#249 - Expo Pitch Slam Recap with ChiChi Foods

0:02Did you hear that? That's opportunity knocking. We've been building something big. Introducing Opportunity Knocks, a new campaign giving startup CPG brands exclusive direct access to submit to leading retailers, distributors, investors, media, and more. Here's how it works. On Fridays, a new submission window opens exclusively for active Startup CPG email subscribers. Each campaign features a custom form tailored to that partner. Share your brand story, products, distribution, and traction. Startup CPG delivers your applications directly to the partner's team. Some campaigns include a live fireside chat so you can meet the partner and ask questions directly.

0:44To get every drop, subscribe at startupcpg.com slash OK. That's just the letters O and K. Today's drop is live and it's with Whole Foods Market UK. Ready? Go. Go subscribe. Go submit. Good luck.

1:18Welcome to the Startup CPG Podcast. Today we have a special episode for you because we have the winners of our recent Expo West Pitch Slam with Advantage FDM Sales. It's Chi Chi Foods. This is a great brand and you're going to be on their side once you hear Kiara talk about the brand and what she's up to. And you will not wonder why they ended up winning a huge prize of$150 ,000 in services from Advantage FDM Sales. What I really like about this episode is I just want all of the early stage brands to understand if you hustle, if you apply for opportunities out there, huge things can happen. It's always worth taking the chance and putting yourself out there because you just don't know.

1:58And if you keep doing it, then good things are really likely to turn up, including this absolutely trajectory changing opportunity for Chi Chi Foods. So thanks again to our friends at Advantage FDM Sales, and I hope you enjoy hearing this first-hand account of how the whole pitch slam went down, who the judges were, what they asked, and how you too could put yourself in a good position for a pitch slam like this. All right, here we go.

2:26Welcome, everybody. I have Kiara here from Chi Chi Foods, fresh off a huge win at our first ever pitch slam at Expo West. Kiara, first of all, welcome to the podcast. Would you mind giving everybody a little bit of an intro? Yeah, thank you. I'm so excited to be here. My name is Kiara and I'm one of the two co-founders of Chi Chi. And we make breakfast out of chickpeas because they're super healthy and they're high in protein. And our first product is the first hot cereal. So kind of like oatmeal, but made with chickpeas instead. Okay, so if I'm eating oatmeal in the morning, now I'm eating Chi Chi foods.

3:02What's the difference in terms of the taste and the nutritional content, all the important stuff? Yeah, yeah. So the biggest difference with chichi versus oatmeal is the nutritional content, but I'll kind of get into the taste first. So it cooks exactly like an instant oat. So all you have to do is stick it in the microwave with milk or water. And the texture we describe is kind of like a steel cut oat. So it's like a little less mushy than regular oatmeal. My co-founder Izzy actually hates regular oatmeal because it's so mushy. So he demanded that we make chichi a little heartier almost. and then nutritionally is like the big reason why we actually started Chi Chi.

3:39We started it because we used to actually like eat oatmeal because we thought it was healthy and we were in our college dorm room together eating oatmeal like every morning even though my co-founder Izzy thought it was slimy we thought it was super healthy for us but like an hour after eating the oatmeal we would get hungry and like we would kind of have an energy crash after eating our little oatmeal packets in the morning and we said wait this doesn't have very much protein it has so much sugar Like they pack so much sugar in those little tiny oatmeal packets. And we knew that chickpeas were an ingredient that has way more protein, way more fiber than oats.

4:14So literally we just were like, let's just replace the oatmeal with the chickpea so it's more filling with that protein and fiber. And that's how we started. Well, that makes a lot of sense. Were you eating those, like the Quaker Oats little packets, the flavored ones like the maple sugar one? Yes, exactly. I didn't want to name drop. It's okay. I can. But yes, we were getting Quaker oatmeal. They are tasty. But also, yeah, there's a lot of sugar in those things. But they're more fun than eating just the unflavored ones. So what are you going to do? You're going to make a whole new category of products.

4:46So I like what you guys did. And OK, so what I want to talk about a little bit today is the Pitch Slam experience. So first of all, can you tell me a little bit about what made you all decide to go to Expo West? What made you decide to enter the Pitch Slam? Give me the whole backstory. Yeah. So actually, we weren't going to go to Expo originally just because it's very expensive and we didn't want to invest in a whole booth. But then we realized that there are so many other opportunities, this pitch slam, for example, that you can apply to. So we ended up just applying to the Albertsons Innovation Launchpad, the Kroger competition, this pitch slam, and said, why don't we just make this the best Expo ever without a booth?

5:32And that's what we did. So me and Izzy, my co-founder, we just like applied to everything we could and we ended up getting selected for the Albertsons thing, the Kroger thing. And then, of course, the most exciting one is the startup CPG Pitch Slam. And we just said, like, even though we don't have a booth, let's just try to make it even better than if we had a booth at all. Okay, so that strategy, I think, worked out really well. And I love it for all early stage brands. I think a booth is a huge opportunity, but also just attending the show and taking advantage of all of the opportunities around and inside the show is a great way to go.

6:09And I'm actually just really proud that we're able to add on more of those opportunities for brands, whether they have a booth or not, to make the most of their time at the show, because it is a big investment. Like you said, but also the opportunity is very real. So it sounds like your product was resonating with a lot of these Pitch Slam hosts anyways, including ours. So, okay. So just for a little backstory for people, we've never really done our own big Pitch Slam. And there are always some that happen as part of the big shows, and it's very exciting. We always do a lot at the shows, but we just decided this year that working with our friends from Advantage FDM Sales, why not do a big pitch slam at the show it'll be so exciting and so we just wound up and ended up launching it honestly kind of late but we were just totally overwhelmed by the response on all fronts firstly from the judges oh boy we got such a stacked lineup of judges we immediately locked in the sprouts forging team so we had brody and mason in fact i think we invited brody first and brody He was like, we're bringing two people, just so you know.

7:14Like, all right. All right. We like it when some of the most impactful buyers around are edging in additional people onto the judging panel. We locked in John Lawson from Whole Foods, the man, the myth, the legend. We had Sarah Ouellette from Hannaford. And that was really cool because I don't think I've ever really gotten the chance to chat much with anybody from Hannaford. And Sarah's amazing. It was so great to have her on the panel. That came via John Trainor III, who is a giant food buyer. But unfortunately, his flight came late. And so he wasn't able to join for the judging panel, but that was a huge contribution from him also introducing us to Sarah for her participation on the panel.

7:49And then we had Jen from the UNFI Up Next team. It was so great to have her there. So many brands really eager to get in front of them. And then the Advantage FDM team was on the judging panel as well. So this was stacked, but I just loved that when we were announcing the pitch slam, some of these buyers were emailing us like, hello, I would like to be on that panel for the pitch slam. That's what we want to hear is people just trying to edge their way to be first to get in front of the amazing brands from our community. So thank you again to the Advantage FDM sales team for powering this and letting us put this on.

8:20It was just such a huge treat to get to do it on the grounds of the show inside the main convention hall in a big, beautiful room. So that was really special. So, OK, you applied. We got lots of applications, honestly, so many. It was very hard for the team to go through and make the final selections. But then you find out, OK, I'm selected for this. And apparently you're finding out you're getting selected for everything. But this was only six brands that got selected. So that is really a very exclusive group to be in. So once you got selected and you saw who the judges were, what was your reaction?

8:55I was so excited because only six brands were selected. We were like so shocked that we actually got picked. It was crazy. So that was like the first talk. We were like, wait, what? How is this? And I know you guys said in the email saying we got in to be a finalist. It said like only six were selected out of like a few hundred. So we were like, is this a mistake? How the heck did we get even picked? And then when we saw the judges, it was like, oh, my God, this is like legit. This is like huge and could be like a huge opportunity for us to be one of six for all those judges and all these accounts that we're trying to get into.

9:28And like both to see their feedback and see like, well, they let us in the store at some point. Yeah, it's pretty amazing, right? Because you know, okay, I'm picked for this, which means I'm going to get to pitch to all of these retailers and distributors. That in and of itself is a huge opportunity because they're going to try your product. They're going to watch you go through your hero slides for a few minutes, and you're going to get to interact with them and chat with them. And as an early stage brand, honestly, if we're talking Sprouts, Whole Foods, those are dream accounts for almost everybody.

9:56And you might not get the chance to really chat with them for years into your journey. So what a great fast forward way to do it. And so not only did you get selected, but obviously you ended up winning. So you were definitely doing something very right. What do you think it is that the team that selected the brands saw in your product? And just to be transparent with everybody, it's not our team that does that. Our role really is to collect all of the brands and create a lot of excitement and recruit the judging panel and all this fun stuff. But we don't actually do the selection of the brands.

10:27So Kiara, what do you think it was that they saw in your application? I think so many brands have such great products and stories, but I feel like for us, I think the first thing is just product differentiation, probably. We're like a really differentiated product in the hot cereal category that really is like ready for disruption. It's kind of a niche category, hot cereal, and like there hasn't been that much change in it recently. So I think that whole trend in and of itself and like that we actually have something so different than all the other options there is like number one. But I feel like that's table stakes almost.

11:02And maybe the other thing people notice, I have no idea, is that we have like a really genuine like story about why we started potentially. We've really bootstrapped this and like have so much grit and hustle that has led us to this moment. So hopefully that came through in the applications where I'm just telling the judges or whoever the team was that. We started this by mushing up chickpeas in our dorm. So let us pitch. I have no idea. I actually didn't hear the specific feedback on why you were selected initially. But that is why one of the big reasons I heard why you guys ended up winning is that really did come across to people, to the judges, and they loved it.

11:39And they really were excited to support you guys. I think also it doesn't hurt that you're innovating in a way that also is not going to be so unfamiliar to people because the process for making this is the same as people are used to with oatmeal. It's just a better version of that. So you don't need to really educate people on like a whole new way to make a product. There won't be tons of questions about it. It just is on trend with high protein content, obviously. And so it makes a lot of sense to me. So fast forward to actual pitch day. You show up at the beginning. Basically, the way it works is there is a sampling table.

12:13So all of the judges get a chance to try all of the product. The room is filled with people. So we had just every chair was taken by people from the startup CPG community there to cheer you guys on. So the judges go and they really have time to immerse themselves in each of the products. And then they go and take their seats up at the front of the room. And there are eight or nine chairs up there. And then you will be facing them and the whole room. and you've got your slides behind you. So can you tell me a little bit about what was that like? How did you decide what you were going to present?

12:46And did you rehearse a bunch or were you pretty ready to rock? Or, I mean, it just was the same as all the slides you were pitching to the other pitch programs you were accepted in? We did make a new slide deck for this presentation because it was so short. We only have five minutes to pitch, which was like the shortest pitch we've ever done. And it just was like, how can we pack everything we want to say in this five minutes? So we filled every single slide with like exactly what we thought that the retailers would be thinking about, like why this product, why the category? We added like, what are you going to do with the money?

13:19So we like really jam packed these five slides for this five minutes. And we did rehearse it. We rehearsed it a bunch because we wanted to be prepared, but we had no idea that the room was going to be so full. that was like such a shock to us we thought it was only going to be like the eight judges in the email and we thought we were going to like be kind of relaxed but then the room was like 200 people it looked like in there and we were like shaking so that was a shock it was good energy in there though right everybody very supportive yeah people were so supportive and it was amazing but it was just unexpected so we were like oh my god it feels a lot higher stakes yeah we like to open it up one because I think people can learn a lot from watching other people pitch.

14:02And two, obviously, a lot of people there do want to talk to the judges afterwards after they're done with the main business is a nice chance to just try to catch them. And this was on the Tuesday before the show floor started. So not too many competing things going on at that time. So everybody, I think, was really able to lock in, focus, and also get a really nice start to Expo, making a lot of new friends, seeing friends as we were kicking off the show. So when you did your pitch, did it kind of go as you expected or did you get any interesting questions from the judges that you weren't expecting?

14:34How did you feel like they received the pitch in the moment? In the moment, they were kind of hard to read. We did the pitch and then I was looking for like some head nodding or something during the pitch. I was looking at them, but I didn't really get many head nods or anything. So I really didn't know. I felt good about the pitch, but I didn't know how we did. And then the questions, we did get some that were a little bit, I don't know, out of the blue. For example, Sprouts asked us, are we going to get organic certified, non-GMO certified, which are two things that we don't have yet. And one, because we're very early stage, we've been like doing so much and we don't have very much money.

15:12So we haven't gotten those certifications yet. And of course, Sprouts cares about those things. So that was just like a random question that I didn't expect to be asked. And we answered honestly, like, no, we're not certified yet. We maybe will in the future, but our customers haven't really asked for it. So we'll see. And I was like, wait, maybe I should have just said, yes, we're going to do it. And I was like, are we going to lose? Because I didn't say yes, we'll do it. I don't know. I mean, I think honesty is always the best policy. Anyways, whatever you did seemed to work extremely well. Okay, I was very lucky to then be part of the deliberations.

15:47Not that I was contributing anything, but I did get to just be a fly on the wall while they were all discussing. Honestly, it was tight. People absolutely loved your product, but the competition was very strong. There were some really great brands that have obviously already been so selective to get down to those top six out of hundreds of applications. So, yeah, there was a lot of discussion, but I think the points that you mentioned are the ones that really brought it home for you guys. other brands did such a great job crafty ramen came in second which is a super cool product have you ever seen how it looks it's like ramen that comes in a big puck almost and it's delicious people love that one too but you guys were the very clear winner from all of the judges and it's fun to win but it's even more fun to win when you win something right and so a huge thank you to our friends at advantage fdm sales because they put up a massive prize that i feel like can really just changed the game for Chi Chi Foods.

16:42And so that prize is$150 ,000 worth of services from Advantage FDM sales. And this is a big deal because they do a lot. I think people really know them for their brokerage services. You have Advantage, you also have FDM sales, but then in their organization, they have so many different capabilities from operations to marketing, so many different things that you could use all that massive amount of money and credits for. So can you tell me a little bit about like, what are you thinking about doing with all of that and the huge advantage that you're going to get from Advantage FDM sales? Yeah, the prize is crazy.

17:23We were like, I mean, the reason we were so nervous is because we wanted that price so bad, like we needed that prize. And I think that also came across. It's almost like a level of desperation we had and hopefully they got some of that but I think what we're most excited about with the prize package is that Advantage can do in-store demos which is like just one component of the many things that could be helpful for us but demos we're going to try to do as many as possible with Advantage we have some new retailer launches coming up this summer and into the fall and our product is new people don't know what chickpea oatmeal is so demos are like our best marketing strategy.

18:02And I mean, we're going to try to use as much for the demos as possible. But at the same time, everything else is also super helpful. Our team is literally only me and my co-founder Izzy full time. We have like such a small team. So as we grow, we like will need additional support. And this is kind of could be a stepping stone to like get us that support as we grow our actual team too. What a smart choice. That's such a, I don't know if I That would have even occurred to me. What a good thing to ask for with the credits. And it's going to make a huge difference also to some of the retailers you're talking about if you're approaching them with, by the way, we have a credit to do all these demos.

18:41Retailers love it when you're going to really support the business with in-store demos. We calculated it. If we got$150 ,000 in services and each demo is like$300, that's like 5 ,000 service demos. Is that true? I think it's 500. I don't know. quick math is tough. That's an incredible numbers. That's incredible. Overall, how do you feel like this will fit into your brand's journey, your growth, what you want to do with the business? Like, where do you want to be by this time next year when we're back at Expo and you're telling everybody all the great things that you did with this winnings and everything?

19:20Like, where do you feel like you could get to as a business, given also what you mentioned that, like, you guys do have capital constraints? Where do you feel like it's going? Yeah. So this prize will really help us like prove our velocity in these upcoming launches that we have. Like we're doing some regional launches and some great retailers later this year. And our goal is just to launch with those stores, support them with all the marketing we can. And this$150 ,000, like we'll go straight into doing that. so that ultimately in a year from now, we can really have the strong velocities in these stores to show other retailers and kind of go from there.

19:57Have you done a lot of demos, by the way, already? We do demos, just we don't have a demo team. It's just me and my co-founder doing them right now. My expectation is that you guys would do pretty well with demos because it's the kind of product where people might look at it and be like, hmm, is that going to be good? But if they get the chance to actually try it, they'll be like, oh, yes, that is good. Okay, that's an easy swap out. I eat this now. I feel like, you know, one day when you get to the point of doing those Costco roadshows or whatever, that's what you'll like really clean up at the house.

20:25But are you seeing that when you do the demos or what kind of feedback are you getting from consumers? Yeah, the demos are amazing. Like we'll just go in and like clear a few cases of each flavor when we do a demo. It does help that we're founders doing the demo, but like it tastes good and people exactly like what you mentioned. You look at it, you say, oh, like a healthy chickpea oatmeal. Is that going to taste good? We try to make it look good on the packaging, but tasting really is believing for Chi Chi and they do work. I like that point about being founders during the demos also. Actually, Stephanie from Ringa wears one of the shirts that we give out at our founder dinners that just says founder, founder, founder, founder, founder on it, which I like giving to people because it's what we love to do is support founders and their businesses and dreams.

21:12and it's cool for someone to give you a shirt like that because I'm not sure it's the kind of thing you could make for yourself. But if somebody gives it to you, you're like, yeah, I'm a founder and I'm proud of it and I'm wearing this thing. And she says when she wears it at demos, it's exciting to people. Oh, are you the founder? I feel like a lot of times people get that energy from you when you're just demoing. They sort of know it without knowing it because of the authenticity, passion, and just gravitas that you have as a founder, somebody who cares that much about the brand, people kind of know it without knowing it versus hearing from a brand ambassador.

21:46But it's kind of a cool thing to have there. So I think that's a really cool use case for these founder shirts that you can get at our founder dinners to just get some extra juice while you are sampling. Because it's a cool thing. It's like knowing someone in a band like, oh, I know the founder of that product. It helps you attach even more to a product that you might try during a demo. So Kira, I'm so excited for both of you. This is exactly what we want to be doing as an organization is finding really cool ways to support people who are starting up and doing the hard work of innovating and bringing better for you options out there.

22:23Recognizing how hard it is. There's no one out there handing out free money except when you win a pitch slam. So I'm really excited that you were applying for this and all the other opportunities, which is what you just have to be doing as a brand is hustling out there, applying for stuff, taking every little opportunity that you can get and figuring out how to turn it into something big. And I'm really excited to see what you guys are able to do with the prize package and where it will land you next year. But what's clear is that everybody really supports you all and loves the product. And so this should give you a really nice head start.

22:58any other tips you would give to brands who are in your kind of a situation, just starting out, thinking about shows like that, thinking about opportunities like that, getting their products off the ground? No, I think what you just said is exactly what you have to do is just get out there and go to every single event that you can and give out your product to as many people as possible. It's a long game, really, because the people you meet now, maybe you'll work together three years later, but you have to start building the relationship three years ago. All right. Well, congratulations again. I'm excited to circle back with you all in the future and see where this incredible win takes you.

23:34So thanks again. And we will see you at one of the upcoming events soon. Thank you. Well, my friends, we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG podcast, the top globally ranked podcast in CPG. As you may know, we're not just a podcast. We're a community of brands and experts, and you should join. You can sign up at StartupCPG.com. You'll then get an invite to our online Slack community. You're going to hear about amazing events near you, all of our special opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands, and more. It's a free community, so what are you waiting for?

24:10I will see you there or on our next episode. Bye-bye!