The Bossticks - The Do's and Don'ts of Brand & Startup Growth Ft. Chomps' Founders Pete Maldonado & Rashid Ali

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

#801: Join us as we sit down with Pete Maldonado & Rashid Ali – the Founders & CEO's of Chomps. Established in 2012, Chomps was created to fill a gap in the market for high-quality protein snacks. Today, it's recognized as the fastest-growing brand in the food industry! In this episode, hear the story of how the Chomps founders built their entrepreneurial journey, scaled their business, & continue to lead the way with their high-protein meat sticks.   To Watch the Show click HERE   For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM   To connect with Chomps click HERE   To connect with Pete Maldonado click HERE   To connect with Rashid Ali click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE   To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE   Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE   To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697)   This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential   Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE and LTK page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn's favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.   This episode is sponsored by Chomps   Get 15% off your order of Chomps meat sticks at Chomps.com with code SKINNY.    Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the skinny confidential, him and her show. Today we have two incredible entrepreneurs, co-CEOs and co-founders. Pete Maldonado and Rashid Ali of Chomps. Choms happens to be one of the fastest growing food brands in the United States. These two bootstrap the business themselves and then went on to do phenomenal things, making it, like I said, one of the fastest selling foods in market. Lorne and I have been eating chumps for years now, and we had to get these two founders on the show to talk about how they did this. This is a real story of grit, perseverance, and ingenuity, breaking into a category that has already established. And I love it because I know so much. many of the listeners of this show are aspiring entrepreneurs, marketers, people that are looking to build their own brands, their own business. There are a ton of gems in this episode, and these two are a wealth of knowledge. What they have done with this brand is nothing less than stellar. So even if you're thinking about going into a different category, if you're an aspiring entrepreneur

or business owner, or even if you work within a company that's looking to grow like they have, there is something in this episode for you. Lorne and I love talking to founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs about what they do to make their businesses successful. And this one has it all. With that, Pete Rashid, welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her. So let's get the lay of the land with both of you. Let's go back.

How did this even become a light bulb moment idea? Yeah, so I'd probably kick that off. So I was a personal trainer in college. And so I grew up in the Hamptons and right outside the Hampton. and I had these clients that lived in Manhattan. They would come out to their Hampton homes and they would meet with me. And I would spend too much time, by the way, this is over 20 years ago. And so I'd spend too much time putting together meal plans and grocery lists.

And back then, it was like Jenny Craig. It was Nutra System for meal plans. Now they're a dime a dozen. You could get a meal plan delivery program. So anyway, what I would find is they would leave and go back to Manhattan and they would get off and jump off the meal plan. and they would never stick to it. And it made life really difficult for me

because my clients weren't seeing the results that I really thought they should. So the wheel started turning. It was like, well, can I bring to market to make their lives easier? And so I've had a list of other businesses that I've started, Frozen Food Company, and all of them kind of led up to jumps.

So when you say a list of other, were these just different companies that you were trying to see which one would take off? Yeah. So you've always been entrepreneurial. Yeah. Okay. And what do you think the main reason

some of those other ones didn't take off compared to this one. Timing. I made a lot of stupid mistakes, like early entrepreneurial mistakes, like trying to get things perfected before bringing it to market. That's probably one of the big things, actually. I spent too much time, like a website. I wanted to have every bell and whistle and spent way too much money, never got to a fully functional website before we actually shut the company down. I think one other thing is raising money from the wrong person that was a real estate guy in Naples. And it was just, it was like pulling teeth trying to get more money from him or to actually just, you know, he just didn't get and get it. So, um,

doing things differently. This time, it was like, we're going to make sure this is a fully sustainable company. It's self-funded. We can grow on our own profits. And so that was one of the main things we did early on. But it, it's interesting though, because your first company was a, the frozen fitness company. Like when you think about the ability to scale and go to market, when we first, when he first started the company, it was originally to create a grass fed beef option to like Omaha Steaks. So that was the original premise and we did that for, let's say, six months, but we realized without raising money, you can't really scale a business when it costs that much to ship. It's expensive to ship frozen. And so we did that for a bit. Our moms were like our best

customers. It wasn't really getting off the ground. And that's where one of the partner we were working with had a refrigerated multi-pack that was kind of like the early day choms. And that's where we pivoted to shelf's table and try to figure out, like, how do we create something that's more scalable and perfect for e-commerce? So how did you two get connected and start working together on this? Because it sounds like there was not a prior business together. Some college buddies' wives knew Pete's wife. And we were at, I think it was like a birthday party.

It was like a poker game. And me and his wife actually made it. We were the last two people in this poker tournament. And she hates when I tell it. But I'm going to tell it because she loves this podcast and she's going to hear it. At one point, she looked over and she's like, Rashid, I'm going to throw you down the stairs if you beat me. And I ended up winning. And then after the game, me and Pete were just sitting there talking.

Did she throw you down the stairs? She didn't. She didn't. But she's done when she hears this. She's listening. I guarantee she's listening. It was an empty threat. But Pete and I were chatting.

And, you know, my background is I did management strategy consulting. I was always like a quank guy, very good at numbers, operations. Like I could really find value in data. If you give me a data set, I could figure it out. Oh, you're so important. to a business. It's hard to find you. But Pete is the complete opposite, right? He's kind of, like, at the end of the day, like, I'm not the creative ideation guy, the big visionary, but like, if you give me something, I can tinker it to make it work and figure out, like,

how do you make it scalable? How do you make it profitable? And so Pete and I were chatting, and all the stuff that he hated or wasn't good at, I was pretty strong and vice versa. And so that's, we just got talking. And then the next day, like, I think he texts me or I text him. And I was like, hey, you know, you're doing this steak thing. Would you ever want? help. And we literally met my wife, she's an attorney, she drafted some partnership agreement. And that's how it got started. What was the first iteration of the stick? So we were initially doing, it was eight sticks in a pack, like a single pack. And it had to be refrigerated. So when we were doing that like the Omaha steaks type thing, that same processor was able to make sticks,

but he wasn't making them shelf stable. So they had to be refrigerated. But I already created the, I already had that champ's name. I was created on like a word art that. The first logo was terrible. And so, but people we kept hearing, they were like, we love these chumps. They're the best, are the best. And so we're like, we kind of figure out how to scale that. We need to make it shelf stable so we can ship it. And then we just, you know, and single serve was also important.

And how many years ago is this because I like to give the audience who's listening a very digestible timeline of what it takes to become this? I think, like, people will look at you and be like, you guys made it overnight. Give us the real sort of timeline here. We just celebrated our 12th year. Yeah. So it's been a grind. And that's through e-commerce for the first four years of business.

We didn't do any retail. We landed in 2016 Trader Joe's, which is one of the best retail partners as far as their ability to select product. They know how to price, merchandise, and deliver it. So we were with Trader Joe's for two years before we leaned into others. So we were very deliberate about the growth strategy. Amazon. Amazon was, yeah, early days too. Early days.

Yeah, it was just chomps.com, Amazon, and then eventually thrive market. What was the tipping point? Or was there no tipping point? It's been slow exponential growth. Trader Joe's was a big one. I mean, we 10xed the business from 2016 to 2017. What were the hurdles of 10xing the business? Because the people hear that, they're like, wow, but there's lots of challenges that come with that.

Being able to just make 10 times the product, right? when you're manufacturer was this small family run in Green Top, Missouri, this town that if you blinked, you would have passed the facility. So convincing them to take on this significant volume where more the facility could have taken. So we needed so much time to build. And then the capital, right, because we were bootstrapped. And so we had to figure out, I think when we got the initial P.O's, first they verbally gave us certain numbers. And P and I were like, okay, this is manageable. So we started talking to our manufacturing partners, our supply partners, like, to make sure that we have enough.

When the POs actually came in, I remember calling Pete. I'm like, dude, this is a lot more than we discussed. Like, this is a lot. Like, I want to be, every single time these things happen, like, I want to be excited, but then I go into execution mode. I'm like, how are we actually going to do this? And so we had already convinced everybody, okay, we're on board. And now it was like, I don't know, it was two times what we thought it was going to be.

And so then we were like, all right. The initial order is $1.1 million. So we did $400,000 a year before. For the whole year. For the whole year. Yeah. And so this was one PO. which was going to be,

we were supposed to be for like five months worth of product, but ended up being more like five weeks worth because the velocities were so much higher than we anticipated. So yeah, when we delivered it to them,

we got a second round of POs only like three days on the floor. So it was another $1.1 million P.O., which was insane. I want to pause you guys for a second because I think there's some gold here for people that are thinking about building a business. You said you bootstrap the business,

which we want to talk about a second. But then when you get a P.O. like this, I assume you have to think about capitalizing the business because you can't yourself sustain the capital required to put an order of that size. So in hindsight, for people that are listening and thinking about building their business, are you glad you bootstrapped and then went this route? Or would you think about capitalizing to begin with to go like, how would you coach somebody if they were, if they came to you guys right now and said, I want to go into food and I have an idea and I have, you know, these resources right now,

but I want to scale it in the same way. Where would you tell someone to begin? I would say I wouldn't change anything on the way we built the company. I think you want to wait as long as possible to take outside funds. I agree with you. At the end of the day, you're diluting yourself, right? They've been glamorized taking funds. And it's not.

It's sometimes a vanity thing where it's like, oh, look at I raised X. But it doesn't help you at all. And the other thing is if you take it to, too early, you fully don't understand your product, you fully don't understand your customer, you don't understand the points of distribution. And it's like once you take money, then you're on the clock, right? Where we were able to build the business and make certain decisions, and I wouldn't change it. The one thing, and it's fortunate to kind of our relationships and where we were at, we got a little bit fortunate where when we needed the trade address PO, we had to do

a, we did a friends and family debt only round. So over a weekend, we were able to raise a million dollars. A lot of people couldn't do that. Right. And so my family kind of came, came in and helped. He had some friends that came in. But at the end of the day, like, we still had to do personal guarantees. My brother, who was, who contributed a pretty amount, he was the one that pushed for a personal guarantee. And I'm like, Trimiel, come on. Like, I'm your brother. And he's like, it's business, right? So he, they, we gave him a very attractive interest rate. And we were able to do this. We raised that that was that was, that was, that was, that was, you know, was the capital influx that we needed to be able to support the initial PO. And then we got that other

PO right off the bat. We asked them, hey, do you guys want to do it again? We paid them back immediately. Do you want to do it again? They were happy to do it because I think it was like a 30% return. And so we were able to do that. But then once we did it, we had enough cash to fund the business up until the end of 21. It was a 30% annualized return. But we did a 10% simple interest. We paid it back in whatever four months or something like that. Right. How do you guys? 30% you call me next time. How do you guys broach the friends and family thing? Like what's the song and dance that you guys did to initially to get them to invest?

Yeah, I mean, I was pretty transparent. I said like it's appeal from Trader Joe's, right, which is again, like that's a certainty. I was like, but on the flip side, it's a food product, right? Like everybody's overcooked a steak, right? And there's issues with yields. There's all these other issues. So I was pretty upfront and transparent, but I was like, but on the flip side, like this, I'm going, I'm not going to let this fail. Like Pete and I are going to be at this and we're going to make sure it's successful, but there's inherent risks, right?

And as a result, we're giving you the interest rate that we're giving you. And so they wanted the personal guarantee. There was a little talk about equity. There's a lot more talking now about how they didn't get equity, equity, but like we were at the end of the day, we were stressed enough about the business. Like I think about in the early days, like if we have the stress of having an investor on. our back too. Like it just, it would force us to make decisions differently. And I'm just glad. Talk about that for a second, because similar, we bootstrapped this business to, to the point before we went and raised capital when it got to the point where we needed to. And I'm glad we did.

But I went a different route, which is like kind of went a private equity route to not venture. I want you guys to kind of discuss what you mean, one, about having somebody down your back and two, having a time clock. Because I don't think a lot of people realize what that means when they're thinking about raising capital. Of course, your friends and family give you some money. You're not really on the same thing. But when you start taking the money you're talking about, what do you mean by that? At the end of the day, like each of these, the private equity or VCs or whatever, they have an investment thesis, right? And in the private equity space, the mid-market, it's a typically five to seven-year window where at some point they need to be able to recoup that investment. These P.E.s invest out of

funds. And so they have to close a fund to be able to raise the next fund. And typically, they're trying to raise a bigger and bigger fund. So once they cut a check, there's an expectation, and there's a clause in the agreement where effectively they get, they call it like the hammer where they can actually force a sale if they need to. And so, you know, say a seven-year window, the clock starts. So you'd want that clock to start as late as possible. And also you, if you, if you sell in the early days, your equity, the percent of ownership they're going to take is a lot larger than if you were to wait. And so we were able to hold off until the end. And end of 21, the end of 21, we did do a minority raise to kind of de-risk beat and I, but we got,

I mean, it was like an over $200 million evaluation. So it was, it was like, there's years and years into the business. Exactly. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about weight loss. So I have, I did lose 60 pounds and a huge part of that was attributed to upping my protein and meat. And things like this really helped me because it kept me satiated and satisfied. It's a really great high protein snack. What have you guys seen with the feedback of them from social media

when it comes to weight loss or protein? You mentioned earlier that this sort of started because you wanted to give your clients something that they could eat to feel satisfied. What's that been like? I mean, we've had a huge presence in all these different trending diet tribes, I guess you could say. Right.

When we started, it was all paleo dieters. It was whole 30 dieters. And it was a ton of crossfitters. And so there's always been this kind of fitness and nutrition angle. And it's kind of where we started. Nowadays, obviously, it's a little bit different. I think with like GLP1s coming out, they're huge. I mean, this is not a trend.

I don't think there's going away anytime soon. This is the perfect snack for somebody that's eating or on a GLP1, right? I think, you know, and I think one of the issues I think we see with GLP1, is that for, I think it's every, every pound that's lost, a third of that pound is muscle mass. Now, that's terrible because that means people are not eating enough food. It means they're in a catabolic state. They're breaking down muscle. And so they are losing weight, but they're getting fatter in the process.

That's a terrible thing. And so I think, you know, if you think of one of the leading indicators of lifespan is going to be muscle mass. So you're losing muscle mass and you're taking these things. You're just not eating. You're starving yourself. So that's why doctors are telling you, make sure you're eating enough protein. That's why CHOMPS is a great thing for that. We're seeing an increase in a lift in sales because of it.

Never thought that would happen. We never could foresee that happening, which we're, you know, we're happy it is. I think there's also a real moment now where meat is having a comeback. Like, meat had some bad. As it should. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone was like, go vegan.

Well, for, you know, for people that have been eating meat for the longest time, it's like, yeah, duh. But there's a lot of people that are now coming around that we're thinking about not incorporating meat. their diet that are now saying like, wait, maybe I should. And so I imagine that's also helpful when people are looking for quality sources of meat. And this has, it contains 10 or more grams of protein per stick. So for me, but you know what? Also, you're selling to me, what do you think I'm going to say? Time. Yep. You're selling me time. I can run out the door. I can throw three of these in my purse. I can eat them quickly. I can be efficient about it. And I can get my protein in. To me, I don't even look at this as anything other than getting my time back.

Right. Because like, I love my bowl of meat, but like sometimes like you just don't have time. So that's what I really like about that. Also, I wasn't joking. Like they're in the office. And when I start to feel like I need something, I'm going to have that crash and I don't want to go. By the way, I don't know what's going on in this pantry here. If I had to say, whoever's running this operation's got to get in there. But I look in that pantry sometimes and the old, like, I'm like, okay, if I see a bunch of chomps in there, I can have two or three of these things and then just keep going without having to go have it crash. And you don't feel guilty about it. No, I don't feel guilty about it at all. And it tastes good. And so I think it's interesting because if you talk to

our customers, like, they're very passionate about the brand. And I think what happens is a lot of times they got introduced to chomps when they were doing paleo, keto, whole 30. And a lot of times when you're doing a diet from personal experience, all you start thinking about is what you can't have. So if there's something that's convenient, that's tasty, and it checks the boxes. You don't have to feel bad about it, you then create this emotional connection with it. And that's where, like, if you think about CHOMS as a company, like, not only are we performing very well from a growth perspective, are repeat rates, right? Or basket size. It's like the consumers buy it and they buy a lot of it and they buy it all the time. And it's moved from, uh, we used to sell per stick,

right? Where it's like on the go grabbing. Now we've, we've moved into these pantry packs where we're bringing multiple sticks inside the home where it's like maybe the mom was eating it initially and now the kids are eating it and the dad's eating it too. And so now just if you think about why we're growing so quickly, it's because it's just a number of game where people are consuming so many more in the household and it's really translating to significant growth. Well, I think it's so interesting

because you guys have been doing this for a long time now. And this year will be our ninth year doing this show, which seems it feels short to us, but it's longer for than most people that do this. And what I find so fascinating is you're sitting in a real moment in time where I imagine this is getting so much momentum because the conversations that are starting to populate

around protein in quality meat sources and getting rid of junk and having clean ingredients and all these things is just you know like it's weird how kind of like the winds start to align and for people that are new to your brand that would be like this feels like it came out of nowhere

but for you guys I imagine it's like finally like people are talking about this does it feel that way? Absolutely absolutely Yeah, and it's actually funny because we've been doing it for a really long time. And I'm the type of person, I get excited about the next big thing. And I'm always kind of thinking about, like, do we bring more innovation out? Like, why are people not talking about this?

Why is not getting big enough or whatever? But now I'm realizing, like, staying focused on what we were doing and keeping it as simple as we possibly can, that's why we're in the position that we're in right now. Yeah, I imagine, and I talk to Lauren about this all the time, when you're an entrepreneur, and especially when you're creative and you have a brand, you're like looking at the next flashy thing and the trend and it takes a lot of discipline to not go and jump onto that thing and just stay true to what you're doing. How have you guys been able to do that over the years, especially in the early days when it was slower? I would say it's the balance and the way that Pete looks at things and I look at things have helped allow us to like you describe it pretty well our relationship, but like the truck barreling down the road.

Oh, what's the truck? I want to hear this because I have this with my COO. So the analogy is if we were, if Tram's a truck battling down the road, I'm the guy with my foot pinned on the gas. Rashid's steering and he's also set up the guard rails so we never fly off the highway. That is literally the exact situation I'm in. I'm you. I'm Peter. It's fun to have your foot on the gas. Yeah. You might crash into a tree. You ought to have someone giving you guard rails. I totally get you. Exactly. That's what happened to me in all my previous ventures. It was just going too fast and too much and then, you know, he kind of helps balance it out.

You have to know what you don't know. This is what I've learned about business. You have to be able, I think, people are like, oh, you got to learn every avenue of the business. Sure. But I also have to double triple down on my strength and surround yourself with the right team of people so you can do what you do best. 12 years in business. What is your day to day look like today? Where are both of your focuses now?

I'm just curious to know, like, as a business owner, what it looks like down the road. Like, what are you guys actually doing day to day? Yeah, I would say now, we now have a president and COO. For me personally, it's gotten me out of the weeds. Like, I used to spend a lot of time at the production facilities. I've traveled the world to meet with our suppliers. And, you know, at the end of that, you have to start thinking about, well, your time is a limited resource and where is it most valuably spent, right?

And so I think now it's more about, I call it heads up thinking versus heads down thinking, right? We start thinking about like what's next. What are the risks, right? We're growing very quickly, but it also means that you have a target on your back, right? Where it's like more, more highs mean there's more risk coming down the pipe. So we're trying to figure out, are we making the right decisions now? Is a business moving in the right direction?

At what point do we have to think about out of category and strategic things? So like I think historically, if you think the last three to five years, I was really focused on ops, finance, back of house stuff to make sure it's an order. We have an amazing team that's way better than I am at doing that stuff. And they have that covered. And Pete was really focused on the sales marketing, creative, like the big ideas. Now I think it's really about long range planning strategy, like what's coming down? And then also just thinking about like what risks, right? Like there's a new administration coming in. What's that going to do to the potential business? There's a lot of risks around a potential port strike. What does that mean? There's a lot of changes as far as the way,

you know, the government is thinking about the food pyramid or make America healthy again. So there's a lot of these things. So now what we're trying to figure out is like, let's not distract the team from all this stuff coming in. Let's figure it out and think about what that means for the business from a planning perspective. What is your guys's goal? Like do you want to sell? Do you want to keep going? Do you not know? Did you have a goal? I think at the end of the goal, like, Choms is our legacy, right? We've been doing this for a long time. And we want to make sure that it's not one of those brands where it's like, oh, remember that brand chomps? Like at the end of the day, like, we want to be the noun, right? Early days we used to, there's a, there's another very

popular meat stick that everybody talks about at the gas stations. We want to be the noun. We want this to be our legacy. At the end of the day, do Pete and I need to be at the helm? Not necessarily, but we want to make sure that the company's set up for ultimate success, depending on where it ultimately lies. But again, we did take outside money at the end of 21. So we talked about the clock running, but we definitely have time and we have very patient partners that see what we're trying to accomplish and they're very patient and want to make sure that we build something that's so large that regardless of where it lies, like they can't, it's, you can't break it.

The goal of the business is optionality. So like what we're doing now is to set it up for all of the above is you want to IPO, you want to sell the company, whatever you want to do, you can do. You don't want the pressure to have to just do one thing or the vulnerability of having to only have one successful outcome. Exactly. Oh, smart. Do you want to know what else I love about meat sticks?

I like how they sculpt my jaw. Have you heard this? Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. The chewing. Actually, I heard the dentist was on. He's like, give your kids a meat stick. See? Yeah, yeah.

I heard them talk about it. See? Oh, but it's true. They're so good for your jaw. If you're just eating like soups and broths and smoothies every day, you're not working out your jaw. And I am all about the jawline with the mouth tape. And I think the meat sticks, since I've been eating more meat,

it's working out my jaw. Is that weird? No, it's not weird. I can be in your next commercial. Yeah. You know what I like about meat sticks? You can, you don't even need any stab, but you just get Lauren there we go. Well, I've been chomping on meat sticks.

No, but it's true because, you know, even for our children, like there's a lot of parents, and I'm not passing judge, but it's like, and we do this to smoothies, but it's smoothies all the time. It's like you want the children to develop that jawbone. So getting them these kind of treats and having them chew and use their jaw muscles is so important, especially for the development of their faces. Agreed. How do you guys think about competition or do you not think about it? You kind of mentioned a little bit, but what's, do you guys look at it? Do you just ignore it? We're aware, but I don't think we allow it to change decisions or strategy in any way.

I think that's got like, like we've been super disciplined about that, right? It's kind of like, oh, this guy's doing this, but okay, well, here we go. Let's keep, like, we just stay down a path. We've never, you've never gotten off course because of what someone else is doing. And the flip side, I've seen the, some of the guys that we compete with changing their strategy based on maybe what we're doing, and it doesn't work out. So that, yeah.

I would say we don't ignore it. Like we monitor. We know exactly what's going on, but we don't let it impact the way we operate and the decisions that we make. I think in early days, like, you know, there are certain brands that we're doing really well and we're like, oh, I wonder who's so and so used for this, this and this. And we would copy them and we would try. Well, if our X bar was using this partner, we should do that because they were

crushing it back in the day. And so like, but we found out like every time we just would try to copy somebody, it would never work. So like now we have this like chomps lens where like we take all the information in and we figure out like what does it mean for us and make sure that it's the right decision for the for the business. What are some early mistakes you guys would coach your younger selves to avoid for people that are just getting ready to start their own thing? You can think of any. I think that's so many. Yeah, so many but yeah. I think that that's one of them is is is looking at what others are doing and assuming that you see similar results like each brand each company every situation is so different and it doesn't necessarily mean it would mean success for you

and I think we went down a couple paths that it was a waste of time and it didn't yield any results well I'll like I'll share some personal stuff here I don't like really talk about that much but people you know there's any business you do especially if you're talking to outside partners they're always like they always ask you that question like well who would you consider your competitors you know, like anybody that's ever pitched anything, like goes to whatever category you're in. And I personally always have the hardest time answering that. Because to what you're saying is, like, I'm aware of other people that are in our adjacent spaces. I'm aware of them.

But I pay so little attention to how they're actually doing things. And large in part, the reason dear media exists is because those people were doing things that way, it wouldn't, it didn't work for us. If we would have tried to copy that version, we would have failed in the first year. It's like the only reason that this thing exists is because we kind of just did it our own way in a completely disregard to what they were all doing, if that makes sense. And so whenever I could ask that question, I'm like, I know people that are in these spaces doing these kind of things, but I'm not aware of like how we would compete because we don't do similar things outside of like there's other people in food.

There's other people in media. Like there's like, there's that adjacency, but there's not like the teams are set up differently, the missions, the operations, the operations, the way. way that you set everything up, the way that we think about branding. Like, not, no shade at any of those people. Like, they're obviously successful in top of mind because they're doing something right. But my point is, I think if we would have thought about what everyone else was doing constantly in the early days, we would just never had a business. I think that's what you're, what you're kind of saying. It's like, it's really hard to stay disciplined and do your thing then. And I think for Chombs specifically,

like, Pete and I came to with very, no background in retail, CPG, food. So like we didn't know what we didn't know. Like everything we did just made sense. And we built the business. It's honestly pretty simple and straightforward. Right. I mean, at the end of they, we, we sell sticks. We sell a lot of them. 90% of our sales are three recipes. Well, I actually think that in some ways, like people, again, they ask for experience. But if you would have come in and looked at what their strategy was and they were doing, you would have just been a second rate version of something that in all of our eyes is maybe not the quality we were looking for. Right. So it just wouldn't have worked. Right. That's how I think.

think about anytime someone comes into like, I'm going to just go and do what this person or this company has done, but I'm going to do it, you know, I'm going to try to copy their formula and do it better. I'm like, it's not going to be what you want it to be. But I would say like the, the passion behind the company definitely changed. There was a, there was a tipping point. And you think about when, when P and I started it, two single guys wanting kind of a side hustle, because we both had full-time gigs. You know, originally it was Pete had gone to the CrossFit games and he'd seen how Jack these guys were. And it was like, they were a cult following, right? If one guy was doing it, then they all started doing it. So Pete's idea was like, can we figure out a product, make some

money, and sell it to CrossFit? Like that was kind of the original premise. But fast forward, Pete and I are both married. We both have three kids, right? And we start thinking about, like, we start reading labels more closely and thinking about all the snacks that they're eating and how much sugars and carbs. And it's like, it completely changed the way we thought about the brand. just like, let's do our part to offer a protein snack that you don't have to feel guilty about. Like, 70% of our consumers right now are still female. But you think about, like, the opportunity with kids and the male demographic, like, it's pretty huge. But there's real passion behind it. And the passion now has pushed down to our team. Like, you know, when we go to trade shows,

like an Expo West, that's the big natural food trade show. Like, people are really proud to wear that Choms logo and say they're part of the Choms team. And it's pretty cool. And it's really resonating with the culture now. So it's really evolved over time. You guys have really built a brand. When I heard when someone wants to wear your merch and they're proud of it, like that's, that's a real brand. I think a lot of times you like have a brand, but you would never wear it. Does that make sense? Like I think Glossier's done a really good job of that. People wanted to wear their name on a sweater. It's got a wild feeling to be like, we created a meatstick brand that people want to wear clothing on it. It's a great name. The name is a great name. And it's funny because when we were

starting this, the big, the big, like, you know, vision was like, what Red Bull did with energy drinks and how these kids are in high schools and they've got the Red Bowl logo all over. They're putting it on their helmets. They're putting all over their, their bikes and stuff. Like, how do we get to that level? We have work to do to get there, but, I mean, I think we're on away. It's a lifestyle thing. It's what it's kind of what the person's trying to convey about themselves.

Like, I care about this kind of quality and this kind of, and this kind of it. And that's what I was saying earlier. Like, I think we're about to be in a moment in time you're touching on the, new administration, whether you're like or dislike the way the election went, I'm excited that for the first time and a long time this country's talking about health. And I think you guys are going to be benefactors of the wave that's coming where people are going to want to start thinking about putting higher quality ingredients and foods into their bodies. We've been poisoning ourselves for a long time now. What strategic ways are you guys working with social media? How are you

leveraging social media with your brand? What are some things that you've seen that really hit, really work? The things that hit for us are usually surprising. So like for instance, like I think some of the top performing influencers were like interior decorators. Like meat sticks and tier, you have just make sense, right? Like it's, well, they're busy. They're on the go. They need to grab something. I don't know. But I think their audiences are just super aligned. Um, to your point, like it's saving time. It's hitting, it's checking all the boxes for these people. Doesn't spill on my white couch when I give it to my son. Yeah, exactly. Saving time. Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's worked out well for us. Yeah, I mean, I think just like really, anything authentic, that's the biggest thing. Like, we're not

going to go pay for some big, I know, you name it, celebrity or some big athlete. We actually do the opposite. We're usually working with, it's usually like a mommy that's got a good following. That's, you know, just someone like yourself, actually is just kind of, kind of the people that work with us, you know? I think the most successful influencer partnerships have, are ones where they would reach out and say, like, hey, I love your product. Can I just get an affiliate code on Amazon? Or like, they actually reach out and want to partner because they're truly a consumer and love the product. And then little by little will start doing more paid partnerships. And those just perform so well versus trying to get some. We've actually never gone down the path of a big celebrity

just because we just don't necessarily believe in it. We want to make sure that they truly are passionate about the product and consuming in their everyday life. And then we weave it into the way they, they share their stories and post. But that's where it worked. I think, I don't know what it's called. It's not a nano-influencer, but I would say like anywhere from a couple hundred thousand to a couple million followers,

like not massive, but definitely some traction. How is your team structured over 12 years? How many people are on it? What does it look like? Now, we've got over 140 people. Damn. Yeah.

And you guys started with two, right? Yeah. Two until 2018 is when we had two full full of gun. how you got to 140. That's a lot of employees. Yeah. And we don't have manufacturing. It's all co-man. Are you doing it in-house? No, no. Manufacturing isn't in-house. So like that 140 is finance, ops, marketing, but it's like, we have a stack team. So that's not the manufacturing team. Got it. So talk to us about how you went from two to 140. Yeah. It was interesting evolution. So we started, so like, let's start with like sales, for instance. You would think like a lot of like

brands, what they usually start with is you stack the sales team, right? You want boots in the ground, knocking and kicking indoors. We did the opposite. It was me selling and we hired one sales guy in 2018. Then we hired data people. So data insights. That was super important for us. And that's something that most small brands don't think about early on. But you need to be able to tell your story. For us, it's a story of incrementality. And we're able to show using data that we're bringing new customers to the category. So put us in the meat snack set. We're not stealing share from whoever other brands on the shelf. We're actually bringing new customers to the set.

And is that data helpful not only for investors, but for retail partners? This is the story. You walk in, that's music to their ears because they're like, oh, wait, you're going to grow the category, not to steal share. So that was early on we had that. We were able to prove that out. And the other side of it was sales ops, because we figured out, like, I say this with the most humility.

Like, it's easy to get on the shelf. Like, to get the initial PO to get, like, that's, That's the easy part. The hard part is velocity's turning, making sure you're in stock. And so we realize the insights that data would allow us to get on the shelf and you hire sales ops to make sure that are they, because you may be getting a really big huge PO and you get excited, but you kind of get blinded by the light. Because then if you double click to say, like, well, they shouldn't be ordering this much, right? It should only be this much. And being able to go back and be like, no, no, we got to cut this in half because we don't want

inventory just to sit in the back room, right? We want to make sure that it's turning. So like we brought in a really strong sales op team to make sure that we really manage the customer relationship and help them. But I think those two pieces are quite unique and rare. And typically all people think about is sell, sell, sell. We thought a little bit different. I think between Pete and the resource we brought in, that was more than we needed. We were really thinking about how do we grow the business the right way. And it's not to say that we weren't, I mean, we were doubling or tripling a year over year.

So it was growing well, but we did it really deliberately. And now with 140 employees, What does it look like? The separation of each category. Yeah. So, I mean, we have a strong marketing team that's doing, we have an internal creative team. We have an influencer, like social team. Our e-commerce team falls within marketing.

So that's like jumps.com, that's Amazon, that's thrive market. So any platform that's selling online falls within marketing. We have a sales team where it's your traditional relationship selling, and they own like the brokers. We also have a field team that rolls within that sales team. So we have boots on the ground that do demos, make sure that shelves are stock the right way. Then we also have a sales strategy and insights or category management strategy. So if you think about it, say like a mass retailer will leverage that team to think about the overall meat sticks category.

There's almost like this Chinese wall where like our sales guys and the sales strategy won't interact. They talk to they talk to the mass retailer from a category strategy and saying, like this is the overall category. Choms fits into it, but it's not necessarily the overall story. And then you have the sales team really managing what does it look like the relationship-wise and what should the portfolio look like? So that's kind of like, that's sales and marketing. And then on the flip side, you have operations, a very robust operations team.

Even though we use third-party manufacturing, we have folks that are really experts at making the product because it's a very hard product to make. We don't use sugar and sugar actually helps in the manufacturing process. And then when you remove a lot of the other ingredients, it just creates a lot of variability. So our manufacturing team creates standards across all our manufacturers as far as they have to follow X, Y, and Z to make sure the product turns out the same way. So that's on manufacturing. We also have a food safety quality assurance team, right? They're the ones making sure that there's no issues. A lot of stuff's happening in the meat space right now with

with Listeria and a lot of these recall. So we invest heavy on quality control to make sure that we get ahead of it, supply chain fulfillment, all that as well. And then we have finance accounting and HR, people, people and culture. And how do you guys typically manage setbacks or mistakes? I'm sure there's been a few over the years. Like, what is it, what is a vulnerability for a business like this? And what do, and how does the team respond to them? I think like now, the bigger you get,

the more of a target you have in your back, it's with any business, really. You said that earlier, yeah. And so we start, you know, we're starting to hear just weird things that you never really heard before. It's just the way it works, right? Exciting stuff. Yeah.

Can't wait. Things to sign up for. You know, but I think for us, it's, there's like other things. If I think about vulnerability, like things that I don't love about the product, it's single-use plastic. That's one of the things I don't love, right? I wish we could change that. But you can't.

If I want a shelf-stable product, I need to have a seal, and you have a vacuum seal that doesn't break. So this is the best thing that we've got right now. We're doing things, which we haven't announced yet, where they're coming up this year, which will actually offset that. that, which we're really excited about. That's kind of the way that we're constantly. We nitpick more on our product than anybody else would in the outside. Like we know the vulnerabilities and the things that aren't great about our product and we're already working on ways to fix them.

I would see on the we mentioned 140 people. That's in a fully, we're a remote company. Oh wow. So that in itself is wow. Yeah, it's tough. So 2018 is when Pete was full time. I was part time. I went full time in 2018. We opened an office in Chicago and we started hiring. And so we were all in the office, Monday through Friday, and that was the case until COVID, right? In lockdown came, we realized we're like, let's just go fully remote. It allowed us to hire the best people all over, right? And so it really opened up the caliber of individuals we could get, but it just created, like, how do you build culture, but then you're fully remote and how do you do that

successfully? And I think we've figured out a formula that's been working well, but, I mean, it's tough. Like, it's really tough because there's so much about that water cooler being around, especially like folks that have never worked before. Like I think all of us at some point have worked in some sort of office environment. So you learn so much just by sitting next to somebody. And otherwise you're kind of the problems that you face. You're in your own head, right?

You're sitting there trying to figure it on your own. So that's where we spend a lot of a time figuring out like how do we continue to keep the culture the way it is, but in this fully remote environment. And my two cents on that is it's possible. We have like a little bit of a hybrid, but similar to you guys, we had everybody's kind of start 2018, 2019, then fully remote. 2020 through 22 roughly. I think it's hard to start a business in the beginning fully remote, but in the beginning, if you've kind of set a base of a culture and had the core people meet and then go remote, it's going to be easier.

But I've had some friends that since then have tried to start companies fully remote, and I think that is a really difficult challenge because in the beginning, I think like the special thing in the early days is you're kind of like all agreeing on a specific mission and you're all kind of coming together in one specific culture, and then that can kind of be shared. But when you're all starting remote from home, I think it's really difficult to do. That's probably one of the reasons we've been successful

is because a lot of our early hires are still with us. We were in the office together. We weathered kind of COVID together, and I think that brought a lot of us closer. That's the best. Those people are like the champions of culture too, right? They are protective of the culture. When someone's coming in

and they're not, like, they're not fitting the culture. Like, they'll call it out. Yeah, that's why I think it's so important to have that. I guess my advice is if you want to build a remote company, you can, but maybe think about in the early days starting it, actually opposite way, like start at first in office and then go remote as opposed to starting remote and then going to office. I have to read this.

Is this true that you, it says you started chumps and Pete's apartment in 2012 with a $6,500 investment. And now you guys are the fastest growing brand in food in the United States. And based on last 52 weeks, so that's not like a near term stat. Oh, the last 52 weeks of data. With 272% in Y. 272% growth. Oh, we'll have you do the numbers.

I do other things. Whatever. Is that true? That's amazing. If you were to tell our audience to start with one, what would it be for me? It would be the original beef stick just to get your chumps wet. And then if you like spicy, the jalapeno, what are both of you guys' picks? The OG you can't go wrong with.

But for me, it's the two newest ones that we've got, the taco and then the smoky barbecue. I haven't had the taco yet. Yeah, I mean, like, we've been eating chomps for a while, so like typically the newer flavors are the ones that I like. How many chombs do you think you've had at each at this point? I'm like, God, I don't know. I'd probably eat three or four a day. Still not sick of it.

What are your favorite? So smoky barbecue is my favorite right now. And then we have the turkey line, pepperoni turkey. I don't eat pork. So for me to finally eat pepperoni, like, I feel like it's what I've been missing all my life. So the pepperoni turkey is pretty fantastic too. What's the most creative thing someone's done with these? Oh, my God.

So during COVID, there was like this meat shortage everyone was talking about, right? So people started using chomps as an ingredient in like other meals they were making. So the UGC coming out of that was insane. People were just posting pictures of these meals they created. And then we were like, we'd reach out and be like, hey, can you give us that recipe? And then it turned out now we've got a, an entire page on our website, which just chomps recipes and people using chumps and what's the best one. I mean, they've used it for taco meat. They're just like just a salad

topper. One of the coolest campaigns that the team came up with when we launched the pepperoni turkey is they partnered with all these like small pizzerias in in in near throughout New York. And the influencer kit was a pizza box with a chomps branded pizza cutter and like seasoning packet. It even had like the metal right, the tin that you, put pizza on. So the team came up with it was pretty creative, but that was a good way to to get people excited. You guys got to partner with lunchables and get rid of the fake meat in there for the kids and put chomps in there. Could be. It might be on the radar. You never know. I don't know. I would like that to a quick, like a little lunchable that's healthy. No, but I

imagine what's happening, and again, not to throw so much shade, but this kind of product is going to replace a lot of these things that unfortunately we grew up with and poor ingredients that we kind of all partook in for a long period of time. And I think, you know, as a parent, when now that we're aware of a lot of these opportunities and ingredients, when I think about, okay, what am I going to feed my kid? Like, what snack can I give them? It's something like this, not a lunchable. But why isn't the taxi cabs Uber and why isn't Blockbuster Netflix? You have to disrupt yourself. If you're not constantly disrupting yourself, someone else is going to come and take it. On that note, where can everyone find you guys? Do we have a code? Can we do a giveaway?

you all the above chomps.com we have a code skinny for 15% off your order Chomsmeat sticks at chomps.com again code skinny and you guys want to do a giveaway for the audience? Sure. Do we give away a lot of chumps? Yeah, let's give them away. Okay.

What's the boss? What's the best of their say? Okay, all you guys have to do is tell us your favorite part of this episode with the Choms founder on my latest post at Lauren Bostic and make sure you're following Choms on Instagram is at Choms the Instagram handle.

I would go on and use code skinny I would start with the original B-stick. If you hadn't had it, it's such a good one to put in your handbag or to travel with. I give it to my kids. And it's so good. It's like the perfect flavor.

These are lifesavers on flights too because airplane food is not great. Where can everyone say hi to you guys if they want to say hi? LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn and or Instagram. It's Pete Maldonado on both of them. I got to get your wife some mouth tape.

You said she listens. Yeah. The chomps in the mouth tape was sculpted jolly. line is like I'm just glad I'm finally doing something she's proud of so let's see I I think she's proud I think you've done pretty well I'm just I'm joking I have a feeling that you guys will be back on the podcast in like eight years telling your story of how you sold or did something crazy to some big conglomerate we'll see yeah hopes hopes come back anytime

guys I'm excited to see what's next for you guys thank you for coming on the show thanks very much