Hey, folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now I am supremely honored to be sitting down with Nick Ajluni and Nick Guillen, the co-founders of TRUFF. Nick G, how are you? Fabulous. Thanks for having us, Ray. How you doing? I'm fantastic. Nick A, great to see you again. You too, man. Excited. Yeah. So when we first met, it was back in January of 2020.
We're at the Winter Fancy Food Show. We sat down IRL in the press room, and it was a thrilling conversation for me because at the time there was a lot of hype around TRUFF. There still is, for sure, but no one had seen a brand like yours before, and it really represented change, particularly within the category that you were competing in, hot sauce.
One of the most interesting things about TRUFF is that when it debuted, it was differentiated by the fact that it was, quote, "A digitally native brand." It was engineered for Instagram. Nick G, how would you describe TRUFF at this point? Our roots, I think, will always be digital. The brand was built on the internet for the internet.
But as we've matured, we have really tried to do a good job at what a best-in-class CPG brand would do, from a retail strategy, from hiring, from showing up where the consumer is, aside from just on social media and TikTok and the internet. And Nick A, the idea of TRUFF, the vision for TRUFF was to be a lifestyle luxury hot sauce brand, and right now you are so much more than that.
When you started the company, did you envision having, say, an aioli line? Did you envision having a tomato sauce line? Did you see that this brand had the opportunity to become a food portfolio brand? We always say we, we modeled the business off of Red Bull, where they had one product for three decades, and even a Cholula, for example.
And so our early days were we will never sell in stores and we're only gonna sell one thing, but life happened, the internet happened, food culture happened, retail happened, and I think we've risen to those occasions and evolved with the demand for what the TRUFF brand stands for and what the TRUFF brand can offer.
How would you describe TRUFF in, say, five words or less, Nick A? Thoughtfully crafted, accessible culinary experiences. Impressive. That was really good. I like that. Thank you. And I think that, again, speaks to how the brand has evolved beyond simply being a hot sauce brand. How do you decide on timing when you are launching new innovation?
How do you think about getting not just the product but the time and cultural moment for a new product line, Nick G? So it's interesting because there's never a perfect time, I would say, and especially with so many different things going on. We wanna do our best to time the market and what's on trend with the consumer and kind of what's hot.
But at the end of the day for us, looking at the dipping sauce category, the aioli category, we knew we could create an incredible product, first and foremost. We had an incredible mayo line, but I think the new form of putting an incredible tasting liquid in a squeeze bottle makes it a lot more easy for consumers to use.
But it allows us to now venture into things outside of hot sauce. And with our line now, we have four incredibly tasting aiolis. Our garlic Parm Caesar, our smoky jalapeno, our original, and our lemon pepper aioli. Along with the new line, we've seen a brand refresh for TRUFF that feels like it's really focused on the retail end of what you're doing, and the shopability of your products.
Again, I think this speaks to the development of TRUFF as a retail-first brand. I could be reading into things, but Nick A, how much of the present and future of TRUFF is really focused on retail versus online? It's no secret that we're making a big retail push, and we have been over the last few years.
The rebrand was part of a push for accessibility and education. And like you alluded to at the beginning, if you hadn't been online, and you just showed up at a retail store, say Kroger or, Publix or somewhere, you see this product and it just says TRUFF down the front. Maybe you don't know what truffle is or you don't know what TRUFF is, and you don't know how to use what you're looking at, and it previously was $15, you might pass on that.
You're likely to pass or be skeptical or think about it and come back later. The rebrand was a very long and tedious and thoughtful process, and took us actually many years and many different, work streams, different groups we worked with, and as well, mainly our in-house team actually. But the future, I think, of TRUFF is retail, but we're actually continuing to double down online in this moment.
We're actually doing a lot of different things that we'll be rolling out over the next few weeks, months, and maybe years, that are very digitally focused. If we had to pick one, it's probably retail, but the internet's not going anywhere So you alluded to the fact that it took a lot of time to introduce this rebrand.
I imagine that there were a lot of disagreements and challenging conversations to be had about making any kind of change to what already has been an iconic and very effective label. And I would be if I were a founder of TRUFF, a little concerned about perhaps losing some of the magic. Yes, you definitely want people to know more about what you're selling and make it as clear as possible, but one of the things that made TRUFF so successful at the outset was that luxurious packaging, that beautiful vertical logo that still exists on your packaging.
There was nothing else like it, and I don't think there's been anything like it since. So Nick G, how much concern did you have? What were some of those questions like? What were some of those challenges that I imagine existed? How did you get through them? How did you talk through them? How did you make sure that you weren't, again, losing the magic of what you already had with TRUFF?
Yeah. So it's funny, I've actually been thinking a lot about this over the last couple weeks, and the way that I best describe it is we're undergoing a renovation of the brand, right? We had built this beautiful modern house for the internet that, at the end of the day, had an incredible product inside of it, but the outside didn't really do a good job of telling consumers what's the flavor profile, what is the actual product, what are some of the flavor cues, how hot is it, how prominent's truffle?
And we've basically been trying to renovate what we've currently built to answer a lot of those questions. And that has us considering, okay, maybe we gotta change some of the fixtures. Maybe we gotta change some of the wallpaper. Maybe the staircase over here wasn't as functional as we thought it would be.
So for us, it's really trying to move into the direction of educating the consumer at shelf very quickly, within three seconds when they see the product, but not stepping so far away from the true DNA and the roots of our brand. And I think one of the best things we did was keep the vertical aesthetic of the TRUFF logo down the front, but now we've used all of the real estate in a very productive way to answer all of those questions that the consumer has at shelf.
Our goal is to be America's number one premium condiment. And if you look at where TRUFF was to start, if you look at just average selling price, it was an ultra, ultra, ultra premium condiment, right? Four to five times the category. And the word premium, we could talk about it all day, argue it, hate it, love it, but when you look at accessibility and truly getting into tens of millions of households, that's a different proposition than selling a shiny object on the internet.
And so I think every pixel of that label was thoughtfully placed there to accomplish that goal. At the end of the day, the product inside the bottle is always going to remain as top-tier as you could possibly imagine. We're gonna continue to source the best ingredients from all over the world.
We're gonna work with the best-in-class manufacturers to really bring the idea of this high-end flavor profile that's extremely unique in our category to consumers. But now we're able to open our aperture and allow customers who wouldn't pay 15, 17, 18, 19, $20 for a hot sauce to now try it at a sub $10 price point.
So as we look to make the brand more accessible, we're not necessarily doing it from a, how do we get all of our costs down? How do we use cheaper suppliers or cheaper accessories for the brand? It's, how do we put an offer together for the customer that allows us to capture more of the shopper market share within the category?
If you look at the category, I believe 90% of the dollars are spent between four and $7 price points for hot sauces. At 14 to $20, we're only speaking to a very slim percentage of the category shopper. So as we move the brand to a sub $10 price point, we're now able to talk to consumers that are willing to even consider our product because it's at a price that they're willing to pay.
So we're essentially just making it more accessible through price pack architecture and also flavor innovation. Yeah. It's interesting, 'cause the way I am hearing what you're talking about is that premium doesn't necessarily mean exclusivity. It's really about quality and versatility, and I think TRUFF has gradually become a more versatile brand via innovation.
And I think about mild hot sauce and how that could speak to a lot of different consumers, and more consumers in ways that the original TRUFF had not How do you think about trying to innovate to reach more consumers, but in a way that doesn't alienate anyone, in a way that embraces the TAM opportunity that you might have in CPG?
Yeah. You nailed it right on the head with, when you were alluding to our mild sauce. That was our very first, I would say, venture away from our true core. We have our buffalo and our jalapeno, but mild essentially is a luxury version of Taco Bell mild sauce with, a TRUFF twist.
And so many consumers out there enjoy sauces. They enjoy elevating their food with these flavor enhancers, but a lot of people don't like spice at the end of the day. And for us, a lot of people when they look at our brand, it's oh, TRUFF's a hot sauce brand. But, we're more than just a hot sauce brand.
We're a flavor elevator. And with this mild offering, it allows us to bring those consumers into our flywheel that have sensitivity to heat, and we can deliver that thing that they're looking for. But we also now have other offerings like our illy line that aren't very hot, and it really just continues to bring new shoppers into our ecosystem.
Do you have to be perfect when you launch new products, or is it okay to say we can iterate after this launches? First off, one of the best things we ever did for our brand was hire a chief saucier officer, individual named Elliot, who has been an incredible resource and a leader on the R&D front, aside from our incredible operations team, to really bring these products and ideas to life.
As well as our marketing team, which really bring consumer insights and real data internally to say, "Okay, this is what's going on. This is what the number's saying. This is what's happening in grocery. How could we truly innovate and deliver incredible-tasting products to our consumers?" And first we start with the data, and then we understand, okay, how can we really innovate in the TRUFF way?
And a lot of times it starts with a retailer relationship. First, in the past, it might have started on e-com, where we could spin something up, we could test it online. If it hits with the consumer, then we'll launch it into a retailer. But now it's more so a little bit thoughtful, like nothing's ever going to be perfect, but it really needs to hit.
It really needs to work. And internally, Nick and I are still extremely involved with any sauce, any product that comes to market. We have samples that we're trying constantly. We're working with our R&D team and Elliot to really fine-tune things. But from a perfection standpoint, we try to get as close to perfect as possible because when these things release, it's on a big stage.
It's not just a small test and learn for our own dotcom anymore. Yeah. Typically, when I see a new product coming out from TRUFF, there is a huge social push behind it. You first tease it on Instagram or other social platforms, and when it launches, it seems like there's a lot of people who were on the edge of their seats waiting to see what it would be.
And I think data really helps to identify what consumers are looking for. But I think at the end of the day, gut will tell you a lot about where you should go for new products and innovation. But what really informs TRUFF at this point? Is it a gut feeling about a particular new product, or is it really rooted in data, Nick A?
It's a mix. It's a hybrid. I think data points the direction of the ship. Data is in buyers, candidly. Buyers are not shy about what's missing in their set or how consumers are behaving about wanting to partner with brands to fill needs. Data can tell you how people are behaving. We also, we're pretty connected to the internet and culture, and we can just kinda see what's going on in food culture, see what's happening on TikTok, see what other launches are getting hype, see what is missing, unfortunately, from other launches.
And, the whole team on our end is kinda synthesizing all this information and, collaborating on the, quote unquote, "right way forward" for, X category or whatnot. And so with our aiolis, if you look at the lineup, a classic truffle is a staple at TRUFF. That's quite simple.
But we don't wanna just be a me too in the set. We wanna kinda bring something to the set that doesn't exist. And so that's why you see some of these, Lemon pepper is such a culturally relevant flavor. It's talked about in music. It's Wingstop known, and I don't see a staple lemon pepper mayo or aioli being used nationwide and there should be one It helps when you have a great team, and you both have referenced your team a number of times, and you've brought a new CEO on.
And I imagine that this is something that has been a long time in the making, a long time in the works in trying to find the right person to steer the ship going forward. Just talk about your new CEO and some of the non-negotiables that you had to see in this person such that they could take it from TRUFF 1.0 to TRUFF 2.0 without any disruption.
Nick G. Yeah talked a little bit about the brand renovation, and I think another big part of that renovation is bringing in leadership and a new CEO like Essie to really help lead the whole team and drive the ship. Nick and I, we were first-time CEOs. We're scrappy entrepreneurs. A lot of gut instinct and just hustling our way through without really knowing.
And I think with this incredible hire, it brings a lot of that traditional, really best-in-class CPG prowess to the organization, and it allows Nick and I to really lean back into our entrepreneurial roots and continue injecting that early DNA of TRUFF back into the brand. But this time we have an incredible leadership team.
Essie was a brand new CEO that we brought in, and we've continued to rebuild out the whole leadership team amongst many other roles that are really bringing in that new best-in-class, more longer term, big CPG to the organization. It's scary. I would imagine it's really scary because that big CPG experience and creating a brand that can be everywhere hasn't necessarily been the identity of TRUFF for a long time.
And you want the culture to remain what it has been. You want the vision to remain what it has been while building out that bigger presence. So again, Nick A, if I were to bring on a new CEO, if I were in your shoes, I think one of the most important things would be to make sure that person is culturally aligned with what you guys are all about.
I have a sense. I've, I, first met you guys in, in 2020, and I feel like I'm still talking to the same guys, at least from a cultural perspective. You're both laid back. You're both highly intelligent. You're both highly ambitious, but you're not willing to compromise, and that's been clear throughout our conversation.
So when you were first talking to Essie, and continuing upon that conversation, how did you know she was the right one, Nick A? Yeah, I don't know if we're highly intelligent, but- ... we're working on that. Yeah, so look, it was a very kinda long process, right? It was a very thoughtful decision with our new partner being the in- investment we took.
As Nick G said, it's, big CPG is, it's its own category. It's its own industry. And Essie came from Tates. She ran a, multi-hundred million dollar P&L. She has a very long and accomplished and impressive career at various brands like Colgate, L'Oreal. I think she's even had MTV for a stint.
And we probably talked to 30-plus candidates over maybe eight months or so, and we weren't in some crazy rush to just get someone in the seat. No, it was very much "Hey, this is what we're building." Having the right, almost giving LeBron the ball, is a really smart and strategic move at the stage we were at and the stage we wanna get to.
And with Essie, it was abundantly clear. It's funny because it's always, like- You know, we'd have kind of some of these long multi-week conversations and get closer to the line with one individual, and then it would kinda not quite work out. Or we would feel really good about certain of their skillsets, and then a little bit hesitant or apprehensive about another.
And Truff is not like your run-of-the-mill just "Oh, we'll just do this. We'll add distribution. We'll do more promos." And we're building something truly thoughtful and special that we think can be here in 100 years. And so it was clear with Essy that she kinda had the whole package, right?
She had the CPG prowess. She understood food and cult- she's a foodie. She loves amazing food. She's also a culinary professional. She's trained, culinarily trained. She was a big Truff user prior to ever meeting us. We had some good mutual friends in the network. Shout out to Craig at Happy Coffee. And every conversation we were just speaking the same language.
And when she kinda put this plan together of, what she thinks this brand could be, it was like, "This just makes so much sense." She's just in sync with us. She's in lockstep with us. And she has a level of enthusiasm that you could be having the worst day ever and you get on a call with Essy, and you're just like, you're perked up and you're ready to go.
And that's a really strong energy to bring to an organization. And so yeah, it took us a while, but we found her, and she's been with us for over a year, almost a year and a half now, and it's been nothing but amazing. Truff scaled very quickly and has built enormous cultural momentum. But what investments in particular behind the scenes were really necessary to turn the brand from what had been a viral success into a durable business?
Where did you invest most heavily over the past few years? Was it talent? Was it operations? Was it supply chain, innovation, retail? I think team and people is first and foremost. Our ops team is off the charts. It's incredible. They move mountains every day. Anyone who runs a CPG brand knows that pretty much every single day is operationally miserable.
There's nothing that ever goes right, even when you do everything right. You can check every box 50 times, and then somehow they get unchecked by the powers that be. And so I think treating people well is the number one thing operators can do, not because it's good for the business, but because it's the right thing to do.
But it pays dividends as you're running the business. I think another area that we've invested is quality, right? So our products, we haven't spent a lot of time talking about our actual liquids, but they're, like, best in class, and they're more expensive because of that. But, we could talk about label and package and price all day, but when you get down to it, people are taking what's in that bottle, and they're ingesting it into their bodies, and they're...
Before they do, there has a whole flavor experience. And we haven't cut any corners ever on the quality of product. That's an investment in itself, because at the end of the day, that's what we're here for, right? We're here to make meals better. We're here to make ordinary meals extraordinary, and that is where we should be investing.
And so even, like Mick mentioned Elliot our Head of Culinary, essentially, and Tiff, who runs our ops team. And so when we look at the offering, it needs to be best in class in every way, and making it that is an investment. It's an investment every day. Nick G- Nick A said that you have to treat your people well.
What does that mean? Are you talking about just being nice to people and treating them like professionals? Is it about compensation? Is it about career development? What, in your mind, what is the Truff way of treating people well? I think it's everything. It's first off really trying to hire the right people and allowing people that are professionals and experts in their field bring that juice to the organization.
The last thing we wanna do is hire the chief saucier and tell him how to make sauce, right? So a lot of the time we really try to instill independence and ownership with everybody in the org. And when Nick and I or anybody else needs to jump in and maybe bump something back online, we'll do that. But, I would say there's a lot of independence.
I would say, people are taken care of very well in many different ways. We really wanna make people feel like they're owners within the org. And everybody at Truff is an owner, so there's a lot that we do across the board to really make people feel like true owners.
We've always had a very ethical framework, Nick and I think that's why we get along so well. And I doubt you'll ever hear a story that, Nick and Nick shaded us. We just treat people extremely well 'cause we care about them as people, not because we're trying to manipulate them into performing at our organization.
We just actually care as people. And so I think just having that as your North Star naturally will trickle down all those kind of things that you mentioned, including career growth, including, autonomy, including, making sure the work environment is good, doing... our head of people, Aaron, does these monthly poll surveys.
What's going great at Truff? What's not? It's hard to be a remote organization, largely remote. And there were rough patches of our journey that we probably didn't do the best job, and things were so chaotic that people were like, "Hey, what, I haven't talked to anyone about this in a couple weeks," or, "I feel like I'm out of the loop.
What's our objective?" And so learning from those things and continuing to develop 'em. But yeah, people is everything. People is what builds the business. I have always been excited about what Truff was and what it could be today, what it could be in 10 years from now. You've talked about the opportunity to be in tens of millions of households, but what is the big, hairy, audacious goal for TRUFF?
What is, what's perhaps the end game for you both as founders? Are you motivated by a potential acquisition, or are you more motivated by, the opportunity for TRUFF to be a truly iconic brand and one that's known perhaps as well as, say, Heinz? Yeah, look, I think they're one in the same.
Acquisition and 20 million households. I think the goal is... When we started TRUFF, Nick and I, we don't have a culinary background. While we were foodies and we were college kids that used a ton of hot sauce, we really wanted to turn heads. We wanted to show people that you can make something that kind of breaks some rules, right?
TRUFF breaks a lot of culinary rules, it breaks a lot of packaging rules, it breaks a lot of distribution rules, it breaks a lot of positioning rules. It pretty much breaks every rule. And when you think about what TRUFF can become, I think we're lucky that we have the opportunity to build something that can truly impact...
people eat three meals, most people eat three meals a day every day, and we can truly impact that experience at scale. And we can offer people an experience three times a day that, or however many times they wanna, eat at home or whatever, something that they look forward to, and it brings them joy, and it allows them to connect with family and friends.
And we can do it in a way that's cool, that's culturally relevant, that's accessible. I can't tell you how many people have walked up to Nick and I at trade shows or in our DMs. They're like, "Hey I started my brand because you guys started TRUFF." I would never think that someone would start a brand because we started TRUFF.
I wouldn't even fathom that. And so to us, it's very meaningful to show that the status quo is in all of our hands, right? We can, we as humans can create things, and so the symbol of TRUFF is very important to us. Whether or not we change hands over the next few years, whatever, but I think there is value in...
you, there's a lot of very cool acquisitions. I think Unilever tripled Liquid IV, right? That's like a platform that an independent just doesn't have. Cholula has become an incredibly... The amount of offerings they've come out with that are actually amazing since McCormick took them over is insane.
There's, there is value in working with a strategic partner to do things that you just don't have the ability to do independently. But I think we're very focused on just building the best thing we could build and doing it with great people and doing it in a great way. Very well said, and I love the phrase you used, "The status quo is in our hands."
And I think for entrepreneurs, especially in CPG, it truly is. When I meet an entrepreneur for the first time, whether they're in food or beverage, and they have something, it makes me really excited, 'cause I was there at the beginning. And those folks include the people who, say, started Poppi, or started Health-Ade, or started Simple Mills, or started TRUFF.
And it's really exciting, isn't it? Because you guys are changing the landscape of food and beverage one brand at a time, and consumers are buying into this idea that we don't have to rely on legacy brands to make our food what it is. We can eat spicier, we can eat healthier, we can eat with more freedom in how we think about what food should taste like.
And it's just incredible to see what you both have built. And I mentioned at the top of the show, I'm supremely honored to sit down with you. I really mean that. Thank you so much for all that you've brought to this industry, and thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having us, and thank you for all that you do for the industry. It's been incredible to see you grow as well. I really appreciate that. I will just say, this I said at the beginning before we started recording, but we extremely enjoy speaking with you, 'cause it's so much below the surface on CPG.
It's, it actually is very stimulating, it always has been, and think every time we talk to you, we're like, "God, we wanna have more of those conversations." Because it's typically, very surface level, and to be able to really jam at a deeper CPG level is our favorite thing to do. So thank you for your perspective on brands and bringing those perspectives to the masses.
I'm down to do this once a month if you guys are down, so Send the cal. Let's do it. In all seriousness, we'll do this again soon, I hope. And perhaps the next time, a strategic partner might be involved, and it'll be a completely different conversation about how that process went. And it'll be very interesting to pull back the layers and pull back the curtain on how that process unfolded.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's just be happy with what we got right now, and I'm very happy we had this chance to speak, so thank you once again. Thanks, Ray.
