Founder Feature: Matt Beaman of Goodburn Sauce Co.

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1:13We're both dads and we got kids and we're cooking at home and we want to be feeding them the most nutritious things. It's like it's hard to say like, Like, oh, we intentionally created this sauce to be extremely healthy and yada yada. But really, it's just like, yeah, you're just doing your best as a parent with the knowledge that you have. And so, yeah, we don't use any sugar. There's no artificial flavors. There's no preservatives, no natural flavors. If we're sweetening the sauce to kind of balance the heat, kind of the good burn sweet spots. It's definitely leveraging things like dates or perhaps fruits, you know, really staying away from any kind of chemicals or preservatives.

1:52We're not into that. Hey, everybody. This is Caitlin Bricker, Managing Editor at Startup CPG. We are back with another founder feature. Today, I'm sitting down with Matt Beeman, co-founder of Goodburn Sauce Co. They're a regenerative, farm-focused sauce company exploring rare and exotic chili peppers from around the world. Matt's journey took him from writing for kids' television to marketing at Facebook to launching a hot sauce brand in Austin, Texas. He's also got a co-founder named Carson Huvestal, who's a reggae dub producer who's been plant-based for decades, way before it was cool. And he knows his way around produce.

2:29He's worked in natural products retail for a bit. We're talking legendary pepper genetics, why dates sweeten their sauces, and how they're finding that perfect good burn zone in a crowded market. This is a hot sauce brand I think everyone needs to know about. And as always, enjoy. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin and today I'm here with Matt Beeman, founder of Goodburn Sauce Co. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. I'm excited to have you here. Typically, I'm like not the biggest fan of hot sauce because I don't like to be in pain when I eat my food, but this is a major exception for me.

3:09So I know I just gave a little hint, but before we get into it, can you just tell us what Goodburn is. Sure. So we're based here at Austin, Texas, and we are a regenerative farm focused sauce company with a deep love and fascination with exploring rare and exotic chili peppers from around the world. Yeah, that's our thing. If I hadn't already tried Goodburn, I would have been sold on that. I don't think anybody's ever spun their hot sauce in the way that you just did. Before we get into the Goodburn world, tell me who Matt Beeman is. Okay, so you started out writing for kids television, went to film school here in Austin, then went to Hollywood to work for Disney.

3:54So post that, started doing marketing and social media marketing for Disney for their films and video games and a lot of their other fun products. and from there jumped to Silicon Valley, working for Facebook, doing some of their brand marketing and brand management. All over on the west side from Austin, then came back to Austin to work for Facebook. Here in the Austin office, once I found out they had one open, I was like, ooh, can I go back? So once I got back, you know, worked for them a little bit longer and then decided that I wanted to change things up and really kind of jump into the food and beverage world.

4:30With that, I started my own boutique marketing agency called Griddle. And yeah, I've been working with cool, mostly local to Austin, but some around the country, CPG brands and food and beverage brands, spirit brands, and even cannabis brands. So pretty wide range there. Yeah, so that's kind of my background pre-building out Goodburn. And I know that you're not a solo founder. You also have a partner in this business with you. Can you tell us a little bit about him? Yes. So Karsten Hovesthal, also known as Mick Pullisch, seriously, I'd say reggae dub producer, reggae dub artist, pretty well known around the reggae dub circles, which are kind of like a global network, which definitely kind of ties into our sauces to some extent, I think.

5:17And he also worked for natural grocers, central markets, and has a lot of like kind of focus around produce, organic produce sourcing, which kind of also like dovetails into the kind of itall cooking and, you know, start to make in cuisine that he's certainly known for creating and cooking up. Yeah. So part musician, part produce man, as he might think. Very cool. So it sounds like both of you have strong backgrounds, which probably had Goodburn pretty set up for success from the start. You have on the cannabis side, is it marketing, growing, both? So we have a genetics company, different partner of mine called Landy Seeds, where we develop cannabis genetics.

6:04And that's also something we're doing with the peppers as well. We're also exploring some pepper varieties that are creating. We started that breeding program last year. And then, yeah, working with local cannabis brands and even a couple national cannabis brands for some of their consumer marketing as well. Very cool. And with Carson's background, too, the natural products industry background is really great. I mean, I would assume that that gives you really cool perspective and bright perspective as to what the future can look like for Goodburn. Definitely, definitely. He's been in that for a long time.

6:36I think he's been, I don't want to misquote, but maybe vegan, you know, plant-based. Before it was a thing, I mean, like 30 years or something like that. Wow. Before it was cool. Four was cool, right? And so I think I attribute a lot of his knowledge of like our sauces and the depth and complexity and their use of a lot of this amazing produce from his knowledge from that experience, you know. Wow. I personally love dates. This is not a surprise to anybody who's listening right now. I was shocked to see that you were sweetening your hot sauces with dates. So tell me about the ingredients. Why did you choose the ingredients that you're using in your hot sauces?

7:13Totally. So I think, you know, definitely speaking to kind of Carson's background and really using plants to the biggest capacity that we can. But also, like, we're both dads and we got kids and we're cooking at home and we want to be feeding them the most nutritious things. I think, you know, it's like it's hard to say like, oh, you intentionally created this sauce to be extremely healthy and yada, yada. But really, it's just like, yeah, you're just doing your best as a parent with the knowledge that you have. And so, yeah, we don't use any sugar. There's no artificial flavors. There's no preservatives.

7:45No natural flavors either. No natural flavors. You know, if we're sweetening the sauce to kind of balance the heat, you know, it's kind of the Goodburn. You get it in that Goodburn sweet tots. It's definitely leveraging things like dates or perhaps fruits, you know, really staying away from any kind of chemicals or preservatives. We're not into that. So we're in Austin. We're kind of hippies. I don't know. And what has it been like building the brand? I know that you first planted your seeds in 2020. Why then? Yes. So I want to say it was the year before, you know, Carson and I were experimenting with maybe making sauces.

8:26I mean, he'd been doing it for years before and exploring growing chili peppers. the real story behind it i say like maybe the kind of anchor story is you know carson had a very good friend named papa dreddy and he's kind of this legendary austin cosmic cowboy era if you're familiar with that era of austin had a willie nelson outlaw country and that kind of thing character who played in a band called alvin crow and the pleasant valley boys he was a silversmith a cyclist stuff they could keep in austin you know og keep in austin weird thing who went and traveled around the Caribbean and then came back to Texas and started appropriating the poppadretti scotch bonnet pepper, you know, originally from Jamaica.

9:12And so Carson's friends with him, of course, as I mentioned, like the reggae dub, the global scene there. And he's kind of this like character in the underground pepper growing, you know, online community and breeding world. And I mean, you can go online right now and go buy some poppadretti seeds, And he's contributed his genetics to that community. And so gave Carson those seeds at different points. And when he passed away, Papadretti's good friend Josh sent Carson kind of like the Jurassic Park, like chipping away in the back of the frozen freezer, like the holy grail of original Papadretti seeds.

9:48And so we started growing those. And it was really through the lens of growing peppers as friends, you know, as a mission to have fun with and to spend time in the garden. And for me personally, to be learning more about living soil, which was a big thing for me and for kind of my journey in across food and across cannabis even. And so I kind of was into going deep into becoming a big soil science and soil biology nerd. So I was like, cannot wait to grow these special peppers in the backyard with this new soil that I just made in my hand. Inoculated with all the amazing, you know, fungi. And they'll get me started on the soil stuff if you get weird.

10:30They're very boring for Eric Wrigley. And I love that pepper is not code for cannabis. We're actually talking about pepper seeds. That's correct. That's correct. I couldn't grow the cannabis in the backyard in Texas, unfortunately. And it's very, the unearthing of these seeds is very Svalbard of you. Have you ever heard of Svalbard? No, no, what's that? It's a Norwegian global seed vault. So there are seeds. You're familiar? I have heard of the vault. I didn't know the name, but yes. Svalbard. This is like back in the spice era days when they would cover these really cool topics. This one got me.

11:07I think it was in like 2017. and it's a global seed vault. They have these seeds underground from all over the world so that if there's devastation in an area of the world, they can pull seeds from the vault and regrow their plants. And unfortunately, countries have had to pull from the vault before, but very small part of you. Let me in there. I want to explore what you got in the pepper department. All right. So regenerative growing, it sounds like it's weaved through your brand through and through. Can you tell me a little bit about the farmers that you're working with and how you choose what farms you want to grow the peppers on?

11:45Totally, totally. So yeah, speaking to the living soil thing, that really has kind of bloomed into this, what I would call like a regenerative agriculture movement with films like Kiss the Ground and Common Ground and just kind of more awareness around what happens when you actually use soil that's alive to grow vegetables and other foods. it's higher nutrient density obviously there's no pesticides or other harmful things like that going on them and you're really improving the environment as well by sequestering carbon and building that kind of soil biology so it's good for the people it's good for the planet and it also is really good for you know the produce it tastes great it tastes even better we all want to know so yeah so for us and our farm partners we really put a hard line in the sand inside we don't really want to work with farms that are using any pesticides.

12:32And we would love to work with farms that are nerding out as much as we are about the soil biology and the living soil. And so we've been very lucky to find a few partners around Texas and also a farm in California or Santa Barbara County. Shout out Los Alamos Gardens. And here in Texas, Hopeful Farms is just fantastic. They're crushing it for us and honestly produce some of the most flavorful scotch bonnet peppers we've had locally ever. So go hopeful farms. And the scotch bonnet is the main ingredient in the Papa Dretti sauce, if I'm not mistaken, right? That's correct. That's the patented Papa Dretti scotch bonnet pepper right there.

13:14The Texas scotch bonnet. Yeah. I love it. So it really sounds like community is a driver for you in this brand. I've seen your write-ups. You're constantly at community events from what it feels like and looks like to me. What is the community that you're leaning on in Austin and beyond? What does that look like for you? Sure. That's a lot. There's a couple of different circles there. I mean, I think certainly the regenerative farm movement and community, anybody that wants to invest in that movement is like, oh my gosh, like let's be friends forever. Because I think that to me is probably one of the most important pieces of the whole project is, hey, if this thing gets big, that means we get to grow more peppers and support more farms and even hopefully have our own farm one day.

13:57Right. that really show and teach the next generation about the importance of that. And then so there's that community, which is it's definitely growing here in Austin and around the country, of course. And then I would say like in Austin, our food scene is just going crazy. Here's so many amazing chefs and so many amazing restaurants. And so there's lots of like killer chef level folks out here. And then as a result of that, people that are cooking at home, you know, and they're foodies. We have central markets, like love the central market. They're cooking at home, and I think they want to explore spicy cuisines from around the world.

14:33And they're doing so through maybe takeout or going out to restaurants. And this is kind of a way for them to maybe bring some of that back home and have fun with cooking at home with these different sauces. And as a busy dad, who, of course, and I are both parents and we're cooking for our family, it's like, cool. The kids are actually going to be excited about this meal. well, there's, you know, a unique hot sauce and there's, you know, it's the Gen Z and like millennials are really seem to be pretty into hot sauce. And so it's healthy. It's a way to get them excited about dinner at night and help us figure out what we're cooking that week.

15:05So maybe it's Jamaican jerk and maybe we're doing Italian with the San Marzano or Tex-Mex with Arbol Primo kind of thing. So yeah. The Arbol Primo is my personal favorite. It's really good. It's really good. And I like that you're talking about parents cooking in the kitchen. It is nice to have a good looking bottle amongst the chaos of a parenting household. So you also talked about millennials and Gen Z's. Like, I think a lot of millennials and Gen Z's are more forward thinking when it comes to what's inside their products. So what's inside the bottle? We talked about the ingredients. We talked about the regenerative aspect.

15:45Let's talk about the outside of the bottle because your product to me, I have yet to see it on the shelves in Massachusetts, but maybe this is a drop for somebody listening right now. It would stand out on a shelf if I saw that amongst the sea of hot sauces. Yes. that was very QVC of you. Thank you. So we have some amazing talent here in Austin to help us kind of get our initial brand together. Mason McPhee, got to give him a shout out for the OG bottle design. You can find him at HelloMaceMan. That's like his handle for his art and also Elmer Gomer. So killer designer, got us started years back.

16:24And now we work with an amazing designer, Zach Shapiro from San Francisco who's a good friend of ours. Zach also has just taken over the helm for Goodburn. He's kind of like a creative director and he's taken Goodburn's brand by storm and so we're just very lucky to have these artists in our network. I think part of it's you know my being have a marketing agency and being able to have access to those folks and for them to be interested in our brand and really elevate it I pay all props to those designers and And yeah, I mean, I think a couple of the things that we're trying to do with the bottle is definitely stand out.

17:02Give it that like old school, rustic homie vibe. But also there's almost got a little bit of a Dr. Bronnery thing going on with the amount of chaos sometimes going on the bottle as well, which I also love. It kind of speaks to like who Carson and I are as kind of like mad scientists, alchemists, folks. So I think there's a couple of components that are at work there. And then there's some little hints like on the poppad ready you have, you can maybe see here. This is like a Jamaican sound system reference there. So there's some little like Easter eggs in there as well that are kind of fun. And yeah, thank you so much.

17:35We do love the branding. We've constantly get love for the branding. And yeah, the packaging feels nice, too. Like even the label has a good feel to it, which is also very different when you pick it up. It's a memorable experience, in my opinion. Thank you. That's awesome. Yeah, I love to hear that feedback too. Thank you. Of course. We'll be right back. All right, people, listen up. Modern life demands a lot from our brains. People are juggling work, family, a social life, and never-ending to-do lists, all while trying to stay focused and mentally energized. Cognizant Cytacoline meets them in their daily routines to give them the comprehensive cognitive support they need.

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18:57I'm curious when you're working with these designers, especially you having your creative background, how do you approach the designers? Are you giving them pointers on how to work on your branding or are you just saying take this and run with it? Oh, baby. So working with creative people is always fun. a challenge too because I'm also creative and so Carson's also super creative so we got a lot of creative people in the mix so it is definitely one of those things where I lean toward more like okay here's a micro brief and we get some like subtle direction but really letting the artist kind of run wild and let their vision unfold and then where it's like necessary strategically for on the marketing end where it's like uber necessary you know like okay can we maybe add this or can Can we contemplate that?

19:44Because there's a certain angle or a certain audience I think that that would resonate with, right? So really letting their creative vision run wild and then just kind of a little bit of direction here and there from Carson's eyes. I like it. Speaking of direction, where is Goodburn carried right now as far as retail goes? I know you've had your farmer's market days, which is great. So many brands have seen so much success and you get that on-demand feedback from your customers as you're sampling live in front of them. What does retail look like for you? Yes. So we are very lucky. You know, Austin, like I said, has an amazing food culture.

20:19So we are in a couple of boutique grocery stores around Austin, including Royal Blue Grocery. We're also in Noah Marion's. And we just recently got accepted into Central Market. So we are super stoked about that. Congratulations. You're in good company over there. Yes. I mean, I'm a total foodie myself. And I feel like that's like the mecca. Like for me, at least here in Texas, you know, so that's really exciting. We're also going to I want to give a shout out to Pullman Market in San Antonio. Those people are amazing. They're also very focused on sourcing locally, regenerative farming. They've got a couple of restaurants and they've just got Michelin stars.

20:59It's just an amazing community down there. So Pullman Market in San Antonio as well. Very nice. And what does your direction look like when you're growing the brand? Do you have any shelves that you hope to be on? Are you growing slow? Do you want to go big? What does that feel like and look like to you at this stage? Yes, this is the time we're about to get our first round of funding and go most certainly a takeover of Austin and then a Texas takeover, if you will. So for us, I think it's more of getting into the right places because we are a premium product. We're a little more extensive than a classic bottle of hot sauce.

21:36But we invest in the farm infrastructure and these rare pepper genetics that you can't buy commercially. Yeah, just having super killer ingredients. And so we want to make sure that we're in places that we make sense, right? Probably more like boutique grocery shops and places like that for kind of the first wave. Certainly, Central Market qualifies as that on a larger scale. But there's so many rad, like super cool grocery stores or little grocery setups popping up in bodegas that have killer products out there. So definitely want to be a part of that kind of wave as well, I think. No doubt. Yeah.

22:10And I'm curious, too, in this environment right now, to me, I'm just a consumer. I'm not a brand founder. To me, the sauce space seems very saturated until you get to taste what's inside the bottles. And then you're like, OK, the market is actually not saturated. It's very different. There are so many different varieties and flavors out there. But there's something really cool happening right now. Brands are getting funding. They are getting investment in sauce. What does that feel like for you as a sauce founder? Oh, yeah, that's great news to hear. I mean, especially with where we're at in the company and kind of like, OK, I think we're really going to take this thing seriously and take it to the next level.

22:52And right as this is happening, you have Bachon and you have, what was the other one that just got? I saw Mazah. We were talking about Mazah. You know, get funding and just kind of just the whole space is blowing up right now. and you're seeing a lot of focus on the better for you versions of it and cleaner versions of hot sauce and to your point it's like it seems like there's a ton of hot sauce you go to the hot sauce shelf and you're like oh my goodness there's so much going on here yeah i mean so much of what kind of good burn was meant to solve for was like so many of these hot sauces aren't hot so many of them are like way too hot so it's like where's that happy media where's that like good burn zone, right?

23:32That doesn't really exist. Like kind of have the nuances of dialing in the heat, you know, that is not an easy thing to do. And I mean, that's why it doesn't really exist to a large degree. And then yeah, the exploration of, for us, these different culinary traditions and cultural cuisines, we're seeing that happen, like you said, with those two rad acquisitions and funding moments, people are really excited about exploring these global cuisines as well. And so So for us, it's like, oh, this is fantastic because we've already been doing this. And through the lens of kind of the chili pepper as a focal point.

24:06So, yeah, it's just like a lot of things coming together. The better for you component has always been a part of our DNA. The regenerative farm movement is, you know, catching more. Yeah, there's like a lot of just simultaneous things moving in the same direction. So we're excited to be here. We feel it's a great time for us to really start getting out there. And yeah, it's good timing, right? It definitely feels like good timing. And it's also really cool to see these brands, these big brands and even smaller brands. I mean, Mazat feels like it's kind of more of a small to midsize company for me.

24:40I don't know anything about their funding background or how much money they're making, but they're very different from each other. And then Goodburn is also very different from those two companies that are getting funding right now. And I think you've positioned yourself very well with your name, too, because I mentioned this earlier in our conversation. I don't like to be in pain when I eat. I look forward to putting Goodburn on my food because it's life affirming, first of all, because I'm like, OK, there's heat here. I'm feeling it. But then I can move on with my day and not have to be traumatized by what I ate.

25:18My daughter's only two, but I feel like if she were to want to dip her toes into the hot sauce pond, this would be a good company to start with. Thanks. Yes. Totally with you on that. I do like we love real spicy hot sauce, too. But really, like we're dads, we want to make dinner that's healthy and fun. And so there's a couple levels that you maybe don't want to go just on normal dinner Wednesday night in LSO. Absolutely. Anything that you want to share with listeners, I always like to remind founders, it's not just you and I here. There are also retailers. There are consumers. There's distributors.