015, is that correct, Jason?

1:20Jason Wright:It's been a while, Kara. It's been a while, but yeah, 2015.

1:24Kara Goldin:I love it. So the company has continued to grow and developed its own patented production technology as well. We'll talk about how Jason has taken a wild idea, pun intended there, and turned it into a national brand. what it takes to stand out in a crowded CPG category and how he's balancing innovation, growth, and staying true to his mission. I love Jason's experience. He's a serial entrepreneur. Can't wait to get into some of his other companies as well. So, Jason, welcome to the Kara Golden Show.

2:05Jason Wright:Kara, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be speaking with you today, and I'm excited to share the story.

2:12Kara Goldin:Very excited. So let's start at the beginning of Wild, I guess, back to 2015. How did this idea for Wild come about?

2:22Jason Wright:You know, Kara, I love potato chips, but potato chips did not love me back. You know, as I was getting older, things that you could eat as a kid, and maybe in your 20s, you know, they just don't sit well with you as you get older. And I've always been a healthy, somewhat healthy guy. You know, I worked out a lot and, you know, high protein, low carb. But that was one thing I couldn't kick was potato chips. So in 2015, at the bottom of a potato chip bag, you know, I asked the question, could I replace the potato with chicken breast? And I'm the type of guy that once I get something in my head, I go down a rabbit hole and I put blinders on and I start digging.

3:10Jason Wright:And that was the birth of wild.

3:14Kara Goldin:I love it. So why chicken? What was it about chicken?

3:20Jason Wright:Yeah, you know, I think when you think about chicken breast, you know, we use chicken breast in all ways, shape or form. You know, whether it's on a salad, grilled chicken breast, chicken sandwich. Uh, it's such a neutral canvas, uh, that you can do a lot with it. And so in my head, I just thought about, you know, replacing the potato with chicken breast. Um, I don't really know why at the time that was the first thing that popped in my head, but chicken breast, um, you know, was just, was just that, that thing that popped in my head. You know, I thought about egg white. Um, so it was just kind of ingredients that naturally we've always, you know, turned to when we were told to eat healthy or wanted to eat high protein.

4:03Jason Wright:So that's just what popped in my head.

4:06Kara Goldin:So the early days when you were pulling all of this together, you have this idea, you have this need, and you decide, I'm going to go for it. But there's obviously prototypes that you're creating. You're trying to find co-packers to actually manufacture this. this, but what exactly was involved in that process in those early days for you to actually have anything to go off of?

4:36Jason Wright:Yeah, listen, I, so the, a lot of people don't know this, but Wild is a self-manufacturer, right? I built three facilities. We're opening our third in January. But in the early days, you know, in my early career as an entrepreneur, I started a cereal company. And through that journey, you know, I would make things in my kitchen. And so when I first thought about Wild, the first thing that popped in my head was, I'm gonna go back to the kitchen and, you know, just start to think through how could something like this exist? What would be the process? You know, it was, I was living in Boulder, Colorado, and Colorado State University has a big meat science department.

5:26Jason Wright:And I was fortunate to know someone there. And I tapped into them really quick, kind of told them what I was thinking that a process would look like. And so from making the prototypes in my kitchen, using a food processor, using chicken breast, using a sous vide system. I kind of had an idea what I would do. And then I translated that to Colorado State, where I was able to work with professors there and work just processes I'd come up with and kind of work on equipment that was more in the meat industry that I could get my hands on. And so the early days, I spent a lot of time at Colorado State University.

6:14Jason Wright:and, you know, we were in the process of raising money and, you know, I had something that people could snack on from a kitchen and I thought at that time I would use a pork rind facility. I was convinced that we would make the product, you know, there's two phases, the wild. So we call it the wild potato. We'd make that like at a USDA facility, you know, that makes anything that starts with fresh meat. And then I would go down to the pork rind facility and that's where I would crisp, season and bag. And we tried that. And it's 100 percent not the way to do it. I was ran out of the state of Mississippi.

6:59Jason Wright:And and then I had a you know, I had a my first huge hurdle I had overcome was now that I know we can't do it at a pork rind facility. how are we going to do this, which led me eventually to creating our own unique patent equipment that eventually led at first going into a co-man and then later to, you know, owning our own facility because co-man wouldn't work.

7:28Kara Goldin:Crazy. So did you have any experience actually owning your own manufacturing facility prior to this?

7:36Jason Wright:Zero. Zero. You know, if you ask me, if you asked me back in 2015 or 16, will you ever own your own manufacturer? I mean, that thought's not even in my head. So I'm not even thinking, you know, if I went back to the granola days, that was a traditional, you use a co-manufacturer, you focus on sales and marketing, let the co-manufacturer make a recipe, you know, that you came up with. And that's a lot of brands in our industry. But Wild was never going to take that path because what I was doing had never been done before. And to be honest with you, I didn't know what I didn't know. And so I didn't realize what hurdles we were getting into.

8:20Jason Wright:I didn't realize how many roadblocks. And that was just things that, you know, you kind of live and learn. But yeah, I mean, when we, you know, I tell you the story about, so it's funny, I come home from Mississippi and I say, come home. I'm in Boulder, Colorado at the time. I'm living there and, you know, I'm pretty depressed. I'm thinking like, what am I going to do? How am I going to, I've told these investors, I'm going to go to a port ground facility and that's obviously not going to work. So I was riding down the road and I got a German short hair pointer and we were going to our favorite dog park and we come to a stoplight.

9:01Jason Wright:There was construction going on on the side of the street and on the side of the street with the construction, there's a bulldozer. And the guy was just running up and down, up and down. He was packing. And I watched his track move, you know, like a bulldozer track. And I was just sitting there staring at it. And I was like, that's what I need. Like, I need a way for this product to be almost sauteed, but I need some way for it to kind of wrap around these shoe plates. And one, it would hold it in place, and two, it would give it some kind of shape. And so I took that idea to a machine shop, and I made a little teeny prototype, very small.

9:45Jason Wright:And then I went out to a very large equipment manufacturer and convinced them to make me a prototype. And through that, and then going back to the investors and saying, hey, we're going to have to do this ourself, and luckily got their support. That was the start, the beginning of us, you know, creating our own equipment, eventually leading to having our own manufacturing facility.

10:12Kara Goldin:That's wild. So the early days of Wild back in 2015, how many SKUs did you actually develop at first and what were those?

10:24Jason Wright:Three SKUs. We had pink salt, we had salt and vinegar, and barbecue. And that was our three SKUs.

10:33Kara Goldin:And what makes Wild, I guess what made Wild different then and what makes it different today?

10:42Jason Wright:You know, then it was obviously the first chip ever made of chicken breast. But in those days, we were not, I didn't make it in the early days with bone broth and I didn't make it with egg white. And those ingredients would come later as we discovered that, you know, I remember my first demo when I demoed the product at Whole foods, you know, people didn't know where to place it in their head. They didn't know why they needed it. And I think people, if you think about a snack made of meat, you think about jerky. And so people automatically thought texture would be chewy. And so as I learned that and we kind of navigated through a packaging design change, I introduced bone broth and egg white as more of a recipe because people could understand that, you know, if it was combined with bone broth and egg white and tapioca, that it was more of a recipe and they could understand how that could eat, you know, crunchy and crispy, like, you know, maybe a tortilla chip or potato chip.

11:56So, you know, today

11:57Jason Wright:wilds much different than it was in those early days.

12:01Kara Goldin:So, so interesting. So you've grown incredibly fast since 2015. What do you think has fueled the momentum? I mean, there are other companies in the high protein and better for you snack aisle. Wild is super tasty and different, but it's always great to have kind of competition, especially when you're trying to get shelf space because then they start to recognize that the industry, right, that the category is growing. even though yours is different. But what do you think has really fueled the momentum, I guess, around the category, maybe even Me Too products to some extent, but also the Better For You craze that's out there?

12:51Jason Wright:You know, I mean, protein, I mean, it's hot, right? It is hot right now. And I don't know that it's going away. You know, I think about, you used to have people say, oh, we eat low fat and then we debunk that, right? And then, you know, you started on this like low carb. And I mean, this has been going on for 25 years now, low carb, like, you know, probably back in the 20s or sorry, the 2000s, early 2000s, you had South Beach diet, you had Atkins diet. I mean, people started to see results, right? when they ate low carb and trace it back to sugar glucose. And so I think protein is not going away.

13:36Jason Wright:I think that's a huge benefit of what's going on right now and the tailwind that we're experiencing. And I see all these brands jumping in with, I even hear protein Doritos is coming. So there goes to show how much protein, how powerful it is right now. But I think wild, you know, we're the only ones out there made of real food. So when you look at all these other guys and girls and brands, we're talking about a powdered first product. We're talking about a product that was a tortilla chip, was a bar, was a muffin, was a donut. And that product exists forever. And then someone comes along and just puts protein powder in it.

14:21Jason Wright:And there you have, you know, a protein bar, protein donut. Wild's not like that. Wild is a unique, you know, innovative. It starts with chicken breast. It's made of real food. There's bone broth. There's egg white. And I was after creating a delicious snack that we could feel good about and that would, you know, curb your appetite. But you didn't give up on taste and texture. And I really was never after like some high protein number. That's not what what was driving me. I was just wanting a snack I could feel good about and I didn't want to lose my crunch. And I think that's the big difference at Wild is the real food, you know, and and the fact that the taste and texture, which is driven by the real food, is different than anything out on the market.

15:13Kara Goldin:So when you think about building the company, obviously, you're a serial entrepreneur. You've done this a few times, the hurdles, right, that you've got to get over. And I think so often you don't, most great entrepreneurs don't necessarily see those hurdles coming, right? If they did, they might pivot before it happens or whatever. But then all of a sudden, it smashes you right in the face. I've told this story a million times. Starbucks was mine. We were doing great. Everything was perfect. Had a great relationship. Over delivering. And then all of a sudden, a new CMO comes in. And she's like, we want to focus just on the Starbucks brand.

15:57Kara Goldin:And I'm like, wait, what? You can't do that. But they can, right? And so you've got a plan in place, everything, you're doing everything possible. And then you got to go back to investors and tell investors, you know, that those millions are not going to happen. And you've got to figure out how else to get those millions. And so I'm curious, like if there's been any hurdles along the way that you found challenging, obviously you got over them. They weren't exactly what you thought was going to happen, but I'd love to hear them.

16:34Jason Wright:You know, I kind of probably should start with asking you how much time you have because I've got them. But, you know, listen, I've been fortunate to have some great investors that stuck with me. Um, but, you know, just to, uh, just to highlight a few, um, you know, we, uh, you know, while we create this, this, this special equipment and we install into a co-manufacturer, uh, down in Virginia, uh, a big, um, manufacturer of meat snacks and things are just not going well. and we are really doing the work ourselves. We're running the line. And, you know, there was a lot of R &D still going on at the time, but we were running the line.

17:26Jason Wright:You know, the ownership from the manufacturer, the co-man, there's no ownership. And the economics were really tough for a while. And so the valuable lesson there, and we learned it, was, you know, we had installed equipment into another guy's facility. And this actually happens twice. But this particular time, you know, you just can't up and move and maybe go to a new co-man or move your equipment. So you're stuck. You know, you take those contracts and throw them out the window because, you know, you can do whatever it says in the contracts, one thing. But you have a piece of equipment installed in somebody's building that you can't get out and you need to make inventory.

18:15Jason Wright:So you have to almost obey by their rules until you kind of figure out a solution. And so that is the first big hurdle of Wild is that we ended up having to build a second unit. And that was our route out of a bad situation because we could not afford to be shut down. and not make product. And so our way around that was we built another unit. And that was a hard conversation. You know, investors didn't think we were going to ever be in a situation where we've installed something and now we can't get it out. And in order to go forward, we have to just go build a whole nother, you know, whole new unit.

18:58Jason Wright:So that was one hurdle that we had to overcome, you know, the hurdle of COVID. And we did, when we built our new unit, we took ownership of it in 2019. COVID hit. And so we had to go and build a manufacturing facility in the middle of COVID in Kentucky. And that was challenging, you know, the world shut down. But at the same time, we're building a manufacturing facility. And I was probably one of the only guys flying almost every week. A lot of empty seats on planes those days. But that's a huge challenge. And you just don't realize, you know, you said it best. I mean, you don't really realize until you kind of get hit with the problem and then you got to pivot.

19:48Jason Wright:And I think that's what makes the entrepreneur Or so, you know, great at what he or she does is that pivot. You got to be able to pivot and it's going to happen. It's not if, it's when, right? It's going to happen and you're going to have to pivot. So that's something that I've been fortunate in pivoting fast. But that's one of the many stories that we've encountered.

20:14Kara Goldin:So when you think about all those lessons that you learned when you were working on your granola company way back when, I always say that the serial entrepreneur is taking a lot of those lessons with them, maybe taking the good and the bad, the hard, right? And those make the best entrepreneurs, right? And frankly, they also make the best employees, right? People who have failed along the way that can actually own it and tell you exactly what happened along the way. Some of our best salespeople were people that really messed up, right, along the way. And then later on, they were able to really talk about it.

21:05Kara Goldin:And I think that it's so key. But what are some of those things that you learned in that first startup that you've taken with you as sort of a key kind of North Star for you?