Hey, folks. It's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now I am honored to be sitting down with Jason Wright, the founder and CEO of Wild Snacks. Jason, great to see you. Ray, thank you for having me, man. It's good to be back. I think it's been a couple years since we last spoke, and I'm excited about the opportunity to sit down with you here today.
It was almost exactly five years ago that we published our last interview with you, the title of which was Why Whole Foods Bit On and Built Around This Wilde Concept, and Wilde spelled W-I-L-D-E. And Wilde has done some amazing things in CPG since it launched in 2014. 12 years, you're 12 years in the business now, which says you must be doing something right, but I don't know how many times you've tried to rip your own hair out over those 12 years.
Ray, when I started I had black hair. Now I have gray hair. If it was falling out I think I'd have lost it all by now, but the first probably four years of Wilde was a lot of idea, thinking through concept, how to do it. So we really didn't get going, officially until 2018, but truthfully 2021 is when I like to say that we became a real brand, and that was because we opened our facility.
And up until that point Wilde was a huge R&D project, start, stop. But '21 we opened our first facility, and we doubled sales every year since. And so that's when we really started to be a real brand. 2021 is also when you first appeared on Taste Radio, so maybe that's part of your success story as well.
I think so, Ray. That's when you recognized me as a, "He may be around for a while," I think so, and I was thrilled to receive your latest product in the mail a few weeks ago, and that is the Wilde Protein Crackers line. There are two SKUs that I received, a classic cheddar and a hot honey. And for our listeners, you might look at this product and say, "This looks familiar.
This looks like a product that I may have seen in my childhood that comes in a red cardboard box, but this product looks significantly healthier and better for me." It is made with real chicken breast, chicken bone broth, and cheddar cheese, and contains 12 grams of protein per serving. There are four servings per container, or pouch in this case.
It's a 4.2-ounce pouch. As I mentioned before you hopped on the mic, I have not tried these yet, and I'm looking forward to doing so. Wild, just to give some context, did not start out in snacks. It started out in bars. Just share with our audience, just to give them a quick history on Wild, how you got started in this business, and why you thought chicken could be the primary ingredient in a snack brand.
Yeah, for sure, Ray. So we started out as a meat-based protein bar. The idea there was make jerky into a bar, kinda I would say like a kind bar. And sometimes what you have visually in your head and reality doesn't connect. A lot of people in 2000, call it, 16, was jumping into the meat-based protein bar category.
You had Epic, you had Tonka, and we were there. But reality was the category was not big, and Epic owned it. So we had to pivot, and I love potato chips, and I always have loved potato chips, but they didn't love me back. And having worked with meat in the bar, I automatically had an idea, could I replace the chicken or could I replace the potato with chicken breast?
And so that was kinda how the springboard from really a failing product, the meat bar was not a success, and I had to pivot, and I really wanted to have something I could snack on. My love for potato chips, I just wanted to see if I could replace the potato with chicken, and I don't think there was another protein I really could pick.
Looking at the meat-based protein bars, we were using beef, and we had turkey, and I think we had one with bison. But when I thought about the chip, I needed something that was a blank canvas, something that we could flavor in seasoning. I'd learned enough in the bars that certain people don't eat certain meats, religious reasons, belief, whichever you wanna chalk it up to, different parts of the world.
And so I automatically thought about chicken when I thought about our chip. And, we pivoted in 2018, and the chip was not a easy road, and I'm sure we'll get deep into that. But we tried it at a port run facility. That was not the way to do it. Eventually, after having a short stop at a co-man with our own equipment, we eventually had to, build our own facility and go do this ourself.
The last time you and I spoke, we were opening that new facility in '21 congratulations on opening that facility. You're also on the cusp of opening another facility down the street. This one is significantly bigger. Yeah. So the first building was 55,000 square foot. We are opening right now 130,000 square foot facility.
Our current facility, we maxed capacity out. It was just slightly north of 100 million in capacity. We maxed that out. The new building, just in the chip alone, is about three times that in capacity, and we installed a cracker line, which we'll get into. But, our first shot at innovation in the last five years, something we've been working on for a while, but, unlike a lot of other brands that go to co-man, I just don't crank it out that fast because a lot of our, if not all of our, products require special equipment, and this one required a lot of special equipment.
And then we have other things at the facility, other concepts, other vehicles that we will be bringing to market later this year. So the new building gives us a lot of flexibility on innovation. We completely have built out our innovation pipeline. You said something interesting to me earlier, which is that you see yourself as a co-man with a brand, which I think is really interesting.
A lot of entrepreneurs that I've spoken with that have their own manufacturing or that operate their own manufacturing talk about two distinct businesses. One side is production. One side is sales and marketing. Which is more important? Which is more critical to the business's development and growth?
For me, it's been the manufacturing piece. I definitely have a flag in the sand. I have a market cornered. And when I said co-man, whether that was the right word or not, what I meant by that is, because we don't co-man for anyone. I've had plenty opportunities from big retail chains to brands coming to me, and I just won't do it.
That's... My secret sauce is what I've developed in that building, and that's what is my IP, and I'm holding onto that. There's multiple ways to skin the cat, but for me, controlling my own destiny, having something that's totally unique, not a me too, and that goes back to my first adventure into entrepreneurship back in my 20s.
I'd launched a me too product and it didn't go so well. And so for me, I'd always thought about after that adventure doing something that was completely new to world, and I could control my own destiny. So for me, listen, marketing and sales are super important. That's something that Wild has not done a great job of in marketing, and we will get better.
But it's because that we put all of our time, money into creating something unique with special equipment, cornering the market, and then eventually we invested into sales. And our last kind of area that we're really investing in right now is marketing and telling the story. When did you realize that you were going from a concept to a challenger brand to a scaled player in this business?
Once you come to market with an innovative idea, you have to make sure that innovative idea fits into consumers' lives. It seems like that happened relatively quickly, but then as you're starting to scale, you start to think about what the potential is for the brand and who your competitors could be.
As it stands now, Wild, I see as a real player in the snack space. Protein notwithstanding, I think you can just call yourself a player in the snack space. So when you're thinking about those steps from concept to challenger brand to scaled brand, what were the biggest inflection points for each? First of all, I gotta say the facility.
If I don't open that facility in '21, I doubt we're talking today, right? I really do You know, Wild before the facility was middle-of-the-road product. It wasn't, in my opinion, I was not proud of it. And in order to make the product better, we had to go control our own destiny. So if we don't open the facility in '21, then, we probably are not here.
So that's probably number one. If we don't continue to massage how we talk about Wild, talking about chicken breast, egg white, bone broth, and developing the flavors, then, we probably don't start to catch on in '22 and '23 as, as well as we did. I would say one, too, is Costco. Wild is a product that you have to try, and so Costco shoppers are conditioned.
They're walking into the store looking to try samples. I know that Costco does a ton of sampling, and it's known for introducing new products to its customers via demos, but I wouldn't necessarily think of it as a place of discovery. It sounds like from what you're saying, that's exactly what Costco is.
I think it is. I think Whole Foods and Costco are your discovery points, and I think you have to go back to what retailer has done the best at demoing product. If you go back to Whole Foods or Costco, you can't really find, and I'd sprinkle in Sprouts, but you can't find another retailer, in my opinion, where you walk in and people are, like, lined up to try samples.
So those were very important to Wild in the early days, and they still are especially with the new product coming out. Because, for the longest time, and still today, although we're much closer today, we have struggled with ways to describe what we are. And I always tell our partners, marketing partners and marketing team Wild really is the classic I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.
If you take out Can't Believe It's Not Butter and you look at the back of the pack and say I'm just going to go to the front and say, let's say butter alternative spread, crafted from..." and list the ingredients, I don't know how many people try that. But when you tell them that I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, and you convince them that they gotta try it to see if they can believe it's not butter, that's magic, right?
And I think that's where you're gonna see Wild go to. But in the early days, demos was the best mousetrap we had, the best way of discovering the product There's a third piece, and the third piece is just the innovation pipeline. I think Wild becomes really a household brand when it can go into other categories, and it can go into other forms, factors, usage occasion, and that's where we're at today.
We're launching cracker. There's tortilla in the lineup coming, and there could be one or two other items. That's the three big points of what I believe is gonna be the, when it's all said and done, the success roadmap for Wild. I like to talk about innovation a lot, but one of the things that isn't necessarily and commonly talked about with innovation is timing, and making sure that the market opportunity for a new product line is the right time.
How do you incorporate and evaluate timing when considering new product development? Yeah, it's a great question, Ray. If I was working at a co-man, I probably would do it faster, but at Wild, we- Even at concept, you work on a product for, in our case, because of the ingredients we use, we're not calling anyone that has the knowledge.
We are gonna do it ourself. And then after that, you're gonna, let's just say that's a year, now you gotta go through probably two years of equipment, finding lead times, building to your spec, testing. So for Wild, it's just that longer journey. I don't necessarily think it's the right journey, although I will say the one big proof point here is I do the fact that we got the core product north of 100 million before you'll see innovation.
There's probably only a few brands that have launched vehicles, so new product extension that has hit over 100 million. I think Quest is one, and I think Kind bar is one, and I think there's one other. And so that always stuck with me. I was surrounded by, on the board with some smart people that, that had some insights.
So that stuck with me, but really it's just the fact that it takes us a little bit longer. I will tell you what you will start to see from Wild though, and I'll talk about the cracker line. Because I knew how long it takes to do an innovative product like ours, we built the cracker line with multiple vehicles in mind.
And so think about pretzel, think about pita chip, think about shapes. So you can imagine that small yellow, orange product that's a cracker but a shape. That all could be done in our current line. So when we installed that, we had all those ideas in mind, and so that equipment now sits in our building that we can, on the same production line, run those products.
And then the last, we did fast pace the tortilla line. We had been working on the tortilla line for a while, and so that'll be in the building, call it September, August, September this year. I'd like to think that now we're just gonna really focus on sales and marketing. From what I'm hearing, Wild is preparing itself to become a platform brand for protein snacks, which is very exciting, and I think the protein crackers are a great next step for the brand.
When you're considering the pace of innovation and the rollout for the innovation, how much does retailer buy-in impact that strategy? I'll tell you that today, right now in Vegas, we are showing the tortilla to multiple retailers. We're actually lining up commitments. I'm not afraid of showing because we are made of chicken breast, bone broth.
The secret sauce of Wild, you can't duplicate it. And so for the buyer to leave and say, "Hey, did you know Wild's gonna launch a tortilla?" And I'm telling you, in six months, made of chicken breast that's not capable of being manufactured anywhere else that I'm aware of. If I was working with Co-Man and I was gonna launch, I'm just gonna make it up, I was gonna launch chickpea, right?
Maybe I keep that to myself, because that's easily duplicated if the secret gets out. But for me, the secret's out, but the know-how's still at Wild and with me. We are very aggressive right now about what's coming with retailers, and they are aggressive in moving around things to accommodate what we're bringing.
And there's some big commitments for the products. And to answer your question, we did survey a couple items, and tortilla and cracker was top of the list by a long shot. It would make sense, because I'm seeing a lot of protein tortilla chips come to market, a few protein crackers come to market.
Not necessarily like the ones that you've created, which are delicious, by the way. I've been snacking on the classic cheddar variety, and it lives up to the billing. It is an excellent product, and it very much resembles what I grew up on and, still continue to see on the market. The ... I'm still amazed that we haven't mentioned that brand name, and we won't, but we'll keep going here.
The idea of creating a product or a line of products that aren't easily replicatable, aren't able to be created by other brands, seems to be a superpower for Wild I'm not saying that you won't have any competitors in the future, but you've created a moat around your brand via production and manufacturing.
Do you have any patents, however? Do you have any patents on anything related to your production facility or the way you make your snacks? Yeah, we do. We do. So there's patents on both the tortilla and the current chip. There's patents there on the cracker. There's no patent really on the cracker with the equipment, at least not as of right now.
We are using stuff on that line that has never been done, but I don't think it's necessarily patentable. There's just a ton of secret sauce, and I always tell people, even when they visit the facility, and they always wanna ask about, the patents, and I'm like, I literally could give people the patent.
I probably could publish it." And it is, right? You can research it. But you could give people that piece of equipment. You still can't make Wild unless you know the secret sauce. And you can make a product that eats like cardboard with the patent, but you really need to understand how we are formulating and what our recipe is to make it eat well.
And I would say the only way we got here is because of trial and error, I just didn't wanna settle. I just kept going after this and I had a vision, and I wouldn't give up, and just kept trying some stuff, and that's really how we got here. It helps if you have patient investors who are willing to allow you to try and fail or at least try and get better.
And people who are investing in CPG are looking at the big, broad opportunity for a particular brand. Oftentimes, especially at the early stage, folks want to find the next great brand, whether it's a Lesser Evil, a Poppy, a Simple Mills. And I think when you look at a brand like Wild, I see that opportunity, and I would see that opportunity as an investor.
But how do you find investors that are willing to be patient and that are willing to take the time for a brand to develop, especially one as unique as Wild? And I ask this because clearly it took capital, and significant capital, to build and invest in the manufacturing facilities that you have built.
Yeah, Ray, listen. If I didn't have one guy, Alan Carb, that believed in the concept, believed in me, and was very patient- We would not be here. I don't know if there's any other investor out there that would've been as patient with me, supported me. I just don't know of any, because you nailed it, people want to invest in a ramp.
Even when you're playing the stock market, I'm playing the stock market, I'm guilty of it, we all wanna invest in the ramp. And unfortunately for Wild, there was a lot of secret sauce building, IP building, that came with no ramp. Right now we're ramping, but a lot of hard work went in to get to this point.
And, there's probably two people, and it's me and Alan, and if we were not together, I think Wild wouldn't exist because it was a lot of hard work on my end and a lot of hard work on my team. But he was a very patient investor, and he's my lead investor, and he continues to be my lead investor.
That was right place, right time in, in meeting him through Bill Moses. But to be honest, I've talked to a lot of other funds and I understand they wanna invest in the ramp, and there's a timetable. But, Alan didn't have a timetable, which was a huge luxury to Wild, 'cause we just had so much to figure out.
So if I'd signed a deal and did something with a five-year, three-year PE, they're out, we would've been in trouble. What was your initial pitch to Alan such that he saw the future of the brand versus its current, or when it was at its current state? It wasn't really a crazy pitch. He's a visionary, and I think he saw the protein category developing before anybody saw it.
He liked the fact that it was out of real food. He thought the world needed an option to not have to settle for, empty snacking with legacy products, and not have to settle for powder products with powder protein snacks. He just really felt that the need for a real food snack existed. I think he enjoys the nuance about it, figuring out the machinery, doing something that's never been done before.
I think that gets him out of bed in the morning, and I think that's really what he took a liking to. And I'm sure he took a liking to the fact that I was willing to... you could tell that I was dedicated, but it was just my life. I can remember when we were at the co-man, I spent 200 nights in Martinsville, Virginia.
If you've ever been to Martinsville, there's one Hampton Inn, and then it really falls off a cliff on any other accommodation options. There's maybe one restaurant there, and then the same thing, it falls off a big cliff. But that's where we put our first equipment, and my wife and fur babies were in Boulder that year while 200 nights I was in Martinsville.
But that was just the dedication. I had a vision, and I was running through brick walls to get to where I wanted to go. I think he saw that, and he respected it. Yeah. Investors invest in entrepreneurs as much as they do in brands and businesses. I hear that a lot. They also want to invest in sound businesses and making sure that if you're not currently profitable, you have a path to profitability, and that gross margin is in line with expectations for CPG brands.
How much does that matter? How much does that impact your business strategy at this point? It seems like your vision and your ambition is driving this company right now, but how do you make sure that costs and efficiency are in line with expectations for a business in CPG? Yeah. Listen, you definitely need to have a path to profitability or positive EBITDA, and you definitely need to have a path to better margin.
Our early margins were peanuts. We were doing something that's never been done before. We had two manufacturing facilities. We were shipping product, not owning it, but co-mans that we were going back and forth from, and we were just not doing well on the margin front. When we opened our facility, we went from teens all the way to triple that.
You can launch a product, like the cracker might not come out of the gate 'cause you're scaling something for the first time. You've got, start, stop. You've got just learnings. So you may not come out with the ideal margin, but over time you need a path to get there. And you need to have products that taste amazing.
You have to have products that people won't try once and say that was fine, but I'm probably not going to buy that again." You need to compel consumers to buy products consistently and often. And when I think about the protein crackers, I do feel like you are at a no-compromise level, especially given the functional benefit that you're getting from this product.
But making sure that is top of mind when you are innovating and when you are demoing and when you are talking to customers has to be priority number one Have there been times when you felt like you could launch a product that was pretty good, that was almost there? Or has a launch or a new product introduction always had to be perfect in your eyes before it hit the market?
Great question, Ray. I strive for perfection, but I don't, I've never gotten there. The chip, I would be lying to you if I said that I wasn't always tweaking it, and if I wasn't always learning. But, the one thing I'd say, let's think about this. Frito, for example, has probably been around 60 years, and think about the 60 years of learning, and you and I wasn't around for all that, but we just know it as what it looks like today.
I've been fortunate to have some folks who have retired and they consult for Wild, and so I get all this backstory. But these guys went through the same evolution you're learning something for the first time, new technology comes, you learn something, you learn a better way to do it. So I view that as our product, with our product, like the chip.
When I turn this new chip line on, I am going from a one cook zone to a three cook zone, and that is going to drive different texture, it's gonna drive cleaner eating. And so all that is just more knowledge that we learned, and then we apply it, and so we're constantly trying to make it better. If I could write my own ticket, Wild chips would eat like a Pringle.
And I'm fortunate and happy that we come out of the gate on the cracker much more closer to the legacy than we did on the chip, but I'm not 100% with the cracker yet. I think there's optimization going on. 10 minutes before I jumped on this call, I was on the cracker line and we were working on something this week.
And so I think you always gotta be getting better. That's just my vision now, that's what I'm going after. And I don't view Wild belonging in sports nutrition. I view Wild belonging in the snack category. And why can't people have the taste and texture of the legacy product without the empty snacking, and have something that, i- is filling?
And just makes them feel better about consuming a snack built out of real ingredient. Like that's really what my focus is. I think the key to any great CPG brand is making something that consumers across the board will embrace. It's pretty rare to find or hear about an acquisition that happens where it's truly a functional product.
It always seems like the best tasting products rise to the top, and ones that really resonate with consumers on multiple levels, not just functionality. And I think that makes a ton of sense when you talk about indulgence as the key to Wild's future. And I see it, and I'm tasting it in these protein crackers that, which again, are pretty darn amazing.
And I have to congratulate you on getting to this point, 'cause it sounds like it was a long process and one that in the end was truly worth it. So Jason, congratulations on everything that you've accomplished at this point, and very exciting to see the brand's development over five years and thrilled for the next five years for Wild.
I hope we can do this again really soon. Brain, thank you so much. I've enjoyed it. You talking about it, I'm just so grateful because that's how your listeners will learn about it, and we will continue to spread the word, build awareness, and drive trial. So man, just can't thank you enough for spending time with me today and I can't wait to do this in the future.
Thank you so much again. Thank you
