814 Thomas Bowman: Co-Founder & CEO of Eclipse Foods

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. Today's episode is brought to you by Pebble, the smarter way to build a global team.

0:47Kara Goldin:Here's something no one tells you about hiring internationally. It sounds simple until it's not. I've been there. One hire turns into navigating foreign labor laws, payroll systems, compliance rules, and unexpected costs you didn't see coming. Before you know it, you're piecing together tools just to make one hire happen. That's exactly the problem Pebble was built to solve. Pebble is an AI-powered global HR platform built for founders, operators, and HR leaders who are hiring teams around the world. It helps you hire, pay, and manage talent in over 185 countries with onboarding that can happen in minutes.

1:29Kara Goldin:Instead of juggling separate systems for contracts, benefits, payroll, and compliance, Pebble brings everything into one place with built-in guidance and real local expertise supporting you behind the scenes. What stands out to me is how much clarity Pebble brings. Global hiring can look simple at first until the fees and complexities stack up. Pebble gives you upfront, all in costs and structure so you can scale your team without feeling like you suddenly need to become an HR or compliance expert. Ready to start working with Pebble today? The new standard discounted pricing of 399 USD per month per employee helps contain the costs.

2:14Kara Goldin:Go to highpebl.hi to get a free estimate. That's highpebl.ai for free estimate. As your business grows, the work doesn't just increase, it gets more specialized. And trying to do everything yourself can slow you down fast. That's where having flexible expert support really matters. And that's what Upwork is built for. Upwork is a one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. It helps growing teams move faster by giving them access to specialized talent across more than 125 categories, so you can get the help you need exactly when you need it without adding full-time overhead.

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3:53Kara Goldin:It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Upwork.com. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to The Kara Golden Show. Have you ever tried a plant-based product and thought, it's good, but it's just not quite the same? Our next guest didn't want just, it's okay for plant-based. He wanted indistinguishable from dairy. And that is, I believe, exactly what he has created for any dairy fans out there. So Thomas Bowman is the co-founder and CEO of Eclipse Foods, a company built on one radical idea, replicate real dairy and don't compromise on it.

4:53Kara Goldin:And Thomas isn't your typical food tech founder. He's a classically trained chef who worked in not one, but 16, if I have that correct, Michelin starred kitchens before shifting from fine dining to food innovation. and he prior to this worked on some other brands that I will let him talk about. But today we'll talk about moving from being in those Michelin star kitchens to actually creating the innovation and the innovative products that he has to not just create a product that is plant-based, but also something that people really fall in love with and buy it not just for one type of use, but also for many other uses.

5:48Kara Goldin:I'll leave it there. So, Thomas, welcome to The Kara Golden Show. So excited to have you here and to finally meet you.

5:56Thomas Bowman:Yeah, thanks, Kara. Excited to be here and chat about all things Eclipse.

6:00Kara Goldin:Today's episode is brought to you by Pebble, the smarter way to build a global team. Here's something no one tells you about hiring internationally. It sounds simple until it's not. I've been there. One hire turns into navigating foreign labor laws, payroll systems, compliance rules, and unexpected costs you didn't see coming. Before you know it, you're piecing together tools just to make one hire happen. That's exactly the problem Pebble was built to solve. Pebble is an AI-powered global HR platform built for founders, operators, and HR leaders who are hiring teams around the world. It helps you hire, pay, and manage talent in over 185 countries with onboarding that can happen in minutes.

6:48Kara Goldin:Instead of juggling separate systems for contracts, benefits, payroll, and compliance, Pebble brings everything into one place with built-in guidance and real local expertise supporting you behind the scenes. What stands out to me is how much clarity Pebble brings. Global hiring can look simple at first until the fees and complexities stack up. Pebble gives you upfront, all in costs and structure so you can scale your team without feeling like you suddenly need to become an HR or compliance expert. Ready to start working with Pebble today? the new standard discounted pricing of$3.99 USD per month per employee helps contain the costs.

7:34Kara Goldin:Go to highpebl.hi to get a free estimate. That's highpebl.ai for free estimate. Support for today's episode comes from Square, the platform behind so many of the small businesses we all count on. When you've built a company, you start noticing the little things. The coffee shop that moves the line quickly, the boutique that emails your receipt instantly, the pop-up that feels organized, not chaotic. More often than not, that smooth experience is powered by Square, quietly helping business owners run smarter every single day. It's not just a payment swipe or tap. It's one connected system that helps business owners take payments, manage inventory, run payroll, send invoices, and track everything in one place.

8:29Kara Goldin:Hardware that works in person and on the go. Software to manage staff and customers and even banking tools like Square checking so sellers can get paid faster. One of my go-to spots here in the Bay Area is Equator Coffee. They use Square and you can feel the difference as a customer. Checkout is fast, receipts land right in your inbox, and sometimes I even earn loyalty points. Businesses that use Square just feel more put together and I love that. And the best part, Square grows with you. Whether you're running a one-person pop-up or expanding to multiple locations, it scales alongside your ambition.

9:10Kara Goldin:No contracts, no hidden fees, no complicated setup, just tools designed for how people actually run their businesses. If you're starting a business or running one that deserves better tools, Square helps you sell, manage, and grow without slowing down. Right now, you can get up to$200 off Square hardware at square.com slash go slash Kara Golden. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash Kara Golden. Run your business smarter with Square. Go check it out and let Square help you do what you do best. Well, and as you and I were briefly emailing about yesterday, you and my husband Theo got a chance to meet a few years ago, and I remember him telling me how great your product was in the ice cream skew.

10:09Kara Goldin:And I was telling him that we were talking today and he was really excited that you had expanded beyond that because he loves your product as well. So very, very excited about everything that you're doing now with Eclipse Foods. But for listeners who haven't heard of Eclipse Foods or who are just discovering it, how do you describe the product, the company, and its mission? Yeah.

10:36Thomas Bowman:We created Eclipse Foods on a mission to really create non-dairy for dairy lovers. There's so many people out in the world like myself that love dairy, but unfortunately, their bodies had different plans. And over 65 % of the global population has some sort of dairy sensitivity. And, you know, consumers really purchase things for number one, flavor. It has to taste good. And as a former chef, I couldn't go and get a soy milk and oat milk and almond milk off the shelf and use them the same for cooking. And it just wasn't the same experience. So really looking at milk on a molecular level, looking at all of its components and rebuilding it back up from functional plant components.

11:23Kara Goldin:So you started Eclipse Foods in what year?

11:28Thomas Bowman:We started in 2019, January 3rd of 2019. Yeah.

11:35Kara Goldin:And your first SKU that you decided to come out with, can you share a little bit more about that? And how did you decide to start with that SKU?

11:43Thomas Bowman:Yeah, we first started with a non-dairy plain sweet cream mix designed for chefs and ice cream shops. We kind of took a look at the non-dairy industry as a whole and realized that there was a big gap in food service for non-dairy offerings, for ice cream shops, for chefs that, you know, was indistinguishable from the others. so they could take it and use it the same way as the dairy counterpart. And really scaling it in a way that we didn't need special equipment, didn't need special processing that could be run on any traditional dairy line as a way of being able to scale this. So we kind of reverse engineered it, thought about how it was going to be manufactured before we made it.

12:32Thomas Bowman:Definitely learned that having unique pieces of equipment and unique processing makes scaling very hard and very expensive.

12:41Kara Goldin:So you didn't initially start out to actually have a B2C product. You were really supplying kitchens initially. Today's episode is brought to you by Pebble, the smarter way to build a global team. Here's something no one tells you about hiring internationally. It sounds simple until it's not. I've been there. One hire turns into navigating foreign labor laws, payroll systems, compliance rules, and unexpected costs you didn't see coming. Before you know it, you're piecing together tools just to make one hire happen. That's exactly the problem Pebble was built to solve. Pebble is an AI-powered global HR platform built for founders, operators, and HR leaders who are hiring teams around the world.

13:31Kara Goldin:It helps you hire, pay, and manage talent in over 185 countries with onboarding that can happen in minutes. Instead of juggling separate systems for contracts, benefits, payroll, and compliance, Pebble brings everything into one place with built-in guidance and real local expertise supporting you behind the scenes. What stands out to me is how much clarity Pebble brings. Global hiring can look simple at first until the fees and complexities stack up. Pebble gives you upfront, all in costs and structure, so you can scale your team without feeling like you suddenly need to become an HR or compliance expert.

14:13Kara Goldin:Ready to start working with Pebble today? The new standard discounted pricing of$3.99 USD per month per employee helps contain the costs. Go to highpebl.hi to get a free estimate. That's highpebl.ai for free estimate. Support for today's episode comes from Square, the platform behind so many of the small businesses we all count on. When you've built a company, you start noticing the little things. The coffee shop that moves the line quickly, the boutique that emails your receipt instantly, the pop-up that feels organized, not chaotic, more often than not, that smooth experience is powered by Square, quietly helping business owners run smarter every single day.

15:06Kara Goldin:It's not just a payment swipe or tap. It's one connected system that helps business owners take payments, manage inventory, run payroll, send invoices, and track everything in one place. Hardware that works in person and on the go. Software to manage staff and customers and even banking tools like Square checking so sellers can get paid faster. One of my go-to spots here in the Bay Area is Equator Coffee. They use Square and you can feel the difference as a customer. Checkout is fast, receipts land right in your inbox and sometimes I even earn loyalty points. Businesses that use Square just feel more put together, and I love that.

15:50Kara Goldin:And the best part, Square grows with you, whether you're running a one-person pop-up or expanding to multiple locations. It scales alongside your ambition. No contracts, no hidden fees, no complicated setup, just tools designed for how people actually run their businesses. If you're starting a business or running one that deserves better tools, Square helps you sell, manage, and grow without slowing down. Right now, you can get up to$200 off Square hardware at square.com slash go slash Cara Golden. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash Cara Golden. Run your business smarter with Square. Go check it out and let Square help you do what you do best.

16:42Thomas Bowman:We were, yeah. So, I mean, we had a great partnership with the famous ice cream company in New York, Odd Fellows, Chef Sam Mason, formerly of WD-50, really heading up just really unique, amazing ice cream offerings in the New York area, as well as some other chefs in the Bay in New York City where we really kind of, you know, proved out that this is for people that know their food, that know dairy, that know ice cream. It's a product that's a one-for-one replacement.

17:16Kara Goldin:I love it. I love it. So you trained and cooked in, do I have that right, 16 Michelin trained or Michelin starred kitchens?

17:27Thomas Bowman:Yeah, some of those had multiple stars. I mean, everything from I started at Alinea. I was with the famous Moto Group for a long time, executive chef of two of their sister restaurants, Autumn and Ng. Yeah, so just really trained at some of the restaurants that were thinking outside of the box, looking at food differently. How can we not really, how do we cook a steak, but like, why are the things happening? Really, restaurants that were on the forefront of thinking about the whys, not the hows.

17:57Kara Goldin:So how did working at that level kind of train your palate and kind of force you to actually go become an entrepreneur then? I would guess that that was not in your original game plan.

18:13Thomas Bowman:I think working in restaurants as a professional chef, you know, we were lucky enough to go through Y Combinator and their mantra is make something that people want. and to be in the restaurant industry, you have to make things that people want. So I think it was a really good stepping stone into the startup product development world.

18:35Kara Goldin:Definitely. So you mentioned Y Combinator. I love Y Combinator. We've had many people on from Y Combinator and I remember them when they were first starting out. When you decided to go that route and that's not just about raising capital, but also getting kind of beat on, so to speak, too. And, you know, they rip your plans apart and help you to just be better, I think. What did you learn through that process of working with Y Combinator?

19:15Thomas Bowman:Yeah, we first applied to Y Combinator. It was about three days to the late submission. My co-founder, Elon, was like, hey, should we do this? And we both thought, there's no way we'll get in. But it was, in our mind at the time, a very good forcing function of us organizing our thoughts and getting kind of more of a plan of attack together. And somewhat gamed the system a little bit, got into the interview, and they started in with questions. And I'm like, hang on one sec, and pulled out five little bento boxes of beautiful full crudite and I said I have three sour creams here one of them is the best-selling uh sour cream and in the U.S.

19:58Thomas Bowman:one is the best-selling plant-based and one of them is Eclipse sour cream tell me if you can figure out which is which uh three of the four uh thought ours was the best-selling sour cream the one kind of like expert in the space was like I know which is which but I like yours better so it was really you know tricked three of the four and they were they were impressed that we're really looking at the non-dairy space in a different way than just having a hero ingredient like an oat or an almond that we're pureeing with water and calling it a milk.

20:32Kara Goldin:So, so interesting. I heard you say earlier, but I've also heard you talk about in other interviews when you speak about the brand that Eclipse is about replication, not alternative. And I had to think about that statement a little bit. And I love it, right? Because I think so many people, when they are talking about plant-based, they're kind of trying to knock people over the head in some way and change how they think about what they're putting into their system versus actually telling people, okay, you like what you like, but I've created a product that really replicates that. And I love that thinking.

21:28Kara Goldin:Where did that mindset come from? And did you feel like the consumers that you had met along the way, or perhaps either even colleagues that you had met along the way, were helping you think more about that? Because I really, really, there's something there, that I think is really unique and different.

21:49Thomas Bowman:Yeah, I think what our thought of like replication versus alternative, I think the consumer has a little bit of a mindset that alternative comes with trade-offs, that the alternative is like what they have. It's not going to be as good as what it's replacing. But being able to replace it one for one and the consumer being none the wiser is really what we're going for. And ultimately, you know, we are a startup and, you know, we are a mission-driven company. We kind of want to be the intel inside where our technology, all of our knowledge into replicating dairy can be used by other companies to make their products better.

22:29Mm-hmm.

22:30Kara Goldin:Yeah, definitely. And what are some of the biggest technical challenges in creating your product and, I guess, replicating dairy's taste and performance?

22:44Thomas Bowman:Dairy is a very complex product when you break it down, but really the key components are its proteins, the casein and the whey. And casein is an albumin protein, so we find very similar albumin proteins and whey is a globulin. And then really the technology is how do we get them to interact together so that you can take those and put them together, but if they don't interact in the right way, it doesn't function like dairy. So that's really where our IP and technology is around and our patents is around getting these functional plant proteins to come together and function like dairy proteins do in a system.