If you’ve had the time to review some of our other content, you’ll recognize pretty quickly that Snacklins is one of our strongest examples of success here at Union Kitchen.
In 2019, Snacklins founder Samy appeared on Shark Tank and made a significant deal with Mark Cuban. A large part of what appealed to Mark Cuban was that Samy makes a conscious effort to oversee and control his manufacturing process. Where so many food brands are outsourcing their production to other establishments, Samy decided to open his own factory.
What’s so valuable about owning and operating your own facility? Let’s check it out!
Samy K, a former DJ and radio host, founded Snacklins in 2016 after a group of his friends dared him to make a vegan pork rind.
What started as a joke, quickly became an obsession. Samy started testing out different recipes and production techniques in his apartment. He devoured whatever he could get his hands on to learn more about dehydrating products, food chemistry, and manufacturing. What resulted was the first-ever Snacklin - a puffy, crispy chip made from yuca, mushroom, and onion. People loved the flavor, taste, and, at 80-calories for the whole bag, that it was guilt-free.
With growing demand, Samy needed to find a place to produce and scale up. He was still making every bag of Snacklins on a single home-fryer. Samy migrated the operation from the basement of a friend’s bar to Union Kitchen, where he was able to better organize the flow of production. Through this process, Samy learned how each step, and inconsistencies in each, impacted the end product.
As popularity and demand for Snacklins continued to grow, Samy recognized he would need his own facility to keep up with his orders. In 2018, Snacklins opened the “Snacktory.” The new production facility increased capacity by 30x and supports national distribution. He built it based on his intimate understanding of his process. He was able to scale up without compromising the quality of his product.
Snacklins is the only puff-chip company in the United States making their own puffs! This gives Snacklins a huge advantage in controlling their product quality, making improvements rapidly, launching new flavors, and keeping all of the folks they work with, from distributors to investors to customers, happy. The hard work is paying off as Snacklins adds Walmart and 7-Eleven to an already impressive and growing list of national accounts.
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