(Slow Burn) Starting and Fastlaning a snack & nutrition brand.

[RicardoGrande]

Hey there,

You may know me from my Web Design thread where I learn the ins and outs of salesmanship, winning business, delivering, and scaling and ALL of the associated hits that come with that . Besides all the learning and getting the hell out of the soul-sucking corporate job (the other thread's primary purpose)- I've actually had another business idea I've been wanting to follow for a good few years as a passion project.

This thread won't be as regular, but I found the extra time and decided to start it in the background since the framework I'm following is fairly passive for about the first 6 months.
Essentially, I see a huge gap in the market, and I see a subset of brands and products that (in my belief) are harming their consumers but don't have to. There's a lot of I've been mentally contending with because my vision ends with a product line on grocery store shelves... but I've decided to take a first step with a simple food product in the nutrition/performance space.

I already ran the idea through ratemybusinessidea.com and it seems I can see about a 5-10million dollar return if I execute this WELL. EVEN if I don't, I'll learn about sourcing, ingredients, branding, taking something to market- and most importantly: NETWORKING, I listened to some interviews of others that succeeded in this space and they chalk up a lot of their success and knowledge to contacting people that already did it before. If I'd never cold-called before, this would seem impossible, but with all the work I've done in the last year, I feel more ready to put myself out there and take on these challenges.

Now, this space is crowded but for some reason new ventures seem to be able to still sell well. One of the companies I researched had an existing supplement line (horrendously flooded market) with it's brand's strength on it's flavors but they still seemed to sell about 1Mil/year (but admitted to only have about 11,000 in the bank account after operating costs, go figure.). I'm looking at a larger TAM but being able to get the hooks in and get my product out there will be a challenge once I get to that point- Ryan Moran's framework promises a good way to launch TO an audience though, so it'll be up to me to execute.

---------------------------------------

Starting this thread- just to put it on the back burner because this business is following a slow-boil outline I learned about from Ryan Moran's newbie business framework and the feedback from his student's that followed it.

What will we be doing in this thread?
- Following Ryan's 12 months to one million framework
- Recording progress updates
- Reporting on metrics and my journey learning how to develop a food product (How do I make something shelf stable? Where do I get packaging? I can cold call a small business... how do I sell to a national chain like costco?)

I'm glad to report that I've already taken the following steps:
- Bought the domain about a year back so it has some good domain age
- Found a neat hack to generate content (NOT ChatGPT- I'm old school )
- Decided on flavors and the MUST-HAVE ingredients in order to generate maximum enjoyment and value skew... I just need to find a way to get someone else to make it so I can stop destroying my counters.

From here, I need to focus on building up a follower base and figuring out a recipe and finding people that have done this before to learn how to develop my product idea and start testing it.
Feeling pretty good, at least with the progress I've made and things I've learned so far. Ryan Moran interviewed a student awhile back who followed this with a much more simple product and imo less of a market and that guy's business took off to the races so... here's to a shining light at the end of the tunnel?


Only time will tell, hope to update this with something interesting in a month or two.
Cheers y'all.

 

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[RicardoGrande]

After almost years of not being able to find it and putting this to the side, I cracked the "search cipher" as MJ calls it in TGRRE and was able to not only locate podcasts from people who have done what I aim to do before me, but also how they did it along with their challenges and struggles. Specifically looking at:
- First formulations
- Building an audience to launch to
- Revising and getting it right with a food scientist
- Negotiating with copackers
- Smaller things like making it shelf stable

Right now, I have 2 recipes in mind I'm going to cook up and try, inputting my raw ingredients it looks like it'd be very easy to get the macros I want in this product while keeping it to few ingredients. The sticking point will be in making it shelf stable and actually good to eat without using the cheats any of my competitors love to use- it won't be easy, but if people were satisfied with the competitors they wouldn't be b!tching about them like I am.

Going forward, have these steps to take care of:
- Start and grow a Facebook group around my niche and the people I want to serve, which I've never done before and seems terrifying but plenty of Ryan Moran's students have done it
- Link the FB group with my authority site
- Figure out how to film and make youtube shorts, thus achieving the "traffic triangle"
- Have opt-ins to build a list from this
And most importantly:
- Settle on my recipe and produce and sell at least 200 units at my local farmer's market

Last step may not be necessary but ultimately I want this to be something even a completely normal, HFCS-addled american adult could accidentally buy and enjoy eating; and that opens the door to making a product for kids because my vision involves growing into serving parents that want their kids to enjoy snacks but not 50-ingredient GMO monstrosities.

 

[RicardoGrande]

Managed to prototype the first recipe I had today.
I fudged a couple things and my worst sin is that I misplaced my mixer's drill bits and had to whip my concoction by hand for 30 minutes (mind you I hit the gym today).

Was a spectacular f***up... but baked it anyway, and was pleasantly surprised with what came out. Given what I used, I didn't expect something so edible and fluffy. Based off of this, I have two new ideas for products I can run down the line (Ryan suggests starting with one scaling to four) that I'd never even have imagined was possible before I took a leap and f***ed up my recipe lol. I know sometimes there's setbacks but kinda surprised this one worked out and it puts more wind in my sales that I can make this brand work and steer it in a way that serves people better.

Next steps are to perfect this recipe and the other I have in mind for the same product (find which one is easier to make, more pleasant to eat, and I could get a commercial kitchen/copacker to make) while starting up a FB group to serve my niche.

 

[Parks]

Dude awesome to hear your progress. Will definitely be watching.

 

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[Panos Daras]

I am also in the food industry myself coming from a lineage of farmers. Glad to see this progress thread! Finally good to see people going away from software and services that are so common in this forum. A Question I have for you: how are you going to validate the need for your product?

 

[RicardoGrande]

I am also in the food industry myself coming from a lineage of farmers. Glad to see this progress thread! Finally good to see people going away from software and services that are so common in this forum. A Question I have for you: how are you going to validate the need for your product?

Super True, there is so much potential in food, physical services and manufacturing but people overlook it because it's not the sexy, "Make 10k a month by getting people on fiverr to do the work for you in the next 5 days" kinda gig but is much more sustainable in the long term. The only reason why I'm doing this now is because I've waited for the past 5 years since I changed my diet and lost 100lbs but no one has bothered to put a product like this out onto the market and I was tired of buying the competitor's products and feeling instant regret the moment I ate them.

I'm pretty pumped because one or two people near my target niche were so successful starting similar businesses in the 2010s that they were able to buy commercial space and do their own manufacturing- thus providing hundreds of medium and high skilled jobs to THEIR areas here in the U.S.- I don't know if I'll be as lucky but I'll work damn hard for it.

For validation- I've been watching the space for over half a decade now and it seems like every month a new competitor comes out and gets decent success. Most notable was a swedish brand that is now in two major chains of gas stations down here in the southern u.s., basically dominating the market and kicking out one of the old main competitors. I also swing through the nutrition item aisles anytime I shop and take notes of the trends- even regular brands are starting to reduce their sugar and introduce other skews and I believe I have a good chance if I can position right.
The lynchpin will be in growing my facebook group, serving them, and driving a funnel aiming for about 500-1000 members on an e-mail list that I can launch to. Ryan Moran has quite a few interviews up you can listen to where people just started out with either only an fb group, an insta page or a blog, launched and iterated, and grew into 1m$ businesses.

All this is just theory until I can put it into action and get feedback though.

 

[Panos Daras]

I think it is a nice take. Barebells (I assume that is what you refer to) are a very nice brand actually and would love to see more similar products/ brands that are high in protein, low in calories, and don't taste like chewing on a lab report, and at a reasonable price. Most protein stuff cost way too much but maybe they are too costly to manufacture, I don't know...

 

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[BizyDad]

Following and awaiting the inevitable website drop...

So that I can subscribe to the monthly service...

I'm Grande hungry Ricardo. Let's do this.

 

[RicardoGrande]

Alright-
Realized I'd put off starting an FB group for months and I realized it was purely out of some abstract fake "fear".
I KNEW there were plenty of people who started and ran them, and most everyone in Ryan Moran's groups had no qualms starting them up for their communities. Already had a name, assume it may need tweaking to better speak to who I want to serve in the future, but the page itself is up.

Now it's down to some housekeeping and whipping up a cover photo- then pushing out my content to my main site and finding snippets to post back to the group. I also know I can go ahead and create some youtube shorts and some of the other pages I'm tracking are doing the same thing.
Between the blog-fb group-youtube shorts I should have what Ryan calls the "traffic triangle" in place and from there it'll be on me to nurture that... wait I'll need to write e-mails for an e-mail list if that's the case... oof. After that, main challenge will be GROWING it- and that's something I've never done before or have any clue about (I never use facebook lol).

Products
Been slacking on finding the time to take some of the recipes I've found and adapt them, luckily the local farmer's markets are still going on but it will come down to finding three good products I want to try and testing them out and getting feedback. Have been doing some digging and oddly enough found a lot of pre-70s recipes that I can adjust and adapt which will take a lot of guesswork out and put it back into my hands. If it comes down to it I can pay a VA to dig up recipes meeting my parameters and just try testing those from there.

My #1 is still heavy on my mind and I see things "sort of" like it on shelves, but nothing that I would want. Thanks to a chat with @amp0193 this past weekend, he brought up that you can test and pre-validate almost anything on the cheap with some facebook ads pointed to an e-mail intake splash page, so I drew up a quick image/creative and a plan to advertise that to my target audience and see if it attracts any sign-ups or interest.


Overall- running with the punches but moving forward slowly but surely.

 

[amp0193]

I also swing through the nutrition item aisles anytime I shop and take notes of the trends- even regular brands are starting to reduce their sugar and introduce other skews and I believe I have a good chance if I can position right.

I can't believe how long it's taking to see reduced sugar stuff getting rolled out. I can't be the only American who wants more options.

Go to any grocery store in northern europe and most of the shelves will be great stuff.

I just want to mix some damn Scanadavian Museli in yogurt... but if I can find any at all, I'm in for 20g of sugar at least. Too much garbage food here.

After that, main challenge will be GROWING it- and that's something I've never done before or have any clue about (I never use facebook lol).

Don't focus on growth for now. Focus on CONSISTENCY of content. Putting a lot of shit out in a day or two will do nothing. You need a system and plan for doing your whole triangle or whatever at regular intervals and NEVER miss. Only until you can see what's working or not working will you be able to figure out what to do more of, and how to try and grow it.

 

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[RicardoGrande]

Alright, came back from a small hiatus through June and July.
Got to listen to some more starting stories about other doing something similar, looking for better ideas on how to start on the brand, how to contact copackers, and how to develop the product and launch it.

Now have 3 products in mind, playing around with #3 today because I think I can make something that would not only be a GREAT snack for kids but possibly one of the few non-deleterious things they could eat that could add some missing nutrition. Even just going for a walk I see the litter and the trash of all the high-fructose corn syrup pancreas bombs american kids jam down their throats every day and if there is ANYTHING I could do to displace that and help them become calmer, healthier, and not ram-rodded down the path to diabetes then I could die a happy man.

Experimenting more with the recipes, and trying a new ingredient across product 1 and 3 that's a common by-product of food industry production, but is packed with nutrients that a lot of diets appear to be missing from what I've read that helps me keep the ingredient count low and the texture pleasant. Have the macros calculated for what I've thrown together so far and blowing through all my goals easily. Right now it's just down to getting a better texture, and trying to make it drier to be shelf stable but I've heard a copacker can also help with that.

For product 2, kind of throwing in the towel but I bought a competitor's from the gas station, saw the price ring up and almost sh@t my pants and immediately thought "I can do this better at scale and get people off of eating GMO corn-based slop". Have already e-mailed a few producers including one in my state that works with u.s. grown product and looking forward to how that turns out.

right now
- Made some images to run FB test ads, trying to figure out how to run stable diffusion to make a mock-up "photo" because my current product looks... non attractive to say the least and clip art won't convert
- Landing page for e-mail capture is ready, just need to drive traffic with ads and measure sign ups
- Realized I get to get my happy face on youtube shorts and insta reels, studying how to do that and not look like a garage operation (this is entirely a garage operation lmao)- I don't want to be one of those people with a ring light and a set up but I allegedly can communicate well and hold attention accd to people so it's time to put that to the test
- Spied on other students in from Ryan Moran's group, one guy who claimed to be doing 600k in sales so far this year was barely getting 15-20 likes per post on insta, one lady that was a case study on youtube barely gets 40-50 on insta and 10-15 on facebook but hasn't had to work a job since 2019 running her brand. If THAT is the barrier to break to make sales, I feel a helluva lot more confident making this work
- Not entirely happy with the brand name, mulling over a better name to speak to the audience

That's the update, we'll see how this develops.

 

[Mikkel]

You seem to be doing a lot of work on aspects of your business that won't do anything if you never get your product right.

I've read Ryan Moran's book about starting a business, but making a product can take a long time. Just my opinion, but instead of dividing your time up making FB ads, landing pages, and YouTube videos for a product that is not even ready, why not focus 100% on getting the recipe good to sell.

Once you get the recipe correct, I can almost garuntee that it will take more than one month for you to fully launch due to lead times. During that time of waiting, you can focus all your energy on marketing.

The marketing means nothing when you have nothing to sell.

Just my 2 cents.

Best of luck!

 

[RicardoGrande]

The marketing means nothing when you have nothing to sell.

Best of luck!

Appreciate the feedback.
An interesting perspective, if so, I ask:

What use is a product nobody wanted to buy to begin with?

Going to have a talk with the founder of Effin' good snacks soon- he literally started with just an insta page and a tiktok for other teens that wanted to eliminate some sugar. Just by watching the data in real-time, he hit on his idea for his first and second products and seems to already be working on a third. Listening to that interview, he said he didn't know what exactly he wanted to start with, but by starting and building that community, the need and opportunity rose to the surface.

This also seemed to be a recourring trend through the other podcasts from Ryan's students and a couple interviews like those with the founder of RXbar, Ana-bar and others. Right now, I'm only focused on building that community, building that list, and getting feedback from the ones I want to serve.

 

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[Mikkel]

An interesting perspective, if so, I ask:

What use is a product nobody wanted to buy to begin with?

Going to have a talk with the founder of Effin' good snacks soon- he literally started with just an insta page and a tiktok for other teens that wanted to eliminate some sugar. Just by watching the data in real-time, he hit on his idea for his first and second products and seems to already be working on a third. Listening to that interview, he said he didn't know what exactly he wanted to start with, but by starting and building that community, the need and opportunity rose to the surface.

This also seemed to be a recourring trend through the other podcasts from Ryan's students and a couple interviews like those with the founder of RXbar, Ana-bar and others. Right now, I'm only focused on building that community, building that list, and getting feedback from the ones I want to serve.

Appreciate your two cents, sounds like you have experience, do you have a progress thread to browse?

There are certainly different ways to approach this. Personally, I have seen myself and others get so focused on building an audience or branding, that we forget about the most important part of the business, which is the product. If you are trying to build a community so you can figure out what to sell them, that is fine. But that seems unnecessarily difficult. Personally, if I was trying to figure out what people wanted, I would find where your community is, figure out what they want, make the product, and then build your community around that. Now I know Ryan suggests you want to build an audience to sell to on launch day, which is mainly for Amazon rankings. If Amazon is your route, you can certainly build this up but you can do this while you wait for your product to be made, but Amazon is not the only way to make sales. There are distributors, licensing, Shopify, lead gen, etc.

I'm not going to pretend that I know more than Ryan because I don't. I just know that Ryan has done this before and he finds people who can make these products happen. If this is your first time building a brand around a product you developed, there are a lot of skills you need to learn. Spreading yourself thin is a great way to get overwhelmed, lose yourself, and fail.

If you do your due diligence properly, you can figure out what people are looking for much quicker than waiting for your community to grow large enough to get an accurate understanding of their needs.

I have had experience with the method you're using but with failure in the past(that doesn't mean his method is bad, just my experience). I did similar processes, except I neglected to build the product. All my money and work meant nothing because I never figured out how to make the product. Sure, I built a basic 3D prototype. It never got past that. Why? I lost steam. I was focused on the wrong thing and lost my way.

Currently, I do have a progress thread, though it is on the INSIDE. You can find it in my signature. I'm currently building a medical/wellness device. My vision is very clear.

Figure out the need
Rough Design of Product
Prototype Built
Refining Prototype
Create Final Prototype
Create a 60-second video for marketing material
File Provisional Patent Application(PPA)
Send Marketing material to ~15-20 companies
If no company is interested in the current product, see what their reason for not liking the product
Revise product based on feedback
When a company is interested in the product, send a sample to the company
If the company wants to do business, start contract negotiations
Assist the company with any changes to the product for final development
Sign negotiations and file Non-provisional patent

This process is different than your process. I chose licensing due to the high barrier to entry into the medical field. If I end up licensing with a larger medical company, I can leverage their resources and get access to their clientele. What I focused on was what was critical for me to finish the next step. I didn't figure out the name of the product, the marketing materials, filing a PPA, etc when I first started. Now, in the next 2 weeks, I should have someone building the final prototype. Since that is someone else's job, I can start jumping ahead. I'll be working on marketing materials and working on my provisional patent application. Yes, I'm jumping ahead, but I now have the time to look at it, since it is either that or just waiting for someone to do the work I am paying to have done.

During my prototyping phase, I exclusively focused on all things prototyping. I submerged myself in all things prototyping. CAD design, 3D printing, and thinking of the potential pitfalls of my design and how I can make it better. Honestly, if I was focusing on marketing or trying to build an audience, I really don't think I would have figured out all of the flaws in my original idea. Leading to a substandard product and would have been devastating later on in the process when I realized my product wouldn't work as originally designed.

Each step of your process will require different skills. Some you may have and others you do not have. Creating a new recipe for a snack or food that is to be on the shelf consists of multiple skills and knowledge.

Baking/cooking
Packaging
Understanding Shelflife
Getting nutrition labels
Other regulations in regard to selling food
Production(make yourself/in a community kitchen/food production facility)
Marketing
Branding
Video editing
Lead Gen
Advertising
Copywriting

That is a lot of skills to learn. Some of these you can hire out which is fine, but you will wear many hats. Don't try and learn and implement all of them at the same time, that seems like an unlikely recipe for success.

 

[RicardoGrande]

There are certainly different ways to approach this. Personally, I have seen myself and others get so focused on building an audience or branding, that we forget about the most important part of the business, which is the product. If you are trying to build a community so you can figure out what to sell them, that is fine. But that seems unnecessarily difficult.

That is a lot of skills to learn. Some of these you can hire out which is fine, but you will wear many hats. Don't try and learn and implement all of them at the same time, that seems like an unlikely recipe for success.

Really appreciate all this!
In fact, I think it could deserve it's own thread, you took the time to write up a lot of valuable information going over your experience.
@Andy Black, think you could move it out for him?
(Trying to keep the scope of this thread tight so it doesn't balloon up into a multi-page monster)

 

[RicardoGrande]

Small update:
Did more prototyping in the past months, I've settled on a first product that I can make reliably (only minimally blowing up my kitchen) but now the questions are:
1) How do I get this to taste better and shelf stable?
2) Can my recipe be broken down into a formula, which a co-manufacturer would need? Can they source the ingredients to my specs?
3) What are the regulations, if any, I need to be aware of if I want to make this a direct-to-consumer product?

I have the split testing and e-mail opt in page up but I don't want to accidentally get a bunch of sign ups and then blue-ball people making them wait 9-18 months for a kickstarter or for a manufacturing/packing relationship to finish and for product to get up- aiming to have a batch of something in hand before that and that I can have people try in my day to day life or at my farmer's market. FWIW, the people I've have try it say it's good for what it is and the regular food product it's imitating- I still like it but I also have a machine-like focus on nutrients and macros over the joy of consumption.

Been on the hunt for any information on co-manufacturers and products I can find, BIG resource that has been helping me has been the StartupCPG podcast.
What's blowing my mind is that they also have a community full of actual, real, seasoned professionals of all flavors and roles along with food founders.
Just got into that group and trying to soak up as much info as I can, and seeing about establishing relationships and if anyone has advice or can provide some guideposts.

Maybe there'll be an exciting update in the future?

 

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[Panos Daras]

It has been two years how many people bought it?