Founder Feature: Houston Buehrle of Little Zing

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0:53I think my strategy, one, is just focus on the flavor and make sure that the bottle and the packaging does stand out. So when people are looking at that wall of yellow, then they look at ours and they're like, oh, that looks interesting. I'll try that. Hey, everybody. This is Caitlin Bricker, editor at Startup CPG. We are back with another founder feature. Today, we're talking with Houston Buehler, founder of Little Zing, a Danish mustard sauce that's been in Houston's family for over a century. After Houston's water bottle company went through a recall in bankruptcy following features on Oprah's favorite things in Good Morning America, Houston found himself at farmer's markets.

1:33He was selling his great-grandmother's recipe that his late father used to give as holiday gifts. From landing in over 120 stores in just eight months to hosting TikTok lives multiple times a week, he's building a brand that stands out in an aisle full of yellow. As someone who believes mustard is the superior condiment, little Zing has earned prime real estate on my fridge door. Enjoy. boy.

2:01Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin, and today I'm here with Houston Bueller, founder of Little Zing. Houston, welcome to the show. Thanks, Caitlin. So happy to be here. I am so happy to have you here. I have to shout out my colleague, Melissa. She's the one that turned me on to Little Zing. She knows I'm a huge mustard fan, and when I got to try Little Zing, I was like, wow, this is a good product. Thank you, Melissa. And thank you for being here. And for anybody who's not familiar with Little Zing, can you just give us a quick little snippet of what Little Zing is?

2:36Yeah. So Little Zing, it's my great grandma's recipe from Denmark. She grew up in Copenhagen and it's been passed down through our family for literally a hundred years. My dad was the last one to make it. Make big batches in our kitchen during the holidays and hand them out to friends, family, and clients. It's a really unique mustard. The original flavor, it's sweet, and then it has a little bit of a horseradishy kick, but it's also a lot saucier than traditional mustard, so it's really designed to be drizzled on stuff, and it goes on literally everything. I can confirm that it goes on everything.

3:13I will say that squeeze bottle format. I know people are going crazy for squeeze bottles. It really is just so convenient. You don't have to worry about washing dishes, washing a spoon or a knife after using it. You can literally just go crazy with it. Yeah, that was definitely intentional. And mustard, I will say, it is the most superior condiment. I've told so many people this before, but if I go into a restaurant and they don't have honey mustard, I think that they should just go out of business. But now I feel like with Little Zing, if they don't have Little Zing as an option, you should probably just close your doors.

3:50Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll hopefully get there. I really would love to see this movement where we do have these more niche condiments and smaller brands of CPG products that are available on a menu of larger restaurants and retailers like go into their deli and be able to order Little Zing on a deli sandwich instead of a typical yellow mustard. Yeah, no, I definitely agree. I feel like a lot of delis and stuff, they all use the same stuff. So having some variety with some smaller brands, more specialty items would be definitely really cool. Totally. And you mentioned horseradish kick. Tell me more about your ingredients and what differentiates Little Zing from other mustards that might be on a shelf.

4:36Yeah, so we only use five ingredients, the same ingredients that my great grandma used. So there's no preservatives or anything like that. It's just water, mustard flour, which is ground down mustard seeds, organic sugar, red wine vinegar, and black pepper. The horseradishy kit comes from the brown mustard seed that we use and how we activate it during production. Yeah, it's really versatile. I put it on pizza, sushi, sandwiches, like literally everything. Some of our customers put it on pasta. So it's always cool to hear how other people are using it. I will say that my husband and I just used it on corn dogs for lunch.

5:13I guess we went like full Tobler mode and had corn dogs for lunch, but I'm here for it. I know this was your grandmother's recipe. Have you gone through any iterations when you were going back and thinking about making this into a product that made it yours? Or are you staying true through and through to the original recipe? I wanted to stay completely true to the original recipe and the flavor and the consistency and the quality of ingredients. So I haven't touched that at all. We do have some new flavors that we're working on. One of them will be ready in about six weeks and that will have a different spin on the original flavor.

5:55But it really did mean a lot to me to keep the original as the original. I'm not adding anything. I'm not adding preservatives to make it last longer. So I definitely wanted to keep it the original OG recipe. I love that. And I love it, especially because when I do look at condiments, I feel like they're very sneaky. A lot of the times you can find so much added sugar in condiments. I was literally just looking at ketchup yesterday when I was in the grocery store. I try to buy these like everyday products and make them not have added sugar, but ketchup, it had four grams of added sugar. And I think it was a tablespoon.

6:33And I was like, that's a lot for a tablespoon of ketchup. Yeah. A lot of condiments are packed with sodium too. And like you said, sugar or even preservatives like citric acid and other ones. But yeah, I actually went to the store to make a post and I use the Yucca app. I have in the past. I Haven't used it in a while, but I'm very familiar. Yeah, so I literally scanned about 50 different mustards and they all came back with a poor or bad rating because of the sugar or sodium levels or the use of preservatives. And then I scanned Little Zing and it came back as good. I'm like, all right, sweet.

7:11We got something good here. That's great. I'm curious, how does a brand get onto Yucca? Do you scan it in yourself or does the platform do it? So if it's a new product, you have to scan the UPC code and the nutrition label and the ingredients. But anybody, if they find something on the shelf that's not in the app, they can scan it and add it. That's pretty cool. Even cooler that you're basically the standout in mustard. Yeah, made me happy. Okay, so I did count before we got on to record today. I currently have seven different types of mustard in my refrigerator. I have an entire shelf on the refrigerator door dedicated to mustard.

7:52Not a single bottle looks like Little Zing. Talking from the squeeze bottle format, I'm talking from the ingredient list, and I'm also just talking about the branding. So walk me through why you made the decisions that you made to create Little Zing. I want to know about the format, the bottle, the branding. I started at a farmer's market just to see if people would buy it. And I would recommend that 10 out of 10 times for anybody starting. Farmer's Market is a perfect launching point because you get strangers to try your product and buy it. Once I started to see some traction, then I started to do a little bit of market research once at my local store just to see what other mustard brands were out there.

8:32And obviously I knew about Grey Poupon and French's and Heinz and all that, but there are a handful of others. But one thing I noticed is that every mustard has the same type of bottle with the same type of branding. Most stores have four different yellows, four different Dijons, four different stone grounds. So I really did see an opportunity for something new in the mustard aisle. So the first thing I wanted to do was put it in a package that would stand out. So that's why we chose the Boston Round squeeze bottle that we use, because it's completely different to the aisle. and I've been inspired by Liquid Death and what they've done with water to me that's just insane so I wanted to really create a cool brand and growing up in Southern California and the surf and skate culture like branding's really big down here so I wanted to kind of embody that so I chose a good name Little Zing it stands out it's not an old school family recipe name that you see on a lot of current mustards I thought it was catchy easy to pronounce and then our logo is a mermaid, and that's a nod to its Danish roots because of the little mermaid sculpture.

9:43So I put a lot of time into the branding and how the label should look, and I will say I've gone through about seven different iterations of the label. We have one more coming out, and then I think I'm done. But the combination of the bottle we use and the branding and the name, I think, really makes us stand out in an aisle of plainness. I completely agree. I mean, I see it in my own refrigerator, regrettably, but it's a very good thing because my refrigerator is just a microcosm of what you'd see in a grocery store aisle. It's very, very cool. And I did not know the connection with the Little Mermaid and the sculpture.

10:24That's pretty sweet. I mean, you could probably make some dreams come true for these people who've grown up loving the little mermaid and now you're like here's a grown-up version of yeah little mermaid for you demos they're at a market today like little kids will walk by like look mommy a mermaid and then they end up trying it i'll give them a sticker or something so it's always that's so cool i need to get a little zing sticker to add to my add to my water bottle next time i see you i'll have to snack one okay so this is not your first rodeo. Might be your first rodeo with a perishable product.

11:02But to my understanding, you had a brand prior to Little Zing. Can you tell me about your ventures before? Yes. So it's called Bindle Bottle. I launched it on Kickstarter in 2017. And picture a hydroflask where the bottom third screws off. And it's kind of it's a storage compartment for car keys, headphones, credit cards, cash. So it's a great water bottle when you're working out wearing tighter gym clothes and stuff. So long story short, we launched that business in 2018. And we got on Oprah's Favorite Things two times, which was incredible. We were on Good Morning America, QVC, and it was doing really, really well.

11:47We were on track to do about 5 million in sales in 2023 and I'll never forget it I was at a trade show in January of 2023 and I get an alert on my phone like you've been tagged so I look at it and it's literally a picture of my face that says Houston we have a problem do not buy a bindo bottle so I open it and there's every single vacuum insulated bottle uses a little lead solder to seal the vacuum insulation so that's what we got tagged for and we had to do a massive recall. And with that followed a class action lawsuit and literally overnight, the business just was done. So it was, it was really devastating.

12:32Whoa. We'll be right back. Are you going to crush it on Amazon this year? It'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.

13:05So if you want them to have a look, email them startupcpg at daybreak.agency and they'll do a free audit for you. Good luck, everyone.

13:16were you not to get sidetracked from mustard but i feel like this is very important for other founders to hear were you obviously you were caught off guard by this but were you at all prepared at for how to deal with a situation like this not at all i didn't know what to do and of course lawyers were involved because of the class action lawsuit and i did jump on the phone with Disney's legal team because they own ABC and Good Morning America and all that. And it was just so scary. But it did lead me to where I am now. And I remember during that period of the bankruptcy, I just was kind of lost and they didn't really know what to do.

13:56And we worked with a guy at the Humane Society who sold cookies at a farmer's market on weekends. And he was telling me how well he was doing. And I was like, OK, I don't know what I'm going to do next. So I thought hard about what I could sell. And I remember the mustard recipe. So that's kind of all how it began. So tell me more about this, because I am very interested in legacy work in general and the legacies that people want to leave behind, what they work on in their lives here, and then what they want to leave behind for their loved ones or people that they never knew before. So talk to me about how your grandmother weaved in this mustard into your family's roots and then how it got passed down all the way to you to then share it with the public.

14:41Yeah. So great grandma made it. It was then passed down to my mom's uncle who was guarding it like hardcore. And my dad was begging him for the recipe and finally got it. And he just started making it during the holidays. And I remember him with giant bowls in the kitchen. And when you're making mustard, it's really punched into your eyes. So we're all just teary eyed in the kitchen. I recently lost my dad four years ago. So that it does feel really good to carry on the legacy of what he used to do. And I think that's what gives me extra passion with this is knowing that I'm doing it kind of with him.

15:18Well, I'm very sorry to hear about your dad. I do think it's really cool that you're able to help continue this for him. And maybe you can be like the Santa Claus that's giving, giving away little zing at the holidays now. I love that. That is a cool story. And like I said, I do really love hearing about legacies that people are leaving behind. I mean, maybe you didn't think mustard would be the next big thing after a bindle bottle, but here we are. And I think it's kind of a happy ending, I would say. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. We've grown pretty quickly over the last eight months. Our true launch was earlier this year.

15:57I went to Expo West, which was amazing and chaotic, but it was so cool. And we're going next year, we'll be in the startup CPG section. Yeah, really pumped. But yeah, just with what I've seen in the category and the traction we've received so far, I'm really encouraged. And the new flavor we have, which will be ready in about six weeks, I can share it now. It's a garlic miso. It's really good, big umami flavor. I used it on a salmon bowl the other night, put it on some sushi it's insanely good so I'm pumped to to launch that in the next month or two and sample that at Fancy Food Show and Expo West I'm really really excited okay garlic is my favorite food ever mustard is my favorite condiment ever I'm excited for this and I'm sure if Melissa's listening she's probably got her mouth watering right now too yeah and same with the new flavor We're keeping it really simple ingredients.

16:58It's not going to be a sodium bomb or a sugar bomb. There's no preservatives. So that's something we're going to keep in our DNA forever is just keeping stuff clean. We don't need the bottle to last for four years by putting preservatives in it. So keeping it clean and simple is really important. Music to my ears. So you've seen growth with your brand. How many stores did you say you're in or did you say that yet? Today we're in about 130. 30. A hundred of those have come in the last eight months. What do you think that says about condiments in general and the CPG world and the way that consumers are behaving?

17:35I mean, I think people are always looking for something different and innovative and interesting. And that wasn't really there in mustard. So at the big trade shows like Fancy Food Show and Expo West, all the buyers are looking for something different. All the stores typically carry the same things. So if they're the one to find the new mustard, the new granola, whatever it is, then that's what they're going to the shows for. I have only seen your product on shelf once. And I don't say that as a knock. I was so excited when I saw it on the shelves. I saw it at Lever's Locavor in Denver. First of all, Lever's was the best retail shopping experience I've ever had.

18:18I was laughing the entire time. Their team is so cool. They have these little, what would you call them, like Easter eggs around the store with celebrities and funny sayings. Super cool. Was not expecting to see Little Zing in the aisle. But when I did, I was like, ah, there it is. Like it just looked so good on the shelf. It stood out, no doubt. What is your retail strategy? If you don't mind me asking like what kind of retailers are you searching out where do you want to be yeah I mean that's a really good question and something I'm honestly still trying to fine-tune one thing I've seen a lot in this industry is go deep and not wide so I am trying to go extra hard in my backyard in Southern California but obviously I'm not going to say no to a store like Leavers so I think my strategy one is just focus on the flavor and make sure that the bottle and the packaging does stand out so when people are looking at that wall of yellow then they look at ours and like oh that looks interesting i'll try that so and then also just supporting each store with social content or doing quarterly sales if i'm in the area i'll do demos so i demo really hard at bristol farms and some stores in San Diego.

19:37But just doing stuff like that and giving as much support as you can is my current strategy. But the stores I'm kind of going for is definitely higher end. Our item is priced a little higher than most of the mustards on the shelf. So focusing on the higher end store, natural stores, stuff like that. Very cool. I haven't seen you sample live yet. What is your go-to pairing when you're sampling or are people just tasting it straight up? I sample it on salami. Ooh, a choice. I get a little piece of salami and then I wait for them to walk up and then I'll drizzle it on right in front of them so they can get a feel for the texture and everything.

20:13And then for people that don't eat meat, right now I've been doing it straight up, but I'm trying to think of a good alternative, a potato chip I've used before. And that's also an odd pairing, mustard on a potato chip, but it works. It doesn't sound odd to me whatsoever. However, I literally just picked up a bag of ketchup chips from Trader Joe's. I went just to pick up some goodies for a friend's bachelorette party and saw they had ketchup chips. I ate them when I was a child. Not as high quality. But if there was a mustard chip, I would be all over it. Yeah, that's definitely something I've been thinking about for a collab or something.

20:55Once we're all set with our new flavors, I think a little zing chip would be excellent. Oh, man. I'm also thinking of like, have you heard of Nuff's NUFS? Yeah. That, if they did like a special edition, Christine, if you're listening, if there was a special edition mustard cracker, that would be good stuff. any other collabs dream collabs that you have in your mind or like not even just collabs with other cpg brands but spill those if you have them too this is the time to do it or even like delis that you have on your radar anything that's on your mind where would you like to see little zing outside of a traditional retail setting yeah i definitely want to partner with more restaurants, like you said earlier, it's really good on pizza.

21:46So yeah, partnering with a local pizza shop or I was demoing at Bristol Farms and Lottie's Meats, they were there. They make bratwurst and stuff like that. So doing some sort of collab with them and doing a little pop-up hot dog stand or something like that. And I think that really helps just with brand awareness too. You get people to try it and you have a fun setup. So that's definitely all stuff that's on the radar. I love to hear it and I love Lotties. They are also a crazy good sister duo that's just making unbelievable products. All right so I would love for more Little Zing to get into more hands and hopefully more retail doors.

22:28Can we wrap this up by you telling everybody where they can find you online so everyone can go and stock you and also stock up on Little Zing? Yeah definitely we're on Amazon. So check out Amazon. We also can ship nationwide through our website, littlezing.com. And if you're on TikTok, I do TikTok live a couple of times a week, have some flash sales there. So those three channels we can ship, we ship the same day. So that's a perfect spot. Okay. I have to ask about TikTok live before we go. How has your experience been with TikTok live? I don't really know what I'm doing on there, but it works.

23:08I mean, I go live for 45 minutes to an hour and I have flash sales and I give away our little tote bags with each order. And it's been great. I mean, we're getting really positive reviews. And for a brand that's bootstrapped with no real marketing budget, it's a perfect free spot to promote your product and get new customers. Okay, good to know. I'm sure other brands are probably going to hear this and be like, what am I doing? Why am I not on TikTok? Well, I'm slinging my product. And another thing is TikTok shows you how many units are sold on your SKU. So I was just doing research and I saw other CPG brands doing pretty well on there.

23:48I'm like, okay, I'll give it a try. And I think consistency helps. The more you do it, the more the algorithm kind of feeds more viewers to your live. But yeah, I've been enjoying it. Does it feel like you're kind of on like your own QVC channel when you're doing it? 100%. Yeah. I'm just repeating the same thing every three minutes because people are always filtering in and out. So it's a little exhausting. So make sure you have a water bottle next to you. But yeah, it's fun. Very cool. I am going to have to go follow you after we hang up from this call. And I definitely need to catch you on one of these lives.

24:27I feel like it's very admirable. And it's also just like it probably is good practice for you doing demos because it's the same thing. You're still live. You're in front of people and you're saying the same thing over and over. Yeah. And once you get over the fact that you're talking to a phone, it gets pretty easy and you can really demonstrate it. So when I'm doing it, I take a plate and I put some great coupon on there and then squeeze ours next to it just to show the consistency, like the drizzle of it. and then people are asking questions you can answer their questions and it's a good time very cool i love that for you i'm definitely gonna catch you on there all right houston it has been so fun talking to you very excited about this new skew that you have coming out i will be all over that as well oh yeah i'll let you know all right sweet i'll talk to you soon all right everyone Thank you so much for listening.

25:20If you enjoyed this episode, do us a solid and leave us a five-star review on ratethispodcast.com slash Startup CPG. I'm Caitlin Bricker, the host of the Founder Feature Series and editor at Startup CPG. Feel free to find me on LinkedIn or reach out to me on Slack and get on my radar. I'm always keeping my eyes peeled for new and emerging brands to spotlight. If you're a potential sponsor who would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnerships at startupcpg.com. And finally, as a reminder for anyone listening, if you haven't already, we would love for you to join our free CPG community on Slack.

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