 This is Starbastard Friend. While still in high school, Jonathan first started producing hummus in his garage and selling it every Sunday in the driveway. Following his grandma's family recipe, he used tahini sourced from the mountains of Lebanon. The hummus is creamy, light, and in him bodies a homemade taste. However, what started as a small tri-way operation quickly gained a loyal following as people lined up to get their hummus. But then he had to make a decision. Is he going to go to college or continue to make his family's hummus? The difficult part came not in the decision, but in telling his family he wasn't going to college. In hindsight, with his product on the shelves of both Ralph's and Erwan, it looks like a no-brainer. But at the time, his family had to just trust in his grit and tenacity. For our part, it's rare that we interview founders at this stage of entrepreneurship. But much like his family trusting his instincts, once we heard his story, the decision to have him on was also a no-brainer. Today we chat with Jonathan, the founder of Habiza, about how we used his high school friends to help him launch into big grocery store chains, why he is targeting shelf space instead of social media followers, and the time he convinced his boss at Marco's Pizza to follow his plan to take down Domino's Pizza. Alright, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Jonathan, the founder of Habiza. Thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. People who don't know, what's the company? What are you working on? So we are looking to go into the market. We see a lot of room to disrupt, you know, legacy brands. The start of the company out of my driveway, dropped out of school, never really fully went to college, but on paper it says that. And we have just launched into Ralph's, we're expanding regionally and hopefully more than that. Why this company? Why this, you know, why Hummus? What's the thing that got to you that you really saw in the market? You're like, this isn't good enough. We have the right way. We have a different take on it. What's the thing? I think there's a lot of elements to it. I think with Hummus, there is a big thing. And everybody wants to make better, you know, better for you. And true better for you, Hummus, does not lie in any sort of fancy shamancy verbiage marketing, anything like that. It lies in the actual authenticity. The originality of it, yeah. Yeah. The way it's made and the way it's sourced and the biggest problem being Middle Eastern is the texture. Shoot your shot, baby. Tell the world. So yeah, I mean the texture is the most grotesque part of it all and anything else. It's like gritty and chalky and you're just like, oh, and it's filled with this weird spice that just, you're like, okay, this is not it. But over the past 15 years in America, you have so many Middle Eastern restaurants opening up that the average person knows what genuinely decent hummus tastes like. Yes, that's true. And because of that, and you also have a lot of brands that have emerged, you have local level saturation in farmers markets and anything like that. And then you have the other brands that have emerged in the major market. My whole thing was none of them seemed to satisfy. And every one of them is branded in the most generic way possible. So the biggest difference with this is the ingredient list is so simple and small. Okay, tell us. It is literally garbanzo beans, which makes the entire thing because the way we cook it, it's like the old world grandma recipe way that we've scaled. How do you cook them? What do you do? That's a little bit different. So to anybody that wonders, that knows how hummus is made, there's the soaking and there's the cooking. Yeah. Yes, we soak our own dry beans and we cook them. I can't share too much more about this. But there's a cooking process that you guys do a little bit differently. There's a very extensive cooking process that we follow and it's so exact and that's how it gets so creamy. And this is your grandmother's recipe? It's based off grandma's recipe yet. There's, you know, with thyme. Grandma used to make it with a big wood thing and just mash up those beans because they were so soft. And then dump in the tahini and whisk it up and she's like, oh, here's hummus. Times have changed. Yeah, absolutely. It's like food safety and, you know, that old world way of doing it. What made you want to start a company, though? What made you say, okay, cool, when I go into the supermarket or when I go out to eat, it's just not, it's missing. But then to take that idea and then say, I'm going to go fix this problem. I'm going to start this company. Has this always been, you're young, you're 20, has this always been a part of your mindset? Have you known this since you were in high school? I was a D student. My first job was at Marcos Pizza in the first three days of working there. I was 15. You know, I'm like day trading and trying to just like, just day trading, sweeping floors. And I go to the guy that owns it. I go, hey, I have an idea. Let's destroy Domino's in the San Fernando Valley. And he's like, how is that possible? I go, it's easy. And so he goes, if you can put together a plan, you will not have to sweep another floor this whole summer. And I'll give you a cut of every order that comes in. And my ears just perk up. In three hours, I called my high school Notre Dame High School and I go, I got you a meeting with them. We're going to make the little pizzas that Domino's making. And he's like, I can't do that. I can't do that again. You can just make it. I'll come in at five in the morning and help you. And he's like trying to think of every like, oh, no, no, no. We go there and everybody in my PE coach, he's like sitting in there because he runs a summer camp. And he's like, this kid, like the kid that dicks around the whole time. And part of my language. Sorry. But, you know, this guy, like, what? And everybody in the administration's in there like, you are like supposed to be an academic probation right now. I don't even think you've done your summer school. I'm like, no, I haven't. But I think that you guys should take this because I think it'd be great. You know, you boast a lot about supporting local, support local. And I just, you know, gaslight them in a way. And I'm like, you know, they'll meet your margins. Everything will be okay. And they did it. So that's how it all started. So the pieces became part of the school for that camp the whole summer? Yeah. Yeah. And then they extended into the school year. And then I unfortunately had to go back to school, which was horrible. Yeah. But you knew that you viewed the world in a different way and that when you got people to buy into that idea, you saw things, special things happen. And then I imagine at that point, you care even less about school because now, you know, you sort of have a talent or something that's you have something that's addicting. Yeah, it's the most addicting feeling ever. And the crazy thing is like, once you open up that door and you poke the bear of the typical train of thought that everybody has, it's the most liberating feeling in the world. Yeah. And then being right. Yeah. It's the best. Yeah. And and taking risk. I mean, like I, I am, I have a high appetite for risk. I love competition. I love disruption in, you know, the market. I love the strategy behind taking market share. I love strategy behind brand building. I have always loved it. The silver lining was there when I was a kid and I was obsessed with McDonald's Happy Meals and the way the commercials were. And nobody understood why I liked it. And I didn't even understand it as a kid. Now being, you know, much older, I'm like, oh, that makes a lot of sense because the attention to detail with packaging and how, you know, the brand is being communicated to this specific audience. And it's, it's, it's true freedom. It's liberating. And it's like, I just want more. Like I don't want to be confined to this bubble. I want to, you know, be over here. When you decided, or I guess when you were told to go to college, what did you, what did you fakerly go study? What was the thing you were like, well, if I'm going to go, I'm going to sign up for this. So that was an interesting part of life, the whole college thing, because it's, you know, it's a big deal for a lot of people. And I was very quiet through the whole thing because I knew this was not going to be this. Like I knew in my gut, it wasn't going to be a dropout. Yeah, but I didn't tell anybody. Yeah. I didn't tell my family, I didn't tell anybody. I, you know, a lot of people, you know, in LA, you like USC is a big deal. So I was like, oh, do Trojan transfer and transfer to USC and all this. And, you know, I'm like just sitting there quietly and I'm like secretly putting together, you know, let's go disrupt the hummus market. And I'm very quiet walking through this whole thing. I'm kind of just going to all these parties and everything. Everyone's talking about their school and this fraternity, that fraternity. Everybody's, you know, exciting. And I love the party. Like I love all that. It's college is awesome. Sure. Let me just say that college is awesome. It's a good time. Without college, Habiza actually would have never got its following because I had all my friends go to their schools and tell people about it. You know, and just this little, little, little following we have. It's all real. You know, I know with Instagram, you get a lot of fake, fake, all of it's real. And a lot of it comes from friends telling people at schools and, you know, duffel at schools, carrying it. So college is awesome. And I love the college late night eating lifestyle, which this will be appearing in soon. But yeah, I just knew this was not going to be it. And I would, I couldn't do it. Like I just couldn't move forward with it. Yeah. And so when you were in college, were you like giving, were you creating, I guess the recipe, giving people samples, seeing if they liked it, sort of getting like, like a bunch of data points around the product. The data points started last day of school, of high school. Okay. Started selling helmets in the driveway. And how are you selling it in like little cans, little tins? So the backstory to the driver was the way we actually got those customers. I had a bunch of friends come out and help me. And do your friends think you're crazy at this time? They're like, oh, this is just what he does. Yeah. But I actually had a few friends that stood with me in the driveway and helped me out a lot. And they really, really, really were supportive. I have one friend in particular stood with me in the driveway, helped out, you know, and the drive-in was very supportive. But a lot of the times everyone was like, oh crap, what's this? Going into farmers market and giving out flyers, telling people not to buy this stand of hummus because it's not that good. And like people were like, oh my God, he's going to get us in jail or something. And it worked. People would take the flyer and come to my driveway, sitting in a gelsons and handing out hummus to people that were in the aisle, reaching for one or two specific brands, telling them, do you actually like this? This is like right after COVID. So people are still masked up, like some teenager, young guy going up to someone in this time. Like that, that's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Right. That's a lot. You know, I like for most people, I pull out my back and start like, don't worry, I'm vaccinated. Like we'd buy this hummus. And what did you learn in doing that? Why were people buying the hummus? They were like, because there's no other option and I'm not going to make it at home. And I go, now what if there was something better for the same price? And I go into my whole spiel, like with the tahini from the mountains in Lebanon, and it was actually creamy. And there wasn't this ingredient and that ingredient. And it was well branded. And they're like, hell yeah, I would take that. I'm just buying this because it's here. And those people took hummus and showed up to my driveway. And I said, if people will go out and I live right next to a Trader Joe's, I live right next to a Trader Joe's. And I said, if people go out of their way on Sunday mornings, to get good hummus. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like upcharging it for seven bucks purposely to see if people would actually pay for this. Wow. And they did. And we made 10 grand in six months. And they liked it. Yeah, they were there every week. Every week, new people were coming. I'd get like my mom and dad would be home in the middle of the day. Such a good story. It's a good grassroots story. Thank you. Basically, you're just collecting like data points and moving each one forward, which is interesting. And then the world is saying, yeah, we agree with your line of thinking, keep going. Yeah, that's actually so exact how it happened. And that led to actually how we got Erdogan. That Erdogan story came from me showing up. I won't say his name, but there is someone at Erdogan who at one store, he has a very big role in the company. And he, he did the favor of sitting with me for, he goes, I'll give you five minutes to talk to me. That conversation turned into a 20 minute conversation. We had like, I'm still driveway. Like there is like homes is being made in my garage. Yeah, right, right, right. It's not like a food prep facility. No, no. And I'm saying we have a manufacturer and we have all these things. And I'm, you know, just doing whatever I can. Pre, you know, no funding, anything like this. And I'm like, we'll fill up your promo calendar. We got you. And he looks at me and he goes, you're young. If we bring you. I remember it so clearly because I got chills. He's like, if you happen to get accepted by some way or somehow, you better make sure you sell or you're out. We got Erdogan, they accepted it within two days. With how many flavors did you start with? Just the OG, just the OG and the, what's the other one? The jalapeno. Okay. Just those two. And that's when everything kind of began. And I'm very glad to say without, I mean, truly without Erdogan, there would have probably been no Habiza Hamas coming to life. Sure. Erdogan made Habiza Hamas come to life. I believe you would have found someone else. But I do like the story. Yeah, I would have found someone else. But there, there are so many stores and buyers to thank that have taken a chance on me. The next one, you know, Erdogan. When you sold Erdogan, did you have any packaging? Did you have like the stickers? Or did you have? There was a mock up. There was a mock up that, you know, our old, this is actually our new packaging that's going to be rolling out in the next month or so. I'm going to try it. We're going to open this. Do I have to shake it? How does this work? No, no, no, no, no, just open it. It's super creamy. So you open it, it's going to be ready to eat. Love it. Oh, and salivating over here in the room. That's the hummus I grew up on. You know, of course, there's also a chef that helped kind of orchestrate some of this stuff. Like, oh, you can't, you know, mush things up this way or you can't do it that way. But the main part is the garbanzo beans and the tahini. And the tahini is a big thing for people now. Yeah. So this tahini comes from the mountains in the north of Lebanon. Sounds romantic. Is it? The city is called Duma. Duma. Duma, Lebanon. OK. And that's where the tahini comes from. So I'm not going to say anymore. You try it, you tell me your thoughts. That is so good. I'm going to go for another bite. That's really creamy, but like silky. Just like grandma made it. The garbanzo beans are a huge part of it. In terms of like where you source them or they grow, does any of that matter? The way it's prepared. Just the way it's prepared. The way it's prepared is so important. And it's hard for a lot of companies to scale that. The one thing in school that I actually paid attention to was an engineering class about reverse engineering. So you took an engineering class. You're a D student, took an engineering class. I did because the teacher was so cool and he says everybody gets an A in the class because I don't grade and we're all here to have conversation. Kind of like that. That's an engineering class? Yeah, he also got axed from the school because... Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, but he was the biggest mistake. Notre Dame, if you're watching this, that is the biggest mistake you guys ever made. He talked a lot about reverse engineering and it struck a note with me because I was like, wow. Another part of scaling it is, of course, costs and margins and all that. And we've just brought in a CFO who comes from Kraft. Kraft Global Strategy. Congratulations. Thank you. That's a huge hire. Thank you. His name's Patrick. He is actually an old friend of my family's. Sure. He's come on and he is... That's amazing. helped, you know, articulating, you know, raising and, of course, scaling on the cost side, of course. Yeah. What made you know you needed a CFO? This is something that every company messes up until I don't even know. Some of them will go years and years and years without getting sort of aware of the levers. I'm not a numbers guy. OK. I know my margins. I know how to sell, but everybody, if you are not a numbers guy, you need a numbers guy or a numbers girl. Whatever the situation is. And so the actual person that I need to give credit to before Patrick, her name is Lauren, she actually took a chance on me when I was in my driveway and she is now in charge of all the accounts and distribution. So my strategy and the whole manager approach and I listened a lot to Steve Jobs and how he managed was, you know, knowing strengths and weaknesses of yourself and of myself. Yeah. And where everybody's best use of strength and time can be. And so I knew numbers wasn't going to be my strength. And scaling the right, not scaling in the manufacturing side. I'm talking about scaling on the cost side because it's so important. And that was the reason for a CFO. But pre-CFO, there was Lauren and Lauren took a chance on me when I was in my driveway. And there were a lot of instances in dealing with stores, especially getting into Ralph's. There were some ballsy ballsy moments that she was like, no, I, you know, I'm going to go with your gut here. Trust your gut. And it worked. Thank God. Wow. But yeah. Can you give us a story of something like happened while you were trying to get into Ralph's? Yeah. So the way Ralph's, Ralph's is really interesting. Ralph's, I got to be careful how much I share. Sure. But the buyer at Ralph's was looking for a new hummus. It's like the set is dry. What was the problem they were having? Like there was like it was it was sort of the sales weren't there. There need to be some rejuvenation. What was the problem? Rejuvenation, legacy. Actually, my exact reason for starting the company just got proven right on a larger scale. OK. And Ralph was seeing it numbers wise. Ralph was seeing it numbers wise. But the velocities weren't the same. Velocities weren't the same because this company is having issues. And a lot of the companies in the market place just couldn't step it up. And they were like, yeah, you know, the market is changing a lot. Let's change with it. And so they, you know, reached out to our distributors, DPI. And they were like, hey, we're going to look for another hummus. What do you guys have in your set? Some distributors act like brokers sometimes. And then there's the brokers and there's the company that are, you know, just distributors and they just distribute and take their cut. And that's it. Then there's places like DPI that have kind of this relationship with the buyer and they handle all the distribution. So Lauren and him had a really good first meeting when we got into DPI. They hit it off. He reaches out and he's like. Would you guys want to go in a Ralph's and, you know, it takes companies five years to go conventionally. This isn't this actually changed our entire business model because everyone's like, you can't go conventional for five years. Conventionals where the big boys play. Conventionals are risk. You either make it or you go bankrupt. And I without a flinch go. Absolutely. We're going to go conventional. I said, everybody said, we're going conventional, right to conventional. And so the way he presented it to the buyer, the buyer actually didn't eat hummus. So he gave it to his family and everybody in the office on the buying team to try. They went crazy for it. He's like, well, everybody seems to like it. What are the margins? And there was a lengthy, lengthy, you know, margin conversation. But we because you guys weren't there yet. You weren't producing at that level of scale yet. No, but sometimes you've got to make the impossible possible. And sometimes you just need to bend and break the rules entirely in order to actually get it and achieve it. And I'm a big, big, big believer in that there is no no. It's yes. That's why I'm doing this business while I'm so young because I have the ability to say yes and figure out and stay up three days straight and just drink a ton of energy drinks and go to the gym and eat junk food because it's the only thing, you know, near our manufacturing facility. It's because of those reasons you just say yes. How are you funding it originally? All my college tuition. And I. So you got to check back? Yeah, I just told my family is like the money you guys save for college. It's not going to go to college. And I'm going to start this company. What was that discussion like? That's that sounds. My mom was very simple. My mom from the beginning was very supportive of it. OK. My dad did not go to college. So my family background is in like construction and neither of my parents really went to college. OK. So that wasn't like a right. But because everybody goes to college now and, you know, if you live in a bubble of a world where everybody's going to college, like, yeah, there's going to be some. That sounds good. It sounds like they were at least supportive of it. And they understood it, I guess. Well, my dad is when he when he does deals and he's it's always very like we'll talk to these people too. And everybody I had to talk to did not endorse this idea. What were you hearing? What was the thing that are you crazy? You think you can do this? Oh, my God, OK, you know, OK, pal, really. And that that would just make me more confident of it because I'm not I'm not one of those people that just goes, oh, dang, he said this and I look like no, I don't do that. I respect everybody's opinion. But at the end of the day, there is just trusting your gut and running with that. And so, yeah, I trusted my gut and I ran with it. And my family was very, very, very supportive. And they were like, all right, if you're going to do this thing, like, go do it. And I had a lot of help from my cousin, too. My cousin is a like mega marketer. So he comes from former intern, I think, SVP impossible. And he's now at Nobel Foods, which I don't know if you guys have heard of. You might hear about them coming soon. They're a plant based cheese that actually stretches. It's really, really, really cool. He helped a lot with, you know, orchestrating the brand and telling me how to put together a sales strategy. So I had a lot, a lot, a lot of help from my family. You know, there are also rough, rough, rough, rough days. And problems stack up. You get to know you hear this in the news about one competitor or something. It's just it really depends. You know, the better way to say it is it depends how passionate you are about it and how invested you are in it. Because there's a lot of people that, you know, make very successful businesses. And it's a business that functions in the cash flow on it. It's great. It's margins are great. And it functions in these five cities and areas. And, you know, they have a great living. That's not what this is aiming to be. So the emotional connection to it is just that much more. You're tested. It tests your, how much do you want it? Yeah, yeah, that's good, though. It strengthens it. And it makes sure, as you know, like, this is what I'm actually doing. I need to go do this. Yeah. Yeah. And it makes it easy. How many stores are you in now? Right. Now we are in so official year one of being on shelf year one was only the driveway and then year two, which is really year one, because it's actual that it's going on stores. Yeah. We are what is July six and 2022 July six. So we are now in like, we're in all the Ralph's, all the airwands, a bunch of independence throughout the region, rose hours. We've got a bunch more regional chains, uh, getting started in the next couple of weeks, I think. So I think our total of door count by the end of the quarter is like 235. Oh, wow. Something like that. Yeah. And, and based on what you learned with the Ralph's discussion in terms of like almost partnering with the retailer in some way around solving their problem. I imagine that sales pitch can be recycled through almost every store. Unfortunately, I never got to go face to face with them. The distributors handle all of it. The way they pitched them was the interesting part and they didn't really pitch it as this is going to be the solution to all problems. Cause they're like, you know, the category has the amount it has to make it's making it's just not, you know, we're seeing a lot of issues with this brand and where it's not performing well. And we, you know, it does, it needs some spicing up. The way it was presented was I have a brand that just got brought on called Habiza and I never heard of it. Oh, they, uh, founders, a dropout, they started in their driveway. They're taking like a family recipe. It's the most insane homeless I've ever had. And they really want to be in Ralph's. And that's actually how it went. And that worked. Yeah. And he was like, he, you know, he's a much older gentleman. And he was like, this sounds a little bit like the Apple story. It sounds just like the Apple story. It sounds like the Apple story. And I was like, yeah, and he kind of wants to lead a crusade crusade, like, you know, into the market the same way Apple wanted to. And, you know, the early seven or mid seventies. And that's how it, you know, of course, okay, let me try it. And let me see the margins. This sounds exciting. I just need to make sure this is legit, you know, because anytime somebody here's a 20 year old started a company out of the garage, everybody's like, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's interesting. Yeah. That's interesting to me. To me, it just means you were sure early. Most people aren't sure early. It's not because of that. It's more food safety. Like, whoa, okay. Do they know that they have to be up to FDA standards? And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we got to, you know, all that stuff figured out manufacturing. And then they, then they get the sure thing feeling. And respectfully. So if I was a buyer and I heard that, the first thing I would say, that sounds awesome. Do they have everything in line with food safety? And after I heard that. Okay, this now sounds awesome. Yeah. Where's the company today? Are you raising capital or what's the, yeah, we, uh, we're beginning to start raising now, you know, bootstrap a lot of the company, do that, dropping out of college and some additional funding. But now we are officially going to begin funding. Okay. We're excited for it. And like a seed, you'll do a seed? Yeah, kind of like a seed round angels. We're hoping to go that route. What I've learned from just talking to people in the way life goes is you never know how it could end up. I know that you could get, you know, with seed and angel round, sometimes VC might say, you know, we like this company, we'll just hop in, even though it, you know, you better give us an amazing deal or five different angels are like, okay, yes, this is our wheelhouse. Let's do this. Let's help you. I'm kind of trying to go and see how it pans out. And will the, will the model always be stores? Is there an e-commerce play that's at all options or just basically stores? I think like true CPG. Yeah, true CPG. Okay. Shipping something like this is costly because it's perishable. Yeah. What's the shelf life on one of these? So shelf life is 90. Oh, wow. 90 days. We use HPP, which helps extend the shelf life a lot. But yeah, 90 days. And that is what these conventional buyers, you know, anything below that the conventional buyers goes get it out. Like we can't, we can't do that just because the way inventory is trucking, you know, we're currently in testing to see, oh, can, can it go longer than that? You know, 90 is the safest number. We know it tastes best at 90. We know it can last that way. But we just want to make, you know, let's see. And how much is it? How much is it? And how much is it compared to your competitors? Like, what are your competitors? So this MSR ping in kind of a range around 549 at most retailers, some retailers 599, some want to have it at like, you know, 499, 529, or they want to do like a TPR for a minute. It really depends on the buyer, the city, the area and what other brands are in there. Our competitors are around 499, 599. We're definitely premium, but we're pricing it, you know, just a notch above. I'm a big believer in with the conventional model. We need to scale. It's our job to scale to make sure it's affordable for you. So what's your target price? You want it to be like 450 at some point? That's a little, a little low. I mean, we're, we have some new skews coming out that I think are going to do that job of being lower and the accessibility. I think that's all I'm going to say. Yeah, no, I get it. I totally get it. There's, it's interesting when I think about, um, so the yogurt market, obviously Treboni sort of cornered that a long time ago. But when I see their product price point today versus what it was even five years ago, six years ago, 10 years ago, it's clear they're, they're trying to scale and get it to become like the lowest cost option for everybody. Yeah. And, uh, it's an interest, it's interesting because that's where you win. Yeah. I think what will happen in our market is there, the legacy brands will be those low cost ones and they'll be able to do that. Yeah. I never studied economics, but I took a lot of interest in economics and economy means a scale and, you know, markets and how they function. And I think that that actually wouldn't be the worst thing. Truly, I don't. And I, you know, my competitors are watching this high, but I think, I think it is a good thing because you want that kind of diversification for any category, for any sector, anything. Yeah. So to have that, they all help each other in some way. Yeah. And you also have the ability to be premium. There's, there's ultra premium, premium, then there's generic and then there's low tier, the premium generic range is like that sweet spot. Because when you TPR it, you can be there and then you can go back to being here because it is premium. I mean, this is Tahini from Lebanon. I mean, this old world way of making the hummus, the other companies aren't doing. So that is the premium aspect of it. I want to ask you this question. So when I was, when I launched my first company, I was about your age a little older than you and Facebook was like the only thing that existed from a social media perspective. And so reaching my customer was basically Facebook. Okay. Today, you are in a world where you have like TikTok, Instagram, all these things. How much time do you spend today trying to build sort of the brand story versus get into stores? And then how do you, how do you, as like, there's no right answers, but it's more of like, how, what's your perspective as a 20 year old founder in, as you think about marketing. So I am a geek for brand campaigns. I love them. I love campaigns. I love branding. I love all that. I get a lot of arguments with people because I have not tapped in a lot to social yet. And they go, one, I go, my priority right now is fully in building the velocity at stores, tripling quadrupling velocities, making sure we're filling up these promo calendar, which makes sense. By the way, that's, that's the intelligence after you make your money. And also the other thing is this, and I, you know, my friends and I, we always talk about it. One of my friends, we walk into a Rousal and day because he's a, he's the most realist I've ever met. And he says to me, he goes, dude, you realize that I have never seen half of these brands and my ability to choose one of them is in less than five seconds. And it's probably not because I saw it on Instagram yet at this early of a stage. Now I love social media. I think it's great. I were building a very organic grassroots following on social, uh, TikTok, you know, I love. I love all of social media. I love all of that. We are going to begin to start tapping into it now that we have more resources to and more time and money to invest into it. But starting out to now, no, not that much time. I focused more on making sure the assets that went on social expressed what we wanted to express and we're targeted to the right areas. Yeah. Yeah. And that was it. Can you, can you give us a window into any new products you're launching? Oh, well, or new flavors. So right now it tells people you have the original, we have the garlic, green onion, hummus here. We have jalapeno and serrano and then roasted red pepper with pepper. Do you have any others? So is this enough? You see a lot of the legacy players and other companies that have huge product offerings and it just strayed so away from hummus. That's not so much us, but we do have a new SKU coming out that I am very, very, very excited for. I think a lot of people will be very excited for it because there is, it's, it opens the door to that accessibility for it. And that uniqueness, you'll be able to find it in gas stations. Oh, wow. There you go. Hopefully places like that. A to go item. A to go item. Eat on the go item. And when does that launch? Uh, we're getting ready to launch that into some select retailers. Yeah. Sometime next year. Where do you want to be by the end of the year? Like how many stores do you want to be? By this year? Yeah. By this year, 2023. So a lot of that depends on the resets and the buyers that will make changes, even outside of a reset. We're focusing a lot on the stores for next year and really quadrupling those numbers. I would like to get another handful of stores this year and pivot right into them. So if anybody's watching this, we're here to something. Yeah, uh, natural specialty, conventional, anything from where you guys are manufacturing today. Can that scale up? Or would you need, would you need, you can, yeah, you have the space. Yeah, we are, I'm very lucky to have the manufacturing situation we had. We, we found our manufacturer or co-packer, but a reason I say facility and all these things is the relationship we have, it's like it's our own facility because I go there every time production's going on. I watch everything. I mean, it's, it's great and there's a lot of space. So it's, it's a blessing. Knock one in the perfect opportunity that we got. We found it two weeks before our order for Erdogan came in. It's great. We have the capabilities to scale dramatically through it. We're excited about it and our partners are great. I love it. Well, look and tell where people can find you. Tell them Ralph's. Ralph's Erdogan. If anybody up north is watching this Rose hours, you'll be able to find this and some more stores in the California area starting in the next, I'd say month or so to be safe. And then on Instagram, Instagram, Habiza, Hummus. We only do an Instagram right now. No, TikTok yet. TikTok coming soon. Yeah, a good TikTok will be coming soon. Not one of those boring, generic CPG ones. That's the stores for now, a bunch more coming soon. We love the product. Our team loves the product. It's super good. Probably the best hummus ever had to kudos to you and your team and your hard work and thank you for believing in yourself. I think that's the takeaway. Thank you for having me on. This is my first ever podcast I've ever done. You did great. So thank you. Thanks, brother. Thank you so much for the support and making it to the end of the episode. If you haven't already, please do review and show the episode with your friends. If you never want to miss a beat on all things entrepreneurship, make sure to follow us on socials for daily content. See you next Tuesday for another great episode. I took a bite of a visa to show Diego I was cool.