Founder Feature: BJ Howard of Wild West Chocolate

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0:59We launched about a year and a half ago and, you know, purchased cacao for our launch and kind of had our big debut. And then last year, for people who are close to chocolate, probably know the cacao market went up by almost 400%. So, you know, this same bar to produce literally that I mean being that the cacao is 70 % or I guess of the dark chocolate 70 % of this bar you know and the cacao itself is such a huge percentage of those cost of goods and it went up by 400 % and so you know it's caused all sorts of reactionary things in the market. Hey everybody this is Caitlin Brooker editor at Startup CPG.

1:47We are back with another founder feature. Ever wonder what chocolate would taste like if it was sweetened only with fruit? Well, today we're talking with BJ Howard, founder of Wild West Chocolate. Chocolate with zero added sugar, zero stevia, and zero sugar alcohols. After formulating a proprietary blend of four dehydrated fruits as their sweetener, BJ launched into one of the most competitive CPG categories just as cacao prices spiked over 400%. From Montana River Conservation Roots to landing shelf space at Whole Foods and Sprouts, she's built a brand that's filling a gap no one else seems to be addressing in the confectionery space.

2:25And on that note, I need to go place a Wild West order. Enjoy.

2:33Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin, and today I'm here with BJ Howard, founder of Wild West Chocolate. BJ, welcome to the show. Thanks, Caitlin. Appreciate you having me. I am so excited to have you on. People already know this about me, I think, but I am such a freak for dates. And when I got samples of your products, I became a freak for Wild West. So for anybody who has not heard of Wild West, can you tell us what Wild West is? Absolutely. First of all, thanks for being a fan and thanks for having us. And I was laughing with you about this before, but I just want to clear the air for the audience that this is not a growth on my face.

3:13Was playing baseball with my youngest and got hit by a fastball in the face. So sorry it had to be this week, but that is Murphy's Law, right? Add some character. Yep, yep. But we're not selling postcards of me. We're selling amazing chocolates. So it doesn't really matter. So yes, Wild West, we are a no-added-sugar, sweetened-only-with-fruit product. And we use four different types of fruit to sweeten our product. So it's a nice balanced flavor that really enhances the particular type of cacao we use, which is the Satipo bean. We wanted fruits that were going to kind of bring out that nutty, citric flavor of the Satipo bean and not mask it.

3:52And we didn't want our bars to taste like a fruit bar, like a lot of date-sweetened chocolates, kind of just tastes like date. So we wanted it to be really on balance and taste like a delectable, rich, chocolatey, indulgent experience and not even know that it is alternatively sweetened. So that was really the whole goal. And then also in that just using pure ingredients, we didn't want a lot of alternatively sweetened chocolates. Well, as you know, Caitlin will use erythritol, they'll use sugar alcohols. And even if they use stevia or monk fruit, usually the second ingredient as a binder is the sugar alcoholic erythritol.

4:29So we're super proud of our ingredient panel. All very simple, easily pronounced, recognizable ingredients. And it tastes great. I would have to agree. And it is nice seeing a product that's no sugar added, but it really is no sugar added, meaning no sugar alcohols, no stevia, no monk fruit. It's just very nice knowing that you can trust what somebody is saying and selling to you. Yeah, we are not just I like to say we're not just talking the talk. We're walking the walk. And, you know, we really are first to market with this type of product. We our goal was really to revolutionize the category.

5:06And it's a super, super competitive category. So, you know, that doesn't happen overnight. It's all about being here with awesome people like you and connecting with audiences to really try to get the word out about how great our chocolate is, how amazing it tastes and how good it is for you and how, as we say here at Wild West, you can have your chocolate and eat it too. Well, you're in the perfect place to reach a wider audience, I will say. Yeah, well, that's the goal. So our product took us 18 months to formulate. I can't take credit for that. We have an absolutely incredible chocolatier. He looks like the Albert Einstein of chocolate.

5:48His name is Guy DeBoss, and he is just the coolest, sweetest man who's been in this industry for a long time. It took him 18 months to develop the product because we wanted it to be the right texture, the right smoothness. And we wanted people to pick it up and eat it and say, wow, this is the best chocolate I've ever tasted, and then be totally floored when they find out that there's no added sugar. And so it took him that long to do that. And it was actually the brainchild of my business partner, Doug Brent. He owns the sister companies that we work with. And he had this idea coming from our sister company, Made in Nature, which is a dried fruit company and snack company and the legacy in dried fruit, nuts, fruits and vegetables.

6:32And he thought, how can we use our fruit access and this partnership that we have with this new chocolate company to come up with a, you know, a fruit sweetened chocolate. And so that's where the genesis kind of started of this product. And, you know, I think that the really cool thing about Wild West Chocolate, the product itself is that, and the reason why we're able to say no added sugar is that we don't take the sugar out of the fruit, like a lot of date sweetened chocolates do or stevia or monk fruit. We don't extract it and then add it back in. We actually use the whole fruit. So we use the mulberry, the peach, the mango, and the date, and we dehydrate them down and pulverize that into a proprietary blend.

7:18I can't tell you about that. On the edge of my seat. That's our little secret. Anyhow, so we take that, we pulverize that into a special mix on balance with all of those flavors. So it's the fiber and all from the fruit. And then we conch that in with the cacao. So the base formula of our chocolate is just all fruit, which is kind of mind-blowing that it tastes the way that it does because you would never know that it is just all fruit. And then, of course, our inclusions that we put in there too. Yeah, I will say when I tasted it, I was blown away. I was excited about the ingredients in the first place, but then when I actually bit into it, I was like, wow, I really would never know that it was just fruit sweetened And I would prefer your bars over a traditional chocolate bar because it has the same feel as a chocolate bar.

8:09It has the same look as a traditional chocolate bar. But I think the flavor is much better. Oh, thanks, Caitlin. That's what we like to hear. That's what we're going for. Nailed it. Gotta let everybody know it. Yeah. I mean, the more you eat, the healthier you are. Okay. So that's my permission slip to go order more. Yeah. Wild West. It literally is guilt-free indulgence, really. It is. You know, my kids will open up a bar and I'm like, where'd it go? And my son will be like, well, I ate the whole thing. I'm like, well, you know what? That's okay. This is good for you. I love that. I am so curious to hear more about your background and how you got into chocolate in the first place.

8:50Can you tell us a bit about that? Well, it's not what you know, it's who you know, right? So I come from a long background in the organic food space with that sister company I mentioned, Maida Nature. I worked for Maida Nature for over 20 years. And my business partner in Wild West, Doug Brent, is the owner of that company and the CEO of that company. And then when we joined forces with a small chocolatier who happened to be owned at the time by Guy DeBoss, who was our chocolatier that I mentioned. And we, you know, had so many collaborations that we basically ended up merging the companies at that time.

9:30And then when Wild West was developed, really, as I said, the brainchild of Doug Brent and then the chocolate formula and expertise coming from Guy, you know, we came up with this incredible formula. and you know when we went to consumer testing because we thought we had something really amazing and revolutionary for the chocolate brand and we were like well let's make sure we're not in an echo chamber here and let's make sure that other people agree with us so we went to consumer testing and it came back very positive and so at the time you know Doug said well you seem to have a special interest in this product and I had some harebrained branding ideas at the time, which when I was pitching, you know, I think everybody looked at me like I had a bird on my head.

10:14But I guess I will say how I really got into it was, you know, through the Maiden Nature background, through my relationships with and long partnerships with Doug Brent and Guy DeBoss. And the fact that, you know, Doug really did believe in my harebrained idea. I sold him on it. So I really hope it works out because I got to eat crow if it doesn't. But he believed in me and he believed in the brand. And so really, he gave me a shot at it. And it's kind of just taken on a life of its own from there. I knew in my background coming from Montana, I was very fortunate to grow up in all these beautiful wild spaces, you know, by Glacier Park and Yellowstone and just the wide vast landscape of what is Montana, big sky country, and fishing a lot, fishing and rafting with my family growing up on the rivers, which my family still does today.

11:08We're very much river advocates and river adventurous. And my kids are absolutely obsessed with fishing. So, you know, rivers have really been kind of a big part of our lives. And I was reading an article during COVID actually about what was happening on the Flathead River up near Whitefish, Montana, where I grew up. And it's just this beautiful, pristine wild river that runs Borders Glacier Park. And, you know, residents were just devastated because there were just people in droves coming to, you know, squat on the rivers and camp. And, you know, COVID, it was a little lawless. And which kind of got me thinking about Wild West, too.

11:48It was like people were just like max exodus from the cities. And it was kind of like this big, like, push to nature and to wild spaces. And in a way, it was almost like going back to our roots, you know, and it kind of reminded me of like what it must have been like to settle the West and kind of, you know, be so connected with nature. But anyhow, the river was, you know, being polluted and fish habitat was being destroyed and defecation on the river and all these things. And the residents were, you know, really trying to band together to figure out how they could protect that river stretch. They wanted to get it permitted and indoctrinated into the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

12:25And so it kind of got my little pea brain thinking about, you know, the Wild West and the exploration of the West and our American heritage and what it must have been like then and people reconnecting with nature and wanting to, you know, be more in tune with our surroundings. and, you know, and what could I do to give back to, you know, this precious resource being Wild and Scenic Rivers? Like, what could I do to protect this little piece of home and all other, you know, waterways around North America? And so that was really how the mission of Wild West came about in the branding. It was, you know, about, okay, let's reconnect with our roots.

13:04Let's go back to when water was clean and when, therefore, food was clean, ingredients were clean, you know, pre-industrial era. And so it was like the name came naturally because I was like, well, it was the Wild West. And I feel like we are kind of exploring a whole new frontier in chocolate. And so I was like, we are the Wild West of chocolate, you know, and it just all sort of kind of came together in my brain. And then the next step was in terms of branding, like, how do I take what is in my brain and get it, you know, into individuals? And how do we build a brand around it. I had an amazing group of women that were partners that I started with.

13:44It was a small team out of LA called Creative Pack. Judo's Creative Pack. And so they really helped kind of put the blueprints and foundation of what is Wild West together with me today. They were the first people who could really translate clearly what I had in my head to visuals. And that was a really cool, fun, unique process. And I am super grateful to Doug for supporting me through that and getting it here because I think people started seeing it. It was like, oh, yeah, I get this, you know. So you'll see like in Wild West branding, we really kind of bring this unique exploration of like the unbridled spirit of the West through highlighting, you know, the American West heritage of what you would see, you know, 150, 200 years ago in terms of landscape and wildlife and people.

14:37And so, you know, for example, you'll see we have our new snakebite package, just, you know, an animal. This one's got a little cayenne in it, so it's called snakebite. Here's another animal. It's a new one. It's our wise one. We love apples here at Wild West.

14:55But the people and then, you know, landscape like snow capped. So it's really kind of like that. Oh, and this is a fun one. Most wanted. So it's like a really kind of fun try visual trifecta of those. That's kind of our three legged stool of our branding and our creation. And then I have to also give big credit to, well, really my whole team, but Cara Corallo has been incredible. She's my creative marketing designer and we partner very closely together on all things Wild West. and she she gets me. And yeah, so she's been absolutely amazing. And I'm I feel blessed to have her on the team. So yeah, I mean, between Guy and Doug and Kara and my salesperson, Jeff, and our queen of all trades, Julie Drancon, like we are a small but mighty team.

15:43It's amazing. And I do really love what you're saying about taking that idea that's in your brain and finding a team who can really see what you're thinking and deliver on it. Sometimes I just wish I was able to project what's in my brain onto a wall so other people could understand me better. But when you have a team around you, that is magical. And I do, I have to say your branding for me, it really stands out because when I see it, I haven't seen it on a shelf yet, but any retailers in Massachusetts listening to this, please get it on your shelves. I do feel like you're rewilding the chocolate space in a way because I don't see I love that I'm writing that down I'll give you credit but I love that rewilding yes we see a lot of flowers we see a lot of pinks we see a lot of purples we see a lot of cutesy things that yes are nature related but we don't see anything like wild bust on the shelves you have this bright red you have this beige which I don't think I see that anywhere, but it does all tie back into that Wild West branding that I think you're totally achieving and we're looking to achieve.

16:55Yeah. Thanks, Caitlin. I mean, really, the idea, that means a lot. It really does, because we were super hard to bring this brand to life. And, you know, you just hope people will love it as much as you do and get it. And so it's really rewarding to hear that. Thank you. We'll be right back. I've always wondered about QR codes. Who's scanning them? How impactful are they? But now there's actually a really cool new research report from our partners at Unicode. You know, it's wild. In this report, you can see 74 % of shoppers say they'll scan a QR code during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, but only 37 % of marketers think that those campaigns actually work.

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18:35couldn't do without my team but you know i think that the goal was really originally i wanted to to do something that looked almost antiquated that looked um pastoral that you would expect to find on a general store shelf in an old west town you know in 1880 and so that was kind of the idea like that's why it's kind of that like muted tones the sepia tones and the beige and you know that's really where I think the visually the brand is rooted kind of between those two colors on that block of like craft paper and and the beige and the sepia so very very natural looking but also you know it doesn't just look that way you know we are also all of our packaging is 100 recyclable like it would have been, you know, on the store shelf of the general store.

19:26So yeah, you know, it's fun to be at this point. We launched with six items or six bar flavors, three vegan oat milk. It was important for us to be plant-based and vegan. And then three dark. So the vegan oat milk is 50 % cacao. The dark is 70 % cacao. And then we just launched our two new flavors, two of which I just showed you. So now we have eight flavors. So four vegan oat milk, four of the dark. And we have all the other sort of like on our past, speaking of our packaging, you know, we have you probably already seen this, but you know, we're organic, we're vegan, we're gluten free, we're GMO free, we're fair trade, we're kosher.

20:09You know, we'd like to say we're all of the things on top of being no added sugar and sweet and only with fruit. And the coolest thing too is we just got our regenerative organic certification which is kind of a big deal um congratulations thank you it was and and again kudos to our co-packing team that helps us make all the small batch chocolate um by hand by the way like everything is small batch artisanal and we conch the chocolate ourselves and want to give a shout out to our team there because they do an absolutely incredible job like you know James Macy, Max thank you all it's just like every batch is you know love goes into it and yeah it's just something I think we can all be super proud of.

20:53Totally and I would love to hear more about being in the confectionery space have you run into any snags being in this space or has there ever been a time where you've thought maybe it's not going to work out my dream of having a fruit sweetened chocolate might not be it and maybe I have to pivot? Oh, you're good. You're good. That's a loaded question. I would love to say no, everything's rainbows and butterflies. That's great. But no, absolutely not. I mean, it's like typical scrappy startup, you know, like the amount of grit you have to have to make it in this industry, let alone in this space is unbelievable that every day I'm like, oh, to the higher beings, oh, please just let us live to find another day and help us make this work out because we put so much work into it, lots of investments and obviously, you know, not just money and time, but emotional investment as well.

21:49So, you know, for not only me, but my team and Doug and Guy and the whole team and at our co-packing facility, like I just really, I want more than anything for it to work out. And some of it is hard work and strategy and some of it is just pure luck, you know, and timing. And our timing has not been the best. Speaking of challenges, so we launched about a year and a half ago, and, you know, purchased cacao for our launch and kind of had our big debut. And then last year, for people who are close to chocolate, probably know the cacao market went up by almost 400 percent so you know this same bar to produce literally the i mean being that the cacao is 70 or i guess of the dark chocolate 70 of this bar you know and the cacao itself is such a huge percentage of those cost of goods and it went up by 400 and so you know it's caused all sorts of reactionary things in the market different strategic moves by big players in the market like Mars and the Hershey's of the world, which us little guys kind of, you know, are severely impacted by because they decided to go out and buy, vertically integrate and buy, you know, mass amounts of farms and kind of buy up a lot of the supply.

23:12And of course, that drives the global market up. The Ivory Coast was supplying, I think over 30 % of the world's cacao. And, you know, I think due to changes in farming practices, due to global warming, due to some crop issues over the last couple of years, it really spiked the cacao prices. And so people started looking to buy cacao elsewhere. So we source our cacao from Peru, from South America. But a lot of these players that we're purchasing from the Ivory Coast, you know, are now looking to buy cacao elsewhere. and it drove up a global price of cacao. So that has been a very, very, very tricky challenge to navigate for us.

23:55And, you know, a lot of these big players can just afford to, they have such big margins that they can afford to hold on price increases or simply, you know, or shrinkflation, what they call it, to shrink the size of their product or quickly pivot and, you know, launch different products that have more inclusions and less chocolate and all these different ways that, you know, manufacturers, vendors, brands come up with to try to save money. But at the end of the day, you know, we're a little guy and we can't, we just don't have that same buying power. We don't have the same ability to pivot like that.

24:33And so it's been a real challenge. You know, we launched it$5.99 on our bars and we just had to, we held off as long as we could, but we just had to increased to$6.99 on our bars for our 2.3-ounce bars, which I think is still very competitive for who we are and how premium we are. But it's been a real challenge. And it's like, the more business we get, it's great. But it also means we have to buy more cacao. And at what price are we going to have to buy that cacao? And will that work with our costing and all these things? So it has been super challenging. Yeah. And, you know, buyers' reactions to that.

25:08Like, there's some retailers that we would love to be in that I think we would do really well in. But I think buyers are a little gun shy right now and a little hesitant to make changes in the category because they don't know what's going to happen with cacao prices. And if we get on shelf, if we're just going to say, oh, yeah, sorry, we're going to be$10 a bar next week. You know, they don't want to give up that space. So there's some hesitancy and it's made it, I think, definitely more challenging for us to get on shelf in certain places. We'll be right back. Are you going to crush it on Amazon this year?

25:42It's such an important channel, but it's so hard to do alone. And most agencies are a total ripoff. We can't afford$5 ,000 a month and a commission on our sales. They just don't get it. That's why I love our partners at Daybreak. They are full service, meaning they do the creative work, the listings, the logistics, and of course, all the ads, all with the most reasonable retainer out there. I work with them personally. I'm so grateful we have such a good partner to recommend out to you, our community. They do evaluate your product first to see if it might be a fit. So if you want them to have a look, email them startupcpg at daybreak.agency and they'll do a free audit for you.

26:16Good luck, everyone.

26:21Is there anything that you would like to say to retailers to maybe soothe them with their hesitancies if they're listening right now? seriously like is there anything that you would want to say to retailers or advice that you would want to give them with introducing wild west to their shelves yeah well first of all we're really fun and we're great partners um we have we're all chocolate outlets here and we have a good time but no that's a great question i think that retailers maybe some some of them are really getting it i I mean, ironically, it's very, very difficult to get on the shelf at Whole Foods and Sprouts.