Accidental Entrepreneurs Revolutionizing the Snack Industry

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Cullen Gilchrist

It's great to have you here on the Food Founders podcast and get to talk about your business.

Dave Birsen

Excited to be here.

Cullen Gilchrist

So I'm gonna take a stab at this, but you guys are Revol Snax. And you are aiming to satisfy sweet cravings without sugar. And so for me what that means is you guys are a snack company, and you're making keto, paleo, and low sugar products. You've got some you'd love to do more.

Dave Birsen

Exactly. That's that's exactly who we are.

Cullen Gilchrist

Good. Fantastic. I got it right on the first try. So let's start with some quick introductions. So if you just want to introduce yourself, what's your title and we'll get going from there.

Dave Birsen

I'm Dave. I am one of the co founders of Revol Snax and the CEO and all things founder involved in operations.

Nadine Calderon

And I'm Nadine, and I'm also the co founder and director of partnerships.

Cullen Gilchrist

Awesome. Very cool. And so you guys are co founders and partners in this business. And a lot of folks that we work with aren't starting as a partnership, or they're not a partnership. So how do you guys get to meet each other, and we'll kind of work through this, but the kind of story of starting this business, but first how'd you meet each other?

Nadine Calderon

It's a funny story, and we're gonna give you like the highlight version, because there's so many details, but basically, we met through mutual friends while I was starting English, at Georgetown, taking classes there and Dave was kind of like

Dave Birsen

Had just moved to Washington, DC, starting my first job out of college. And long story short, we were tagalongs on blind date, mutual friends who had met in one of the online dating apps, and didn't want to meet each other, one on one. So we happened to be the two that they brought along as the extras. It's funny that is their date went terribly, and ours was like hitting it off.

Nadine Calderon

It worked out for us.

Cullen Gilchrist

Yes, we start business and so on and so forth.

Nadine Calderon

Yes. That's right.

Cullen Gilchrist

And here we are. Yeah. So we talked a little bit about background, but so you you were working, What were you doing before this?

Dave Birsen

I was a biomedical engineer at FDA. So yeah, working in the medical device space.

Cullen Gilchrist

Okay. Yeah, very cool.

Nadine Calderon

And I was working as a Spanish teacher. My first job here in the United States. fresh out of college, kind of trying to find my path.

Cullen Gilchrist

What just what we were studying in school?

Nadine Calderon

I started studying industrial engineering.

Cullen Gilchrist

Okay, so two engineers of sorts.

Nadine Calderon

Yeah but food lovers though.

Cullen Gilchrist

Yeah. And I think that's a great party or so we were talking about that earlier. So you guys met and you've got a passion for food? Yeah. And tell me a little bit about that.

Nadine Calderon

So after we met, we both realized that 1. we didn't know how to cook good meals

Dave Birsen

I was making frozen frozen pizzas every day. Yeah. Anything else you can pull out in the freezer aisle? Yeah, he was very good that it wasn't impressive to her. Figure it out.

Nadine Calderon

But yeah, and I was like making smoothies and nothing very nutritious, and sugary smoothies, as they call them. And everything I was eating was low fat, actually. So we were like, when we started learning about keto, that changed very quickly after that, but basically are our parents and David's family, we had some family members that had struggle with diet related disease in the past, and we knew, like if we didn't pay attention to what we were eating, we will end up you know, like my dad or like, people that we knew and loved. So we took a step into, you know, like being charged about diet, learning, informing ourselves and learning how to cook.

Dave Birsen

Yeah. So curious about like learning how to do things for ourselves. And we were getting really interested in this low carb keto movement through podcasts and other things.

Cullen Gilchrist

And when is this?

Dave Birsen

2016, 2017

Cullen Gilchrist

People are starting to learn about that sort of stuff then.

Dave Birsen

Exactly yeah. Which was in contrast to like a lot of the diet advice out there.

Nadine Calderon

When you told me I should stop buying low fat yogurt, I was very shocked. Everything is supposed to be low fat, you know, like my yogurt, my cheese and then he's like, no, this is the keto diet that tells you to eat high fat.

Dave Birsen

And then we did coconut oil in the coffee.

Nadine Calderon

Oh my god that was terrible. You kind of like make the relationship between healthy and low fat. So when someone tells you no actually to eat healthier, you actually need to incorporate healthy fats. It's very shocking if you're not familiar with that. So that was like a big change for us but we did it.

Dave Birsen

Yeah, so it really we were just kind of experimenting and started feeling better, like love less sugar, less like processed carbs, less frozen pizza.

Nadine Calderon

More whole foods.

Cullen Gilchrist

I actually think this is a really important thing kind of in the entrepreneurial journey, because you guys are entrepreneurs, right? And you weren't and you've journied towards it. And I hear this all the time from others. And it's it's that moment when you realize that things that you knew, maybe weren't right. And you didn't like it. And you started, you tried to try doing something different, right? And that's an important step in that really, okay, well, we're in this keto thing, that other stuff we've heard, isn't right, because we're doing keto.Yeah, feel good.

Nadine Calderon

Yeah. And especially after we realized that, you know, there was nothing in the grocery stores that we could buy that we were able to fit in the diet, but it was very hard. And we both have a sweet tooth, like, we like sweets, and treats, and desserts. And we had to make everything from scratch and we're like, we don't always have time to make everything like we wish there was something that we could go to a grocery store and get that healthy, low sugar, low carb dessert. And that's when it kind of clicked to us that okay, well, later after but we started experiment in our kitchen making the search for ourselves and after like a year or so we kind of thought that it can be a good idea for other people.

Cullen Gilchrist

So you have this realization, you know, that drives you to Keto maybe something better, something different, then you have this problem and you feel it acutely. It's your life. And so then you start working on like a personal solution for it.

Nadine Calderon

Exactly.

Dave Birsen

That's right. Yeah, essentially, we started just researching all the food bloggers out there, like, there's this, like, keto community out there and like other people have sweet cravings so how are they doing it? And we just started learning mainly about the non sugar, sweetener space, like that ingredient stack that is out there and there's been a lot of developments, I think, in the last five or so years, 10 years, that have enabled like these really delicious, sweet flavor profiles that don't have all the sugar that is traditionally used to make a brownie or cookie, ice cream, all those things. And so you can buy these things on Amazon back in 2016. And so that's what we were doing and just making stuff at home. And we're like, this is amazing. Like, this tastes almost as good as things that we were having in love previously.

Cullen Gilchrist

I'm impressed you had things that tasted amazing at first.

Dave Birsen

There's a lot of trial and error.

Nadine Calderon

And quickly afterwards. It was like wow, this is good. We don't miss the sugary desserts anymore.

Dave Birsen

Yeah, there's a lot of things you can just kind of swap directly with sugar for these other types of ingredients and it doesn't always work out perfectly, but they're good enough that that you can make something that tastes pretty good.

Cullen Gilchrist

That's what you did.

That's what we did. And then that's how the mousse, the first product, started out we really worked on for like a year, develop the recipe tweak things experimented with like shelf life and expiration dates. No sugar, coconut based. So it was plant based it was three things that we really stand for which are like, low carb, paleo meaning clean ingredients, and plant based. That was kind of our first idea, like your first product. Until we met you guys!

Cullen Gilchrist

That's right, you were like hey, we've been doing this thing and no one makes it and this must be a great idea for a business.

Nadine Calderon

Exactly. And then we present it to you our baby mousse idea that we've been working on for a year and two other ideas are we kind of scraped together two nights before we're like, okay, let's give them options. But we're pretty sure we're gonna choose the mousse because we've been working on the mousse for a year. And then you and Elena were like, you know, the mousse actually is not the good option, let's go with the bites. And then we were like, okay, let's work on the recipe but it all worked out and it's funny to think about how much time we put into developing the recipe for the mousse. And we went with something completely new for us.

Cullen Gilchrist

I think it's such an important theme and being entrepreneur and starting business, especially in the stuff we do like food for consumers is you can have all the ideas in the world you can work so hard and no one really cares at the end of the day. They just care if they want it or not want it? And so for us, we're like, well, you know, this is hard. And that was your first time

Nadine Calderon

And it was not shelf stable. You know, and with shipping, you know, like,

Dave Birsen

And we wanted to be an e commerce company.

Nadine Calderon

And yeah we were not being realistic. So you were there to be like okay, we need to, you know. eah, we don't want you to kill anyone. Yes, exactly.

Cullen Gilchrist

Okay, cool. So, so we send you away and say, Jesus, terrible idea. But, um, thanks for trying. And you come back with these bites. Yeah, that is kind of the core of the company right now. Right?

Nadine Calderon

Yeah,

Dave Birsen

That's right. Yeah, we were inspired, I think, by some other companies, not in the low carb or keto space, but during these kind of dessert type of bite products that, you know, we were finding in Whole Foods or other kind of natural food channels. And we thought we could do something like this and you know, tastes really good but without the sugar. Yeah.

Cullen Gilchrist

So describe the bite.

Dave Birsen

So we make a line of nut butter filled coconut bites. They're in four flavors now. The initial idea was just a chocolate kind of all in butter stuffed by almost like, kind of like a Reese's cup. Or like a, you know, an energy bite format. And we're coming at it from like, a luxurious dessert. These things are not on the market. There's a gap. And like, we want to be able to give people that indulgence without all the sugar and refined carbs and all that stuff.

Nadine Calderon

Then we developed the three other flavors. We wanted to launch with four and then after that we developed the double dark chocolatem snickerdoodle and matcha latte.

Cullen Gilchrist

Yeah. With the chocolate almond butter one. That's the first one,

Nadine Calderon

Yeah that was the first one.

Cullen Gilchrist

What's your favorite one?

Nadine Calderon

Mine is double dark.

Dave Birsen

I'm also double the dark chocolate in less than the mornings. I'll go with macha. Yes. Nice. And the matcha is the newer one?

Nadine Calderon

Matcha and snickerdoodle are the newer ones.

Cullen Gilchrist

Well, they're very good. And every time I see someone who's experimenting or learning about keto, they basically start with you guys. You're like the entree into it.

Dave Birsen

Right, that's our mission.

Nadine Calderon

To make it easier for everybody, you know?

Cullen Gilchrist

Yeah, we had someone on the team, Andrew was basically like five packs a day at one point.

Nadine Calderon

We don't recommend that though. I do advise that no, don't try at home. Here, don't do one half. but every day. Right and get a subscription. Super cool. So anyways, you you figure out the products. And everyone's like, yeah, this actually does work. It's something that exists in the market already - bites. It's in a format that, you know, is manufacturable. There's a line of sight towards into the game, others are doing it. Clearly, there's evidence that this is something people want, except you guys are also you know, answering the problem of sugar and diet and those things. And it's like boom, you've got this product and you launch it of course, you're gonna launch it with us. Yeah, but it's so tell me a little bit about like, what kind of getting it into a package. And then with us, and then I kind of want to talk about you know, getting other people to buy it. So going from we've got the product, getting into a package that you can actually sell. How does that take you like a day to take a year? I mean, what was that process?

Dave Birsen

Yes, this is really and thinking about partnerships, something that I would have been very bad at but Nadine was very good at and I think she has an intuitive sense of design and the network of people to go to to make something look really nice from a design packaging perspective. And so, it probably took us a couple of months of iterations with the designer but relatively quickly we were able to go from we think we have a good product now let's you know, put a package around it and get it on a grocery store shelf

Nadine Calderon

First logo, you know, first logo then packaging, like the process that you go into. But of course, like as we were telling you early like the first time without really knowing how the product will behave from like going from Union Kitchen where we make it to like actually the shelves of the grocery stores. So many things we didn't know about the product and so many things went wrong. And it was a good learning experience because for example, the packaging we wanted people to To be able to see to the product. And that was a bad idea.

Cullen Gilchrist

You could look into it and it would be smudge. Yes, maybe like greasy. Right?

Dave Birsen

Yeah. And Matcha turns this nasty gray color when it's exposed to light.

Nadine Calderon

Yeah, and then they were gray matcha bites and we were like what's happening? And then we have to research and yeah, if matcha is very sensitive to light, and we're like, okay, we need to remove the window ASAP. And then we also realized that they needed a tray to hold the shape. That was very important. And those changes were happening, you know, as we were learning.

Cullen Gilchrist

And they were happening quickly. That's really important. You didn't wait a year to change it.

Nadine Calderon

Because we launched locally in just a few stores, that was a good thing, instead of reduce going huge. Just the fact that it was easy for us to implement changes and use, for example, order 2000 bags at a time and or less, you know, it was more expensive than way but also, that was what allowed us to make those changes on time.

Cullen Gilchrist

It gives you the confidence to constantly change as you listen to the market. Did you make this product? We've said this before you make a product and go to market. And no matter what you think, no matter how hard you work for it, it's up to the market. And yeah, they were showing you these things. And some are obvious, like the window, some are less obvious, you know, like, how they were stacking or how people were eating them or how they were storing when they took it home?

Nadine Calderon

Yeah, or a lot of people didn't know why they were. So it took us a lot of like, many iterations to get the word in, right? Because although, for example, we had coconut bites in the front, maybe it wasn't the right size, and people that didn't like coconut will try them. And they will be oh my gosh, it has coconut in it. And like really like them. And we're like, well they're coconut bites you have to read it. But you know, maybe it wasn't like the right size. So it's not it's not their fault. It was kind of like learning about exactly the first thing you see when you see the packaging.

Cullen Gilchrist

Exactly. That's a fun thing I think about his entrepreneurial journey again, like the process of creating and kn owing but then you have to be humble. Yeah, to just stop what's in your head and just listen, you know, it doesn't matter if you think they should know, it says coconut bites, what matters is do they know? And how do you redesign for the user for their experience? And that's great. You guys did a great job of iterating that over month by month, yeah, step by step.

Nadine Calderon

Totally. Yeah. And still changes, though, we still learn now there is a summer, we have a new bag that has a little kind of sticker that's in the bag is in the sign that says that they melt at high temperatures, so please refrigerate them, you know, you're always learning another we're learning from shipping them, which is like another challenge.

Cullen Gilchrist

So that actually brings me to something I want to talk about which is which is sales, right? And we've talked a little bit but so you make the product and you go to market and you put it on on the Union Kitchen shelves and we get to learn. That's one part of it. But you have to be on other shelves, you have to compete against other markets and engage with other customers. What what were kind of the first things one of the first stores that he sold into, and I love hearing that story of your first sale?

Dave Birsen

Yeah, definitely start local, because that's always gonna be a little nudge in your in your direction. Yeah, we got into Whole Foods pretty early on in our trajectory. And that pitch was very much almost Shark Tank style, we were in a office room or on a big table and pitching to a corporate team. And so I think we practice on you guys at Union Kitchen first, to make sure we were hitting all the things. And then yeah, we got into Whole Foods, but that's really just the start, right? Because then you have to go one by one and pick off these each individual store. So learning how to talk to buyers, learning how to even walk in and find out who the buyer is, or even to know to ask for a buyer in general. Those were all things that we we learned.

Cullen Gilchrist

Yeah, yeah. Well, then you also are selling into other places like coffee shops.

Nadine Calderon

Oh yeah. Compass Coffee was a big one. That night we got into Compass we kind of remember that we were at the beginning of course, we were making everything ourselves like including the bites here in the facility manufacturing. We come in here at 6pm and stay until 2am. That was kind of our schedule. And then Michael from Compass comes in. And he's like, Where are those? And we're like, give him a sample. And we're like, we're just making these bites are keto blah blah blah, and he happened to be into the keto diet at the time. And he's like, oh, wow, these are pretty good. And you know, when you meet someone that actually understands the struggle of getting something that tastes good without sugar is love, you know? I get it. And he's like, okay, maybe we can sell these at Compass. And that's how we got into Compass.

Dave Birsen

Yeah, and we found out that they do great in coffee shops, and people love having a sweet snack with their coffee.

Cullen Gilchrist

Oh, yes that's perfect for that. It sells well. And I love that story. There's a lot of questions about what Michael's doing and 1am. And that's the thing. It's like when your community in your network of people and you're local, things happen that don't happen in on the internet. They don't happen across the country. And I think that's one of the the best ways as you're just trying to get started, just the collisions that happen within a local group. And so yeah, you're in Whole Foods you're in Compass. And you're growing this business as you're selling to retailers of all types.

Nadine Calderon

Yes, and getting different feedback, because the feedback that we will get from the coffee shops was not the same one as the one that we were getting from the grocery stores. But we quickly like we knew that we wanted to be an e-commerce brand. So as soon as we thought that we were ready to launch our website, we put like up like a plan in place, like we draft our plan, and we decided to do the Kickstarter to make that happen.

Cullen Gilchrist

So you're selling in retail, it's going well, you're learning a lot. And you see that there's this you know, community that's just begging for the stuff and they're not just here. They're not just going to Compass, Union Kitchen, Whole foods. So ecommerce, Kickstarter. Kickstarters are hard.

Dave Birsen

It's a lot of work. Yeah, all the work happens before you launch the Kickstarter.

Nadine Calderon

Before, during, and after. But we knew kind of the work that we needed to put into to make it happen, but I feel like it was more.

Dave Birsen

Yeah, but yeah, we were using the Kickstarter kind of as as like a proof of validation that that people was a market for this beyond just our local retail community. And so we were going to the Kickstarter, very much was like an experimental mindset, but doing all the work that's needed to make something like that successful. All the marketing and, you know, leading up to it. And yeah, we were approaching that to say, we know this, this group of people out there, do we have a product that's going to solve a problem for them and that they're willing to split with their money for? And so yeah, that was at the beginning of 2019. So we're about a year into this retail kind of nights and weekends experiment that Revol Snax was at the time.

Cullen Gilchrist

So just to put the timeline back on so 2016 you guys are learning about keto? 2018 we know guys started this business launch it and then 2019 you turn it online?

Nadine Calderon

Yes. Right. Exactly. And then there's the Kickstarter was a successful Kickstarter, with surpassed on goal, which was like a big kind of like, affirmation for us, you know, you as an entrepreneur always, doubt yourself a lot. Like, I don't know, I feel like we're having a lot of moments like are we doing the right thing is like, is enough people believing in our idea, or is it just as in our friends and family? But that was like a big high five, you know, is one of our proudest moments probably, just like how hard we worked on that and made it successful and actually surpassing the goal. And after that, we launched a website and we were able to maybe after three months, or like actually receiving it, we were always sold out after that, because we didn't have the production capacity to you know, sustain the orders after that. So that was like also a big learning experience like oh, now we have to do schedules for our employees because now you know, we actually have orders coming every day before it was like Okay, we got a PO from this stores. Let's work two nights per week. Maybe you know, kind of like whenever we feel like it come to the kitchen hang out. One shift will take eight hours to do what we get now we're doing like an hour. But eventually we will figured it out..

Cullen Gilchrist

So sales grow, which then drives the next set of challenges of how to manufacture and how to build and run a company. Like it's not just you guys coming in like doing the thing at night yourselves. We have to have a plan we have to hire people.

Dave Birsen

We were preparing for Kickstarter, you got to prepare a video, you have to have content now to put on Instagram and all of that in order to market yourselves. And we had a friend who was a videographer and we always start with friends first when we need something. And they came to the kitchen, one of the nights that we were working to take pictures that we could upload for Kickstarter. And it turned out his wife also came with him. And she was like, it looks like you guys need extra hands, like doing all these molds? Do you want me to just help you for a few minutes? And we were just like that would be great, thank you so much. And then fast forward, like three months later, she and our videographer became our first two employees.

Nadine Calderon

We offered them a full time job after a year, they were also going to their day job. Like in a night from six 6pm. They were leaving at 11. Because they were like, okay, we really value sleep. I don't know about you guys, but we do while you're sleeping, you're still learning. And we will stay here and you know until 2am. But those were our two first hire.

Cullen Gilchrist

Yeah, these these stories are kind of mirroring, right. But you developed a product kind of bit by bit. And then you learn how to make it bit by bit. And then you sold it bit by bit, little bits to more. And then you kind of build a team bit by bit. Alright. Alright, let's go like videographer to making bites. And then I kind of want to talk about like your manufacturing, because you were making this tabletop style right? And then you transitioned and you can tell us about that. But from tabletop to batches to larger batches to now, machines. Awesome, so let's talk about that manufacturing, that growth, that iteration, because this I think is so scary for folks, because everyone kind of understands that you have selling and the internet and marketing and kind of its idea of making a product, but everyone's so scared of manufacturing. So I'd love to kind of talk about how you went from making them at night on a table like, you know, hand pressing them. And where you are today, which is you're using some pretty awesome machines. And you're making a lot of bites. So walk us through that journey, where kind of like the major transformations you took from that tabletop to, you know, kind of continuous production.

Dave Birsen

So we started out making these in silicone molds. I think they're probably used to make like truffles And we've taken a very kind of piecewise approach to manufacturing. So it was always kind of like, what's the one next small piece of equipment that we could do or get something made that will help kind of resolve a bottleneck and whether it's pressing the bites or packaging them or filling them with the nut butters in the middle.

Cullen Gilchrist

I love that you're always trying to find the bottleneck. That's the thing to solve right? What's the bottleneck? Let me solve that. Then what's next?

Nadine Calderon

Yeah, it wasn't an experiment.

Dave Birsen

Yeah. So for the first probably 18 months or at least for the first year we were we were pressing each bite by hand with these cocktail mufflers.

Cullen Gilchrist

Like you're making mojitos.

Dave Birsen

Everyone's arms will be very sore after every shift and they would say no more like, we had a hard limit on how many we could do really, because people's like we're getting sore by the shift. And so we we knew we had to figure that part out that was an obvious one like physically pressing our base into form these bytes. And so one of the first major upgrade that we had in manufacturing wise and like equipment wise, was transforming a, like a pizza dough press into something that had this custom plastic mold on it with little cylinder pieces on it that match the mold we're using. And so one press of this dough press was now doing 63 bites at a time, which is a huge upgrade for us. Totally industrial. I had a friend from college whose family is in the plastic manufacturing business and he was able to make this like CAC, like removing plastic from a big block to create a custom molded awesome piece and so he was able to help us out with that. We got that in and like, fastened it to this pizza press that we bought off eBay. And that honestly, got us a long way. Yeah, we were running with that for at least a year. Yeah. And yeah. increased our production capacity by, you know, five times at least. And then we got the filling machine. A little filling machine. I believe that's also in the truffle industry. So, yeah, I think as you're going through this, you do have to kind of respect like, the traditional industry, you know, what are pieces of equipment that people are using? And how do you adapt that to your product? So we've always kind of been trying to learn what's out there and then how can we adapt that to our product? And so yeah, the truffle industry, for example, has been one where there's been a lot of overlap, and we were able to use some things. And fast forward to today. Early 2021, we purchased our first major piece of machinery. It's a co-extruder. And so it's taking the bites and the filling and basically forming these cylinders, and cutting the bites at the perfect size, and rolling off a conveyor belt right into our trays now, which is like, amazing. Because we in our minds, we have all people of these pressing each bite one by one

Nadine Calderon

and filling them and topping them. There were so many parts in the process and now gone. Press a button.

Cullen Gilchrist

Well, it's an amazing thing, because you had to go through all those steps to really understand that you needed this machine to do it this way. If you guys were to buy a machine in 2018 who knows which way that would have gone?

Nadine Calderon

Oh, well, Dave, at some point was about to buy this sausage machine. In our desperation to finding the right piece of equipment before we knew about Rheon we were like, okay, what can we adapt to our bites? And, you know, we were so desperate, kinda that we're really wanting something soon. And Dave had the idea or something like that, like the sausage machine?

Dave Birsen

Yeah we were talking about getting two big extruders, one for the filling one for the bite the outer part and combine them together and it was just a really expensive and kind of complicated, complicated. But we didn't know what we didn't know.

Cullen Gilchrist

Yeah, a lot of bad decisions we can make, but if you're iterative, you can go bit by bit, you can cancel those ones out and move closer to a better decision. Thank you guys made a great decision with the Rheon machine, it's producing a better product. No one's arms are sore. I think that's a lot of button presses. And you get you're be able to just make so much product, and you can really grow the business with this solution.

Nadine Calderon

The challenge with the machine, though, was adapting our recipe for them handmade process to the machine is completely different recipes. It took about a month to figure out the new recipe. It's a lot of iteration. And you know, the recipe never seems to actually hold steady for too long before we actually have to make new changes. So it's like it's continuous.

Cullen Gilchrist

You guys are basically experts in iterating and continually improving, because you've been doing it for four years now. Yeah. Right. And you're confident Yes, that you can figure it out. I love that. Like, that's it. Alright, so yeah, you guys are selling a whole bunch. You built a team of manufacturers and other folks, you have badass machine that allows you to grow significantly, and allows you to have a plan to grow even more from that, right? And so that's kind of where you're at. And you guys are raising money right now as well. Right? Yeah. Yeah, that's a fun thing. So what do you value the company at?

Dave Birsen

At 5 million.

Cullen Gilchrist

That's a great place to be in. It's a great milestone. Very cool. So you're $5 million company, you solve all these things, you have a great trajectory for the next year or two years to grow this be more than 5 million. Pretty cool. So that's an awesome place to be great milestone. I kind of want to talk about in kind of wrapping up the conversation, the things that you're most proud of like, what's the big win? And then what's been the most challenging thing? So let's start with which one you want to start with the win or the challenge?

Nadine Calderon

Let's start with the challenge. Get that out of the way!

Dave Birsen

I think well for me personally, the biggest is just like the company goes from this, you know, side project that we're literally making them to now, we have a manufacturing team and people underneath us. And it's kind of like prioritizing what you're working on in that transition from inside of the business, you know, doing all the operations, all the manufacturing to now, kind of working on the business and growing sales and marketing and branding. And there's so many things you can be doing, you know, and and you have to narrow in on what's most important now, and what's going to be moving the needle. And so that's something that we meet regularly and talk between the two of us to try to guide each other to where should we be spending our time on right now. And, yeah, it's something all entrepreneurs have, and it's a good challenge to have. And it's inevitable when your business kind of evolves over time.

Cullen Gilchrist

What's amazing what made you start the business has to transition to what makes you good at growing the business, and then that as a transition into what makes you good at really managing the business. And then, you know, building teams and working on the business, and those are so different. The amount you have to change as the business grows is, is tremendous. It's fascinating. It's hard. And a lot of people struggle with that. I mean, everyone struggles with that. And some people make it through the struggle and succeed. And you guys have done a great job with that. But it'll continue to be hard. Okay so biggest win?

Nadine Calderon

I feel like one of our proudest moments was definitely getting into Whole Foods and Erwhon like those two stores, as long as also with like the Kickstarter. I feel like those three actually gave us like, the confidence that we needed in order to know and be sure that we were the right people to kind of like, grow this business. And we actually had a good idea that many other people wanted. That part, because you're always like doubting yourself in, like, is this the right thing to do right now? So that was very good, that we were able to get that.

Cullen Gilchrist

That's pretty awesome. Well I also think it's always impressive to be able to build a partnership, and go through those changes, and maintain the relationship and be successful in the business, but also, you know, in life. So I think that's a pretty big one you can be proud of.

Nadine Calderon

Yeah that we're still togerher.

Cullen Gilchrist

Yeah, going through the hard things, that's good.

Nadine Calderon

Learning and learning how to manage our time together as a couple and setting that aside with how to manage our time as co founders, you know, like sometimes that very, it's very mixed together. And it's like, part of like, what we're learning. And it's been, it's been a fun thing. It's definitely challenging. But also, earlier you asked me, like, do you think you need like a partner? And I was kind of telling you that definitely, I feel like having each other has made these so much better for us has made us like stronger. And I honestly don't know if either of us would have pursued this path by ourselves. Maybe yes, we don't know. But definitely having each other is like very important. It's something that we value a lot.

Cullen Gilchrist

Oh, it's powerful. And you guys have done great. Well, thanks for chatting today. I think it's an awesome conversation. A lot of lessons.

Nadine Calderon

Thank you so much.

Cullen Gilchrist

Congrats on everything. Good luck on the next steps. There's much more to do, but you guys are well positioned for it already. All right. Well, thank you.

Dave Birsen

Thank you.

Cullen Gilchrist

Bye, guys.