#99 He Turned Down Retail Offers to Build This Snack Brand the Right Way

Welcome back to a new episode of the Rectified Podcast. Today we're gonna be navigating the food industry, one of the brands in the food industry. My guest today is Alan Glanfield, the founder of Chuck. If you don't know Chuck, you're gonna know what it is today.

So we're gonna talk all about it. Welcome, Alan. Hey, thank you so much. Alan, your product, if nobody knows what it is, it's a meat stick something that has existed for a while now and the meat stick snack aisle let's say has been dominated with multi-million dollar companies some of them are clean some of them are cleaner some of them are not that great I'm not going to name companies but what was that aha moment where you realize, okay, I need to make this something that has a good quality and is Canadian.

It is sort of a story about Canada in that if you are a buyer and a fan of meat sticks, you may have come across a lot of great brands down in the US, a lot of better free brands. And so, you know, like everyone else, we would be traveling through the U.S., buying those, smuggling them back here, and kind of finding ways to get them here.

Yeah, same. Yeah, so, and then we continue to get those messages from people where they're like, oh, like, I don't have to pack a bag full of them and go across the border. so it was sort of something always on my radar um we're a family that travels quite a lot uh so protein on the go something that's kid-friendly is always like this like challenge we're trying to solve um so yeah i was being exposed to that in the u.s um and uh trying to find something like similar like that here or if not even better um and really having a hard time finding that in Canada so it was um uh I have sort of my background is in um marketing uh CPG um and just sort of been I've been an entrepreneur my whole life and so it was sort of one of those one of those things those bucket list sort of opportunities where I'm like I would really love to like start something like this myself um like because I I'm like worst case if I fail I just get a lot of meat sticks and I can't go wrong.

So I didn't see any harm in giving it a shot. The big challenge was actually finding the product or finding someone who helped me make the product at a level that I wanted to make it at. It was like needing to find something here in Canada and not being available. Okay.

And kind of setting up to create ourselves. Personal need, let's say. Yeah, yeah. And we quickly realized that we weren't the only ones feeling that way.

Yeah. Me included. That's how actually I contacted you and we got to know each other because I saw it and I'm like, oh my God, this is Canadian and it's available here. And I do buy the other cleaner American brands and I do the whole thing or I find like small local stores who have it and then I go and buy from them, things like that.

But yeah, that's the story, the backstory of how we know each other. um you were marketing in the cpg world so you're a little bit familiar about the how this world functions but this category is you're a newbie in this category like and everything um how did you validate the idea that people would actually buy from you and pay for this product uh before you ever created your first production the best thing you can do really is talk about whatever you have planned right or whatever or whatever idea is and just even just get people's like reaction to it um because i've shared a lot of ideas before that you know definitely don't definitely the conversation trails off so um this was interesting because just talking about it it was just like constantly people checking in wondering how that's going wondering when we have when we'll have something i'm like okay like even just having those conversations um are validating because it's just like people are clearly interested yeah um my experience is just like a small portion of of sort of a larger business uh so like i'm in the little marketing corner but like everything else i know nothing about um yeah exactly so it was like a whole adventure of like you know yeah production operations everything else you name it right and I continue to and at that point it was just sort of okay let's how let's negotiate the smallest sort of production around me possibly possibly can and uh and kind of put that out there and again like I said it's like at that point you're like if it's a product you believe in and you love worst case you're just stuck with a whole lot of snacks um exactly so it was it didn't feel too scary to do that so we did that and um of course so much went wrong obviously like everybody does it like when is it not but yeah yeah um and you're like yeah whatever you're thinking you're going to spend maybe like double it for like things going wrong anyone now has access to test something um so throw it on a you know build a shopify website exactly yeah throw it up there so again it was um just getting that gut reaction from people i truly knew there was a gap to fill um because of like our history of years being like why are we why are we bringing this across the border like let's make our own and then and you know through that through that i discovered there's even better ways to make them so that was kind of a unexpected bonus but uh um yeah it was just starting small and just talking about what you want to do you know it's like just share it like I think a lot of people like try to like hide their plans and they're like well I'm not gonna I gonna share this until it ready but you like how do you know like how do you know people people even care that actually the new way of doing things many people create um 5 000 skews in their brand and they perfect the branding and they perfect the packaging and they work for the longest time on their shopify site and everything yeah you know like they want to be like one of those big multi-million dollar companies from day one and you don't even know if people will want to buy from you so i believe that your strategy just start small start with one product test it out if it works out it works out you just double down on it but if it doesn't um it's okay so you started d2c you started on shopify selling from your website did anything change with that are you in stores or is it just pure 100% online?

My background is more in e-commerce, so I just sort of did what I know. So we launched D2C, and we also launched on Amazon.ca. Okay.

Again, getting on Amazon, you're like, I'll just throw it up there. It's not that simple. Amazon is not simple. So I was actually going to say, test it on there, but I'm like, I wouldn't even do that.

because it's not actually that it's not simple it's so simple to throw we actually we actually did an episode with an amazon expert like a few episodes ago we'll link to it yeah um and he talked about the ins and outs and the ads on amazon and how to make your product seen it's a whole other world that like it's a new venture it's as if it's a new venture i don't know if that's your experience well then only that but like they can say well no we want you to like uh like for example I printed all my packaging with a UPC code that designated for Amazon.

And then they decided that they wanted to tombstone that listing, basically kill it. And they're like, no, you have to start a new one, which meant a new UPC code. Why did they decide to kill it? Because it was like, because during my like bill, like as I was like setting everything up, it spent too much time like idle like it wasn't being okay used and they're like oh we just thought you didn't need this listing anymore so we've shut it down i'm like okay if you turn it back on and they're like no no so i had okay i had all my packaging with all the upc codes on it so now i'm having to print upc codes and stick them over the other ones and it's just like you know so amazon can make decisions and you don't really have yeah there's nothing you can kind of roll then So yeah, do you still have Amazon or you just shut it down and stay down Shopify?

No, I, uh, I, uh, I printed, started printing, printing UBC codes and sticking them over all of them until we ran out. And now we're back on track and then we are like dipping our toes in retail. Um, but again, that's like a whole area that I'm much less experienced in. And so, um, that's been really cool, but there's like a lot to learn there.

And just from fellow founders, um, um i i've been getting a lot of advice around like not not rushing uh that um because they can you know someone could quickly put you out of business no exactly if you're not ready don't go into retail and it's hard it's tempting like we've had offers and okay and i'm like i've had to say i kind of had to say we have to keep talking about this or uh no you know um because they're just like it would it would spread maybe test it out maybe test it out with smaller stores yeah see how it works yeah so we have smaller retailers in quebec we have um um and then through ontario and then um we have a few uh great great retailers already in west so in alberta and All right.

So, yeah. What has been the biggest hidden cost of launching your product? The cost is just producing product and everything that, all the little bits that go with that. So, you know, our products require like a top film, bags, boxes, all these things.

And so the hidden cost for me, which is something that I wasn't prepared for, not really having than someone in the sort of operations and production side is like having no real experience of like forecasting and planning um so all of a sudden you're like oh yeah i could bootstrap this and work small and as i make money i'll put the money back in and we'll just do that but no all of a sudden the demands for you to like put money in goes way up before you get any of it back um So for me, the big hidden cost has just been not understanding that needing to forecast and plan ahead and how much actual working capital you need.

in that I don't want to say is bootstrapping like a like can you bootstrap really like because uh I am but it's quickly becoming like a question like like how far can I actually do that without needing to find additional capital to do that if you're enjoying this conversation and you'd like to see more episodes with amazing guests don't forget to like subscribe follow on whatever platform you're tuning in from we release new episodes every friday and i can't wait to read your opinion in the comment section all right we've had a change of scenery behind alan and that's because of some technical issues with the connection but we're going to continue our conversation and we will talk about the marketing side of your brand so basically from what i've seen on your socials you talk a lot about your kids or kids in general and how this product is great for kids so mostly you're positioning this for your kids as opposed to adults or you know health and fitness people so why did you take that decision of making it only well not only I mean I can have it but that what we see on social media Yeah it sort of a messaging thing we sort of wrestle with is who are we speaking to And we are definitely for the, you know, the fitness focused or like nutritional focused the person um but we feel like they they will naturally like they're the ones who are like oh i love these other brands in the u.

s and i found you and so i've they they sort of just are kind of already seeking it out and find it um the the and that's great and that's what we want um but we also have this opportunity just again through our own experiences of like understanding the pain point as a parent where you're like trying to you know find specifically like a protein source on the go for kids and when you're traveling you know we're doing road trips and whatnot it's like you know big snack bag keeping everyone busy for long drives and all that and a lot of it is like crackers and all the bars all these other things and so especially if you're going to go for a pretty long haul you're like okay we need more variety or we need more options so we want to sort of have that discussion of like hey this is like a kid-friendly snack that is protein source a sort of a bioavailable sort of real protein source that is also is like what I discovered through the learning how to produce the product is that we could create something that was a lot more tender and flavorful that might be more appealing to a kid than other meat sticks or something like jerky that's just way too tough yeah um so i started to like sort of just through the process come to the realization this is like becoming a super kid friendly or or just what i would say family friendly as in you know mom dad are gonna snack on it as well usually there's this line where there's like the kids snacks and then the mom and dad snacks yeah and this is something for everybody so that so that became part of our sort of pillar one of our pillars of like building something that's kid-friendly so even though and that was actually one of our early failures was i was like the package has to be like my kids have to be able to open it like if i throw it at them in the back seat and like here snack on this i need them to be able to open it because i can't turn around and be driving and opening things at the same time and so um our first production run didn't open easily okay and and i'm like wait this was like a big thing for me was like making sure it was truly kid-friendly that like uh you can put in a kid's lunch take it to school and they can open it themselves um and it wouldn't open so i actually returned like i actually took back we took back probably 5,000 sticks and repackage them.

Do you think positioning this as something for the entire family? Well, it's something new in the meat stick category, because most people, they want to sell this to the health people and fitness people and, you know, more for adults. Did that help you? Do you think that it was helpful to position it this way?

Or do you feel that maybe you lost some of the market because you didn't go towards the fitness people um no i i don't think we've lost because i don't think we've lost them because like those a lot of those people are the parents like um yeah they are you know they like they're they are that and like i said like that audience is seeking out these options and so we are working on our messaging we want to push the family-friendly conversation we're not saying we're like a kid's snack um we're saying we're sort of a family-friendly snack um and here's why and how we made it that way um but i think we're also going to be having through collaborations through uh events through these other things we will like be targeting sort of a health and wellness fitness channel um we're not going to exclude them because our actual product isn't like just saying this is a family kid snack where this is so if you picked it up at a store you wouldn't get necessarily get that impression this is for anybody and it really is yeah I think it's a huge opportunity because I think if you can I mean as any parent would know if your kids find something they really like they'll probably come back and as a marketer which channels did you decide on adopting for your brand right now essentially just focused on from a social media standpoint just Instagram okay you we do distribute content on other channels but not but it's more of just sort of flowing through uh to those channels there there's no separate strategy um again this is like not just bootstrap but like literally operated by me um yeah of course which is why i've sort of made myself like the the face on socials because there is no one else so um the that's just been the one focus um i'm like very like i i'm very keen to be on things like tiktok shops uh but we only distribute in canada so we don't have we don't have tiktok shop no so you know i would love for that to happen i'd say if if if that you know i've been thinking about maybe we put a little more energy into that channel in the event that that does become available that we're sort of like a little more prepared because I think that's a huge opportunity even without TikTok shop TikTok has become a great discovery place so yeah if you can create some stuff that are TikTok friendly or native for TikTok it would be I believe a good opportunity for you also for discovery let's say over the years working with product brands I developed my own framework for scaling I call it the 3R framework It my signature system and it what I use with every single client I work with And today I want to give you the diagnostic tool that sits at the heart of it.

It's free, it takes about 10 minutes and it will show you exactly which of the 3Rs revamp, reshape or reach is your biggest gap right now. The link is in the description. Go grab it and start working on the right thing. Do you do email marketing?

Um, a little bit. I'm looking at what, what our retention strategy looks like. Um, and also just like what conversations are we going to be having? Cause you know, at this, at this point we'll, we'll put in more flavors, but essentially we currently are running with one skew.

So I, I'm not going to build a, um, you know, campaign after campaign. that's just pushing the same, you know, meat for steak over and over again. I want to have other conversations. So, um, we're sort of working that out where we're fully set up from a automation flow standpoint.

Um, but really trying to look at like, what are our campaigns look like? What conversations can we have that like, you know, resonate with our audience that we're, we're not just, you know, talking about the same product over and over again. let's move into like a rapid fire of questions uh before we wrap this up first of all um who's the bigger villain in your story who's who's the bigger villain you can name the brands if you want i mean i think like yeah like you're you're obviously looking at someone like jack langs these big guys are obviously the the gas station brands or the or as far as villains go um you know they're they're the ones from an especially from an ingredient standpoint yeah um we're selling things that aren't aren't the greatest um exactly and uh and again it's the struggle there and for that reason they're able to um sell a very inexpensive product um they're obviously they're gonna be the villains for us for sure you have to keep them on your wall and keep looking at their picture and then go do whatever you need to do even from you know i see lots of other brands other categories calling out their villains and their content yes i'm always like i was debating on that i'm like i don't know it's just it's it's not me personally but it is like it is very like polarizing and people engage with that content for sure so yeah it's a personality thing you have to decide if you're ready for the backlash if you want that kind of negativity in your life 100 yeah all right question number two um d2c or retail if you could pick one for the next 12 months which one is it um what would d2c um and just to maybe quickly explain why is is like we said before retail can get really out of hand really quickly um and become something where you don't have the resources to get that velocity in the storage i think you get very excited when you're like look how many stores i'm in but then the question is like yeah but but is it even pushing, like, is anyone buying it?

And so you're like, oh, no, I should probably go check. And you're like, wait, I can't check every store. I can't do that. So D to C, because we can control it.

We can control the customer. We can have conversations with customers. We can really, like, build our own little network, as well as the performance of that is attractive to the retailers. so if the retailers are like oh like you already have proven this yes then it's a product market fit yeah they seem way more receptive let's move to the third question it's a rapid fire it's a rapid fire let's do it i'm trying to be rapid okay uh the biggest mistake one thing you spent money on in month one that you never do again like subscriptions to tools especially as ai came in man it's like an ai tool for this and that it's like and now i'm looking at my statements i'm like i have 20 subscriptions of things because they all promised making you know being my in-house marketing assistant or whatever and i'm like this is nonsense so we've all done that i'd say like you know especially when you're like i want to try and like build this all by myself you start looking for like tools and assistance to do that and i've wasted a lot of money already on that so I'm going to cut some of that.

What's the most expensive ingredient in your stick that you refuse to compromise on? It's the beef. I can't compromise on that one. We're going to need that in there else, but it'll be a pretty sad meat stick.

And the struggle with meat is it's like a stock market. The costs fluctuate like crazy. So trying to stabilize that is a huge struggle, but can't compromise on that beef. Yeah.

Last question. One app or tool your business couldn't survive without today? I mean, we definitely aren't going to survive without Shopify. And again, I think on the topic of AI, it's using just you having having set myself up with a little bit of a my own like custom ecosystem through Claude has been super helpful to sort of not not use it as like someone to do my job but as that assistant to help me download my own strategies and my own thoughts and help me process that I would say has been a huge has been super super helpful and definitely in in in keeping myself lean.

Agree. We're all in the same train, the claw train together. All right, Alan, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast and for this nice conversation. And I'll see you next week with a new episode.