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Guest: Brad Summey, founder of Savage Jerky Co.
Host: Kevin Mako, founder of Product Startup and the leading expert in hardware startup consulting. A hardware entrepreneur since 1999, Kevin has advised more than 1,500 founders and built and scaled MAKO Invent through its acquisition by TriMech in 2024.
Entering Food With a Sharp Product Niche
Brad Summey explains how Savage Jerky Co. entered the food industry by serving customers who wanted genuinely spicy, all-natural craft jerky. He shares how Kickstarter supported the early venture and what it took to build the product without prior category experience.
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Filip Valica: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Product Startup Podcast, podcast that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors, product designers, and other industry professionals. This podcast is run by Mako Design
Filip Valica: and Invent, and hosted by Filip Valica. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial idea to putting your product on the shelf. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business. Now onto the show.
Filip Valica: The Product Startup Podcast, episode four.
Filip Valica: Welcome to the Product Startup. Podcast, helping you turn ideas into successful products step by step with your host,
Filip Valica: Filip Valica. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the product startup podcast. This is episode four. Today I'm joined by Brad Summey, the founder of Savage Jerky. Brad and his friends set out to create flavorful,
Filip Valica: spicy beef jerky that wasn't terrible for you and didn't contain ingredients that belong in a lab. They launched a Kickstarter in February 2014, and they exceeded their goal in less than 30 days.
Filip Valica: Today, Brad, we'll talk about how he got started without any food industry experience and how they launched their Kickstarter. In two years, they had created three hot sauces, spice rubs, and 13 flavors of jerky.
Filip Valica: Brad is very transparent about his whole story, and I think he'll take away great tips, even if you're not looking to launch or grow a food product. So let's get started.
Filip Valica: Hi, Brad, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Maybe you can tell people about yourself and a little bit about Savage Jerky and how you got to where you are now.
Filip Valica: We started the company out of the need for a spicy jerky. We were on a road trip in, I think, late 2013,
Filip Valica: watching, unfortunately, our Georgia bulldogs get beat by Vanderbilt. So we were in Tennessee, and we were all sort of just miserable, a car full of me and my friends.
Filip Valica: And we were stopping at little mom and pop shops on the way back to D.C. where I was at the time. And we just couldn't find anything.
Filip Valica: It was all the same, you know, kind of big, jerky conglomerate shelves, even in the smallest of stores. So we got back in the car at one point, and I said, I'm just going to do this myself. You know, we can't find anything that we're looking for.
Filip Valica: So I'll just figure out how to do it myself.
Brad Summey: And keep in mind, I'm doing technology consulting at the time.
Filip Valica: So it was kind of way off the beaten path. Right. Nothing related to cooking or anything like that. Literally nothing. I mean, I enjoy cooking and I can handle myself in a kitchen pretty well. I had never made beef jerky. I'd never done anything.
Filip Valica: I've never brought a physical product to market. I've brought plenty of digital spaces to market.
Filip Valica: So everybody laughed at me in the car, and we kind of shrugged it off. And so we got back home, and my family is notorious for getting me little trinkety things for Christmas, as I'm sure most families are. And I finally just, I sent out a blast.
Filip Valica: And when everybody asked me what we wanted for Christmas, and I said, if anybody's going to get me anything, everybody just put your mind. money together and buy me a dehydrator, a food dehydrator. And so everybody was kind of really
Filip Valica: bewildered by that. But that's what they did. And at the Christmas of 2013, I got a, I got a semi-commercial dehydrator, a very nice residential version of a dehydrator. And I just, I made some
Filip Valica: really awful beef jerky. I just, I researched it and researched it. And I just went in and decided I was just going to start trying things.
Filip Valica: And we ate a lot of really terrible beef turkey, but slowly but surely it eventually came around.
Filip Valica: And, you know, we kind of focused on what we call our moho, which is a Cuban marinade because my wife's family is largely Cuban.
Filip Valica: And every year around the holidays, they make these gigantic, you know, Cuban porks. And it's just incredible. It's garlic, lime, cilantro. It's just, I mean, it's one of the best marinerades I've ever had.
Filip Valica: So we kind of decided we would focus on that and then make spicier versions of that. And yeah, it just kind of went crazy from there.
Brad Summey: We launched a Kickstarter after we had some recipes we thought were hammered down pretty well. And that was well received. And it's just been kind of crazy ever since. Okay.
Brad Summey: So there's a lot of people that are listening, myself included, who have thought about creating a food product. And to me, as an engineer, that's the most intimidating type of product to create. because you go into the grocery store and the competition is ferocious.
Brad Summey: There's so many products that compete against you and it's all about having the distribution at work.
Filip Valica: For the lack of a better term, how did you have the audacity to say, you know what? I can do this. Like, how did you get past that hurdle? I mean, I think that's amazing. Much of it was ignorance. I mean, you know, sometimes, you know, and we used to say this when we were doing technology
Filip Valica: projects as well because we would try to do, you know, we did some of our own, you know, forward-facing consumer products and house. And it was, you can sit around a table and just come up with every reason in the world to not do something.
Filip Valica: And so at some point, you just have to start. And that's, if I had any advice for anybody that was going to start creating any sort of product, is you just have to start, you know, take that step and get into the kitchen with a
Filip Valica: dehydrator and just try to figure out exactly what beef jerky is and what goes on behind it. And you're going to learn a lot along the way.
Filip Valica: Trust me, we learned a ton along the way. Once we finally got the recipe and the product hammered out, people think that's the hard part. That's not the hard part. And, you know,
Filip Valica: learning about USDA and FDA regulations and what a co-packer is, you know, because our Kickstarter way exceeded our expectations originally. And so I knew all the branding and design
Filip Valica: side of things and marketing from my previous career. So that stuff kind of came naturally. And we were able to make things look really flashy and do product mockups and things of that nature. And so,
Filip Valica: It was easier to sell people up front, but sort of behind the scenes, we really didn't know exactly what we were doing when it came to, okay, how do we take this pretty picture that's on a screen? And we take these recipes that we have that everybody seems to like and really bring it to market.
Filip Valica: And we learned a ton that it's not as easy as you think because, you know, our first big setback was when we took our recipes to a co-packer. And we said, okay, this is what we do. And, you know, we were chopping up all these fresh vegetables and we were processing all of these fresh ingredients.
Filip Valica: in a facility that makes beef turkey is not set up for that. You know, they use a lot of wet marinades and, you know, dry spices and things of that nature. And, you know, it was a huge blow to us because we're like, oh, well, that sucks.
Brad Summey: This is what we, you know, this is what we've been working on in these recipes we fine-tuned.
Filip Valica: And it was kind of a big, you know, blow to our ego a little bit. So I'm going to ask you really quick. Can you explain what a copacker is for people that might not know?
Filip Valica: Yeah, of course. So a copacker is a facility that makes private label branded products for other producers. So, for instance, ourselves, we
Filip Valica: utilize a copacker because we don't have to deal with, you know, the USDA regulations and the constant audits and inspections that come along with that and the cost of equipment and the cost
Filip Valica: of a warehouse and, you know, the cost of all of these things that are significant. And so when it comes to bringing a product like this to market, or our spice rub or our hot sauces, anything like that, you know, we can develop the recipe
Filip Valica: in-house and work with a copacker on everything all the way. I mean, really granular. This is the cut of meat we use. This is the exact Worcestershire sauce we use. I mean, these are the things that we use, and then they can take it from there and scale it.
Filip Valica: And so I'm not having to sit in a kitchen all day and make racks and racks of beef jerky.
Brad Summey: I can be focused on engaging with our customers on Twitter or engaging, you know,
Brad Summey: coming up
Filip Valica: with our next product or coming up with our next marketing campaign. Right. And so you're able to get the product started really quickly that way, too, so you didn't have to wait for all that stuff to be in place pretty much. Right, right. So it came very quickly. And, you know, kind of behind the scenes while we were
Filip Valica: running our Kickstarter, we were putting those pieces into place, you know, finding a great copacker, getting samples from that copacker, working through our recipe because, you know, like, again, I said, our recipes weren't really something that a copacker would typically
Filip Valica: deal with. So they helped us adjust our recipe to be fit for market. You know, and we just
Filip Valica: work back and forth. And the key is to find a copacker that you have a strong connection with.
Brad Summey: And, you know, not every co-packer is going to be right for every producer. So that was by far the hardest challenge we faced was finding the right one. One thing that I don't think you've shared
Brad Summey: yet is that the premise behind savage jerkeys that you don't have any preservatives,
Filip Valica: it's all natural. Did you have any pushback from people in industry or maybe the Cokebackers to say, no, there's no way that you can get an all natural product out? You know, it's actually been relatively easy. There was some initial pushback that was like, hey, you know, it's really
Filip Valica: tough to do jerky products or, you know, dehydrated beef products with some of these ingredients that you're trying to use and keep your costs to where they need to be in order to make a profit.
Filip Valica: But we've been of the mindset that we would rather sacrifice a little bit on that. And even if it drives my cost up just a little bit, I'm going to use the gluten-free soy sauce over, you know, just a regularly available soy sauce.
Filip Valica: You know, things of that nature, you know, where I can make sure that it's going to be gluten-free and free of MSG and free of preservatives, we certainly do.
Filip Valica: And so far, every single one of our products is completely all-natural, gluten-free and doesn't use it. any preservatives. Even our bacon. Bacon is typically cured with nitrates and nitrites. That's just how you make bacon.
Brad Summey: We use an uncured bacon even. So our bacon jerky is completely natural. So not a lot of people with bacon jerky on the market can say that. That's pretty amazing.
Filip Valica: So you touched a little bit on making. I mean, you didn't say prototypes, but you made some initial versions at the house and eventually those got better. I guess you had a test group of some kind that you're kind of testing these on, a bunch of friends that sat around eating jerky.
Filip Valica: Yeah, so when we lived in D.C., we lived at this little community called National Harbor right on the Potomac River.
Filip Valica: And there's a bar on the harbor that we were kind of regulars at, and we kind of just knew everybody that worked there and knew a lot of the people that came in and out of there.
Filip Valica: And so literally every weekend, we were taking giant bags of jerky to the bar and just letting people try it and just seeing what people thought and getting people's reactions.
Filip Valica: and that's really kind of how we tweaked everything. And that's the funny thing is that all the guys that were in the car with me when I said, hey, I'm just going to do this myself.
Filip Valica: There were two guys in the car that are my really good friends.
Brad Summey: And as soon as they tried, kind of one of the recipes I was really happy with, they were like, okay, how do we invest? I want in. Here's the money.
Filip Valica: You know, and now they're two of my partners. So it's a really funny world. That's great. So you were talking about doing a Kickstarter to get funded, and now you're actually running a Kickstarter to…
Filip Valica: Yeah, so this is actually our third Kickstarter, which some people give us a little bit of a hard time about. But my thing is, why not?
Filip Valica: I mean, the community is there, and it's a community that wants to back not only startups, but new products and product expansions and, you know, restaurants building a bigger kitchen.
Filip Valica: You know, the community thrives on this, and they thrive on seeing a product come from a concept to fruition.
Filip Valica: And when you do that successfully, they don't mind if you go and ask them to do it a second or a third time as long as you put out a solid product the first time around. And so originally the thought was that this wasn't necessarily ever meant to be a company.
Filip Valica: It was really set out to be kind of a project of ours, and we wanted to kind of, you know, make our own jerky in-house.
Filip Valica: And then all of a sudden it became this kind of quest to build a bigger and better product because everybody we let try the jerky was like, why is this readily available? Or, hey, I need to buy a couple pounds of jerky or this or that.
Filip Valica: So that's when we decided that Kickstarter would be a great avenue. And being in the technology business at the time, you know, I knew the buzz surrounding Kickstarter and kind of the ins and outs and the inner workings of it.
Brad Summey: So it just kind of came naturally. And we funded our other two, and we funded this one in the first 50 hours of launching it. That's really amazing.
Filip Valica: So how did you initially get the word out for that? Did you just go back to the same bars where you were doing the prototype testing and said, hey,
Filip Valica: so if you guys really want to buy some of this stuff in the future, here's how to make it happen? That's exactly. I mean, we went straight back to the people that kept asking us, how do we get it? And we said, you know, go back it on Kickstarter. Kickstarter.
Filip Valica: And then, you know, obviously sharing it with our personal networks is huge. I mean, that you have to be able to ask, if you can't ask your friends and family to buy something,
Filip Valica: how are you going to be able to ask, you know, just random people on Twitter, random people, you know, go to a grocery buyer and say, hey, you know, buy our product. So
Filip Valica: that was the big thing is just getting all of our friends and family and their friends and families. It's just basically anybody you can and say, hey, look, we've got a great product. You know, we appreciate it if you support it on Kickstarter. you know, make a promise that you're going to deliver it.
Filip Valica: And that's the biggest thing that, and the biggest, um,
Filip Valica: the biggest step back that people have about Kickstarter is that there are so many projects that, that go funded and just completely fail. Um,
Filip Valica: and it's, uh, it's upsetting. I mean, I can see personally how it would happen because I've been there and, you know,
Brad Summey: things seem to be a lot more expensive than you first think they are. Um, I mean, I, I even raised some private capital. capital from some friends of mine in our first Kickstarter because things much more expensive.
Brad Summey: Wow. So established trust and the way to do that is to be as transparent as you can be about your process.
Filip Valica: That's what I've seen at least in existing Kickstarter is they have video and they have interviews and they try to show backers as much information as they can about the product and where they're at with it to, I guess, reduce any type of buyers or mores or any type
Filip Valica: of hesitation about this company isn't going to fund. Yeah, people don't want to be surprised. You know, people, A, people want to see confidence in somebody. And our first Kickstarter, we showed video of us making jerky from just cutting vegetables and things like that.
Filip Valica: People just want to see that this isn't some fool in a kitchen that is just going to take my money and not produce anything. We were fortunate enough again, and I would recommend that people do this is, you know, spend some money on a great logo, spend some money on great packaging, spend some money,
Filip Valica: you know, spend some money on showing people that, okay, A, these people are serious, But B,
Filip Valica: they actually have what it takes to bring a product to market. And that's what's so tough to convince people of because people are naturally skeptic, particularly now, just from all of the failures and nightmares that have come out of Kickstarter, people are naturally skeptical.
Filip Valica: And you just have to convince them otherwise. And being transparent, like you said,
Filip Valica: this is actually probably the most transparent we've ever been in terms of where the company has come and gone from. A lot of people probably don't even know that we use a copacker.
Filip Valica: We have the exclusive here. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, this is definitely the inside scoop. But yeah, we try to be as transparent as possible. We're hugely active on social media and Twitter, things like that.
Filip Valica: We're actually coming up with a new jerky right now, a Reaper, a Carolina Reaper infused jerky, which is just insanely hot. And we had some issues with USDA signing off on our nutritional analysis. And we pre-sold like 500 units.
Filip Valica: And so trying to be transparent with people, I've been transparent with those people, like, hey, look, I'm waiting to hear back on USDA.
Brad Summey: It's not going to ship when I said it was going to ship. And if you want to refund, email me and I'll refund your money. And we got probably 90 responses back of just, you know, don't worry about it. Thank you for the update. You guys are awesome. Keep making awesome jerky.
Filip Valica: It feels good to know that, you know, the people that are paying for your product ahead of time, you know, have that kind of trust. Well, imagine a huge part of that is that you've already delivered on a product before. And so you've established precedents to where you're not going to just run off with these people's money. Right, right.
Filip Valica: Fortunately, we've been around for two years now. we're so old.
Filip Valica: It's been two long years. We've built sort of this rabid fan base. It's amazing. Actually, it's kind of fun where, you know, people, they just can't get enough and they want to tell other people about it. And we hear all the time, you know, so-and-so brought this jerky into the office and
Filip Valica: I just had to have it. And it's actually kind of funny. This year is the year we're really approaching distribution and really trying to tackle some more shelf space, at least regionally.
Filip Valica: I've always been kind of of the mindset, you know, crawl before you walk.
Brad Summey: And so we definitely wanted to take a couple years or a year or two kind of get our footing and make sure we had a product that was definitely going to be widely received and then try to tackle some of the bigger shelf space, which is my focus this year. And so, yeah, it's been quite interesting.
Brad Summey: So I ordered some beef jerky from you guys right after we scheduled the interview because, you know, product research that I can ride off, right? Right, right. Right.
Brad Summey: You know, I have to say I've never tasted beef jerky with as much flavor. I was just blown away. It was almost too much flavor. And I can't believe I can say that.
Brad Summey: But I had the moho halopeno and the sweet sarracha barbecue. And those are both flavors that I've never had before in another beef jerky. It's something that I would have never thought of.
Brad Summey: I think that's part of the reason for your success is that you're not trying to be like the other beef jerkeys that are out there that make me feel. So I'm from Texas.
Filip Valica: I feel I can say this. All the beef jerkeys want to speak to me. me as a cowboy or somebody that's from a ranch or and they've got a horseshoe on it, you know, that you're packaging. So you talked about marketing and packaging a little bit. Yeah. Your packaging sets your beef jerky apart from everybody else.
Filip Valica: There's some things that I think that are really unique about it that I want to make sure that we cover. Yeah. So in the beef turkey world, there's this sort of stigma that you have to have a window on the front of your bag in order to sell your product.
Filip Valica: And there's some truth to that for sure. I mean, people want to see what they're buying.
Filip Valica: And we do, we have a window on the back of our product. But when we came up with the brand, we wanted something that was, like you said, totally
Brad Summey: different from really anything else that's out there. And that's why we kind of went with this jet black package with really kind of bold typeface and bold colors. And it's probably the one thing that people really comment on, at least initially, before
Brad Summey: they've ever had our product, is that how cool our package looks. Yeah. So I have to say that you obviously have a premium product here compared to other beef jerkeys. it sells at a premium price. I think it's safe to say that it's an higher-end beef jerky, right?
Brad Summey: And it's probably justified by the all-natural ingredients and the unique recipes. The matte finish on the bag actually stuck out with me because most of the beef jerkeys have this like high gloss that you can see from across the convenience store to, you know, finish to it.
Brad Summey: And this is almost the other way around where it's very simple and clean
Filip Valica: and, you know, you use San Sera fonts and, you know, it's very well-designed. And I like the indicator on the front that tells you how much heat you've got in your recipe, you know, one through four bars, which is actually really good because a lot of
Filip Valica: beef jerkies are, you know, you see the window, but you have no idea what to expect from it. Right. Yeah. Well, and we were, you know, like I said, we were initially starting out by making spicy beef turkey. That was kind of our stick, if you will.
Filip Valica: You know, we couldn't find spicy beef turkey. So, you know, or spicy beef turkey that actually had a spice beef turkey. flavor assigned. I mean, what is sweet and spicy? Yeah, what is hot and spicy? What is
Filip Valica: sweet and spicy? I don't know what that is. And so that's why we have very specific when it says habanero, we use actual habaneros. When it says jalapeno, we use actual jalapinos. We did want to be different. You know, like you said, there's two different worlds right now in the
Filip Valica: beef jerky marketplace, and it's, you have your commercially available beef jerky, which is I don't know if I can say the brands, but I'm sure everybody knows them. And then you have
Filip Valica: your craft mom and pop beef jerky and those are normally in a clear bag with a label on the front and that's that's all well and good but we knew we didn't want to be that and we knew we didn't
Filip Valica: want to be the corporate jerky and oddly enough we've kind of fallen in this weird space right now where we're we're about to be on some product shelves for sure but we've sold a ton of jerky
Filip Valica: online and we've kind of carved out this weird area where we're not the mom and pop jerky with the with the clear bag with the label and we're not the corporate jerky that's on
Filip Valica: every on every convenience store shelf and so we're kind of in this limbo where I think we're
Brad Summey: going to be able to compete with some of those some of those larger brands even from a price point we are a little a little bit pricier but even even in a C store setting you know
Filip Valica: A bag of some of those other jerkeys can run you anywhere from 679 to 7.59 to 7.59. So I think we'll still be able to kind of get in there for sure. No, that's really exciting. So can you talk at all about
Filip Valica: sales in the last two years, at least to the point of saying that you're able to live off of this business 100% of the time? Or is this something that you do on the side? Yeah. So myself and my wife,
Filip Valica: Michelle, we both work full time for the company. And we'd started that actually just after our first year. So we've been paying ourselves for over a year now, which is still kind of crazy for me to say because this was never supposed to be this.
Filip Valica: But you have to, you know, we have a 16-month-old mouth to feed and we have a house to pay for. And, yeah, so we've been fortunate. We don't take a ton of money out of the business.
Filip Valica: And I don't recommend that people do that, obviously, initially, especially something that's as cash intensive as a product where you're always having to cycle cash back into inventory and into new things.
Filip Valica: you know, keep interest in marketing. So we pull out only what we need, and we've been very fortunate. But that comes from the fact that we've just online, you know, we've provided
Brad Summey: jerky to over 15,000 customers. Wow. Yeah, in just two years. And with very little marketing in terms of display advertising or anything like that, we do some retargeting ads on
Filip Valica: Facebook. That's really pretty much our marketing budget. And those are very, very effective. But, yeah, I mean, we've done 20,000 orders. I'm just trying to take a peek at our dashboard over here. 20,000 orders online in two years. That's really amazing.
Brad Summey: You know, I looked at your Facebook page and you have like 7,000 likes.
Filip Valica: So that's one in every three people that buys your product likes you on Facebook. Yeah. That's ridiculous. Yeah, 7,500 followers on Twitter and almost 7,000 likes on Facebook. And we have 130 something five-star reviews on Facebook.
Filip Valica: So it's so, and we only have 130-something reviews total. I'll let you guys do the math. Well, so talk about that for a little bit. So you said most of your sales were. All their sales right now are online? The majority of them are online.
Filip Valica: And I was kind of getting into the distribution thing earlier, and I lost my train of thought. But we don't really, until this year, we haven't really started chasing down store shelves. Everything has come to us, which, you know, not to sound condescending.
Filip Valica: It's just that's what has happened is people have given the jerky to a friend or, you know,
Brad Summey: taken the jerky into their local store. And it's like, hey, do you guys carry this brand? And then whoever runs that little store will call us and say, hey, I need to stock your stuff.
Brad Summey: And, you know, we probably have, we want to say 15 to 20 stores across the country, you know, carrying our product just because they reached out to us and just had to have it. So we've been very fortunate on that side of things where our wholesale accounts have just kind of fallen in our lap quite literally.
Brad Summey: That's really great. You know, I think one of the challenges that I'm thinking about right now is that typically the margin on retail is at least, you know, let's say 30 to 50 percent, right?
Filip Valica: So if you're a supplier and you're giving a product for $2, the C store wants to sell it for four. how are you able to manage that with your product when you're now you're going to have to eat into that margin to distribute it?
Filip Valica: Is that been something that you've been able to absorb because you've got decent margins or is that you figured out a way of negotiating with volume or something else? Yeah, so we have decent margins. You know, jerky is expensive to make. That's why it's so expensive.
Filip Valica: Yeah, people are like, why is beef turkey so expensive? I'm like, well, you take a one pound chunk of steak and then you take all the moisture out of it and then you weigh it again and you sell it by that weight. You're trying to explain
Filip Valica: that process to people is kind of befuddling sometimes because people just don't understand why it's so expensive and it's because you're drying out all of the product. So we definitely
Filip Valica: are going to have to compensate with volume. We're definitely a volume product. There's no way around that. You know, it is one of those things where you have to look at it at the end of the day.
Filip Valica: Do you want to lose a potentially high volume contract over 50 cents a bag? Or do you make a 50 cents a bag but you sell 200,000 units a year, you know, with one retailer. I know what I would
Filip Valica: choose, especially in my position where my overhead is somewhat low because I utilize a co-packer. So I don't have to pay all of those employees and pay the gas, lights, water on all of that
Filip Valica: equipment and the building. I don't have to pay all of that. So we're kind of in a position where, yes, our margins are a little slimmer because we are paying a little bit more to produce a product,
Filip Valica: both from a recipe and a standpoint and the fact that we utilize a co-packer. But it makes it that much easier for me to say, okay, you know, if I make X amount per bag
Filip Valica: for this contract and they're going to do, you know, 200,000 bags a year, I mean, why wouldn't I? That's more. That's more of my product and more people's hands.
Brad Summey: More than you can sell on the website. So, yeah, exactly. So it's because it is a, it is a convenience product. We're completely blown away that people order it as much as they do online because then they have to wait for it, you know, a couple days, three days to get it.
Filip Valica: When it's really something that you're walking through the grocery store and you see a bag of jerky, you know, okay, I want some jerky right now. You know, it's so it's, to overcome that has been awesome, but acknowledging that and knowing that, you know, it's certainly going to
Filip Valica: eat into our margins to gain distribution, but we'll be all the better for it for sure. That's a great point. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on, you said the distributors kind of
Filip Valica: came to you and that's kind of how you've branched out with local retail stores. So you just started with one and kind of worked your way up from there? Yeah, literally a store. I was in D.C. doing
Filip Valica: technology consulting and a store here in our hometown in Atlanta out of the blue called me one day and said, hey, somebody that works here just brought in a bag of your jerky and I just need
Filip Valica: info on how to order it. And it was kind of really bizarre because we weren't set up at all to do
Brad Summey: anything like that yet. But we figured it out because it's obviously somebody's calling you to give you money. So, you know, so we put a quick sell sheet together at center prices, just crunch some
Filip Valica: numbers on margins for wholesale. And which we knew, we always knew kind of where we were going to be on wholesale. But, you know, we figured it out. And then, you know, shipped her some product. And fortunately, we were moving back home, you know, for the birth of our child. And, you know, now we're
Filip Valica: able to service that by ourselves and just drive the product down the road. But that's the best one to have. So that's really good. Roll up your sleeve, save some money, and ship the product yourself. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And I guess you establish the relationship with the retailer that way, too,
Filip Valica: because you can go in and you drop the box off and you shake their hand and they put a name to a face. Yeah, and that's the great thing because we get to go in. The even better thing is that this particular store,
Filip Valica: Beaufort Highway Farmers Market, it's a pretty well-known international supermarket here in Atlanta. They really like for us to come in and do samples and we'll come in on a Saturday or Sunday morning. and just hand out samples to everybody.
Filip Valica: And that's a great, that's, that's probably the most rewarding piece of it for me is actually seeing people try the jerky. And, you know, okay, I'll take a bag of that. I'll take a bag of that. And it's, even today, it's been two years now.
Filip Valica: It's just still bizarre to me, you know, to hand somebody a product off the shelf at a supermarket that, you know, that we built and have them walk away. A funny story really quick, we were actually doing these samples.
Filip Valica: And this gentleman and his wife come up and they try a piece.
Brad Summey: And they're like, oh, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. And then they walked away for a second. They came back and they tried another piece. And I was like, well, can I get you a bag? You know, this is the price and everything. And they were like, oh, sorry, we're, I mean, we're vegetarian. It's delicious,
Brad Summey: but we're vegetarian. So we can't actually buy any. I'm like, okay, that's a head scratcher to begin with.
Filip Valica: But they're starting to walk away. And I see them stop and they come back and they're like, okay, we have to have a back.
Filip Valica: So I'm texting my friends. I'm like, we literally just sold beef turkey to a vegetarian.
Filip Valica: That's amazing story. Thank you for sharing that. All of that is actually a great story. I know somebody that's trying to get into a grocery store now and they're kind of caught between working with brokers
Filip Valica: and distributors because sometimes it's hard to get the attention of a buyer at a store. You had people pull your product through into the store. Or did you approach the buyer directly?
Filip Valica: Actually, I would say 90% of, if not more, of the wholesale accounts we have right now, they have reached out to us and said, hey, so-and-so gave me your product. I'd like to put it on the shelf. And so we've been very fortunate.
Filip Valica: Now, too, we're talking about smaller grocery stores, smaller gourmet boutique shops, things of that nature. Non-chain.
Brad Summey: Yeah, non-chain type things.
Filip Valica: This year, we've really started sort of trying to hustle things to smaller chains. We're not trying to take on Walmart or anything like that, obviously. A lot of people don't realize that Walmart is just insanely big. People don't realize exactly how big they are.
Filip Valica: Everybody has dreams of their products being on one of their shelves. but then you realize that you can only do 50% of your business with Walmart, and they're going to order 100-something truckloads for their first order. Then you start looking at how much business you do.
Filip Valica: And they're going to hammer down that price until you have barely any margin. Oh, yeah, it's just just, yeah. I mean, you'll have pennies, but it'll be a lot of pennies. Right. So that is the one thing you have to keep in mind.
Filip Valica: So, yeah, we're trying to get some smaller grocery chains, things like that, and kind of test the market because a lot of those places require that you have a distributor. in place and right now we self-service everything you know so it'll be a good for instance there's a
Filip Valica: chain of six stores in Washington that we're we're working with right now because they're they're really interested in the product it'll be kind of one of our first steps into distribution which is a little frightening but it's not a I don't it's nothing that we can't probably tackle so it's just uh
Filip Valica: you know trying to make sure that you like you said can you like you can take a beating on your on your price points a little bit just know in the back of your head as long as you're making something Some pennies, yeah, as long as you're making something,
Brad Summey: especially this stage of the game, if you can get on six supermarket shelves and still make something at the end of the day, you know, that's the kind of things you have to do.
Filip Valica: Early on, you just have to get out there and whatever you can make, you make it, and you're just happy you made it and just know that that's more hands. You never know who's going to pick it up. That's the thing. It's these people that order from us online, our customers, I never know.
Filip Valica: Every bag of jerky has sent out the door is like a little soldier, and I never know where it's going to go. and what it's going to bring back, you know, and I just kind of have that outlook. It's been pretty fun so far. That's really smart. There's the saying that pigs grow fat and hogs get slaughtered.
Filip Valica: Yeah, no, for sure. It kind of got a greater footprint. And that's been our focus so far, and it continues to be our focus.
Brad Summey: And there is a great story about the founder of bare-naked granola and how this girl worked for six years, making granola out of her college dorm room oven and then sold to craft for $60 million. Wow. After six years.
Brad Summey: And, you know, it's just her story about hustling local grocery store shelves and making sure people were picking up her granola instead of the other guy's granola. And, you know, it's just, you just got to get out there and grind. And, you know, eventually something's going to pop.
Brad Summey: You're going to be in every store that you wanted to be in or, you know, one of the big guys is going to say, okay, we've had enough of this and snatch you up. Well, I think you have a really amazing story. I mean, again, kudos for creating a product with such high competition and being successful at it.
Filip Valica: I think that's amazing. Can you maybe talk a little bit about some times when something didn't work out quite well? Which one? Which one do you want to hear about? I know there have been some times where I've been ready to throw in the towel and I'll sit on the couch with my wife and she'll sit down and say, okay, why are you doing this?
Filip Valica: What's the goal here? And I'll say, okay, this is a part of me. This is a core belief of mine that this has to work. And she said, so why are you giving up? But it's really hard to keep that positive mindset all the time and especially as a small business owner to compete against the big guys.
Filip Valica: Yeah. There have been times where we've had setbacks and missteps. And there are a lot of outside forces at play, obviously, from package production to actually getting product delivered and things like that.
Filip Valica: You can't always control. And so again, that comes back to the transparency thing where, you know, as long as I communicate that, I get more stressed out than my customers do, like all
Filip Valica: the time. You know, for instance, this Reaper thing I was discussing with you. You have to just put it out there and say, look, this is really beyond my control. But don't pass. the buck, own it. I mean, it's our company at the end of the day. And, you know, here's the
Filip Valica: options. But there have been so many times, especially when it comes to cash flow and things like that, when you're running a cash intensive business that requires a lot of inventory. I'm sure there are times where you sit down and you look at the bank account. You're like,
Filip Valica: how did we get here? How did this happen? And kind of scroll through your spending and you're like, okay, well, maybe we shouldn't be spending so much money on X, Y, and Z. I haven't had that moment where I've just been like, okay, maybe this is just not going to work. Maybe I just want to, I just need to throw in the towel.
Filip Valica: I haven't had that yet just because I see the feedback we get on our product from all of our customers.
Filip Valica: And it's just like, I don't know that
Brad Summey: there's a way I could close some shop and throw in the towel. There might literally be riots
Brad Summey: somewhere if we, if we were just, listen, we're not selling any more jerky. You know, we might have a real problem on our hands. So, so we just have to keep grinding. If you got to, if you need more money you've got to go out and raise more money i mean i'm a majority owner of the company but if i need
Brad Summey: to sell more of the company to keep it going and you know until we get that footing like we're talking about until we get that market share where okay now we're making money to really cover things you know so be
Brad Summey: it i mean it's that's what it's there for so you just got to do whatever you got to do to make it run i mean right a smaller chunk of something big is worth more than a chunk of something that failed
Filip Valica: right yeah exactly yeah yeah so might as well keep going you talked about about cash flow a few times now. I feel like people rush from idea to manufacturing really
Filip Valica: quickly without testing. That's in my observation. And the second is, I think on the funding side is not making the proper assumptions around funding in terms of expenses and revenue. People
Filip Valica: think they're going to scale up in a faster fashion or maybe they misrepresent some of their expenses and because they're not managing their cash flow and their bills to vendors, they end up in trouble. So can you talk a little bit about some of that?
Filip Valica: Yeah, it's a constant balancing game. And I'm admittedly not always that great with it because I just always want to be pursuing the next project, kind of that kind of guy, you know, we'll go from, we have four different flavors
Filip Valica: coming out right now that we're working on the three originals that we're doing for Kickstarter and then our Reaper jerky. But I'll be sitting around and like, oh, we can make a Reaper hot sauce. And so we'll tease that on Twitter. And it's like, okay, but, you know, there's dollars that are
Filip Valica: associated with that. And so we still have to sell all of the jerky we already make. So it's like a constant, you know, sometimes I battle myself where I'm like, oh my gosh, this would be so good. And people are so receptive to it. You know, the Reaper thing came out of kind of the blue.
Filip Valica: And we ended up pre-selling 500 bags. And that was just because I just cut it off at 500 bags. We actually sold 550 because I got so many emails like, oh my gosh, I missed out on the pre-sale
Filip Valica: that we just made 50 more available. Again, it's that crawl before you walk mentality. that you really should have in terms of don't bite off more than you can chew. Just pace yourself.
Filip Valica: It's tough to say this with my technology background sitting on my shoulders.
Filip Valica: You're not racing anybody.
Brad Summey: And sometimes you are, but you've got to finish the race one way or the other. So whether, you know, if you don't finish, it doesn't matter if you finish first or second. So you definitely have to pace yourself and not get ahead of yourself and make sure you do things the right way.
Filip Valica: And make sure you have a product that people are going to want to buy. buy. That was the big thing for us is that I could put just really terrible jerky in a really flashy package. And people might buy it the one time, but, you know, they're not coming
Filip Valica: back. And, you know, we have about a 30 to 40 percent customer retention rate. So, that's huge. Yeah. So you definitely want to make sure you have a, have something that's a quality product before you rush it to market. Great points. So as we're starting to wrap up
Filip Valica: the show a little bit, can you talk a little bit about things that is the most valuable when bringing a product to market. Maybe just one tip to help everybody, you know, help their product succeed.
Filip Valica: One tip. Gosh, that's, that is such an open question. Yeah, it's,
Filip Valica: I think my biggest piece of advice would be to maintain because self-destruction is probably the biggest thing that faces entrepreneurs and people that build things like this. And you just have to keep
Filip Valica: that confidence. There's like this really cliche saying that an entrepreneur is somebody that that will live like nobody else will, so one day they can live like nobody else can. Right. You have to have that mindset that's like, okay, not everybody's out here doing this.
Filip Valica: A lot of people go to work, and that's the life they lead. And they do very well. I mean, a lot of people make a lot more money than I do, for sure, and have a lot more time off and a lot more time to spend with their family. Don't let yourself get in the way of your own success.
Filip Valica: And in that same vein, don't let perfect be the thing that hampers you. Like I said, we used to sit around tables and just beat. a product to death and it would never go anywhere just because we we let perfect become evil and it was always
Filip Valica: the stumbling block at some point you have to start right that's my biggest piece of advice for anybody is at some level you just have to jump in and get your feet wet and hope for the best you'll learn how to
Brad Summey: swim but you have to jump in first so that would be my biggest piece of advice i see it all the time on reddit where you know people are bouncing ideas off of these forums and and these social media
Brad Summey: things oh this is my idea guys tear it apart everybody goes and tears it down and then the guy comes back a couple months later and he's like here's my idea you guys this is where we were two months ago
Filip Valica: you know man why haven't you just got out there and put a prototype together or put a you know working MVP whatever it is why haven't you made some beef jerky why haven't you done something you know we can sit here and talk about it all day and it's until it looks perfect on paper at the end of the
Filip Valica: day once you launch it it it might still be trash so you're never going to know until you just dive in and that would be probably my biggest piece of advice
Filip Valica: Great. No, that's perfect. I totally relate to analysis paralysis being an engineer. So we have to look out for risk and failure and all these other things. And if you stack everything up,
Filip Valica: then all of a sudden, nothing is ready. So I could totally appreciate that advice. Can you maybe talk a little bit about what you have going on now and where people can find you and if you've got any new products that we should look out for?
Filip Valica: Yeah. So I've mentioned it a couple of times. We have a Carolina Reaper infused beef jerky coming out that is just insanely hot. one of the girls that works in our kitchen tried it when it first came out when we were doing
Filip Valica: testing. And she said she blistered the roof of her mouth. Comes with a warning label. We don't do warnings. We don't do signatures. We don't do waivers. You know what you're getting when you're buying our jerky. So we did put in a big black scary bag with a huge,
Filip Valica: we had to change our heat scale to have an extra extra chevron. So it is hot. I will tell you
Brad Summey: firsthand, it is very, very hot. But people kept harassing me about it. I didn't want to make it. But people were just like, oh my gosh, you've got to get hotter. You've got to get hotter.
Filip Valica: So we did it. So that'll be available very soon, actually.
Brad Summey: We just got our nutrition squared away with the USDA.
Filip Valica: And then we have our kickstart going on right now. And that is for the three original flavors. And so, as you mentioned, we have a lot of unique flavors. But people kept pushing and pushing us to do sort of some classic deep turkey flavors.
Filip Valica: And so we've done that with three different flavors, a traditional, a terriaki, and a sea salt and cracked black pepper. And we've put our little twists on all of them. And obviously, they'll have our commitment to. quality, they're going to be very, very good. I don't know if it'll be live by the time we finish
Filip Valica: this podcast, but that is coming out. And so those products will definitely be available in the next couple months. I think you've sold yourself a little bit there. If you look at the crowdfunding
Brad Summey: page, you're already funded. Yeah, it's definitely going to happen. Yes, it has to happen at this point.
Filip Valica: So with 20 days to go, you've already killed your goal. Yeah, that's true. Like I told you,
Brad Summey: we have a really rabid fan base. It's just insane. Yeah, we do a lot of partnering with video gamers. And I don't know if you're familiar with a website called Twitch.
Brad Summey: Yep. Okay. Yeah, we do a lot of partnering with a lot of streamers on Twitch. And it's been a great source of marketing for us. But those guys, and you all know, you
Brad Summey: all know, it is just a rabid, rabid fan base. And it's awesome. You know, we send out a tweet and a couple of our streamers retweet it. And then it's all of a
Brad Summey: sudden, you know, 50 hours later, you've raised over $12,000. So thank you to, thank you to all of it. Okay. So, yeah, I can't let you go now. Originally, we're going to
Filip Valica: wrap up the show now, but now that you're right. I know. I forgot all about, I forgot to mention Twitch. and they would crucify me if I left them out, by the way. Maybe you can edit this into the beginning of the show. No, no, no, no, this is good. This is how things evolve, right? Products evolve. That's true.
Filip Valica: And so does the show. So that's true. Yeah, now we have to talk about this because, in my opinion, Twitter is like this giant stadium and everyone's yelling at each other. And unless you have some sort of a tool that monitors all that, it's just almost impossible to get noticed.
Filip Valica: Or for me, it is, or what I've seen anyway. So talk a little bit more about your relationship. with these specific communities and how you approach them and now how they're retweeting your stuff.
Filip Valica: So me and my group of friends, we've always been, you know, sort of into video games and into the communities that surround that. So we had a forum around our own community. And so we kind of started our discussion there with a lot of different things.
Filip Valica: When we first launched the Kickstarter, we were able to put up forum posts. And that's one kind of social media outlet. I see it as a social media outlet, a message forum. But then this website came along, twitch.
Filip Valica: Twitch.TV where you can literally watch people play video games. It's one of the most fascinating and bizarre things at the same time where these guys, these young kids are making a great
Filip Valica: living for themselves and building a great community for themselves playing video games. And people can go there and watch and interact through a chat function and really kind
Filip Valica: of get to know the entertainer or the content creator. And so we naturally kind of took to that when it first rolled out, and we learned that video gamers like beef jerky,
Filip Valica: surprisingly enough. Yeah, I thought it was just old mountain dew and Doritos, yeah. So we had the idea that, hey, maybe if we send these guys some jerky, they'll talk about it on their channel if they like it.
Filip Valica: And so we did that. And we were kind of one of the first sort of brands, and I don't mind saying this, we were one of the first sort of brands to really start trying to position ourselves aligned with streamers.
Filip Valica: and they're going to give me a hard time about being a total sellout, which is fine. But, you know, we basically just approached these guys and say, look, we're a small beef turkey company. We'd love to send you some products. If you like it, tell your stream about it. We'll set up a little discount code for them.
Filip Valica: And then we'll give you some money off the top for everybody that uses your code. And so far, I mean, it's worked incredibly. We go to conferences all over the country and meet a lot of the guys that are in the chat room with us. We watch a lot of the streams.
Filip Valica: A lot of people know that we're always active in the chat room. And we've been able to build our other social media properties based on these relationships that we have on Twitch. And so a lot of the gamers follow us on Twitter.
Filip Valica: And every now and then we give away gaming related prizes and things of that nature. But really, our following has been really, really built organically by those relationships we have with the streamers on Twitch. And those conversations we have with all of the viewers in Twitch.
Filip Valica: So we have been very, very fortunate with those relationships because they really have bolstered the company. It was wrong of me to not mention it before, but we just get so talked up in the actual product itself. But yeah, Twitch has been amazing for us.
Filip Valica: And just an example of how communities can really drive a product and make it thrive
Brad Summey: because you really want to build. We used to talk about this in the consulting world all the time when working with associations in D.C. You really want to build almost like activists for your brand. You want to build evangelists for your brand.
Brad Summey: So it's those guys that are taking the jerky and taking pictures of it and putting on Instagram or taking pictures of it and putting it on Twitter
Filip Valica: and really sharing the excitement that their jerky showed up in the mail. And for that, it's not really cool for us to see, but it's money. I mean, it's real dollars that anytime somebody shares your brand and somebody says,
Brad Summey: hey, you know, that actually looks pretty good. I'll go try it.
Filip Valica: Or even if they go check out your website and now you're able to remark it to that person through the advertising channels that are available, Facebook, Twitter, whatever it is, you know, that's extremely powerful.
Brad Summey: That's really amazing, you know, that you basically created a second audience or another group just based on those types of relationships.
Brad Summey: That's huge.
Filip Valica: Thank you very much for sharing that.
Brad Summey: You know, I think we could probably talk for another 30 minutes on marketing. I know, sure. Actually, so I'm hoping that maybe a year from now you can come back on the show and we can start talking about some of the new products and get into more detail about marketing.
Brad Summey: Yeah, I was actually just going to say it was like maybe I'd come back a few months or a year from now and we'd see where we're at and that we can talk more about the marketing side of things now that we kind of just teased it there at the end stay tuned for more exactly well
Brad Summey: thanks a lot brad for coming on the show you have any part in words no thank you so much for having me visit www savage jerky.com for all of your jerky needs and then you know look for us on your local shell coming soon i'm sure great well we're going to have all those links on the show notes
Brad Summey: so people can find you and reach out to you on social media and you have an amazing tasting product
Filip Valica: so congrats on that and i wish you guys future success great thank you again and that concludes today's episode. Thanks for listening. I've put all the links that we've covered under the show notes posted on the product startup.com slash episode four. Join me next week as I talk with Mat Hofma
Filip Valica: and Erik Polumbo for Mini Materials. They sell 112th scale construction materials like cinder blocks made from real cement, bricks made from real terracotta, and wooden pallets and wooden planks. They even have concrete mix to help anyone build realistic models.
Filip Valica: One last thing. If you like this episode and you want to see more like it, or if you want to see something completely different, please leave me a review on iTunes by going to theproductstartup.com slash review. I really appreciate your support.
Filip Valica: I read all the comments and questions, and I try to incorporate them into future episodes. Reviews also help me get new guests on the show. So until next time.
Filip Valica: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Product Startup podcast with your host, Philip Felizza. For more great content and to stay up to date, visit theproduct startup.com. your guide to getting there.
Filip Valica: Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent, the first firm in North America
Filip Valica: to provide global caliber, end-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product businesses. If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to Mako-design.com. That's M-A-K-O-D-D-E-E-O-D-Ellment.
Filip Valica: for a free consultation from one of Maca Design for design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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