Founder Feature: Arif Khan and Sabeen Hasan of Chikka Chikka

0:09We're insane, delusional and insane, and I think a lot of people in this industry share that, or some kind of delusion. I think from the restaurant, it was a successful restaurant. We were profitable. It was well-loved in the community, and we sold it and took some of our earnings from that to start this business. But I think it made us think, you know, everyone's like, oh, the restaurant industry is so hard. It's so difficult. But we succeeded in it, so I think it gave us this weird delusion that we could do other things that are actually harder. Hey, everybody. This is Caitlin Bricker, editor at Startup CPG.

0:44We are back with another founder feature. Today we're talking with Arif Khan and Sabine Hassan, founders of Chicka Chicka. They've got a modern take on traditional Indian fennel seed digestives. Maybe not so strangely pairing Arif's decade of disaster relief and Sabine's 15 years as an architect, the two paired up and ran a successful restaurant before selling it to chase their next venture, Chicka Chicka. Embracing what they call being delusional and preferring to fail in new ways, they turn their post-meal ritual into a maple roasted product in the most satisfying tin you will ever shake. From hand labeling their first batch to landing in over 100 stores, they're proving the best products come from sharing what you love.

1:27I cannot stop fidgeting with this package, and I know you will not be able to, too. Enjoy!

1:36Hey everybody, welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin, and today I'm here with Arif Khan and Sabine Hassan, founders of Chicka Chicka. Welcome to the show. Hi, Caitlin. Thanks for having us. It's so great to have you here, especially as Shelfies finalists. And I'm a big fan of your products, so I'm excited to get into this with you. Well, thank you for having us. And it's, I mean, we are just totally grateful of Startup CPG and everything you guys do. Well, we wouldn't be able to do what we do if it wasn't for founders like you. So it's reciprocal. Awesome. Well, this is fun then.

2:12Great. It's fun for me too. I would love to start this off by having you introduce everyone to Chicka Chicka. Can you tell us what Chicka Chicka is? Sure, I can take that one. So Chicka Chicka is a modern twist on a traditional Indian digestive. It's made primarily of fennel seeds. We're roasting it in maple syrup. And it's a simple ritual of every Indian household. You chew on these seeds after a meal, freshens your breath, cleanses your palate. It's good for digestion. And we wanted to share it with an American audience. So, chicka chicka. I also have a little container here and I just got a just because.

2:54Right. People ask us about the name, you know, and they're like, oh, does that mean something? You know, thinking it's like some Hindi word or Sanskrit word. And I don't know, we just take joy in just shaking the tin. It's like, it's an onomatopoeia. It comes from the sound of shaking the tin. We made it up. You read my mind. That was going to be my question for you. I thought that's what it meant, but I just had to ask. I usually ask if it's not an obvious brand name. So thank you. It is a lot of fun having this container in my hand and just being able to shake it. I'm like, maybe I should put this far away from you because I'm going to keep picking it up.

3:28I'm going to keep shaking it if it's too close. but tell me about the ingredients in Chicka Chicka and why you decided to maple roast as opposed to maybe sugar coating. Sure so we really wanted to offer a healthier cleaner take on something that typically if you've come across it in like an Indian restaurant they're very colorful they're candy coated I mean truth be told it's mostly sugar and just a little bit of fennel seed and so we really wanted to highlight that the fennel as the main ingredient and it sort of came about through experimentation. You know, we're based in the Hudson Valley. Maple syrup is a very traditional local sweetener that's here.

4:10It's all around us. And actually, I think a friend of ours had suggested as we were developing the product in early stages, like, hey, have you ever thought about using maple syrup instead of refined sugar? And so we gave it a go. And it turned out to be like this magical flavor pairing. It really, I think the two things complement each other. And And so we ran with it. In addition to the maple syrup, also to add some of that color, you know, keep it fun. We decided to explore different superfoods. So the red in the cinnamon flavor comes from beet powder. The blue in the mint variety comes from spirulina.

4:44So really just trying to keep it clean and fun at the same time. Yeah. And I think the product, what it became is like a reflection of us, right? We're the children of immigrants from India. So we have this traditional Indian kind of idea of a product, but then we mix it with something that's very Native American, maple syrup. So it's like we were born and raised here. So it was just like this perfect, magical combination of East and West, which I think is kind of what we are. I love that so much. And I do want to say you did touch on it. I have grabbed a spoonful of fennel seeds coming out of an Indian restaurant before, but I've never seen it in a package like this.

5:24And yes, Sabine, like you were saying, it usually is sugar coated. From my experience, it's like pastel colors. It catches your eye coming out. But with your packaging, which I'm trying not to grab right now, it's just unlike anything I've seen before. And those colors, yes, it's bursting with color. It's bursting with flavor, the spirulina and the beet. It's a great experience. And it is so unique. So how are you approaching consumer education around fennel seeds and around your product itself? What is the goal when somebody is grabbing Chicka Chicka off the shelves? You've mentioned the packaging.

6:01For us, it was very important to have something that was portable, something that was attractive that people would want to carry around to make it easier. It is something that's used after a meal. So you can put it in your purse, in your pocket and, you know, put in your car. So we wanted to have something very convenient and very fun. And we didn't want to use plastic or some other kind of throwaway material. We wanted it to be reusable. Ideally, you reuse it by, you know, refilling seeds. And because we have a larger package that you can refill the tin. But if you decide you don't want to use seeds, we wanted people to use it for other stuff.

6:35You know, it's like, truth be told, I thought it would be nice to have something to put joints in, you know. Also reading my mind there. Or anything else, buttons and needles or what? Drill bits or whatever, you know, it's like anything. But it was just like delighted us that I think we were making a product that's inside and the packaging is part of the product. Right. So it was like, yeah. And we can talk about our design process. And Sabine led that. And I think it from everyone we talked to, they're like, you killed it. Yeah, I mean, I guess getting back to the education component, you know, I think a big part of that ties into our strategy of sticking with small stores, you know, retailers that understand the product and can then share some of that educating aspect with their customers who they know best.

7:26I think we've been focusing on regionally in the Northeast, but also are in a couple of locations across the U.S. But we found that really with these small scale independent stores, being able to share some of the use cases and the health benefits and, you know, just various ways that a consumer can benefit from the product. really sharing that with the retailer so that then they themselves and their staff can and can pass that information along seems to be resonating. Right. It's interesting. We, you know, we're in some large stores, large natural food stores, and then some small, like mostly, you know, small independent stores.

8:06And where we do best is the small independent stores. And we've asked some of our retailers, like, what's your secret? Why are you moving so much product? And it's obvious that the owner loves the product, the staff love the product, and they talk to all their customers about it. So they're doing our consumer education, whereas if we went towards larger stores, sometimes we get lost on the shelves. And there's not that dedicated education about the power of fennel seeds or the joy of this product. I think that that makes a lot of sense, and I have found that to be true. also having previously worked for a small independent retailer, Cambridge Naturals, who you are partnered with, which is pretty cool.

8:43It is a lot easier, I find, to walk into a store and be educated on products because the team tends to be more interested in the products, in my opinion, and also gets more excited about the products coming in because you get that hands-on experience of unloading the boxes together, putting the products on the shelves together, and then also being in trainings with founders like yourself. So it's cool to hear that perspective from you too. So I want to know, when you are going into the store, like Cambridge Naturals, for example, I don't know if you've seen it in person yet, have you? There is an epic bulk herbs ball in that store.

9:23There's got to be, I don't know how many, but I'm just going to take a guess and say that there's 250 herbs lining a wall. What would make your product different than somebody just grabbing, say, a handful of regular fennel seeds and chewing on them as opposed to grabbing chika chika and chewing on them? Sure. So I guess one thing that really sets us apart is that maple syrup. There's really no one in the world that's doing it, to our knowledge. So that's a very one-off experience. Roasting it in the way that we do at the temperature that we do also gives it a particular crunch, which I think is more satisfying to chew on.

10:02And again, then those different flavor offerings that we have, whether it's peppermint or the cinnamon or the cardamom, they all have their own additional health benefits, whether it's anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, you know, various components that really set it apart. And also we should mention we have split coriander seeds in there for extra crunch too. But yeah, I mean, if people want to make their own, they should. We encourage that. I mean, we make our own blends using Chicka Chicken that we don't sell. That's how this all came about. Sabine, she couldn't find something in specialty Indian stores that she liked.

10:41So she would mix fennel seeds, coriander. Sometimes you'd put coconut and make her different blends. And we shared that with some friends. And they were like, this is amazing. where do we buy it like you know classic thing of like well you can't really buy something like this that's all we needed for inspiration to get this thing started i love that so much i've done like cumin coriander and fennel seed right before i think it's like commonly known as classic yeah and it's just not nearly as fun it tastes good but it's not as fun it doesn't put a smile on my face chicka chicka does that's a great thing to hear that's awesome i mean it's true i i have to grab it again it like everything about this makes me want to gravitate towards the package like lifting lid up everything it's like even if the seeds are gone it's like a nice little fidget toy that's can't do that with a mason jar we want it it's funny because like it's basically like a supplement but we're not branded like a supplement like if you go to the supplements aisle everything's very serious and very like plain and so we're like i think a lot of the stores and the merchandisers the category managers they don't know what to do with us because we're like this fun colorful thing but it's a health supplement after dinner digestive but it's a yeah snack and so that would be my next question for you how do you help differentiate for people who might just think chicka chicka is just a snack i mean it could be right but it's not just a snack so how do you get people to really understand that well i would say that you know being a year in we're still kind of in a testing phase we feel like you know we're getting feedback and so between the various types of stores that we're in we've been put at point of sale we've been put in like the digestive aid section next to healthy snacks and so for us right now, really, we're trying to glean information that we're getting back from our retailers to see where things are tracking and how folks are responding to it.

12:47Yeah, obviously, we do best when we're at point of sale, but we're also, it depends on the store. Sometimes we do well next to the ginger chews or the, you know, better for you candies. Sometimes we do well in the digestive section. But one thing that we're finding is that I think gut health has just become such a huge mainstream health issue. And we're often surprised at how many people are aware that fennel has this really powerful digestive aid benefit. Not unlike yourself, we have people sharing that they're drinking CCF teas and that they've been consuming fennel as a tea and then just didn't realize that you can simply chew on the seed.

13:26So that's been kind of an interesting discovery. another thing i like about our product is like the primitiveness of it which i think is often overlooked right it's like in this day and age where you have the gummification of stuff or powderized you know like supplements where people are it's like we're in this future world where people are drinking green drinks and chewing on their nutritional gummies which is fine but there's something very primitive about chewing seeds that i like and i think it's part of the health benefits that starts triggering your saliva production and introducing your body to what you're taking in so it is so funny and not to sound like I'm going off track with this but I feel like it's very much aligned it's so funny that you're saying this that it's so primitive to chew the seeds I was just at a farm with my daughter a few weeks ago and the person who was handling the cow said the cow grew those pumpkins that are over there and everyone's kind of looking at each other and I was like I know exactly what he's talking about and he's like yep the cow chews up the pumpkin seeds and then it poops it out and makes more pumpkins and it had its own pumpkin patch out on the field it was just so cool i haven't seen any fennel plants sprouting in my home anywhere yet but that's the next phase of our project i'll just have a big composting pile out in my backyard with chicka chicka there you go Chicka chicka plants.

14:54We're doing a full circular economy here. That would be the dream. It really is. Oh, it's too good. I mean, it really is the dream, right? I get so overwhelmed by the idea of like gardening and planting food myself. It does take me back to that primitive idea, right? Because when you're online right now, everyone's trying to sell you a course. Everyone's trying to sell you a book. Everyone's trying to sell you lights and seedlings and all these things. And I'm like, but they didn't have that back then. There's got to be an easier way. So if I could just poop out my fennel seeds or my sesame seeds or whatever it may be and cover it with soil, that would make my life a lot easier.

15:37Did not know we were going to get here, but here we are. Simplified. Yeah, I know. I don't know how to transition from that. Design. Hmm. Okay. So this could be a great segue for you to tell me about your backgrounds, because as a former buyer, something that was very, very important to me was knowing everyone's why and your story behind your product and your brand and who you are. Sure, your package is amazing. The product tastes great. It's effective. But who are you? Where did you come from? And why are you here building Chicka Chicka? So Sabine, knowing a little bit about your background already, tell me why you're here and how primitive design might be working its way into Chicka Chicka.

16:26Sure. So I guess without going too far back, I am... Feel free to. Sure. Okay. I'm an architect. I have been practicing for the last 15 years. Arif and I met about 10 years ago. And at that time, we kind of took a little bit of a collective left turn from our professional paths. Arif's background was also professional, let him get into that in a moment. But we moved to the Hudson Valley in 2016. We bought an abandoned biker bar with an apartment upstairs and turned it into a community gathering place and restaurant. So, you know, through that experience, I think I was leading a parallel life of, you know, as a designer and then also as a restaurant owner, you know, kind of up to our eyeballs in the food industry.

17:21And fast forward six years, we sold that business in 2023, really loved the community and food element of the restaurant, but wanted to move away from the day to day of being in the service industry. And so after taking a few months off, we leaned into, you know, different ideas around food and sharing that experience with people. And we landed on this idea of packaging fennel seeds into these little tins. Yeah, and I can give another answer. It's a little bit shorter is that we're insane, delusional and insane. And I think a lot of people in this industry share that or some kind of delusion. I guess like I think from the restaurant, it was a successful restaurant.

18:06We were profitable. It was well loved in the community. And we sold it and took some of our earnings from that to start this business. But I think it made us think, you know, everyone's like, oh, the restaurant industry is so hard. It's so difficult. But we succeeded in it. So I think it gave us this weird delusion that we could do other things that are actually harder. Someone else said like, oh, you know, the packaged food industry is harder than the restaurant business. and I was like no it can't be because you don't have to deal with like crazy kitchen staff or having to bail out our chef from jail so is that a true story it's a true story yeah but yeah so far we haven't had to bail anyone out of jail and I don't have to wash dishes because the dishwasher needed to play Dungeons and Dragons that night on a Friday night so I think we're the CPG industry might be more difficult but it's less stressful I love that But you were like, oh, we succeeded in running a restaurant.

19:03Let's close that and let's see if we can fail growing a C &G. Someone told me this recently, and I think it's just a little nice piece of wisdom. He's like, I try to do things where I can fail in new ways. And I know it's popular in Silicon Valley to be like, fail fast. But the way he said it, he's just like, new ways to fail. And I don't want to fail repeatedly in the same ways. But I try to set myself up in places where I can experience new failures. And I think maybe I share that or we share that. Well, neither of us, you know, really came from a restaurant background. RF had worked as a server in his 20s.

19:38I designed a sushi restaurant 15 years ago. You know, so we took something on that required a lot of learning quickly. And so that, I think, is familiar now in this journey. Not neither of us having, you know, worked in CPG before. And I think it's clear that it's just going to be continued new challenges and learning along the way. But, you know, we're having fun. Yeah. And I think we decided it's better to try and fail than to not try and regret not doing it, you know. So 100 percent. We've chosen to live life in this way and for better or worse. Right. And I think that's what a lot of CPG founders have, that they had an idea.

20:19They felt very strongly about it. maybe their friends or other smart people tried to talk them out of it. And they ignored that advice. And they said, this is going to work. And I think if for most of us were delusional, maybe if you're like Khloe Kardashian, or even, you know, some celebrities starting a food brand, you're fine, right? You'll do fine. But for the most of us who are just starting with an idea from zero to something, it's high risk, high failure. And there's something about doing it regardless like knowing sort of the odds are against you but doing it anyway so yeah it's an amazing vehicle for us for like introducing us to new people there's such amazing collaboration and cooperation in this industry it's great so yeah you'd ask me about my background yes before we get into your background i do have a question if you don't mind two questions actually.

21:13One, Sabine, with your architectural background, I have to wonder, did you keep the biker bar aesthetic or did you change it? Oh, that's such a good question. You know, we live in a pretty rural part of Ulster County. This biker bar was a beloved institution. I mean, it had its heyday. There were some pretty rough nights and we just met neighbors the other day that lived down the street for decades and never went one step foot inside because they were kind of just scared of going in there. So for me as an architect to approach it, it was really important to not completely turn it on its head. For me, it was very much important to honor its history and for people to feel like it was still a familiar place that they were walking into, especially because, you know, moving in and opening this restaurant in like the falls of 2016, you know, we really wanted to make clear to the community that everyone was welcome.

22:13And so really, we started with kind of a, let's just do a more delicate facelift. And then over time, over the course of the next two, three years, like in getting like feedback and hearing from the community and just seeing how the space was being used, slowly kind of made upgrades. And I mean, often we just, Even now, you know, we run into folks that were regulars and they often just reference the warmth of the space. And, you know, it's something that I am super proud of. You know, is it something that I would have designed in like a from scratch, like, you know, no context situation? Probably not.

22:53But I think that it was a place that like still, I think, stands out in a lot of hearts of people in the community. I think we did the thing that you're not supposed to do is we tried to appeal to a wide variety of people. Like usually in business, you're supposed to have your target, right, your target market and you cater to them. But we did the thing with our menu, with your design. And in reality, like we had people who were famous artists there, sort of moderate celebrities and then folks, you know, local folks that have a very modest life who grew up and live 70 miles from New York City, but have never been to New York City.

23:31So we had a wide variety of people and that kind of made it great. well i feel like a lot of what you both are saying could probably be translated into your product too and bringing it to life like especially what you were saying sabine about preserving the history but making it recognizable to people or making it so that it's not unrecognizable but also approachable to new customers i think could totally translate over to what you're doing with Chicka Chicka. So that's really nice. Now, Arif, I need to know more about your background too, because I'm still trying to put together the pieces of Sabine, Arif, Chicka Chicka.

24:15So I need to hear the other part of the story and then we get the birth of Chicka Chicka. Yeah. So I'd done a lot of different things. I was an urban planner. I did bicycle and pedestrian planning for a bunch of years. And then I worked overseas as a disaster relief manager. So did that for 10 years, worked in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. And often what that meant was getting sent to somewhere, figuring out what's needed, coordinating with other people on the ground or organizations or United Nations agencies or the local government, local people, figuring out what's needed, getting money, implementing the projects.

24:52So did that for NGOs, non-governmental organizations, and then the United Nations for two years. Yeah, so a lot of that. It's a funny transition to go from that and opening up a bar restaurant. I think maybe go back to the part where I'm insane. We can always keep coming back to that bar. And it makes no sense. But there is a through line, I think, through all of it, right? I like figuring things out, solving problems. And I like partnerships. I like figuring out how to work with others. And the, I don't know if it's irony, But working in this startup CPG, like in the CPG business, I find there's like greater cooperation in this business than I experienced.

25:32I've worked for government. I've worked for nonprofits. And I've worked at the United Nations. And not to slag any of those. Yeah, there's just amazing cooperation and support. Just people who know more are willing to spend their time helping us out. Yeah, it's cool. It's a really great community. I mean, as you, I'm sure. Yeah. And it's like weird. Sometimes they'll be like, what am I doing? Slinging tins of seeds. Like, should I be doing something else? I don't know. It's not about that. It's like, you know, the delight you mentioned or the sort of joy. I think there's something very powerful about connecting with others through like commerce.

26:08You know, it's like we've got this product. You need this product or with the stores like you've got a cute little store that you love, you know, and it's like and you care about all the things in it and you like your customers. And so there's this like nice exchange, I think, you know, small scale, like small is beautiful. It's it's human scaled. It's real. It's culture. You know, it's everything. Yeah, for sure. And I feel like everything in the world, especially in today's day and age, things can get very, very overwhelming and things feel very black and white or just like very dark sometimes.

26:45and I'll be the first one to say too sometimes I get overwhelmed with CPG and the amount of waste and I'd be a total liar if I didn't say that but when you come across products that are really just new and different and delightful like you're saying it makes life that much more special like these are the things that are brought into our daily lives that just make it cool to wake up and be like oh I have this fun new thing that's making my life just a little bit better today so thank you for introducing the world to chicka chicka because it definitely i keep looking at it it's staring me in the face i want to pick it up and shake it but i'm not going to but yeah i think hearing both of your backgrounds and now feeling like the love that you poured into chicka chicka is definitely coming out and it shows and i love that like your architectural and design background Sabine clearly is coming across I just have to show it again I'll show it a little closer to the screen for anybody who's watching and the little flip top just everything I got to talk to you about the package but Arif your background too working with so many various groups and countries and bringing everything together and just like I don't know I feel like especially working in disaster relief and going to places where maybe people are not smiling maybe people are just like in a dark place being able to take that and be like okay how can i just make life a little bit more enjoyable and delightful really quick for somebody this is a great way to do it so yeah probably just went on a little bit of a tangent but here we are it's okay that's how we What is tangent?

28:29What is not a tangent? Well, I want to just touch on your packaging because I can't stop talking about it. It's the first thing that I mention to people when I am talking about Chicka Chicka because it's unlike anything you're going to see on shelves. Not only what's on the outside, but what's on the inside. But I'd love to talk really quickly about your packaging and how you landed on your packaging design and maybe any learnings that you found along the way while completing that design. Sure. Our journey to start was pretty quick. And a part of that is, you know, just, I think, a balance between how RF works and how I work and, you know, working together as partners that we essentially decided we wanted to go down this path.

29:14And in order to test it, we signed up for the Good Food Mercantile Show in New York City last June. And we basically had like four months to come up with a packaging. And so we knew we had this like rapid fire deadline. And we did probably something that is not recommended, which is we tried to come up with this packaging, not by hiring packaging consultant or a designer, but by using a bunch of different freelance designers to kind of rapid fire move through that process. And I think having a design background, being an architect, having managed designers before certainly helped in that process.

29:57And so we found a tin while traveling just for mints. And we just size wise kind of said, OK, we like the size and feel of this. How would we fit the information that we want? What's kind of the general design concept? And so we went online, we did a design contest, got a bunch of concepts and generally got the idea of like, you know, a thing on the front, like a beautiful pattern that wraps around the sides. And then we kind of zeroed in on, you know, knowing we wanted to nod to Indian traditional block print fabrics, really something that would make the package something that people would want to keep kind of inspired by the, you know, Altoid tin that everyone wants to like keep things in and not throw away.