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Erin and Dimitri Vranas – Yips Yogurt Chips and Parthenon’s Gyros
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You have found the Authentic
Business Adventures.
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The business program that brings
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the struggles, stories and triumphant
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successes of business owners across the land. We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie.
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My name is James Kademan, entrepreneur,
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author, speaker and helpful coach to small
business owners across the country.
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And today we’re welcoming/preparing to learn from
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Erin and Dimitri,
the I would say owners, founders,
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best people in the world for Parthenons
Gyros, as well as Yips Yogurt Chips.
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So I’m excited to meet them.
You should be, too.
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So, welcome.
How are you guys doing today?
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Thank you.
Great.
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Thanks for having us here.
Excited to be here.
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I’m excited because, well,
one Gyros are awesome.
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I think it’s safe to say they’re probably
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a step above tacos,
but they don’t get the you-rah-rah that tacos do.
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So let’s start with Parthenons,
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because I think that’s where
this whole story started, right?
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It did.
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So let’s start there.
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What do you want to start with?
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How long have you guys owned Parthenon’s?
Good question.
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So we actually, Parthenon just
celebrated its 50th anniversary.
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50th?
That’s fifty, half a century.
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You say it like that, you’re like, whoa.
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Yeah, it’s a long time.
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They eat that on the Mayflower?
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We had a really fun celebration recently.
Nice.
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Oh, my gosh.
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It was a really great party.
Oh, very cool.
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But it’s been in our family
now for three generations.
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All right.
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Officially ours since 2017
with just the two of us.
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And ever since then,
we’ve really made a lot of changes.
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We did a complete gut remodel.
It gets gorgeous.
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Now, of course,
we kept our classic traditional Euros,
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and they’re still made the same way
that they have been in the last 50 years.
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Housemates, one of the last
places in the US.
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To still make everything
in hand in house by hand.
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All right, so we still grind our own lamb.
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We grind our own beef,
we grind our own peppercorn.
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We use oregano from Greece,
so it’s just meat and spices.
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Most places are from factories.
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There’s a lot of stuff in there.
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Preservatives, fillers, chemicals.
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Weird junk, which we’re not into.
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We’re all about the natural stuff.
Got you.
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So tell me just really quick.
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This may be getting off
on a tangent a little bit.
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We like tangents.
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But when I go to your place,
I see the big meat thing that turns.
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Yes.
What am I looking at there?
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Yeah, that’s the ground beef
and ground lamb with spices.
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Okay.
That’s it ground.
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It is ground.
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It’s not just like a lamb
leg that they sell?
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No, we grind it ourselves,
so we get the whole cuts.
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We grind it.
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So I always wondered because I’m like
that’s kind of like a leg size, but no,
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I had no idea what I was eating,
but I knew it was good.
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So think about,
like a burger with ground beef.
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This is ground beef and ground lamb.
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And then ground peppercorn, oregano
from Greece,
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just meat and spices and the whole thing,
and it cooks just the outer layer.
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And that’s what we slice off into a pita
with onions, tomatoes, and sauce.
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And the sauce is our second secret of what
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makes the best is that we
make our own Greek yogurt.
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So you can kind of go into
that a little bit. So it’s just milk and probiotic cultures.
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We use five cultures.
Okay.
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So it’s actually good for you.
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Our yogurt process is a very long process.
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We do the entire fermentation,
the straining, all of that.
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It’s like a 60 hours process total.
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And then at the very end of it,
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we add cucumber, garlic,
and lemon to make our tzatziki sauce.
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All right.
And then that’s kind of where yips spiraled off.
All right.
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Yeah.
Right.
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So those are two things.
All right.
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Gyro, I knew or I thought, was cucumber sauce
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of some kind, but I had
no idea what that meant.
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Yeah, a lot of them that you get
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the tzatziki sauces, it’s like
a sour cream base and other stuff.
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But also other weird ingredients that are in there.
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Well, ingredients,
we’re big ingredient readers and.
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Just natural food things that you’re
going to find in your pantry.
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It’s really important to us.
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So that’s our thing is gyros and yogurt.
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I don’t know of any other restaurant
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in the country, actually,
that makes their gyro and their yogurt.
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Oh, okay.
So that’s what kind of sets us apart.
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We’ve been doing it for 50 years now,
and that’s what kind of led into this, is
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we’re playing with taking either of those
and being able to package them in a way
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that we can kind of reach more people
other than just local Madison.
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Sure.
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Well, it was also sort
of pandemic induced, in a way.
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Originally, we were like,
let’s create another product
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for Parthenon, and then this crazy
pandemic came out of nowhere.
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Yeah, I heard of that.
Yeah, right.
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Do you remember that?
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It hit us really hard.
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I bet. At one point, we’re like,
80% down, and it was really rough.
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And so we started looking at what we’re
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good at. Gyros and yogurt. And at that one of our
friends had gotten a freeze dryer.
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So we started experimenting,
and we got our own.
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And these things, they’re pricey,
but we’re like, you know what?
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If we make a product out of it, then we
can actually make something. Justify it.
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Sure.
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But then we really started
looking into the CPG business.
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Consumer Packaged Goods that’s CPG.
All right.
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And we’re like, wow,
this could actually be something.
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And so we started experimenting
with our products.
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And of course, the first thing that we
experimented with were our gyros.
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And so we took the sliced gyro
meat and we freeze dried it.
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And it was, like, the worst thing.
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Just imagine eating chalky meat.
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It was awful.
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So that didn’t work.
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Like, okay, what’s next?
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We tried a bunch of different things,
but then we tried our yogurt and we’re
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like, wow, this actually has
a pretty cool potential.
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So you freeze dried yogurt?
Yes.
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So it’s like dehydrating.
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It’s similar, but it actually removes
more moisture than dehydrating.
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It doesn’t use the heat.
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Okay, so dehydrating usually will heat
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things up, and it will
take away most moisture.
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Let’s just say 90%.
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Yeah, a little home dehydrator.
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You make beef jerk right
out of this stuff.
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Exactly.
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So the difference between drying let’s
say beef jerky is beef jerky can bend it.
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Right.
Which means there’s moisture still in it.
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But also because it heats it up,
it also kills off a lot of the nutrients
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that are in it and the vitamins
and things like that.
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Okay.
Freeze drying does the opposite.
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It actually freezes it down.
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The opposite, instead of heating up,
freezes it down to negative 40.
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It removes most of the moisture,
let’s say 99%.
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But it does use a tiny, tiny amount
of heat so that it can sublimate.
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So it goes from like an ice state into
gaseous state and uses a vacuum, too.
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It’s really neat.
It’s really awesome.
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It preserves the shape, the color,
the size, and it actually preserves
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the nutrients and the
vitamins that are in it.
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And because it removes more moisture,
that same beef jerky that’s normally
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dehydrated and could bend the freezed dried
one will not bend.
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It will snap.
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And if you crushed it in your hand,
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you could crush into a powder because
there’s no moisture almost at all.
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Well, so we did that with the gyro,
and it didn’t bend the same.
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It snapped in half,
and you could crush it.
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And it just wasn’t good.
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Just chalky?
Yeah, it was chalky.
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Just like it turned into
a powder in your mouth.
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And then we tried it with the yogurt,
and it was a really interesting texture.
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And everything takes on
a different texture when you dry it.
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When you freeze dry it, I bet.
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Because you are removing moisture,
almost all of it.
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I know that that’s got
to be mostly moisture.
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Exactly.
Like 80% ish moisture.
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Okay, but melts in your mouth.
Yes.
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Actually, it’s a really
interesting concept.
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So then we’re like, okay,
well, this is kind of neat.
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So we tried the yogurt,
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and then we were like, okay,
this is what we’re going to go with.
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So then we started experimenting
with all these different renditions.
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We did hundreds of different variations.
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These are adding flavors.
Yeah.
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Okay.
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We’re using real food.
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We don’t add any natural flavor.
Okay.
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I didn’t mean like this chemical
is I mean like berries or exactly.
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All of that that you just mentioned.
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So most of the things and the one biggest
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challenge, if there was one thing that I
could teach everybody,
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it would be to just look at the
ingredients of whatever you’re eating.
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And does it come from nature?
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Is it natural or is it something
that you don’t know where it comes from?
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Can you get it from your fridge?
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Is it at a grocery store?
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Can you raise it or grow it on a farm?
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If not, it’s probably a preservative
is probably a chemical.
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It’s something made in the laboratory.
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Whenever people pick up packages.
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I feel like when we interview people,
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the majority of people look first
at the nutrition facts, and that’s fine.
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But for us, we try to tell people, count
chemicals before you count calories.
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Like, look at what’s in that ingredient.
Interesting.
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And if you don’t see it in your pantry,
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should you really be
putting it in your box?
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Sure.
Can you pronounce it right?
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Exactly.
Can you pronounce it if you recognize it?
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Right?
And that’s our biggest thing.
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That’s why everything
in here is all natural.
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And that’s actually what led us
to even make this in the first place.
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That’s because we’re really busy.
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In general, restaurants have
a tendency to just keep you very busy.
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60, 80, 100 hours weeks is normal.
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Plus, then we have a tendency
to take on additional projects.
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Always.
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You got to stay busy.
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I want to do this too.
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So anyway, when we really put this
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together, when we really started to give
it a shot, I was taking classes at the UW.
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We both were sitting
on different industry boards.
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Obviously, we had the restaurant.
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Then there was a bunch
going on with the pandemic.
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And so we’re like, hey,
let’s create this product too.
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We were talking about earlier,
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when people tend to do things,
they kind of do it all at once.
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That’s also part of our story.
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But it also came from a need,
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because we’re always running
around the whole time.
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Although we had a restaurant,
we never sat to eat.
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We just didn’t have time.
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So we always would eat on the run.
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Even now, I’ll get food and I’ll just
I won’t eat a narrow on the run.
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I’ll eat a standing.
Yeah.
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Or just really quick.
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Picturing.
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It’s part of the fun.
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You can find me too.
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Exactly.
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So that’s where it came
from for the snack.
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Right.
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Basically, we wanted to solve
yogurt’s portability problems.
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I would leave super early in the morning,
get home really late at night,
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but in the morning,
I would bring my yogurt with me while I
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always tell people, you can’t eat
with a spoon while you’re on the run.
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And plus, it’s not like you can
carry a fridge in your backpack.
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Not easily, no.
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To mix other things with it,
it’s just inconvenience.
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It’s messy.
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We’re done with that hot mess stuff.
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Let’s create something
you can actually eat.
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With your hands, all right.
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That’s portable and also healthy.
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Because also at the UW,
we’re taking classes.
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You’re trying to find snacks
in the vending machine.
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It’s like potato chips.
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Oh, garbage, nuts and energy bars.
Right.
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Do you know what’s in these things?
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All right.
Fake sugar, I imagine is big.
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Or corn syrup.
I imagine it’s in everything.
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Let’s talk about sugar, because
that’s a super important thing.
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Sure.
Definitely.
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Of course, as a society right now,
we’re on this like anti sugar kick,
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which is great because it’s ridiculous how
much sugar we consume as Americans,
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but it’s also the type
of sugar that we consume.
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Broad sweeteners.
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Yeah, sure, all of that.
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But as anything, there’s like good fats
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and bad fats and good
sugars and bad sugars.
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And to me, it all comes back
to does it come from nature?
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Is it natural or is it not?
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And also how much?
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So with us, we put honey
in our chips, but also honey.
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It’s important.
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It’s been around it’s been a part
of our diet for thousands of years.
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Versus corn syrup
or any other sort of these sweeteners
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that are overly processed and things
like that that hasn’t been right.
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It’s not a vitamins, it’s prebiotic.
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It’s predigested, but it’s also
coming from the Greek aspect.
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So eat honey with everything part of.
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The Greek diet, but with the antioxidants
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antiinflammatory properties
and all of that.
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You know what?
We are going to use that, but.
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Also with yogurt, too.
Yeah, right.
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I was going to say, like Greek yogurt
and honey go perfectly together.
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Probiotic, prebiotic.
Sure.
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Yeah.
I can remember looking at the ketchup
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bottle or a ketchup bottle and seeing
that there was corn syrup in there.
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Right, exactly.
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Maybe a little vinegar.
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Why do they have to add sugar to that or
even just a sweetener to that?
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Because I’m like tomatoes
are good on their own.
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Right.
And there are a lot of things
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with calories that there’s a sweetener,
like kind of like neutral sweet.
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Just because it doesn’t have
calories doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
[00:12:22]
To me, we look at everything
through a different lens.
[00:12:24]
Like I said, is it natural?
Is it from nature?
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And if it has much different properties
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than something that’s calorie
free or got you sugar free.
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So that’s why we use honey
with the yogurt for our chips.
[00:12:38]
But to bring it back
to how it all got started.
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Yeah, yeah.
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We’re talking about the portability aspect
of yogurt and how we wanted to solve that.
[00:12:46]
So essentially hundreds of different
recipes later,
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all of our team at the parthenon being
subjected to try this, try this, try this.
[00:12:55]
Do you like that?
Yeah.
[00:12:56]
By the way, hummus is not good at all.
[00:13:06]
How you gonna know what’s good
or bad unless you try them?
[00:13:08]
All right?
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How much chalk?
[00:13:10]
So we’re playing with these different
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recipes and ingredients and snacks
to make eating yogurt easier,
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but also just to have a healthy snack food
because there aren’t that many out there.
[00:13:25]
And then we started
and that was just going to be
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for the restaurant to make something
just for the restaurant and for us.
[00:13:32]
Then we started thinking about it.
[00:13:33]
We actually had a friend
that came to visit us.
[00:13:36]
He had been in Greece
a few summers back and he was at a dinner
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out with a bunch of people and he
ended up sitting next to this guy.
[00:13:46]
And this guy had started
this snack company.
[00:13:50]
A lot of people start,
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at least in the food world, they start
snack companies for the same purpose.
[00:13:55]
It’s to just make healthy eating easier
[00:13:59]
and kind of nudge
healthy society in a better direction.
[00:14:05]
Anyway, this guy started this company
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and he sold it a few years
later for a huge amount.
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It was like $600 million.
[00:14:13]
That’s a lot of snacks.
That’s a lot.
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It’s a lot of snacks.
I actually didn’t believe it.
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His name is Peter Ray Hall
and he started RX Barr.
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And to be totally honest,
I hadn’t even heard of it at the time.
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I did some research, I didn’t
believe it and it was true.
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And ever since then we’ve listened
to every interview or podcast that we
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could possibly hear because there’s
a lot of interviews that he has online.
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And we started learning that there is
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actually a pretty big potential
to make this as a business.
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Not just as a product that can help
people, but as a business to pursue.
[00:14:45]
So we’re going to start looking into just
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tons of different snack company founders
and seeing what they did and just kind
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of trying to follow their
model and their path.
[00:14:54]
It’s very interesting.
We’ve learned a lot from him
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and from a lot of other founders,
including we ran into him actually a few
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months ago at a food show out west
in California
[00:15:04]
and we’ll get back to this in a little
bit, but he was pointing to trying to find
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your product market fit,
which will get into in a little bit.
[00:15:12]
Anyway, interesting how it started as
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something to solve problems and then we
started realizing maybe we should pursue
[00:15:18]
this as something bigger,
as an actual side of business that has
[00:15:21]
potential also to reach more
people and to help more people.
[00:15:25]
So something like this,
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when I look at this from the very little
that I know about food production,
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essentially sitting on a shelf, you had
an acronym, I can’t remember what it is.
[00:15:36]
Consumer package gets versus
restaurant or restaurant.
[00:15:40]
Your problem is serving
it fresh the packaging.
[00:15:44]
You’re trying to keep it fresh or
at least keep it tasting fresh.
[00:15:48]
So that seems like
it would take a lot and be busy.
[00:15:52]
And you’re essentially pulled in two
different directions,
[00:15:55]
one with the restaurant and then
the other with the yogurt chip.
[00:15:59]
So how do you keep it all organized?
[00:16:02]
We’re really good at creating systems.
[00:16:04]
The secrets are good.
Business.
[00:16:06]
I love it.
Yes.
[00:16:07]
We’re obsessed with
systemizing everything.
[00:16:10]
Oh my gosh.
That’s a rule for my crew system.
[00:16:15]
We don’t like to leave anything up
[00:16:16]
to chance or thought
memory or memory anymore.
[00:16:20]
Common sense.
[00:16:21]
So we have logs and checklists and manuals
and training for everything that’s always.
[00:16:27]
Constantly evolving
and improving on a daily basis.
[00:16:29]
That is genius.
[00:16:30]
I love that for two reasons.
[00:16:32]
One, when we take on new clients,
the majority of them don’t have systems.
[00:16:36]
And so we’re trying to pull
stuff out of their head.
[00:16:38]
And a lot of times they don’t
even know what they know.
[00:16:40]
They just don’t that way.
Right.
[00:16:42]
Which is great.
[00:16:43]
In order to grow, you have to document.
You do.
[00:16:47]
And just two, then you
don’t miss anything.
[00:16:49]
Yeah.
If it’s systematized, there’s never that.
[00:16:52]
It’s like, oh, I forgot to do that this
[00:16:54]
one time, and now your
product is not uniform.
[00:16:56]
Well, plus, on top of that, then,
[00:16:57]
if you don’t have systems, you are
the one doing absolutely everything.
[00:17:01]
You’re working in the business,
and when you are constantly
[00:17:04]
in the business, you cannot
be working on the business.
[00:17:07]
And so there is no growth.
[00:17:09]
And if there is, it’s slow,
which is fine if you want that.
[00:17:13]
But ultimately what we want is to be able
[00:17:15]
to continue to do more things and put
these systems into place so that other
[00:17:20]
people who are smarter than we are
and who are more capable than we are can
[00:17:25]
continue down this path that we’ve sort
of created and make it even better.
[00:17:29]
Sure, yeah.
[00:17:29]
And we can help teach them
and empower them to do more.
[00:17:32]
It’s kind of the difference between
fishing or catching a fish for someone
[00:17:36]
and helping them learn how to fish,
to catch their own fish.
[00:17:39]
And that’s what it’s all about, too.
[00:17:41]
And also going back to what you’re saying
[00:17:42]
about with restaurants, they are both
in the food industry, food business, but.
[00:17:47]
They’Re drastically so different.
[00:17:49]
Actually, we didn’t realize just how
[00:17:50]
different they were until we
got into the CPG aspect of it.
[00:17:55]
Wow, this is completely different.
[00:17:58]
The only thing that’s the same is edible.
[00:18:02]
Yeah, but even like you were saying,
[00:18:03]
for a restaurant, you want to try and keep
it hot and fresh at the moment to cater
[00:18:08]
to your surroundings, the people that are
able to drive to you or walk to you.
[00:18:12]
Whereas with this,
[00:18:13]
one of the interesting things about freeze
drying also is that because we remove
[00:18:17]
the moisture and we seal it,
these could stay outside of a refrigerator
[00:18:21]
shelf stable for up to a year if
we do it right for multiple years.
[00:18:24]
So you’re essentially eating healthy Greek
[00:18:27]
yogurt that doesn’t need to be
refrigerated years later.
[00:18:30]
All right.
[00:18:30]
And that’s actually how
the technology came about.
[00:18:32]
Going back to that is through astronauts.
This is how they eat.
[00:18:34]
They freeze dry their food,
[00:18:35]
remove the moisture,
and they’re able to eat their foods
[00:18:39]
for years later without
anymore but disclaimer.
[00:18:41]
We only put a nine month
shelf life on ours.
[00:18:43]
Got you.
Okay, do you mind telling me why?
[00:18:46]
That’s just what we’ve tested, too.
[00:18:48]
We can go longer than that.
[00:18:49]
We’ve tested longer than that,
[00:18:50]
and eventually we will go
longer than that as we grow.
[00:18:53]
It’s kind of this is more curiosity
question, and you can totally tell me if
[00:18:57]
you don’t want to answer
this because I don’t know.
[00:19:01]
What is the official test?
[00:19:02]
Is it just open the bag and if it’s moldy,
you’re like, okay, well, a week before?
[00:19:06]
Or is it more like sticking under
a microscope or some magic machine?
[00:19:09]
There are a lot of different
ways that you can do it.
[00:19:11]
You can do lab restaino.
[00:19:13]
A lot of the smaller businesses will just
[00:19:16]
take a whole bunch of different samples
throughout time, stick it on a shelf,
[00:19:21]
and then they will open them over
time and then do lab testing too.
[00:19:24]
All right.
There’s a whole bunch of different ways.
[00:19:26]
To do it depending on how
microbes or anything.
[00:19:29]
They do a lot of that.
[00:19:30]
No, there’s microbe testing, there’s
moisture testing, there’s water activity.
[00:19:36]
There’s a whole bunch of different
tests that you can do.
[00:19:38]
Also eat it to see if you get sick.
[00:19:41]
That’s Dimitri’s favorite method.
[00:19:43]
I’m just going to eat like
ten bags of it for fun.
[00:19:45]
But then we do the technical.
[00:19:46]
But no, we do the real part of it.
[00:19:48]
Don’t worry.
[00:19:50]
It’s kind of neat too,
[00:19:51]
because this product is probiotic and so
we have it lab tested too, to see make.
[00:19:56]
Sure that they’re driving.
[00:19:58]
Yeah, I mentioned a lot of it has
to do with the packaging itself.
[00:20:01]
Right.
That’s really plastic bag versus foil bag.
[00:20:06]
If you sealed correctly and also,
like, have you removed oxygen?
[00:20:09]
Do you have an oxygen absorber in there?
[00:20:11]
Do you do nitrogen flush?
[00:20:12]
There’s so many different options.
[00:20:14]
And so as we were developing this,
[00:20:16]
we’re working with dairy scientists,
we’re working with R and D directors
[00:20:20]
with different operations,
and they really helped us think through
[00:20:24]
all of the different aspects that we had
to do in order to make this food safe.
[00:20:27]
So, I mean, there is a lot
of overlap with restaurants.
[00:20:31]
We’ve got all of our SOPs in place.
[00:20:33]
Standard operating procedures.
[00:20:34]
Definitely not sorry, acronym.
[00:20:36]
No, you’re good enough.
[00:20:37]
But we have all these things in place
[00:20:39]
and so we were able
to translate that into this.
[00:20:45]
Nice.
Yeah.
[00:20:46]
But obviously you want to even take this
[00:20:48]
up another level because this
is sitting on the shelf yeah.
[00:20:51]
And reaching more people.
[00:20:52]
It’s more difficult to trace.
[00:20:53]
We have to be more on top
of things in general.
[00:20:55]
So it’s interesting because as I’m
[00:20:57]
thinking about this, there’s the food
aspect, but there’s also selling it.
[00:21:02]
You’re relying on people in a restaurant
to come to your business with this.
[00:21:06]
You’re relying on managers of a grocery
store, I imagine, to put on the shelf,
[00:21:10]
and you have no idea who the
customers are directly anyways.
[00:21:14]
Yeah, there are a lot of challenges.
[00:21:16]
There that’s been a difficult part of it.
[00:21:18]
We do a lot of direct
to consumer from our website.
[00:21:22]
Okay.
[00:21:23]
And so then we are able to trace who’s
[00:21:26]
purchasing it and really kind
of target people that we think would.
[00:21:32]
Really demographics are a target whatever.
[00:21:35]
Yeah, there’s a lot of busy
people advertising.
[00:21:37]
We haven’t done a whole lot of digital
advertising, but we’ve done some of it.
[00:21:42]
But there’s a lot of functionality when it
[00:21:44]
comes to that, but yeah,
but what you’re saying when you put it
[00:21:46]
on a grocery store shelf,
you don’t know who’s buying it?
[00:21:49]
No.
[00:21:50]
There are companies that you can pay an
absurd amount of money to tell you that.
[00:21:55]
But we’re just so small right now
where that doesn’t make sense.
[00:21:58]
So what we’ve been trying to do is
[00:22:00]
a decent amount of demos,
especially in the local area,
[00:22:04]
just getting out there,
getting our samples out there or.
[00:22:08]
Sending the people around the country.
[00:22:10]
Social media influencers people.
[00:22:12]
We do a decent amount of that too.
[00:22:14]
Just trying to get the name
and the brand out there.
[00:22:17]
Right now, it’s not about
making money at this point.
[00:22:20]
We’re a startup.
Yeah, we’re still tiny.
[00:22:21]
Good luck if you’re a startup
and you’re actually making money.
[00:22:24]
So right now it’s about just
trying to get it in more people.
[00:22:27]
But also with this,
the good thing is that we are the first
[00:22:32]
this is the first of the kind, the first
dried yogurt, natural yogurt that exists.
[00:22:36]
That’s the good thing exists at all.
[00:22:37]
Well, the closest thing to it
are like the baby yogurt melts.
[00:22:43]
Okay, I’m not familiar
psychologist no, that’s fine.
[00:22:45]
They’re like tiny little yogurt
for dried yogurt melts for babies.
[00:22:52]
But for ours, the ingredients
are a little bit different.
[00:22:54]
The style is different.
[00:22:57]
We try and go more natural with ours,
a little bit healthier, things like that.
[00:23:01]
Ingredients you can pronounce.
[00:23:02]
Yeah, you know what they are.
[00:23:04]
So it’s a good thing that we’re the first
[00:23:07]
of their kind for adults
and natural ingredients.
[00:23:11]
But it’s also a bad thing that we’re
[00:23:12]
the first of their kind because
it’s not very easily categorized.
[00:23:15]
When you think of a grocery stories,
where do they sit with other plus.
[00:23:20]
There’S an educational
component to it, too.
[00:23:23]
People come to us all the time like, oh,
so these are yogurt covered potato chips.
[00:23:27]
And we’re like, no, bro, they’re gone.
[00:23:30]
And people think about yogurt covered
[00:23:32]
anything, whether it’s pretzels or raisins
or whatever it is,
[00:23:35]
and they have the misconception that it’s
healthy because it’s yogurt covered.
[00:23:39]
If you look at the ingredients,
it’s sugar coating that’s on there.
[00:23:44]
And it’s nothing to do with real yogurt.
[00:23:47]
Not great with the differentiation.
[00:23:49]
You guys mentioned that because
I teach in business planning classes and I
[00:23:55]
always tell people it’s better
to be number two than number one.
[00:23:59]
And I always use pace.
[00:24:01]
I use massage therapy as an example
because I’m like,
[00:24:04]
can you imagine just telling a random
person, be like, look, get naked,
[00:24:08]
lay on the table, I’ll put some
nice music recordings in the.
[00:24:11]
Light, you’ll be fine.
[00:24:13]
They’re going to be terrified, right?
[00:24:15]
Or they’re going to like
it too much, right?
[00:24:18]
But now a massage is everywhere.
[00:24:20]
So, like, somebody had to be the first
[00:24:21]
one, and they had to break that mold,
educate people, be able to say it.
[00:24:25]
So it’s tough to be number one.
Yeah.
[00:24:27]
Well, especially kind
of the way we did it.
[00:24:30]
So initially we had this plan where we
[00:24:33]
were going to launch in our restaurant
and then go local, regional, national.
[00:24:37]
And kind of build out.
Yeah.
[00:24:39]
Which makes sense, right?
[00:24:40]
But have this habit of kind of.
[00:24:44]
Doing things over committing.
[00:24:46]
Not true.
[00:24:50]
Okay.
I always come home and I go to Demetria.
[00:24:52]
I’m like so I did a thing.
[00:24:54]
And he’s like, oh, no, what did you do?
[00:24:56]
Where I started submitting
for these awards, okay.
[00:24:59]
And this was like, well,
before we even launched the business.
[00:25:03]
We didn’t even have proper
packaging at the time.
[00:25:05]
I’m like, I’m just going to do it.
[00:25:07]
You’re talking.
Yeah.
[00:25:09]
So this is the end of 2020.
[00:25:10]
I started submitting for these awards
[00:25:12]
for GPS yogurt chips, which we do
have to talk about the name too.
[00:25:16]
All right, we definitely do.
Yeah.
[00:25:18]
Anyway, so I get a notification
in like, February of 2021.
[00:25:23]
They’re like, Congratulations,
[00:25:24]
you’re semifinalist in Foxtrot markets
nationwide, up and Comers Awards,
[00:25:29]
and we’re going to put you in all
of our stores across the US.
[00:25:32]
And I’m like, oh, wow.
[00:25:35]
So I did a thing about 15.
[00:25:36]
Stores at the time, I think.
[00:25:38]
Something like that.
[00:25:39]
I’m like, we need to get going on this.
[00:25:42]
And so we just had a hot second to get all
[00:25:45]
of our packaging together and get
everything, and we didn’t.
[00:25:48]
Have it on our website or the website
wasn’t even up and running.
[00:25:50]
We didn’t even sell it
in parts and not yet.
[00:25:52]
So I did a thing,
and we sort of went national before we
[00:25:56]
even started selling
inside of our restaurant.
[00:25:57]
But we were close.
We put it together very quickly.
[00:26:00]
We did.
We had like all the days within.
[00:26:04]
A couple of days.
Yeah.
[00:26:05]
We weren’t selling, we weren’t online,
but we were ready.
[00:26:09]
Everything was kind of coming together.
[00:26:10]
But you always need a catalyst.
[00:26:11]
That one spark set the whole thing up.
[00:26:14]
Because ultimately you’ll never be
ready good enough when it’s ready.
[00:26:18]
Right.
You’ll never be ready for these.
[00:26:21]
Never.
[00:26:22]
Someone else needs to pull the trigger
for you in a certain way, for.
[00:26:26]
You to be like, good.
[00:26:27]
Which is another thing that we come across
[00:26:29]
when we’re speaking to other entrepreneurs
or creatives in general, Newers,
[00:26:35]
that they get to this point where it’s
just analysis, paralysis oh my God.
[00:26:39]
Over planning, just trying
to think everything through.
[00:26:42]
And there are way too many things
[00:26:43]
that you’ll never know until you actually
get ten hundred steps on the roof, right?
[00:26:46]
And at some point, you just have to know
when it’s good enough, where you can jump.
[00:26:52]
And then you figure everything out
as you’re falling off the cliff.
[00:26:56]
Right?
Yeah.
[00:26:57]
I think that goes with just
about any big decision.
[00:27:00]
Right.
[00:27:01]
Whether that’s relationship
and we’re not talking.
[00:27:04]
About making risky decisions.
[00:27:05]
We’re talking about do your analysis,
but at some point,
[00:27:08]
don’t let it become paralysis because
we see that it too much yeah.
[00:27:11]
Action or something.
[00:27:13]
I mean, there’s 50 million quotes.
Right.
[00:27:15]
Good enough beats perfection.
Yeah, sure.
[00:27:17]
Right.
And good enough can actually get done.
[00:27:19]
And in the end, you can always
find a reason not to do it.
[00:27:22]
Of course.
So, I mean, some excuses.
[00:27:24]
Of course, in the end, it’s much.
[00:27:26]
Easier not to do something.
[00:27:28]
Oh, yeah, I was going to do this,
but right, right.
[00:27:31]
Nobody wants to hear the story about
how you almost jumped out of the plane.
[00:27:34]
Yeah.
Right.
[00:27:35]
Sorry.
[00:27:36]
Now we just jump off a cliff and figure
[00:27:38]
out how to build a plane
on the way down before we crash.
[00:27:42]
That’s not true.
We have the blueprints ahead of time.
[00:27:44]
Right.
You got a stomp thing ahead of time.
[00:27:46]
Brought a couple of parts,
if you have a couple.
[00:27:49]
Right.
Nice.
[00:27:51]
So tell me,
I want to talk about the packaging,
[00:27:53]
the colors, and just the mechanics of
the packaging, the name and everything.
[00:27:58]
Yeah.
[00:27:59]
Because this always fascinates me as food
when you go to a grocery store,
[00:28:04]
who decided on this size,
this weight and all that kind of stuff?
[00:28:07]
A lot of research.
Okay.
[00:28:09]
Yeah.
[00:28:09]
So we went and analyzed store
shelf after store shelf.
[00:28:14]
We did a bunch of competitive analysis,
[00:28:16]
figured out what products we
would sit next to on a store.
[00:28:21]
Surveys, talking to people.
[00:28:22]
A lot of surveys.
[00:28:23]
Yeah, a lot of research.
All right.
[00:28:26]
Buying samples, bringing them home,
[00:28:27]
comparing the size, the height,
the weight, the weight, how much portion.
[00:28:32]
Eat it.
If you’re hungry, eat it.
[00:28:33]
Yeah.
The serving size.
[00:28:34]
Eat the whole thing.
Are you full?
[00:28:36]
What would it be?
Is it a snack?
[00:28:37]
Is it a meal replacement?
All right.
[00:28:40]
Even down to the graphics we put
into it, the fonts, the colors.
[00:28:43]
Yeah.
Does it stand out or not?
[00:28:46]
We even bring it into stores and put
it on the shelf with other ones.
[00:28:49]
Does it stand out?
[00:28:50]
A lot of pictures.
[00:28:52]
Leave it on the shelf.
[00:28:54]
This is so interesting because when I saw
[00:28:56]
you speak originally, I guess I
didn’t pay attention to the bag.
[00:28:59]
I see the little stars and stuff
on that and is that you?
[00:29:03]
Yeah, that’s right.
[00:29:08]
I love the marketing aspect that you guys
[00:29:10]
have going, or any
marketing is wrong phrase.
[00:29:13]
Just the branding.
Thank you.
[00:29:15]
The design, the colors, the fun kind
of tongue in cheek, and it’s fun.
[00:29:22]
We wanted a brand that kind
of encapsulated our personalities.
[00:29:27]
All right.
[00:29:28]
We like to have fun, and we want to
bring that out in our packaging,
[00:29:34]
in our brand, in our voice
and our brand’s personality.
[00:29:36]
Like, just something witty and quirky
[00:29:39]
and loud and bright and something
that I will enjoy selling.
[00:29:44]
I love that.
[00:29:45]
So you can stand behind,
you can support and things like that.
[00:29:49]
And also it even comes
down to the name, too.
[00:29:53]
Yeah, it talks about yes name.
[00:29:55]
So the name is interesting, so it.
[00:29:56]
Kind of start off as a joke.
[00:29:58]
Well, really, it’s kind of like
trying to name a child.
[00:30:00]
How do you decide on one name?
[00:30:02]
Well, that starts off as a joke, maybe.
[00:30:05]
Yeah.
[00:30:10]
So in this case, as we’re trying to think
[00:30:12]
of the perfect name,
we needed to come up with the names.
[00:30:15]
We didn’t keep calling them these yogurt
[00:30:17]
chips as we’re talking
for weeks or months.
[00:30:20]
So we just decided to combine yogurt.
[00:30:22]
And chips with portmanteau.
[00:30:24]
And you stick it together super simple.
[00:30:26]
So we kind of knew that temporarily
and then until it came up with the perfect
[00:30:30]
block, and then it kind of goes back
to the analysis paralysis thing, like, oh,
[00:30:33]
how long do we figure
out the perfect name?
[00:30:35]
Or do we just like, jump with this?
[00:30:36]
And then if it’s necessary,
then we do some sort of rebrand later.
[00:30:39]
But ultimately, people ended up liking it.
[00:30:42]
Plus, it’s fun in that you see it
and you’re like, yup, yup, yup, yup.
[00:30:47]
You know how you say it?
I do.
[00:30:50]
You’re subconsciously saying yes
[00:30:52]
throughout the day,
so you’re kind of saying the name
[00:30:54]
throughout the day, but also little things
like logically that we thought of after
[00:30:57]
the fact that we do like
that it’s a single syllable.
[00:31:00]
It’s easy to say, it’s easy to pronounce,
it’s unique.
[00:31:04]
And since yeps are the first of their
kind, essentially,
[00:31:07]
it can kind of potentially be like the
Kleenex or the cum tips or the Pop Tarts.
[00:31:14]
You’re not going to call
it a toaster pastry.
[00:31:16]
That’s a Pop Tart.
I don’t care what brand it is.
[00:31:19]
So that’s what we want is for people
[00:31:21]
to eventually we know more yoga trips will
eventually come out, and that’s fine.
[00:31:25]
There are thousands of bars.
[00:31:27]
That would be a good thing because they’ll
[00:31:28]
reduce your education components,
right, exactly.
[00:31:31]
But we want them to say, oh, they’re yep.
Got it.
[00:31:34]
I love it.
[00:31:36]
And it’s such a small word
that it can fit anywhere.
[00:31:40]
Yep.
[00:31:40]
And I think it’d be very tough
to be upset and say yeps to be mad.
[00:31:48]
Going back to our brand personality
[00:31:50]
and playfulness, we can use
so many different slogans.
[00:31:53]
Like I always say,
yippee and yippy parade.
[00:31:56]
All right.
[00:31:57]
On the bottom of the bag, it says,
put your lips on these yips.
[00:32:00]
Does it really?
Yeah.
[00:32:02]
That’s awesome.
[00:32:04]
You seal tightly to keep them crisp.
I love it.
[00:32:07]
Tell me about the bag itself.
[00:32:09]
How do you decide mill thickness, more.
[00:32:13]
Researchers is metal and talking to people
that know what they’re talking about,
[00:32:18]
we really like to surround ourselves
with people who know more than we do.
[00:32:24]
If we are the smartest people in the room.
[00:32:26]
We are in the wrong room.
[00:32:28]
That is a slogan that we live by.
[00:32:30]
You guys got to take a walk.
[00:32:34]
Tell me.
Also, this is an interesting thing.
[00:32:37]
When I’m talking with people that have
stuff that they throw on the shelf to sell
[00:32:41]
at grocery stores or whatever,
you have to come up with something that’s
[00:32:46]
packaged, but you also have to figure
out a way to actually package it.
[00:32:51]
And some of those machines
can be psycho expensive.
[00:32:54]
So how do you scale something like this
to be like, okay, in our little kitchen,
[00:33:00]
big kitchen, I suppose
big kitchen is working out well.
[00:33:04]
But now we got 75 grocery
stores that want to host this.
[00:33:07]
That’s exactly where we’re at.
[00:33:09]
We’re trying to figure out right now.
[00:33:11]
Right now we’re still very small.
[00:33:13]
We’re still very manual and hands on.
[00:33:15]
But we are in the process of scaling our
operations,
[00:33:19]
getting an additional space,
getting bigger equipment,
[00:33:22]
figuring out more of a continuous
process because it’s so laborious.
[00:33:27]
Right now, we need to get these bigger
[00:33:30]
machines that are able to automate
and increase our production capacity
[00:33:34]
because right now we are completely
limited by our production capacity.
[00:33:38]
Okay?
[00:33:38]
So once we’re able to do that,
then we’ll be able to actually start
[00:33:41]
scaling this thing and start
implementing our plan.
[00:33:43]
We have a lot of plans and.
[00:33:46]
Learning about this business.
[00:33:47]
A lot of these companies,
[00:33:48]
how they started, including our XBAR,
is that they would create a product
[00:33:52]
and then initially, everybody would
have to make it on their own.
[00:33:55]
That’s how everyone starts.
[00:33:57]
And then once you need to scale up,
[00:33:59]
it’s much easier to go to a contract
manufacturer to make them for you.
[00:34:04]
They specialize in that.
[00:34:05]
Sure.
[00:34:07]
On the sales and the marketing.
Exactly.
[00:34:09]
Because there are two completely different
[00:34:10]
businesses, the production and the sales
and marketing and branding and all that.
[00:34:14]
Right.
But again, pros and cons to everything.
[00:34:17]
You can scale up quicker,
[00:34:18]
but also with a lot of that,
especially in the last couple of years
[00:34:21]
with supply chain, are you
able to get ingredients?
[00:34:24]
If you do, how much more
expensive are they?
[00:34:27]
From a quality standpoint,
you lose control of it.
[00:34:32]
Sometimes you lose control
of your own recipe.
[00:34:35]
And then what we’ve had from friends,
several friends who have gone to contract
[00:34:39]
manufacturers, is if you are
too small, you’re the first to go.
[00:34:45]
Yeah, you’re in the bottom of the list.
[00:34:47]
They have capacity to get a trim, right?
[00:34:50]
So there’s a lot of positive aspects to
it, but there’s a lot of negative ones.
[00:34:54]
So for us, our goal was always to start
[00:34:57]
it, figure out the process,
and then hand it off to a contract
[00:35:00]
manufacturer who would be
able to allow us to scale it.
[00:35:04]
And we went throughout the country
[00:35:07]
speaking to endless contract
manufacturers, physically going to working
[00:35:12]
with our Rd teams, even getting to trials,
and no one was able to make it because
[00:35:16]
it’s such a unique
process and product, which is why.
[00:35:20]
It doesn’t exist yet.
[00:35:22]
Even if you’re learning, like,
this is a huge pain in the past, what.
[00:35:26]
Do we get ourselves into?
[00:35:27]
Why do we do this?
[00:35:29]
But it really just like recently,
within the past couple of months,
[00:35:32]
it came down to the point of like, well,
we either scrap this or we do it ourselves
[00:35:37]
and we commit to doing
it on a bigger level.
[00:35:39]
And so we had kind of a heart to heart,
[00:35:41]
and we both decided we’re
not ready to scrap this.
[00:35:45]
Like, for us, it has too much potential.
[00:35:47]
There’s been too much
buzz generated around it.
[00:35:49]
We know what it can be.
[00:35:51]
And so, well, let’s just do it then.
[00:35:54]
And so that’s what we’ve been planning
now is the build out of our own facility.
[00:35:58]
I mean, we already have our own facility,
but like a bigger version of it.
[00:36:01]
Sure.
[00:36:02]
To be able to actually produce
it so that we can grow.
[00:36:04]
I imagine the production difference goes
[00:36:06]
from, hey, we can make a few hundred bags,
maybe a couple of thousand to two.
[00:36:10]
Well, now we can make 250,000 bags.
[00:36:13]
We got to sell a lot of bags to justify
the expense of all the equipment.
[00:36:18]
And the equipment is very expensive,
especially with freeze dryers.
[00:36:23]
Again, why do we get into the most
expensive food production?
[00:36:27]
It’s not just that.
[00:36:28]
It’s also once you’re making something,
let’s say in your home, or in our case,
[00:36:32]
our commercial kitchen,
you’re still doing it because you don’t
[00:36:35]
have the room, because you don’t have
all the equipment to do this.
[00:36:41]
It’s a lot of hands on manual labor.
[00:36:42]
You’re literally doing it by hand.
[00:36:44]
But then at some point when you scale up,
you can’t keep doing this all by hand.
[00:36:48]
Yet to get equipment,
think about a factory.
[00:36:49]
It’s automated for the most part,
[00:36:52]
and there’s a huge gap in between doing it
all by hand, like cooking something
[00:36:56]
at home or in a commercial
kitchen or a factory.
[00:36:59]
And there’s a huge learning curve.
[00:37:01]
There’s a lot of money and investment.
[00:37:03]
And that’s kind of where we are now,
is learning how to minimize that gap so we
[00:37:07]
don’t take these huge risks in investing
a lot of money that might not work.
[00:37:13]
We’re kind of building
and learning along ways, step by step.
[00:37:18]
I mentioned at some point you have to get
the sales and marketing to meet or even
[00:37:24]
they have to dance together
for some of that stuff.
[00:37:26]
Exactly.
How often once you flip the switch
[00:37:28]
to the big equipment, you’re like,
yeah, right, exactly.
[00:37:32]
Because there are two different worlds
that need to balance along the way.
[00:37:35]
So I’m happy that we were able to launch
when we did from where we did.
[00:37:39]
We were able to build a little bit of hype
[00:37:42]
behind it, get more of an audience,
get it into retail stores.
[00:37:46]
And so now it’s kind of allowing
us to get to that next level.
[00:37:49]
I mean, there’s been ups and downs
and heartache along the way, for sure.
[00:37:55]
Yeah.
[00:37:55]
I mean, just recently we had a kind
of a major kick in the butt.
[00:38:01]
But yeah, that’s allowed us
to get to where we are now.
[00:38:03]
And it’s not going to be like, oh,
we flip a switch and now we’re going
[00:38:06]
to produce this much, and now we have
to have the sales keep up with that.
[00:38:11]
It’s still going to be
incremental to an extent.
[00:38:15]
And just like the path to anything
worthwhile or fulfilling or successful
[00:38:20]
in life or even just growing anything,
it might succeed, it might not.
[00:38:23]
Right.
But it’s not linear at all.
[00:38:25]
Everyone just thinks, oh, you start and
you do this and now you’re a millionaire.
[00:38:29]
And that’s not how it works.
No, it’s back and forth and ups and downs.
[00:38:34]
My favorite, too.
[00:38:35]
Oh, you own your own business,
you must make your own hours.
[00:38:38]
It must be so nice.
[00:38:43]
We always tell people, too,
[00:38:44]
when they’re thinking about
doing their own business and getting
[00:38:49]
into the entrepreneurial world,
that fits a lifestyle.
[00:38:54]
And they really have to want to live it
[00:38:57]
because if you’re not doing 60, 70,
8000 plus hour weeks,
[00:39:01]
especially in the beginning
and the beginning is years long.
[00:39:07]
Yeah, forever.
And also you have to be very okay
[00:39:10]
with failure and not taking things
personal and just always just defeat after
[00:39:16]
defeat after defeat, because
there is no winning or losing.
[00:39:20]
If you’re open to learning,
you always move forward.
[00:39:23]
And that’s the biggest game.
[00:39:24]
Right, exactly.
[00:39:25]
So you just can’t take anything personal.
[00:39:27]
You can’t stay down for long.
You’re going to have these hits.
[00:39:29]
It’s going to bother you.
You’re going to be off for a day,
[00:39:31]
but then the next morning you
get up and you just keep going.
[00:39:34]
Yeah, figure it out a long the way.
[00:39:35]
It’s like a good boxing match, right?
Right.
[00:39:37]
Or you’re going to have on the other side
of it, you’re going to have the positive
[00:39:41]
things, you’re going
to have the great stuff.
[00:39:43]
And we always tell ourselves, okay,
we can celebrate for an hour or two,
[00:39:46]
maybe we can celebrate for the night,
but then the next day we’re back at it.
[00:39:50]
Right.
[00:39:53]
On both ends.
Give yourself that day and then the next
[00:39:55]
day you start over fresh
and you start all over again.
[00:39:57]
Yeah.
[00:39:58]
I always say nobody gets excited
to go on a flat roller coaster.
[00:40:04]
Exactly.
You got to be cool with all of it.
[00:40:06]
Right.
[00:40:07]
Tell me about distribution, because I’ve
heard a lot of stories, good and bad.
[00:40:11]
Some of the alcohol side are,
broadly speaking, bad.
[00:40:16]
But chips you don’t have to be.
[00:40:18]
We also know that through
the restaurant side of it.
[00:40:21]
Sure.
Through the distributors.
[00:40:22]
But anyway, national or local, whatever.
Yeah.
[00:40:26]
So right now we’re not using distributors.
[00:40:29]
We’re only doing direct to retailers
and direct to consumers.
[00:40:33]
Okay.
[00:40:33]
I guess we sort of use a middle type
distributor called Fair,
[00:40:38]
where they essentially just act as
a platform where we can connect
[00:40:42]
with retailers and retailers can
order through their platform.
[00:40:45]
But that’s the only type of distributor
[00:40:46]
that we use right now because our margins
and our production capacity can’t sustain
[00:40:51]
can’t support having this
sort of middleman in there.
[00:40:55]
But distributors are very expensive.
[00:40:57]
Okay.
Yeah.
[00:40:59]
We’ve had a lot of friends,
[00:41:00]
have a lot of nightmares, but at the same
time, it’s necessary part of the game.
[00:41:04]
It’s just part of it.
[00:41:05]
Imagine you’re not throwing stuff in the
back of a van and driving to California.
[00:41:09]
No, but we do ship nationwide.
[00:41:12]
We do have retailers nationwide,
[00:41:14]
and we also have consumers who order
from our website that are nationwide.
[00:41:17]
We do ship that way.
[00:41:19]
So shipping is a whole thing because I go
[00:41:23]
to ship computers to my employees and I’m
like, I think I could have bought it
[00:41:29]
on Amazon and EBITA Ship for what I paid
debit Shipped,
[00:41:33]
which is one of those, like, I feel
like I’m supplementing something here.
[00:41:38]
So, I mean, these are relatively light,
[00:41:40]
but I imagine it’s still
something you have to ship.
[00:41:43]
Yeah, well, we are really lucky
that they are very light.
[00:41:46]
Another thing with the freezer
shop stable is we lose time.
[00:41:49]
Yeah.
60, 70% of that weight.
[00:41:52]
So weight wise, it’s great for shipping.
[00:41:55]
Okay.
[00:41:56]
In terms of the heat and the stability in
shipping, it’s like the perfect product.
[00:42:02]
Yes, definitely.
It’s frozen refrigerator at any speed the.
[00:42:04]
Next day, or glass jar,
which is super heavy like these.
[00:42:09]
You can just throw them
in the air and drop them.
[00:42:11]
They’ll be fine.
[00:42:12]
They might crush a little bit,
but they still taste great.
[00:42:14]
Okay, so I guess the other question,
I guess, is about the cost.
[00:42:20]
When people are on the website and click,
[00:42:23]
a lot of people assume that shipping
is just magically free, right?
[00:42:27]
From some other ecommerce
retailers, right?
[00:42:29]
Yes.
[00:42:30]
They aren’t magically free.
No.
[00:42:32]
It’s a big cut.
[00:42:33]
So that’s why on our website we have
a threshold where
[00:42:38]
you’ll have to pay for shipping,
but we don’t jack up the shipping.
[00:42:42]
This is literally what it costs.
[00:42:44]
It’s $9 to ship something.
[00:42:45]
It’s $9 to ship something.
[00:42:47]
But once it’s above, say,
[00:42:48]
like $50 or something like that,
we just eat the cost of shipping.
[00:42:51]
Got you.
[00:42:52]
It hurts a little bit,
but at the same time, it’s also fair.
[00:42:56]
They’re getting more.
[00:42:57]
Okay, sure.
Got it.
[00:43:00]
It is a different avenue also,
[00:43:01]
which didn’t really exist as much
in the past, where you can do direct
[00:43:04]
consumer online, whereas before it
was just kind of grocery stores.
[00:43:08]
And in order to go grocery stores,
[00:43:10]
in order for the mass distribution, you
need distributors and things like that.
[00:43:14]
But that’s what kind of scaling up
kind of fits into that,
[00:43:19]
where you can produce something
for cheaper to accommodate for the extra
[00:43:24]
cost, for the distributors to go
into more than mass distribution.
[00:43:27]
I suppose once you’re on scale or each.
[00:43:29]
Well, also we have this omnichannel
[00:43:32]
distribution strategy where we are doing
direct to consumer on our website.
[00:43:37]
We’re doing direct to retailer.
[00:43:38]
Eventually we’ll include the distributors
[00:43:40]
in there and eventually
we’ll get on Amazon too.
[00:43:42]
Because you have to be on Amazon.
[00:43:45]
I mean, you don’t have to, but.
[00:43:47]
Right, I get it.
[00:43:50]
I have an audience.
[00:43:52]
Having all of this altogether will help if
[00:43:54]
say one falls because that’s a lot
of what happened during the Pandemic.
[00:43:59]
All right, but one of the most.
[00:44:00]
Difficult parts of it.
[00:44:02]
But I think one of the secrets that we’re
learning and we’re learning from.
[00:44:04]
You’Re talking about product market Fit.
Product market fit.
[00:44:06]
We’re learning from Peter Ray Hall RXBAR.
[00:44:09]
And a bunch of other people too.
[00:44:11]
That’s like the number one thing.
[00:44:12]
And it’s also something that we’re
still trying to figure out.
[00:44:16]
What is your product market fit?
Explain it.
[00:44:19]
So you have the product now you got
to find your market and you got to figure
[00:44:22]
out how to reach them in the most
efficient way possible.
[00:44:25]
For example, if you make a product,
[00:44:27]
a food product, your natural tendency
is to go into grocery stores.
[00:44:31]
That’s where food goes, grocery stores.
[00:44:33]
But there’s a couple of things with that.
[00:44:35]
You go into a grocery store,
you have thousands of competitors.
[00:44:38]
Also when people go there,
they’re also value shopping.
[00:44:40]
They’re trying to find
the cheapest product.
[00:44:41]
They can depending on the grocery store.
[00:44:43]
You go in, depending they’re all down.
[00:44:45]
To the product market Fit.
[00:44:46]
So for us, we need to be very careful
[00:44:48]
and not necessarily put our product
in conventional grocery stores because
[00:44:53]
we’re not going to find the consumers
who are going to want to purchase our.
[00:44:57]
Products, the ones that
are healthconscious,
[00:45:02]
that are looking for healthy products
and maybe they’re not as value driven.
[00:45:11]
Right.
[00:45:12]
The cost is not as big of an issue
then we’re not competing with.
[00:45:15]
Cheetos or do you’re concerned about
[00:45:17]
what’s going on in their body rather
than out of their wallet kind of thing.
[00:45:19]
Exactly.
[00:45:21]
So going back to our export,
what they did the first two years,
[00:45:25]
they sold online and they went
to CrossFit Gyms specifically.
[00:45:28]
So think about how specific that is not
[00:45:30]
grocery stores they didn’t go into it
not just Gyms, CrossFit Gyms.
[00:45:34]
And that’s what kind of got them their
[00:45:36]
start and they had
a backdoor into the market.
[00:45:38]
All right, so that’s one of the biggest
[00:45:40]
challenges, trying to figure out exactly
who our market is and how to kind of go
[00:45:43]
into a backdoor to find them specifically
with not as many competitors.
[00:45:47]
And several of the companies that we’ve
seen that have found success have found
[00:45:51]
side doors, not necessarily backdoors,
but more side doors.
[00:45:55]
What are the different avenues that they
[00:45:57]
can take that’s not just getting it
on a conventional grocery stories shelf
[00:46:02]
where it can reach your
perfect target market?
[00:46:04]
The people who are going
to be the die hard fans.
[00:46:07]
Those are the ones that you need.
[00:46:09]
So that’s something that we’re
still trying to figure out.
[00:46:11]
And we’re also trying to figure out,
[00:46:13]
along those lines how to categorize it
because it’s so unique.
[00:46:19]
It doesn’t fit into the chips category.
[00:46:22]
It doesn’t fit into the yogurt category.
[00:46:25]
So we’re trying to figure out where do
we put it on shelf in order to do this?
[00:46:28]
And so this has taken a lot
[00:46:30]
of experimentation, and even recently,
we got a pretty big gut punch because one
[00:46:35]
of our bigger retailers ended up
dropping us, which was my fault.
[00:46:42]
It hurt, and it was a learning lesson.
[00:46:45]
No, but it was my fault because
I wanted to experiment.
[00:46:49]
We were in a category,
and I was like, you know what?
[00:46:52]
We probably shouldn’t be in that category.
[00:46:54]
Let’s try we’re more at the candies.
Yeah.
[00:46:57]
And you’re like, we’re not candy at all.
[00:47:00]
And so, you know what?
[00:47:01]
Let’s try putting it in, like, the dried
fruits category or younger category.
[00:47:05]
And so it just didn’t work in those
[00:47:08]
sections because people go into those
categories and they’re looking for dried
[00:47:12]
fruits, or they’re actually looking
for conventional yogurt, whatever it is.
[00:47:17]
So it’s been an interesting learning
[00:47:19]
curve, trying to figure out
where are we going to put this?
[00:47:22]
I have some friends that have these
[00:47:25]
products, and, for example,
there’s one that has chips,
[00:47:28]
and she won’t go into the chip aisle
because she doesn’t stand out there.
[00:47:32]
She’ll go into the produce aisle,
and that’s where she does well.
[00:47:36]
So that’s where it’s really creative.
Right.
[00:47:39]
Because she
[00:47:40]
bars and beer and beer with chips,
and she doesn’t have many competitors.
[00:47:44]
When you go in there, it’s one of the few,
maybe the only ones that will be in there.
[00:47:47]
All right, so that’s a machine.
[00:47:49]
Yeah.
[00:47:50]
She’s brilliant.
[00:47:51]
Years ago, we’ve learned a lot from her.
Yeah.
[00:47:54]
From a lot of people.
[00:47:55]
We’re trying to learn from everyone we
[00:47:57]
need, and that’s a big thing,
is kind of going directly to the market.
[00:48:01]
So find the product and attach it
connected to the market directly.
[00:48:06]
All right.
[00:48:07]
And that might be health conscious parents
that are looking for a snack for their kid
[00:48:11]
that doesn’t really exist, that they don’t
want something like Doritos or whatever.
[00:48:15]
Or it could be someone that’s maybe
in yoga or who knows?
[00:48:21]
That’s what we’re trying to find.
Narrowing.
[00:48:23]
Yeah.
Interesting.
[00:48:25]
I’m thinking, like, my kids in sport,
so I could see that at his camping.
[00:48:30]
That’s actually what we’re finding, too,
[00:48:32]
is originally we didn’t want
to market toward the children.
[00:48:34]
We wanted to market toward essentially
millennial women, usually.
[00:48:40]
But what we’re finding is adults,
just health conscious adults in general.
[00:48:43]
But, I mean, you really got a niche down
[00:48:45]
so that you can target
someone specifically.
[00:48:48]
Otherwise, you’re just targeting everyone
and you’re not getting anything.
[00:48:50]
Yeah, everyone’s a target.
[00:48:53]
Exactly.
[00:48:55]
In trying to niche down,
what we’re finding is that people are
[00:48:58]
buying them, but then the people who are
consuming them are their children.
[00:49:02]
I mean, the kids are stealing their snacks
[00:49:04]
from their mothers, which is
cool that it’s working that way.
[00:49:07]
So my kids specifically is one
of those kids that get hangry.
[00:49:11]
Yeah, I do too.
[00:49:13]
He’s like a mugwye, right.
[00:49:14]
The rules to keep them fed all the time,
and he’s always moving.
[00:49:20]
So it’s one of these, like, this is clean.
[00:49:23]
He doesn’t have yogurt, whatever.
Right?
[00:49:26]
Exactly.
[00:49:28]
And it’s not candy.
[00:49:30]
Yeah, it’s not candy, but they’re still.
[00:49:31]
Going to enjoy the flavor, right?
[00:49:33]
You’re not giving them some trash
canola bar or something like that.
[00:49:36]
So this would be there’s a convenience
factor that I think is plus you.
[00:49:42]
Don’T have to worry about your kids
[00:49:43]
throwing yogurt all over
the back car window, right?
[00:49:45]
Oh, my gosh.
Minivan smell, right?
[00:49:47]
Yeah, delicious.
You love that sour yogurt.
[00:49:49]
Oh, that’s funny.
How can people find these?
[00:49:52]
So we are online at yipsyogurtchips.com,
and also we’re in several stores around
[00:49:57]
the Madison area,
including throughout the US.
[00:50:00]
Of course.
[00:50:01]
And Parthenon, tell us where is Parthenon
for the people that don’t know.
[00:50:04]
People that don’t know.
[00:50:06]
316 State Street, downtown Madison, right
in the middle of State Street. I feel like people
[00:50:11]
know Parthenon is more than they know the capital.
[00:50:18]
It’s been there almost as long. The capital is near Parthenon.
[00:50:24]
That’s funny. How do you get to the capital? You go to Parthenon’s, go up 3 blocks.
[00:50:25]
50 years, though. That is incredible.
Yeah, it’s really neat.
[00:50:28]
That is impressive.
[00:50:30]
We’re really excited.
[00:50:31]
It’s pretty rare for a restaurant to make
[00:50:32]
it that long, so we’re
honored to be a part of that.
[00:50:35]
Steering in a different direction
and still working with family,
[00:50:38]
which is always interesting
in a different direction.
[00:50:41]
I mean, I’d love to have you guys
on another time because we’re running out
[00:50:43]
of time here, but I want to know the story
about dealing with family and transition,
[00:50:49]
how that worked,
and when you’re like yogurt chips,
[00:50:52]
they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
this isn’t what we do.
[00:50:56]
This is exactly how it happened.
[00:50:57]
But now they’re like, yeah, let’s do it.
I love it.
[00:51:00]
Yeah, there’s some resistance
with everything all along.
[00:51:03]
I mean, there’s any change?
[00:51:04]
Any change you’re like, hey,
we’re going to change the doorknob.
[00:51:08]
You sound like you’ve worked with family.
[00:51:10]
I have not, but I’ve seen it.
[00:51:12]
I’ve seen it, so I don’t. We’re family, too,
but it’s different family, you choose.
[00:51:20]
And I love working with her. It’s amazing.
[00:51:24]
But it was difficult for a while
until we really defined our roles.
[00:51:28]
Trust me, on a daily basis, it still
gets difficult, but we always learn.
[00:51:33]
What are you talking about?
No, but you always know.
[00:51:35]
I have a joy to work with.
[00:51:38]
You can’t take anything personally.
[00:51:39]
You’re always learning and improving
[00:51:40]
and helping each other grow,
and that’s what it’s all about.
[00:51:42]
Yeah.
That’s amazing.
[00:51:43]
I love it.
[00:51:44]
So yipsyogurtchips.com. And people
can buy stuff or buy these there?
[00:51:50]
How many varieties do you have?
[00:51:51]
Yeah, we have three right now.
[00:51:52]
Three okay.
Yeah.
[00:51:54]
Super berry, almond butter
banana, and cocoa sea salt.
[00:51:56]
All right.
Nice.
[00:51:57]
I love it.
Well, thanks for being on the show.
[00:51:59]
Thanks for having us.
Really enjoyed it.
[00:52:02]
I love it.
[00:52:02]
Yips Yogurt Chips.
[00:52:03]
Got an awesome name
and Parthenon’s with gyros.
[00:52:07]
You can’t go wrong.
[00:52:09]
I love me some gyros
yeah.
[00:52:11]
This has been Authentic Business Adventures. A business program that brings you the struggles, stories, and triumphant successes of business owners across the land.
[00:52:24]
We are underwritten locally by the Bank of Sun Prairie.
[00:52:26]
You could do us a huge favor, hit that subscribe button. Smash that like, big old thumbs up button.
[00:52:28]
And if you could do it even bigger,
[00:52:30]
favor comment, ask questions
for Dimitri and Erin, let them know.
[00:52:35]
What do you like?
[00:52:35]
What do you want to know about yips, producing food, gyros, all that jazz.
[00:52:39]
Maybe what you don’t like
so we can get better.
[00:52:40]
Yeah, right.
Name of the game.
[00:52:43]
Always be improving.
[00:52:44]
I love it.
My name is James Kademan.
[00:52:46]
And Authentic Business Adventures is
brought to you by Calls on Call offering call
[00:52:50]
answering and reception services for
service businesses across the country.
[00:52:54]
On the web.
Callsoncall.com. As well as
[00:52:57]
Draw In Customers Business Coaching, offering business coaching.
[00:52:59]
Services for entrepreneurs looking
[00:53:01]
for growth on the
web at drawincustomercom.com. And of course,
[00:53:05]
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for the entrepreneur in all of us.
[00:53:08]
Available wherever fine books are sold.
We’d like to thank you,
[00:53:11]
our wonderful listeners and viewers
and our guests, Erin and Dimitri.
[00:53:17]
Tell me the website one more time.
[00:53:19]
Yipsyogurtchips.com.
[00:53:21]
I’m like it’s got to be on here.
I can just search it.
[00:53:24]
It’ll pop up.
It’s on there easy.
[00:53:27]
Past episodes can be found morning, noon, and night.
[00:53:29]
Podcast link found at drawincustomerstonesh.com.
Thank you for listening.
[00:53:32]
We’ll see you next week.
[00:53:33]
I want you to stay awesome
if you do nothing else.
[00:53:35]
Enjoy your business