Founder Feature: Tabi and Meena Hoshmand of Tursh

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1:24I'm somebody who really feels like I can do it all. I can figure out every single detail of every piece of the brand. That was like such a huge waking point for me, like a reality check with Tersh, because I'm sitting there, you know, me and Mina are thinking through how we want this to come to life in a food label, in social media, in brand assets, etc. And I just like came to this point where I was like, we need to hire an expert. Like I cannot design those pieces because I am not a designer. So there's this element that you learn from the jump about where you need to lean on expertise and where you can probably wear that hat by yourself.

2:06Hey everybody, this is Caitlin Bricker, editor at Startup CPG. We are back with another founder feature. Today we're talking with Tabby and Mina Hashmand, co-founders of Tersh, an Afghan-inspired sauce that's so addictive people are literally stealing jars from each other. Operating from opposite coasts while bootstrapping their business, these sisters turned their mom's family chutney recipe into a CPG brand that's bright, punchy, and unlike anything you've tasted before. From diving into vintage Afghan postage stamps for design inspiration to discovering that their mom's stories are as rich as the sauce itself, they're proving that the best products come from the heart.

2:45I pre-gamed for this interview with the rest of my jar, so it's about time for me to re-up. Enjoy!

2:56Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin, and today I'm here with Tabby and Mina Hoshman, co-founders of Tersh. Welcome to the show. Oh my gosh. Thank you for having us. What an honor to be on the show. I'm psyched to have you here. Sauce was a major category in the shelfies, and I think your product was one of the most standout for me personally. it's very tough because we have three judges but I think when a brand can stand out in the sauce category it is that says a lot oh my gosh that makes me feel so happy like literally tears because we say so often that this product is unlike anything you've had before but then like you know you can't just say that in hopes that that claim lands so then when people say oh my god that's like literally unlike any sauce I've ever had before I'm like we're in the right space for saying the right things, you know?

3:49Totally. I just, I pre-gamed for this podcast with the rest of mine that was left in the jar. I came out of the room and my husband's sitting there eating and I was like, what are you doing? That's mine. I swear we're getting text messages from like partners and houses and roommates that like people are stealing the jars from each other. I'm like, okay, good. This is a fight. Jail time. Exactly. So I'd love for you, Mina, to tell us what Tersh is. I'm sure we have people in the audience who are thinking to themselves, okay, great Tersh, but what is it? So can you tell us? So Tersh specifically means sour tart tangy and gari.

4:24It's one of the languages spoken in Afghanistan. And this sauce is an Afghan inspired sauce. So Afghan inspired flavors that came from our mom's recipe. It's been with us for as long as I can remember. Families rave about it. And they finally said, you guys need to sell this Chutney. So here we are. We've decided to create this Chutney to really spread our heritage and our culture. And we're super excited for people to try it. Awesome. And Tabby, what kind of flavors can people expect when they try Tersh? That's a great question. I always say that it's super bright, very bold and punchy. Like it's something that when you put it in your mouth, you realize, oh, there's a lot of complexity in the flavors.

5:04It's not just like one thing, not just heat, not just spices. It's very much everything. There's a lot of kind of like acidity to it as well. That's really nice. A tangy, punchy flavor. It really is like the, you know, the perfect personification of the word tush, which literally means sour, tangy. Like it really is that type of product. But I'd say very bright, punchy, herby, something that doesn't feel super heavy. When you think of a sauce, sometimes you think it's maybe a little bit heavy. I totally don't think that is the case with our product, the OG spicy green chutney, you can dump spoonfuls.

5:39Like that's how addicting it is. Addicting is a great word for it. I don't know what it is about the product, but like if the jar is open and it's sitting in front of me, I am not going to stop reaching into the jar. It doesn't matter if it's a spoon, doesn't matter if it's a cracker, a chip. So success in my book. That makes me so happy. I'm always very curious to hear how people use the sauce. We grew up eating it with like rice and chicken. And like that is like kind of the association we had with our chutney. And then the second we started selling it with friends and family, I was getting texts that was like, it's perfect on salmon.

6:16I'm eating it up with my cheese board. I'm obsessed with it with eggs. And it was like, oh, there's a whole new world that even Mina and I didn't even realize to think to put our chutney on. So you guys are honestly like letting us explore our own product. I saw that you recently did a series on Instagram where you're trying your product on different items. I believe I saw you do apples. I tried apples with it. Unreal. Like a green apple, a red apple. It's so, so good. And if you roast the apples, I feel like that could be such a hitter. Honestly, it was so crispy and fresh. Like, I was very surprised.

6:54I had a friend text me saying that her roommate went into her jar and tried it with apples, literally. And she was like, she tried it with an apple. Like, you should try it too. It's really good. And so I was like, okay, I need to have this. And then it made me think of cheese boards, right? Like, you have like the sauces on a cheese board and apples and gouda and cheddar. I was like, okay, this makes sense, you know? I see the vision big time. So I have to know, you have very different professional backgrounds. So Mina, can I start with you? Can you tell us what you do when you're not working on Tersh?

7:26I'm a full-time medical provider, specifically a family medicine PA. So there's really not much time during my day. So most of my Tush work is after hours or my days off. But I do enjoy that I not only do I get to do what I love, which is my passion in medicine, but I do have a creative outlet on the side working on Tush. So it really kind of keeps a good like work-life balance. And I don't ever feel like overwhelmed or burnt out because of it. I love that. And I also see that you two are not in the same space. And my understanding is that you're operating on different coasts, which I think is very impressive.

8:02Yeah, it was a very interesting business decision for us. I moved to New York three and a half years ago from California. I'm a born and raised California girl through and through, but I got a job in New York. And so I've been here for quite a while and like obsessed with it and honestly don't want to leave. And so when we started working on Tersh, like maybe a year and a half ago, even longer than that, we knew we're going to have this battle, this like coast to coast battle. But in actually in some ways, it's been oddly convenient for us to be on different sides of the coast. I'm manning one side of the coast with New York being such a heavily populated city and with incredible CPG brands that are building from like sour milk to edgies.

8:46Like it's a really great presence to be able to also have a foot in the East Coast while Mina is in LA having that foot in the West Coast. So oddly, it's been working for us. Obviously, it's not ideal to be on different time zones, different schedules, etc. But we're making it work. And honestly, it's kind of half the fun, too, because we're flying back and forth and meeting each other for different things. But yeah, I actually think it's opened more doors than possible because people are also excited that we have a foot in the East Coast, just like an actual physical presence, at least. I like that a lot.

9:24And I always feel like New York is kind of the epicenter of CPG. It's so densely populated, but there are so many cool brands coming out of New York. It's very inspiring. I feel like there's a lot of really good energy here and momentum with CPG. everybody's really willing to teach you something or learn from each other and that's been huge for me personally just because like you know you mentioned already our professional backgrounds are so starkly different than the food business and you know entering the CPG space was honestly a little bit intimidating because we didn't really know anybody in the space that had done anything from launching a restaurant to launching a product and so I've been really lucky that I've been able to actually connect with people in person on the East Coast in New York, where a lot of brands launched from and have made me feel like, oh, OK, we could totally do this.

10:20Like people are willing to help. And I think that has been like kind of the biggest learning lesson, honestly. So can you tell us a little bit about your background and how it plays into Tersh? Yeah, of course. So I've been in marketing for maybe eight plus years now. I originally started working at a beauty subscription service in LA called Ipsy and I was running their social channels. I basically built in their brand voice and their social channels from the ground up with one other hire that was brought onto the team to do just that. Build your social channels across all of the platforms. And so I worked on everything from like Facebook live programming to like building community groups to producing to directing, you know, product photo shoots.

11:07It was a very immersive role. And then from there, I actually transitioned into a role in the same company to launch celebrity beauty brands. So I was able to work with a team that launched Item Beauty by Addison Rae and then Trace Luce Beauty by Becky G. I actually just like learned what it's like to launch a brand from the ground up, from ideation to bringing these products to life, product development. How do you get a site up and running? What does the product look like? It was a very, again, immersive experience for me. And then I also moved into tech recently, about two years ago, moved into a tech marketing role where I focus on creator partnerships.

11:48And so as a marketer, my role is pretty expansive. I've done everything from creator partnerships to organic social to even events and experiential. And I truly believe every single thing I've done is what has made, you know, Tersh even easier for me to kind of work through because I've launched beauty brands. OK, so how hard could it be to launch a food brand? That was a mistake. I said that too early on. But, you know, in my brain, at least I was like, I've done this before. I can totally do it again. And, you know, I understand social media. So I know how we can show up as a brand. Again, social media is like a nightmare in one.

12:26Nobody understands it. We're just pretending, you know, but it gave me the tools and the confidence, at least my professional career did, to be able to go into Tersh with this like confidence and understanding that, OK, I have a skill set from my professional background that can be applied here. So it's kind of odd when you think about it. I'm like, you know what? It actually worked in my favor. Like all of that career development worked really hand in hand with launching Tersh, you know. It sounds like it would be invaluable experience, especially working with these larger brands. The stakes probably feel like they're that much higher.

13:02That's true. Yeah. And like more, you can take more risk with larger brands. There's this opportunity and trust that, you know, I can experiment as a marketer. And so I was able to kind of do that with those larger brands and then take those insights and like figure it out with Tersh as well. That sounds like it's the perfect pipeline for you to now be in the seat of a co-founder building your own brand after kind of taking somewhat of a backseat to another brand and being like, okay, that's working. That's not working. Let me take some notes. Honestly, who would have thought? It sounds perfect to me.

13:36Mina, how does your professional background play into the day-to-day for Tersh? That's a great question. Honestly, sometimes I'm like just going for it. At this point, like my field is so different than the space that we're in right now. But I do think, Like I said, everything's super procedural in medicine. So I'm doing more of the operations in regards to Tush, like getting the jars, lids, food labels, shipping. Like I'm more in that procedural part of Tush, which I do think helps. I'm super like organized and I like things a certain way. So I think that really helped make our product, the production and the shipping a little bit more efficient.

14:14So I would say that's the closest I can say that I can relate to my professional field. But other than that, I'm just here learning something new every single day. I love that. Would you say that it was a joint effort, the two of you maybe coming together from both coasts, when you're thinking about design? Now, Tabby, I know that you have the marketing background, but when you're thinking about the design that's going on that package or what jars you're going to use, was that a joint effort or was one of you calling the shots? I think that we both had the vision that we created for this brand really helped us decide on how we wanted to move forward with the label.

14:49So we really did agree on a lot of things. And we worked with an amazing designer, Appie, who's all the way in New Zealand, right, Taffy? Yeah, so she really sent her all of her inspiration, our Pinterest board, and she really was able to create something that both Taffy and I were really happy with. Yeah, absolutely a joint effort. And I think like piggyback off of that, like I'm somebody who really feels like I can do it all. I can figure out every single detail of every piece of the brand. That was like such a huge waking point for me, like a reality check with Tersh, because I'm sitting there, you know, me and Mina are thinking through how we want this to come to life in a food label, in social media, in brand assets, etc.

15:32And I just like came to this point where I was like, we need to hire an expert. Like I cannot design those pieces because I am not a designer. So there's this element that you learn from the jump about where you need to lean on expertise and where you can probably wear that hat by yourself. And that's been a very big lesson for me, at least. I'm somebody who, like I said, I want to do it all. I want to figure out every piece of it and I want the control. And so our designer was so wonderful at just taking our vision and being so gracious with us and so patient about, okay, we just want a little bit of tweaks.

16:08And ultimately, the design landed in a place that felt modern enough to be commercial for the CPG world, but had this ode to the traditions of our Afghan culture up to the icon that we use, which is like this flower icon. And that was pulled directly from these beautiful vintage postage stamps from Afghanistan that were all these gorgeous colored flowers. And so I feel like the design element, me and Mina were a lying dot. We knew we wanted it to be an ode to our culture and our tradition, but we also wanted it to feel almost presentable and a little bit accessible to the audience that maybe isn't super familiar with Afghan culture at all.

16:50So they could easily feel like, oh, I can read this. I can understand this. Maybe I'm interested. Totally understand that. I will say I was not familiar too much with Afghan culture prior to being introduced to Tersh. And I love hearing the background about the postage stamp because now I'm like, I need to see this postage stamp. So gorgeous. And like even us, as we were doing research, I think something important with this brand for us was like, you know, Afghanistan is really the connotation with that country is war. even to me who is a first generation American like I'm also making that connotation in that association and so when we were actually going through this like design piece in the brainstorm which is so fun when you're building a brand it's like the most amount of fun we were even going in the archives of art and the archives of those poster steps and just kind of in awe by how much beauty there is in the art world of Afghanistan and so I feel like it's actually brought us really close, even closer to our culture than we thought we were.

17:51So that is so touching, honestly. I think that that is so cool. It's so beautiful. And I mean, like Ancestry and 23andMe, probably you're giving them a run for their money just by looking into the archives. I know. And it was really hard. Like looking for archives is challenging. And then looking for archives in a country where like lots of history is destroyed ultimately is also so challenging. And so I think it's been kind of like a really nice moment for Mina and I to ask more questions. I think that's been a really interesting thing. And also like our mom, who is like such an inspiration for this brand, she's the recipe developer.

18:32She's the reason we have this brand in the first place. We literally tell her, I think we were talking to her yesterday and I was like, you are the reason this brand is happening. Like I need you to tell me every single detail of your life from the moment you were like, I need all details of the Afghan world. So I feel like she's been almost like an open book with us about a lot of things that even Mina and I never really grew up with. Afghan phrases and cultural things that my mom is now like, oh my God, you guys should hear about this. And oh my God, you should talk about this. And it's definitely an open to world for us.

19:02This is really special. Being able to have a family founded business and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like maybe you are going through these exercises with your mom right now about your culture and her history and her life experience that a lot of people probably miss out on because they just think their parents are going to be around forever or they think that this is going to be living in a diary somewhere and you're able to do it in real time. What does that feel like? Mina, can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah. So obviously growing up here, a lot of stuff were lost. And I think our parents, they wanted us to create a life here.

19:41So maybe a lot of stuff were lost in translation, and we just didn't grow up with it as much as we wish we did. And so as we grew older, we realized, no, we want to learn more. Like, you know, this is our background. This is who we are. So when creating this brand and trying to make sure that we have our story right and the flavors right, we got to learn more. And it's been really, really amazing. You know, a lot of people through social media who are Afghan have been reaching out to us and kind of confirming things that we grew up, which has been super special. And I think we're creating connections and bonds that we didn't know we could with this brand.

20:15So it's been really special. It's pulling at my heartstrings because honestly, it's just how do you compare anything to that? Yeah. And I don't know if you've caught, but like some of the videos we have with our mom, like she's incredibly emotional about this whole experience. Like she feels like she just can't believe that it's a product that she grew up with like forever and ever and ever. And her mom made and then she made and then she just can't believe that people are connecting with it online and in person. That's also been a huge joy is just to watch how special it is for my mom to be able to see that people love the product.

20:52Like you should see her like she sends us text messages. That's like screenshots of what people say about the product. And it's just like, oh, my God, I can't believe they like it. And then she'll like send me ideas, like social media ideas and these ideas. And she has no idea. Right. But she really is very immersed in this experience with us as well. It's totally changed our relationship with our culture in such a wonderful way. Created so much depth. It's also funny because it's a sauce. It's literally just a sauce. But we've created like this like insane emotional bond with our culture through this sauce.

21:27So who knew? I think just like the sauce has a lot of depth, the story that you're telling and everything that's going into it. It's just bringing that much more depth to it. And I think taste aside, when you have a really great story with your brand, that's what keeps people coming back for more. Because they're feeling those ties. They're feeling that history. They're feeling that excitement that you have behind your own brand. And yes, it tastes great. It's delicious. But that is what I think will keep people coming back for more. That's so validating to hear. We say that a lot. Like it's very validating to see the way that people connect with our story, honestly, because it's just very vulnerable experience.

22:10You know, being sharing this type of background yourself, your culture out into the world and helping people receive it in the way that you, you know, intended for it. So there's a very wonderful feeling when, you know, we hear things like that. What has it been like for both of you building this brand and being first time CPG founders? Have there been any snags in your process or is it all gone very smoothly? Oh, man, this is a journey. Like we really didn't know anything. So we were just like, oh, starting a food like a food brand. Oh, easy peasy. And obviously it's been over a year of work and every single day we're learning something new.

22:50And we're like, oh, we missed that. Oh, we should have done that. So we have to like, we move a couple steps ahead and then all of a sudden we're moving a couple steps behind. But we know that's a part of the learning process. Again, we didn't have anyone in the community that we could have reached out to early on. And now we do. So now we're kind of learning things as we go. But it's a part of the process. Tabby and I will send voice notes of us having kind of mental breakdowns. But then after we'll be like, we're fine. Everything's okay. All is well. We're going to keep going. Yeah, pretty much.

23:18And the whole thing, like our whole motto is like, we have to just persevere. our whole motto is just persevere someone once told me like you're so much further down than you think and if you think about all of those little milestones where you were like oh i don't think i can get through this milestone that's just a drop-off point like it's okay you just keep going through the each of the individual milestones and you're gonna realize you're gonna look back and realize oh my god i can't believe those were like 17 different hurdles that like i really didn't think we were gonna make through but we did because it's just perseverance like I think someone else mentioned this once before and like it stuck in my head, but you know, you're doing the best way to work on a brand and a product is you have passion and you have perseverance.

24:00You have to be obsessed with what you're working on, specifically food, in order to see it succeed. Or you have millions of millions of dollars in investment and then, you know, do you do whatever you want to do. That is probably a very good segue into another question that I'm curious about. How are you funding your brand? How are you making it happen? Yeah, we are dipping in our savings. We put money aside for a little bit of time and we are completely bootstrapping this and using our savings to fund and run the business. And that means being really cautious about the business decisions that we make, the financial decisions that we make.

24:41You know, we're not spending any money on specific elements like, for example, marketing like we do all of our own organic social we're not doing any ads right now so those are certain things that we have to think about but financially like we are fully running this with our savings and you know food is a business where and people know this and we knew this too when we were starting like it's not going to make us rich in a year like that was definitely never the goal like we had never even thought about that when we started the brand we knew that this is like an absolute labor of love. And our why is because we wanted to share Afghan culture with modern kitchens.

25:18That was our why. We just kept going back to that over and over again. And so when we're bootstrapping all of these, bootstrapping the business and making financial decisions, we continue to remind ourselves of that. So we're really cautious of our spend, to be honest. I think the bootstrapping really plays into believing in yourself as a brand because you probably wouldn't want to put your own money behind something you didn't truly believe in. And then it sends a pretty good signal, I think, to investors or people who want to fund you later on that, hey, OK, they were bootstrapping. They believed in themselves and the product tastes pretty good, too.