Hello, and thank you for joining.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET Inosh, and I am pleased to welcome you to the Nombase Podcast.
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It's where you can find episodes of this podcast and so much more.
Today we are joined by Poorva and Rajus Korde, co-founders of Aaji's, a coastal Indian food brand built on a cherished family recipe, and Clay Lichterman, a food service expert and former chef, now VP at Sol-ti Living Beverages.
Food service can be a great way to get your product in front of new customers and build retail momentum.
And Aaji's is exploring how to make that happen.
We'll talk about the opportunities, challenges and strategies to succeed with Clay's solid advice.
It's so great to have all of you here.
Poorva and Rajus, I feel like I've been talking to you for years, if that's even possible.
And it's so great to finally have you on the Nombase Podcast.
And Clay, you came highly recommended in the food service space.
So thank you so much for joining us today.
So why don't we start off today with Aaji's.
Poorva and Rajus, could you share a little bit about how Aaji's came to life, how your family recipe became your business?
How long have you been doing what you're doing and how are you doing it?
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, first of all, we just want to say thank you.
Thank you, Melissa.
Thank you, Clay.
We're so excited to be able to have this conversation with you.
Aaji's is a family company based in Philadelphia and centered on our grandmothers' or Aaji's coastal Indian recipes.
Rajus and I, we have really no background in food apart from enjoying it ourselves and cooking and eating it.
But it was a few years ago now that we decided we wanted to do something with more meaning, more purpose.
And our family's food and recipes had always been at the center of what was meaningful for us.
And so we decided to jump right in with our grandmother's recipes.
We started with a taste test in our neighborhood or community.
And through that taste test, our first product came to life and that was tomato lonsa.
Tomato lonsa is made by slow cooking fresh tomatoes with coastal Indian spices and fresh ingredients.
For several hours, it can be used as a spread, as a topping, as a dip, as an ingredient to cook with.
We have four flavor varieties.
Our original recipe, a garlic, a spicy and a spicy garlic.
And we've started really in farmers markets and grown from there into local retail.
We've done some collaborations with local restaurants and have actually stayed on menu with a few establishments.
And last year we launched in local Whole Foods stores.
So we're at this really exciting point as a company, exciting and interesting where we have an established retail channel that is growing.
We have a production partner that has the capacity to scale.
We have a distribution partner and broader distribution.
And we're really excited to explore this possible strategy of food service and what that could look like for us.
What did I miss?
Anything?
No, Poorva covered it very well.
I would just add expanding on tomato lanza.
I think in terms of its flavor profile, it's very balanced.
It's savory, it's sweet, tart, spicy, umami.
So it has a lot packed into it and also very much celebrates fresh ingredients that Poorva mentioned including fresh tomatoes that are sourced locally from New Jersey.
So we're very proud of that.
And then I think you covered all the other bases.
That's the only thing I wanted to highlight.
For anyone in the audience who hasn't tried it, you absolutely have to.
It's such a fresh, delicious product.
I love it on sandwiches and cottage cheese and everything else.
So that's all fantastic and so much success in a seemingly short amount of time.
This episode actually came to life after a conversation we had at the Fancy Food Show.
I was asking what you guys are up to when you were talking about how that's the next frontier.
Why now?
Why does food service make sense as the next challenge?
Yeah.
I think we're touching on it a little bit.
I would say it's a couple of things coming together.
It's one, we've developed this partnership with our co-manufacturer and co-producer, and they have the ability to scale.
They have the capacity, and we're growing into that quite quickly.
Two is, I think we've seen some market resonance in the sense that the collaborations have been very successful, the short-term ones, but then also, we have a few instances where we're on menu, and it's sustained.
I think for a couple of years now in both instances, they're not big, but they've been at least this market, I guess, recognition and confirmation that there's something there.
And our third reason is really having the distribution partner and the tentacles to get tomato lonsa and aji to more places.
And so we feel like we have that in place as well.
So those are the reasons why it's now becoming something we want to understand, and whether food service is something we should pursue.
And then if the answer is yes, we're very eager to hear Clay's take on it, is how?
How we should go about it?
There was also a fourth point that we were talking about earlier between us is that our product, tomato lonsa, is made over several hours and it is so deep in its flavor.
And it's really doing a lot of the work of creating flavor for the end customer.
And so right now, that's the person that's picking it up off the shelf or buying it in a farmer's market.
They can flavor anything that they enjoy eating with something that we've worked hard to make.
We wonder if there's a similar opportunity in a food service setting.
You know, are we offering something to potential food service partners that they can't do, don't have the people, time for ingredients in their setting?
Is that something to explore too?
Well, I can't wait to hear what Clay has to say.
Clay, you've held executive roles at Lula, Kodiak Cakes, now Sol-ti.
Before that, you were a chef, so you have such a great perspective.
What is the first thing that jumps out to you about the potential that Aaji's has, and what are some of the questions you would be asking if you were in Aaji's shoes?
Yes.
Thank you for having me.
Super exciting.
I think you guys are at the most fun part of creating a brand, which is like, where do we want it to live?
How do we want it to engage with people?
You get all of that creative license, like you get to go figure out where you will play.
The biggest thing I'm looking at is, what's the value add?
We have this prepared product.
You mentioned save on labor.
It's something that is processed cleanly, neatly, but saves the chef or user some labor.
You also mentioned on point three, distribution partner.
Who is that?
What are you thinking you're leaning into just so I can help you scale and craft?
Yeah.
Currently, our distribution partner, our primary distribution partner is Rainforest.
With Whole Foods, we are regional still.
So we're in DC, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
And they're our partner for Whole Foods.
Awesome.
And Rainforest is a wonderful partner.
You may or may not know this, they're now the whole Eastern Seaboard.
They've expanded into Georgia, Florida.
So they can really carry you a long way.
And I think that that's a great place to start.
If they're servicing you into Whole Foods in your market, then we're paralleling the thought of building Whole Foods and expanding with them, building and expanding with this distributor we already have unlocked.
And then where else do they go?
Do they go to Moms Organic?
Do they go to some of these other markets?
Can we branch out?
Do they have food service guys?
They're selling who are servicing.
You just tentacle out with them and you'll see your business grow exponentially.
So if you've already got Rainforest unlocked, I mean, that's a heavy hitter.
More so in the DSD world than say traditional food service.
But I think what's interesting about your product is there's a tremendous license to hunt.
There's not, you don't fit into a traditional food service bucket in that you're not a chicken tender, you're not a French fry, you're not a, you know, open a bag and serve kind of broad line distribution staple.
You're probably going to live in the gray world of food service, which is like that specialty food service distributor, whether it's Baldor or Gourmet Foods International, or What Chef Want, What Chefs Want, those guys who service both specialty grocery and food service.
So what I would do if I'm you, is just keep going through the next open door.
If you're with Rainforest and you have this great vehicle, right?
Where else can they take me?
Where else can I use that current distributor to expand?
And I would think about building food service to constantly lift and create the halo effect for whatever retailers you're in, right?
So as you expand with retail, you expand with food service in those markets.
The, you know, trialing your product at food service gives me permission to go purchase it off shelf.
If I come across a product that is not mainstream staple and it's really not one that already lives in my fridge, there's a hesitancy to trial as a consumer, right?
You're throwing out money to try this product that may not be, I mean, so many uses in the kitchen, in my opinion, on this product, but we have to tell that story.
And so retail gets lifted by food service, food service creates the trial and awareness.
They work together.
So I would just think about growing them together.
It makes no sense to scatter it nationally and expose people nationally.
If we can't, if we don't have retail to lift for them to go purchase it, right?
They experience it in a restaurant in California, but they can't do anything about it.
So that's kind of how I would think about your business, given how early you are and how you're still finding your footings and where the brand succeeds.
Yeah, great perspective.
Yeah, and that was one of our questions too, is this exploring the strategy.
One avenue for that is just as its own channel, and the other is as a channel to support our existing retail base.
And so that's helpful to hear that that's where you think the focus should be.
Yeah, I mean, and it's interesting, very interesting, because it's, I always think as we talk about this as team members, co-founders, that it's about prioritization of resource and time, right?
We are a small team, small business still.
So we want it to do, our main channel is retail.
And that obviously takes a lot of time and attention.
So it should be some, it sounds like what you're saying, Clay, is it should be something that's complimentary, supplementary and complimentary to our existing business.
Absolutely.
And in a lot of ways, food service can almost be your marketing arm, right?
Instead of spending that money to run ads or to run, what you're doing with food service is you're driving actual like food in mouth trial, which creates that retail.
Actually, I have a question about that actually.
So is there ever an issue making sure that when a potential customer who's already consuming the product in a restaurant or somewhere else, is it ever a challenge to make sure that, you know, Aaji is getting full credit and they are actually able to tell their story?
It is.
It can be a challenge, transparently.
It can be a challenge to get to get a menu mention or a branded.
That's where, you know, you go in, you meet with the chef and you create a partnership.
They're going to give your brand that recognition.
If you're just selling it through sort of a disconnected network where they're picking it up and there's no true connection to the brand, it can be a little bit harder to get full credit, if you will.
I think what's unique about your product is that it's so unique, that giving it credit kind of lifts your brand, but it also lifts their brand that they found something unique and special.
It's okay to shout that out.
There are certain places that are never going to give you brand credit, but I don't think that's where you put your time and attention.
If you wind up there, so be it, you get sales, but you're not spending your time chasing to get those accounts.
You're spending your time on the guys who want a partnership, want to list great suppliers at the bottom of the menu, or want to shout them out and highlight them on the menu, because they know it makes place to dine.
You'll never get full credit, but you'll get credit with the right ones.
That was a great question, Melissa, because we're at a computer right now that has the Intel sticker, right?
That was previous to Aaji's, I was working in technology at one point in time, and that was like talk about an ingredient product or an ingredient.
That was obviously, I don't know the dynamics of that partnership, but I'm sure there's some paid component.
We're thinking that it's the storytelling on both sides, right?
For Aaji's and whoever the food establishment or restaurant is, is that it's helpful to them to talk about Aaji's or to share our story.
Is that how we should be thinking about it?
Yeah, absolutely.
And there's a, so today it's a great lean-in because it's a great rare find product.
And so brands will lean into that because it's cool.
It's a new discovered treasure that they're bringing to light.
Later in your life cycle, when you have 40, 50, 60,000 Instagram followers, they'll start leaning into your brand to lift their brand or to expose new consumers to their brand.
And then you start working together.
So that's more like your national chains who are giving you a shout out, right?
Because you have this great following.
I don't know what your followers are at today, but it's more likely that you're just this cool, undiscovered treasure that they're bringing to light.
They're wanting credit for having brought something forward.
Now to your point, you're probably making it better than they can.
You're sourcing better ingredients.
You're putting all of your energy into this sauce that they could put about 15 minutes of thought into if they tried to replicate it.
And I think there's a lot of people and a lot of segments within food service that recognize that.
I can't put that much effort and time into preparing a tomato-based sauce.
So let me source a great one.
And then you get the whole credit thing.
One of the things I would ask you is, where do you want to be in food service?
Do you, you know, there's all these different segments within food service.
And what I try to tell everybody is, pick one, pick two, right?
And really put your efforts into those.
You'll wind up in the others.
But you can really only put your energy and effort towards so many things.
And I think you need to let certain segments of food service drive your business into that channel.
Because this is so new to us, would you mind elaborating on what some of those segments are?
Sure.
So college university is a popular one.
Corporate B&I, corporate campuses is huge.
Lots of feeding, especially in the Northeast.
There's a lot of opportunity there.
Let's see, you've got your fast casual, quick serve restaurants, you've got your coffee shops, which have become kind of their own little segment of food service.
I put a lot of individualized effort towards coffee.
It's kind of pulled away from QSR.
What am I missing?
Fine dining, corrections.
We've all sold in corrections, but that's not really an area.
Travel.
So you've got hotel hospitality, you've got arenas and venues.
So those are all the different buckets.
You obviously don't want to focus on all of them, or you're a food service company, not a retail company.
But I think it's finding a balance of which of those complement the brand, help you expose the brand to your retail customers, drive sales, if that's the initiative.
Just a couple of different ways to think about it.
Yeah, that's very helpful.
I think without having spoken about a clear segmentation, based on what you've said, my instinct is that the coffee shops, cafes, given that we have two right now that are existing customers, and then two, I think the corporate angle, which we have not explored at all really, given that they are also retail customers, and may be willing and excited about trying new flavors.
But we could be wrong.
So, Clay, if you think we're off, or there's a third one that should be in front of that, those two.
No, I mean, I love starting with cafes, right?
They're smaller.
To your point, you've probably got one chef, two chefs in the back.
They don't have the time and labor to put into it, but they're looking to source fantastic ingredients.
I think that's a great place to start.
The story you have to tell is, how do they use the product?
I think you have to quickly help establish the product as not just Indian, so that we're not shoved into a certain niche or a certain bucket.
This product is so versatile that it can be folded into other sauces.
It can be a topping for things like French fries.
I think Melissa was talking about putting on a sandwich, cottage cheese, you name it.
It's breakfast, lunch, dinner.
I saw a picture somewhere of an amazing poached egg with the sauce, and it just breakfast right away.
So as you get into corporate B&I, you're going to get more into contract management, where a certain business and industry, we'll just pick one, Google.
They're not going to operate their kitchens.
They're going to have a third party who comes in and prepares food.
So a little bit harder to navigate in.
You do have a large player in Philly, Airmark.
They want local brands and they want labor save and they want to be part of bringing...
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treasures to light.
That's one I would work hard on because it's not hard for you to get there.
It's easy to go have those meetings if you can get the right contacts.
And I'm happy to help connect you if I can.
And I feel like it's the right product for them in that it's so versatile and it highlights on-trend cuisines that are becoming very popular within food service that they can lean into without having to be experts on Indian cuisine.
Right?
So they can bring in those flavors without really having to understand them and how to prepare them and how to give them the right respect.
I have a question.
One of the things that I love about your product is that it's pretty low in calories and you can add a ton of flavor without adding a lot of calories to it.
Clay, are there certain venues that maybe they should think about whether it's like Starbucks, for example, where they do have calorie counts or juice cafes where people are looking at that kind of thing?
To me, that's a huge selling point.
Yeah, I think you named them.
I mean, the juice cafes, the smoothie shops, all those...
I'll pick a national one just for reference, like Tropical Smoothie Cafe, right?
They're built around their smoothie, then they lean into food.
Someone along those lines, this is a perfect fit because they're not going to prepare sauce from scratch.
But if they have a great product, they can elevate a wrap or a salad or a sandwich so quickly, so easily.
Start with your local guys.
Create a story to tell, and then share it with the bigger guys.
Look regional, then look as you grow as a brand.
Another area just looking at your social media that jumped out to me is hotel lodging.
I find you have some really great boutique hotels within your market.
If you can get it in and Rainforest to service it or work the other way around, hey, Rainforest, what hotels are you going to?
Let me go call on those.
Let me try and build some sales with your sales reps, and let's get it in and going.
The reason I say that is because breakfast, lunch, dinner, and that's a lot of what your selling story is.
This is for all meal periods, and it's funny how it plays differently at each meal period, but it definitely has its purpose.
It's on an egg at breakfast, it's on a rack of lamb at dinner.
It works.
Yeah.
You know, that's very exciting to hear.
And I just wanted to share, given we have two cafes, just very quickly, one is called Camellia Coffee House in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.
They make a biscuit from scratch, but it's eggplant biscuit sandwich with tomato lonza, and you can add it to it.
And then there's Top Hat Coffee Lounge in Philadelphia.
They do savory waffles, and they-
liege waffles, right?
Lige waffles, yeah.
And-
Yeah, so it's a sweet waffle, but it has a fried egg, it has avocado, and then kind of a spicy lonza, and then a drizzle of like a yogurt sauce over it.
But it's been very popular there.
And we also have a winery.
Yes.
Yeah, Muriel City Sellers, they're using lonza to enhance kind of their snacks and bites offerings with the wine they sell.
And we just landed a new location in New York with Fonty's Bodega.
They're bringing Indian sandwiches to life.
And so we are now a dipping sauce with their grilled cheese offering on that, so.
That's amazing.
You don't even need me.
What are you?
You've already got to do that.
I'm so much.
Nobody else.
No, but I don't think that's true.
I think we do.
We need you.
Clay.
Yeah.
Now, as you think about growing it, one of the things I would encourage you to do in adjacent to growing it alongside retail is hold off on expanding packaging.
There's a big push.
A lot of people think you've got to go into food service with a bulk pack.
You've got to go into food service with these large packages.
One, it creates a logistical nightmare for you.
You've got multiple inventories sitting around.
You're now separating out the inventory.
You've got distributors who've got to carry double inventory.
But two, from the understanding of how this product's used, I don't think you need a bigger package.
I think you need a smaller package that can be kept on the line close to finishing a dish or a sauce.
I would hold off on bulk pack until you really get someone who demands it of you, who's big enough to demand it of you.
Does that make sense?
If you were to pick up a restaurant chain who said, hey, we love this, we've seen it, we see it growing, but we need it in bulk, okay, fine, no problem.
We can go to a one-pound container or something.
But don't create extra work.
There's this whole thought of food service only means bulk.
I just don't think that's the case.
It also, when you go to bulk, a lot of times it can limit you out of some of the places who have extremely small coolers to work from, and people don't even realize it.
You mentioned Starbucks.
Starbucks has very little refrigeration in store, and it's really utilized for dairy.
If we go to a bulk pack, we're almost moving away from what would work for them, as an example.
I like that, yeah.
And going back to the discussion around cafes, in retail, there's this very natural progression.
We went from farmers markets to local retail, then independent retail, and then whole foods.
How should we look at the progression?
Because we have a few eateries right now, a few restaurants, a few cafes.
What is the threshold we should get to before we think about, you know, tropical smoothie or whoever else to approach?
There's no right answer to that.
I think you have to ask yourself in reality, can I produce?
If they say yes, can I produce?
Right?
If they wanted it nationwide, can I make it?
If I can't make it, then I wouldn't spend my time and energy there just yet.
They're going to see you building and growing in the marketplace, but I wouldn't get too far down the road if I didn't have production for something of that scale.
So you take your cafe, you see what your cafe is using, you multiply it by the number of cafes that the customer has, and you can do the math.
Can I produce enough?
If I can, and I've got all this extra capacity laying around, run with it.
There is nothing that says that your brand has to be established nationwide for a nationwide guy to be the one to help you establish it, right?
Somebody is always the first one to bet on a brand, but it's about, can I keep up with capacity?
Additionally, we mentioned before the halo effect, I think retail must grow before food service in terms of region by region, or I'm not getting all the work out of it.
Again, you discover it somewhere, you love it, but you can't go buy it.
Now, e-commerce has helped with that and has eliminated a little bit of that struggle.
But there's nothing like being able to walk in and pick it up off the shelf of a grocery every time you go to make that dish that you use an item in, right?
And them seeing it in the grocery store every week makes it something that you fold into your routine.
Buying it online, to me, is great.
And e-commerce is wonderful business.
But it just doesn't have that same impact as when you walked into a grocery, you were prepping for a meal, you picked up the items, and then you saw it and you're like, yes, this is the way, you know?
So think of it that way.
That makes a lot of sense.
Because even from like a digital and social media marketing perspective, like talking to somebody outside of the five states we mentioned is like, it's almost like going to outer space and just.
Yeah.
Talking is out into the ether, it doesn't matter.
I have another question for you, Clay.
When we were knocking on our first retail doors, we had created a retail sell sheet, kind of outlined everything that folks needed to know about us and the product.
Do we create something similar as we're knocking on food service doors?
And also, more so thinking about how to position the ways to use LONSA, because we do know that our customers use it in certain ways, like to enjoy it in certain ways based on some of, we've had a lot of different collaborations over the years, and there have been certain menu items that have just blown up, really, I think, because of their simplicity and letting the flavors of LONSA shine, whereas others that kind of have gotten lost in the mix because there were 13 ingredients and LONSA was one of them.
So is it acceptable for us to say, like, this is how we think LONSA should be used and how you're going to get the most for purchasing it?
Yeah.
I 100% would encourage you to create a food service cell sheet, and I would 200% encourage you to create it in a way that it's editable for who you're calling on.
If you're calling on a hotel, showing them breakfast, lunch and dinner, labor save, calling out the things that resonate and make sense, is how I would approach them.
Coffee, similarly, hey, lean hard into breakfast.
This is why we work in coffee shops.
When you have a cell sheet that speaks to what the consumer does, it just gives it that verification of this belongs in the space, and this makes sense.
It's not anything crazy.
It's in my lane.
Almost as if, why wouldn't I do it?
I'm being left out if I don't do it.
I like really channel-specific cell sheets, and I like to give ideas of how to use my product.
That's your big time to talk.
So put it out there or QR code it with a link to a website.
The website's got all the recipes categorized by time of day or protein or even business type.
If you search online food service cell sheets, you'll find lots of great manufacturers who have great recommend...
Theirs are all out there.
Almost every company I've been at, I've built a food service website at some point that houses broker information, how to find me, how to use me, what trade shows I'm at, all of those things.
You won't need that out the gate, but you're kind of building a library of it.
So I really encourage you to speak to that specific segment in your cell sheet, and then just make it easily editable and have another version for the next segment, et cetera.
Clay, can I ask you to explain what the cost of doing business is in the food service channel?
So, I mean, certainly you don't have to run promos, which is amazing, but you still have a distributor.
The margins may be different.
What are we looking at there?
So, I feel like everybody goes, well, but you don't have to do promos.
You don't have to do all the things that retail does.
You're going to spend it.
There's a balance, and with food service, you have a lot of layers.
So in the typical format, as you grow, the product would go from manufacturer to a redistributor.
It's predominantly dot foods is the largest in the nation, right?
So it's going to go to them.
And the reason for that is it's hard to meet manufacturer minimums within food service.
So dot takes a bunch of different manufacturers, lumps them together, puts them on a pallet, ships them out.
Every major distributor in the country is receiving a load from dot.
So I've got to pay dot something.
Then I've got to pay the distributor something.
And the distributor is going to want an ongoing program on that product.
Regardless of the fact that they're marking it up to the customer, they're going to have a deal with you.
And then in some cases, it goes from a distributor, like in the case of corporate B&I, it could go from Vistar to a smaller distributor who is then loading the shelves in corporate B&I or the marketplaces.
Same thing with airport.
You find that a lot where the distributor doesn't go in and do the actual labor, someone else does.
So you could have three or four layers.
I typically work off of a 12% blend on my distributor and operator side in trade spend.
And then I allocate for DOT.
And DOT is a little more difficult to tell you what it costs because you're subbing out your logistics, warehouse, order entry, collection fees, all those other things that we eat as a business.
If you plan on 20%, you're safe.
And I tell everybody that 20% can get you to market all the way across the board.
There are some key places where people really want to be.
Airports is one that it can cost you 40-50%.
But that becomes more of a marketing arm where you're creating trial.
I don't think it's a perfect fit for your brand in terms of, you're not trying to be in Hudson News tomorrow.
That's not how you want to be picked up.
So I think you can prioritize the channels that makes sense.
But your typical coffee shop, cafe, that route to market, you can get it done in under 20%.
And typically it'll blend out.
What will happen is you'll have these key anchor accounts that you've got to deal with and that you'll have all these other independent accounts who pick up the product because it's already in there, in that distributor and that creates your blend.
And so you can usually blend around 12% plus logistics.
Very interesting.
So it's almost like you have this natural progression, you get a bigger account, but then it also helps you get broader, smaller accounts.
I guess that's-
Yeah, you'll sometimes lean in to the bigger account because you know that there's so much opportunity on the other side to pick up all the others.
Yeah.
I think as we're talking through this, the targeting of the cafes and the boutique hotels is making a lot of sense also from an experience and artistry sense.
There's curation and they care about their menu, but they don't have the time and the labor to put together a chef's menu.
But there's this experience element, and we want folks to experience LONSA, and to really enjoy the food that they're consuming.
So I think that fit is really nice.
Thank you for helping us hone in on that, because there's obviously four or five other segments there we could run after, that would probably not be the right.
Sure.
What's your shelf life?
Yeah.
From the time that it's produced, if it's refrigerated, it's between six and seven weeks.
Okay.
But it can be frozen too.
Okay.
So frozen would obviously help you extend that shelf life to be able to reach further.
As long as you stay regional, six to seven weeks should be relatively doable.
You still want to create a lot of layers of distribution on a product that's six to seven weeks.
I currently sell a product that's 120 days, and to go from us to DotDot to a distributor, distributor to the account, it can get really tight because everybody needs logistics, time, load, unload, transit, et cetera.
So just keep it direct from you to small distributor.
Again, I really think growing with your current DSD partner is your best start.
Sticking with Rainforest, you can grow with them and expand out side of them or outside of the whole foods markets as you get them and grow with whole foods.
Add your independent grocers, then add your food service around it.
Just thinking, sorry, I had a question on top of my tip of my tongue and it dropped.
It'll come back to me.
I think I touched on time and resource.
I wish we had 24 hours a day.
Then we have we're balancing the business.
We have a small family, young family too, with kids.
I think Melissa understands this in terms of juggling.
It's like, how do we and I think we talked about it in terms of segmentation?
I'm just trying to figure out how we are the most efficient and effective in the cycles of our time.
To get on menu in as quick as possible without too many cycles.
That's the biggest thing on my mind.
And I know it's not a science.
It's probably a little bit more of art.
We talked about the cell sheet.
Is there anything else you'd recommend?
We talked about targeting segmentation cell sheet, but anything else we can layer on to it?
Yeah, do you have a Salesforce?
Well, I laugh, but we don't have a huge Salesforce.
We do have some team members that can act.
We can deploy beyond us.
Do you have a broker?
We do not have a broker.
Okay.
I think that's the other step.
If you have some retail business and you get the right broker who plays in both the natural, independent and some local food service, that person can understand your vision of how you want to grow this.
They already have the distributor in stock.
That's the next key step.
That's not some big national broker that's going to take a ton of money and try and go pitch nothing but the largest retailers.
That's like local smaller food service related brokers.
I can send you some ideas on the side.
The good thing for you is no one's going to have a conflict.
There's not another product like yours.
And a lot of times in beverage or certain categories, you run into, every broker has a bar or a protein bar or whatever.
And so it controls your decision making.
You can go work with almost anybody and they're not going to have a conflict, which is pretty exciting.
There are a lot of brokers who do do both the natural independent and the food service side.
And so just finding the right fit there.
A broker will run you, call it, 3 to 5 percent depending, probably five beginning out, when you're getting out the gate and maybe a small retainer.
But they're going to go out and sell, they're going to sell the independence, they're going to sell the food service for you.
You might be at that point.
But you definitely want to lean into your current distributor for who to utilize because it's somebody they're working with.
Interesting.
That would be very helpful when you're talking to Rainforest because it's one of these things where it can't be somebody looking.
Again, we talked about the regionality and staying a little bit behind retail.
We want to stay within that realm and that geography.
So looking for a partner or a broker that understands that strategy and approach would be really helpful.
Yeah, and then look at the next market, and if you want to grow, let's say you want to grow in New York City or you want to expand that way.
While you're waiting on Whole Foods to help you get it done, go talk to the independents.
Independent Grocery is the easiest place to have a conversation you'll ever go into in your life.
You walk in, they're excited to see new brands.
There's not some huge corporate buyer sitting above them that's got a review cycle and they won't see you for six months.
Go into the independents, talk to them, and make that one of your questions.
Hey, is there a broker you see a lot of?
It'll play itself out for you pretty quick on who you need to be partnering with.
Clay, so Ajis is already in some of the outlets that they're looking at for food service.
But if you're dealing with a retailer, you have an understand of what the velocity should be if you're doing well.
So units per store, per skew, per week.
How do you gauge success in food service channels?
Similarly, without all the data, because there's no great food service data.
There are when you get at a really big national scale and you're selling to the big broadliners, but everywhere else, there's no data to track it or measure it.
I typically just do a quick like back of the napkin ROI.
What did I spend to be in there and what am I moving?
It's really tough to figure velocities in food service because in one dish, you might be a core center of the plate type item, and then in another dish, someone might be using you as a very small ingredient.
It'd be tough to get a velocity movement, but you can take averages.
Hey, in coffee, we move about this much.
In the hotel world, we really like that because we move a tremendous amount.
You'll figure that out over time.
Unfortunately, in food service, the laborers usually want us to figure out what the velocities are, because there's just no great metric.
But I can tell you the first one you spend on, you'll know very quickly if it moved well or not, because you have that spend and then you have the, okay, here's what I sold and did I get out of it what I wanted?
Probably in the beginning, there's a relationship with those cafes or small restaurants where you're getting that qualitative feedback.
Are they used again?
Yeah.
Is the menu item, is it something that customers?
Yeah, right.
For me, it's like that's what I'm thinking.
We've been talking about it like the quality over quantity.
Like if we, let's say we have four existing food service accounts right now.
But if we, let's say we make that 10, like if those are all quality where it's a sticky menu item that their end customer really loves, that's much more meaningful than if we add 10 or 12, 20, because it's not really gaining traction.
Well, and the other thing I would encourage you, you have these great smaller independent accounts, shout them out, partner with them on social media, bring attention to it because I can tell you, whoever their big manufacturers are, they're not doing that.
You're creating a better relationship and to your point, it'll stick and that's what you're looking for.
I really love small brands who engage with their partners, and everybody has the website like, hey, here's how you find us.
Not everybody takes time to put their food service operators on there, not everybody and especially the big brands, they get one post a day or one post a week.
It's very hard to get them to shout out a college or a cafe or somewhere where they're trying to grow their business.
Start that as a habit now and let it go with your brand, and you'll create some really cool relationships with both your operators and your customers because you're going to get that customer loyalty of whoever is loyal to them.
I love that.
Yeah, that's such great feedback.
One other angle is the prepared foods within retail.
I want to touch on that.
I know, of course, Whole Foods Market has a huge ecosystem when they're prepared foods, but even some of the independent retailers we're now working with, they seem to have those prepared food arms where they're doing some prep, but they're also relying on some ingredient products.
Yeah, the challenge you're going to have there is it's different in each set up in terms of who's doing the ordering.
In some of those independents, they can just go pull products off shelf and use them.
In others, it's got to be a very planned thing.
The other thing I'm learning or seeing as this is evolving and becoming more of a fit, is they're very hesitant to give brand recognition because if they give brand recognition to you, they have to give brand recognition to basically everybody in the store.
And then when they get to a certain size, they start selling that brand recognition because it's very valuable, right?
So the answer is yes, it's an interesting space.
In some cases, you'll even see on these big retailers, where there's one route in the market to be on shelf, and then there's a whole separate distribution network who service in the actual deli prepared food area.
And I've been at companies where we've had to have two different distributors running product into the same store to get all of that business.
So, but in the independents, I think you see a lot more willingness to play with brands, and you'll be able to execute some of that.
Okay.
Let's get to Nombase.
Well, Poorva and Rajus, I hope you got some really great information that will help direct you the right way for your food service journey.
It sounds like you've already done so much.
Any final thoughts on maybe what your next steps might be, or do you want to let it all marinate for a little bit before you come out with that?
I think I'll let it marinate, but going after the local, regional, additional cafes and boutique hotels seems to be the right approach in building the collateral and the assets that are going to help in that, and then potentially a broker to just have more conversations quicker.
But this has been so valuable that Melissa and Clay, part two on how we did.
Yeah, let's do it.
I'm into it.
We can unlock trade shows next.
We can unlock all the future steps.
We're definitely going to have to get this band back together.
Um, and Clay, thank you so much for joining.
You have just such a vast expertise, and it's been such a pleasure to listen to how you kind of dissect what's going on with Aajis and, you know, help figure out what their best opportunities are.
So thank you so much for joining and being so generous with your time.
Poorva and Rajus of Aajis, thank you so much for joining the Nombase Podcast.
Clay Lichterman of Sol-ti, thank you so much.
And for everybody else out there, thank you for joining us.
Head over to nombase.com and we'll see you next time.
