 This is Starp Starfront. Every culture has a food it's known for. In Japan, it's sushi. In Italy, it's pasta, and in Brazil, it's this famous Brazilian cheese bread. While sushi and pasta have long since made their way into every town in the United States, the same can't be said for Brazilian cheese bread. Recognizing this gap in the market, Junya decided to bring her favorite snack to America, and so she founded Brazibytes. Initially, the growth was steady and predictable, but once they went on Shark Tank, Junya quite literally couldn't keep Brazibytes on the shelves. In today's episode, we chat with Junya about selling out nationwide in a matter of a couple days after airing on Shark Tank, the challenges that come with inventing a new food category, and why her deal with Laurie Griner ended up pulling through once the cameras stopped rolling. All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Brazibytes founder Junya. Thanks for coming on. For people who don't know, what is Brazibytes? What's the company do? So Brazibytes is a frozen foods company, and we make Latin spire better for you frozen foods. We started the origin of the company, and the original mission was to bring Brazilian cheese bread to the US market, which is a staple in Brazil and South America. Do kids like grow up with it? Is it something that's like on the breakfast table, dinner table? What's the origin of the food? So in Brazil, it's literally everywhere. So think about how, I try to explain this as almost like how chips are here in the US, not sold similarly, but that present. The cheese bread is in Brazil part of, it's ingrained in the culture. And it's in the freezer section, so you can cook at home like we make it here, but it's also in school cafeterias, in bakeries. You land at the airport in Brazil and there is a huge cheese bread breaking mortar in your face, and it's really part of the culture that's ingrained on how Brazilians live life in terms of gatherings. You're always ready for a family member or a neighbor to walk through the door, and so the cheese bread is kind of part of that. Got it. And then you come to America, you see it's missing, it's lacking, it doesn't exist. And then at some point you go, let's make it, and then you transition into saying, let's start a company. Was the idea so clear to start a company? Or was it something like you can just make it for your family, your friends? The idea was kind of like this. I moved here and I've been here for over five years working as a civil engineer, just day job, had graduated from college. And then I was really puzzled that this product wasn't here in a way that Americans were enjoying because it's so popular in Brazil and South America. And then around that time, you might remember Brazil had hosted the World Cup. How can we forget? Right, big moment. Huge, didn't end well on sad ending. Yeah, sad ending. What happened at that time? So around that time, hundreds of thousands of Americans descended to Brazil and experienced Brazilian culture. And I noticed that as also a pattern. I'm like, at that time, like, OK, this product is not here. It's incredible. It should be. And then I noticed the love that Americans how easily they connected with the product, right? Because sometimes you go to a foreign country and something is really foreign or something is like something you've never had before. Right, you get it. And so I start hearing like this sort of like, oh, one of my favorite things about Brazil was the cheese bread. That is such an interesting data point, right? And then at the same time, like all the things were like I got married and I had a wedding in Brazil and my husband is American. We had a bunch of friends go down there and then they're eating the cheese bread. Again, another data point. I'm like, OK, you know, Americans are missing out on this. I am going to be the one to create a company and bring it. I think it's important to know I wasn't the first one to have this idea because this idea is kind of obvious. Yeah, it's in your face. It's in your face. And I had seen it in the US in a very sort of underground international way approach. Like in international stores, corner bakeries, like you had to drive to a specific area of town. Totally. And my idea was, no, I'm going to bring this to Americans in a way that Americans can't understand. And I wanted it to be sold in mass groceries. So at Whole Foods, at Costco, Target, you know, Kroger. So from from the inception, the vision was to create a company with sort of our way to introduce it. And so that's kind of the idea came about. And when they're coming into your wedding, are you are you like it's a brazi bite? Like, are you saying that naturally? Or did you have to figure out some time to get the name of it? Like, we will just say that's the cheese bread, right? So it's very sort of like just think about like, yeah, any type of you're just trying to describe it, right? It's Pão de Queijo in Portuguese, which means just cheese bread. So it's a cheese bread, cheese bread. Then over time, people are just falling in love with it, right? And so over time, we kind of created a brand around it and decided to launch the product in the CPG space and created the brand named Brasi Bites to sort of honor the bites from Brazil concept. What was your first step in deciding to go? Did you get like a prep kitchen? You knew you wanted to go and be in all these stores. And so what was like the first step that you took? Very first step was learning the ABCs of the food industry. So we took a class at a community college in Portland. Not CPG, but just food industry. Food industry, just basic, right? And so started learning how to package a recipe, what it would take to do that. So there was a class in a community college in our area. So Portland is a place that's very well set up for there's a lot of like young food companies coming, emerging brands coming out of there because there's a lot of infrastructure and support. So took this class, kind of understood the basics of it and then started. Got a commercial kitchen, packaged it, started knocking on doors, tons of rejection, a couple yeses here and there and started to go. What was your first account? First account was a grocery store in Portland, very small, independent, called Barber World Foods. Amazing. So we'll always remember those guys. Yeah. And then, and then at that time, so you're doing, you're at one store, or are you just doing a bunch of the sampling to get people sampling when you get a product in a grocery store that's brand new. So we created a category from scratch when you're doing that, not only you have to sell in, but you have to promise to sell. And so our way was like, Hey, give me the shelf space. I promise I'm coming this week and I will demo it and I'll sell everything. So all I'm asking you is to just say yes, it's no risk for you. You know, you kind of do a little bit of like, Hey, help me out here. I'll show you. And where are they putting you in the store? Was that another issue? Because like frozen bread isn't a thing everywhere. It's a thing in some places during COVID, it became a thing. But where are they putting you in the grocery store? So we created a category from scratch. And that happens a lot with new food products and beverage products. When you create a category, you have to kind of have clarity or at least a vision for where your product will go. Right. When you're getting it to retail, I always say, you got to deliver on a platter the information to your buyer. Obviously, now I know this way better, right? After doing this for a decade. Yeah, but it's a good take away. It's a good take away. You deliver because sometimes we create a product and it's like, Oh, I'll ask my buyer where this goes. Well, the buyer is managing thousands of products. You're telling them where to go. Telling them where you think, at least with confidence and then have a conversation about it. Because our product is like cheese bread bites, there's a number of places it can go in the store. It can go in frozen bread. It can go in frozen snacks. You know, there's a variety. We are approached to this day, even as we build the category and we're in 17,000 stores nationwide, is to have a retailer-specific approach. So we go, how do you march on theizer side? Where are the consumers going to find, go come looking for brassy bites as a destination? And so we work hand in hand with the retailer. Is it always very different? Or is there some common, like I would, I'm just thinking out loud here. I have no idea. Correct me if I'm wrong. Because you have the pepperoni bites, was that like a strategic move to put us next to the pepperoni bites or the bagel bites or some of those things that exist on the market? So in the frozen space, the categories are a little bit more sort of like this. They a little bit more broad than you're speaking, but they tend to be more like frozen snacks, frozen bread, frozen breakfast. You know, so they kind of like split that way. And the retailers will assign buyers for the categories. If the retailer is massive, then they'll have multiple buyers throughout the freezer. If the retailer is small, there may be one or two buyers for the whole freezer set. So they overlap for us. A lot of times, like the sort of like natural, better for you snacks is a good option for us. Because it's gluten free, low calorie. Because we're better for your brand, right? We're a natural brand. We have all clean ingredients, no preservatives. So we do plane that space very well. Now, some retailers, I'll give you an example. We we work with Sprouts, right? Very well known retailer in the sort of like the Arizona, California and other parts of the country. They're natural foods retailers. So we are in snacks there. So our product line is snack. It makes a ton of sense, right? They have a ton of snacks there at Whole Foods. We can often be found in bread and snacks. We are Costco. Guess what? Costco doesn't delineate, delineate in categories, right? Sure, sure. You're at Costco and there's no signage, but you sort of navigate it, right? You're in the freezer, but you kind of navigate organically. Yeah. And you'll see our product there sort of near the snack bread area. Let's go back to the one store. So how did it go with the one store and how long were you just in one store super focused on proving the concept, I guess, and selling out? When we launched the company, you kind of ask about like, oh, did you want to be, you know, a bigger brand or you want to stay small? We did the math, right? So it was a math game. Running a company, running CPG is math, OK? So then you kind of start to realize how many units and am I going to move on a per store per week? It's a math around that concept. Super simple. Very simple. Every category has a sort of an average sort of range. And so then you do the number. How many doors do I have to be to make this company viable? Right. Right away. What number, what number do you guys have in your head while you're doing the math? The first number that we did the math that we say, OK, to ever like even get a paycheck or even get sniffed close to a paycheck for us founders. We have to be in 2,000 stores. Which equals how much, roughly, revenue-wise? Oh, I don't remember what our P&L was like at the time. Maybe like 500K in revenue or something along those lines. You know, it was under a million dollars, right? It was just a very small brand, but at the time, like the vision, but it was something like OK, yeah, kind of maybe just like approaching a million. We felt like, OK, that's kind of bare minimum to just viability. And you hear that a lot in the food industry. You've got to kind of get to that sort of one, two, three, two, even breathe, right? And so we kind of already had done the math and we knew there was a bit of a race. However, that race was a slow moving race because you have to get a door at a time. You have to learn in the craft. Different salespeople. Different salespeople. Different markets. And by the way. Which is crazy to me, by the way. That's the thing that when I think from a tech perspective that drives me crazy about CPG is the fact that like a buyer here is a very different buyer there. It could be the same company, but there's so many different layers, so many different people. And so it's like the repeatability of the scalability is way more difficult and way more personal than than like tech, let's say, where it's like, you buy it, you can buy any buyer to same thing. It's hard. It makes it so much harder. There's a lot of layers. There's a lot of people you have to navigate, right? And then as you get better at it, as you're more confident in your selling store and your product begins to get traction, then you start having access to those buyers that are going to unlock much bigger doors, like the Whole Foods of the Worlds and even Sprouts and Costco and eventually Walmart. But then it takes time to get there. Yeah, there's no easy way of doing it. What year did you get into the first store? 2011. Yeah, it was the first store. And then at some point you decided to apply to Shark Tank. What was the idea of just trying to apply? How well was the business doing before you applied? And what value did you see? To some extent, 2015 Shark Tank, we could say is like early days of Shark Tank. So we had been in business for nearly five years since launching the brand. And did you get funding prior? We got some very small seed. We were very bootstrapping, very bootstrapper. We were very good at running a company and trying to figure out how to make our company successful. We were not very good at raising money in the early days. That skill lagged for us as founders. It's hard. It is hard. It takes time. But honestly, that benefited us. So what happened was we were laser focused on figuring out how to make BrasiBytes work as a company. And then we developed that skill very well. We didn't develop the less raised money skills. So it lagged. But that was okay. That turned out to be okay. So in 2015, we had been in business about five years. We had been knocking on doors. We had about 600 doors. We had early traction. We had some regions of whole foods. We had gotten sprouts, some Kroger. There was some really good signs that the brand really had the foundation to scale. But we also were like, holy shit, it's been five years of working nonstop. Like seven days a week. Like we were those founders with no life. Whatever you took, this is pre-kids. Like you're in it. You're just going for it. So bootstrapping, kind of going nuts with it. So we go and say, okay. That's why I call plunge, by the way. Just to remind myself of the torture of those days. It is, right? That's why you do it. You gotta remember those moments. You have to, yeah. So we go like, okay. We can see there's a lot of opportunity here, but we're gonna run out of gas. Cause you can only do that for so long. And sometimes I tell people five years later, oh my God, like the Brasov buy store is like, guys, don't because people get scared. Like am I gonna have to do this for five years? Not necessarily, but this was our story, right? Then we go and say, okay, we love the show. We're huge fans of the show. We felt like we had the qualities that the show likes, right? Sort of like you have a husband and wife team. You have an authentic product. You have entrepreneurs who are giving their all and like bootstrapping and just building a category from scratch. So we're like, okay, we're perfect for the show. And we kind of knew that. So it's very hard to get on the show. As you know, very competitive, but like everything we put our best foot forward, we understood our place in there. Sort of like what the show was trying to do. So we got on the show and we knew it was gonna be a huge break because we're like, okay, this cheese bread is incredible. We know people love it. The product is great. The product is fantastic. Yeah. Which is the hard part on a lot of times. And so you have an amazing product. And then when you went in, did you know exactly the number? I know you said the number, but how long did you guys deliberate deciding the $200,000 or 10%? Oh, we worked a ton. Like tons of hours prepping for the show. I mean, it was nuts preparation. It was the biggest preparation of our lives at the time. Hours upon hours, upon hours. Like we went and watched every single show that had ever been recorded and we would write down every question that was asked, the data and would ask ourselves back. So we were very smooth, very prepared for everything, including that ask. We were very clear on the ask. We wanted to be real and not be one of those entrepreneurs that go on the show and just ask for a ridiculous amount only to be like rejected and left at. That's not our style. We're like, okay, what's... You're deliberate. Yeah, what's the reality of the situation but make sure that we're being valued. So did you know going in that the ask of 200 for 10%, they would change it to 200 for 20%? Because based on the data, they do that every single time. Sometimes, I mean, we ended up like, I think our final offer from Kevin was 12%. So we ended up getting very close to... 12 and a half, yeah. 12 and a half, again, very close to our ask. So we weren't necessarily predicting it, but we had kind of like, okay, what's the max that we would go? It's so funny looking at the evaluation at where our company is today. Oh, I believe that, yeah. Right, because we are so much more and have evolved so much. But I love about your story on the show. You had three of the sharks going crazy for you guys. So they bought into the product, they loved it. And then they're all just sort of competing with each other. Which is kind of what you want when you go on the show, right? Which is insane. And I think so rare. When you were thinking about going on the show, was it clear that there was a shark you guys really wanted to work with? Kinda, we really like Mark because everybody likes Mark. Everybody likes Mark. And Mark, he follows a gluten-free diet, so he's gluten-free. Our product's gluten-free. So we're like, okay, he's gonna get into it. But I also feel like Mark is very moody. And he's, some days he was just- He was having a bad day. I don't know. Like some days it's like- It's a long day of recording. Long day of recording, where are you going? So it came to be hit or miss with him. We did like Lori. I mean, we had same pros and cons just on most of them. And we just wanted, we wanted to get an investment. We wanted to have a good time. We wanted to get the exposure. So we just, we were open to it all. So you say no to Mr. Wonderful. You say no to Damond, also. Yes. Who looked offended, but if you watch the show it's just kinda funny. And then you end up striking a deal with Lori. Yes. And then what happens after the show? Do you guys close the deal? We had multiple offers. Ended up shaking hands with Lori at the show. And then after the show the deal did not close. Both parties kind of decided to go part ways on the deal. You know, this happens a lot at the show. Yeah. More often than not, I think it happens. Yeah. More often than not. Was there a specific sticking point that she didn't like or that you guys didn't like? There was a couple things that were major drivers. So when you get behind the scenes, because you're at the show, you kind of have this broad kind of conversation about, oh, you know, this is how much I sell. This is my margin. This is my product. And so the offer is made there. When you get behind the scenes, you're getting to do diligence. You start going, okay, what does this really look like? And then we started doing the diligence on her as well. We were very savvy to that. And there was a couple of things on both sides. On their side was the fact that they wanted to sort of prolong the ability to have that deal. What do I mean by that? So they wanted to see you hit certain targets before they make the investment? Investment. So they said, okay, we would do the deal, but we want to do it in 18 months. When your company is worth more money. And so it's interesting. And I said, I want the exact deal, but I want it in 18 months. And in the meantime, we were kind of like doing the diligence of like, okay, we knew we had had a great episode. Like we knew the editing was gonna be in our favor. Worst case scenario, you air for sure. We are likely gonna air. Publicity is gonna do, yeah. Production had told us we were gonna air. We knew the episode had gone beautifully and it was gonna be entertaining. So we had confidence in that. And then we had a ton of traction. Like we were about to launch at Costco like a couple of weeks in. And so we didn't feel like it wanted. Like in 18 months. Yeah, you're a different company. This company is totally different. What do you think her logic was there on the 18? Like, do you think she was thinking, okay, they'll air, they'll do a lot better. They'll launch at Costco. It just feels like a safety play. But what do you think the logic is? I think it's a total safety play. It's just having perhaps options on their plate and wanting to see every single thing hit the mark. And that's, you know, that's not helping. But who doesn't want that? Right, by the time she would have made that investment, she would have had like a huge payback. It made no sense to us. And so, and then we were also really wanting, it was like, if you're gonna take that much equity if you're gonna be holding hands with us, what's your experience in the food industry? And we felt like the experience wasn't quite proven. I admire all the sharks. You know, I think that they're amazing at what they do, they're very successful. But the food industry, the CPG industry is very unique. It requires a set of skills that not all investors have. And so, combined with that, we were like, you know what, totally get why you want to extend a deal. That's your deal. Like, we also feel like we really want a partner that's holding hands and just jumping with us like right now when it owes our space. Yeah, totally. Like, let's not do this. So we both kind of part ways in a friendly way. And, you know, the show airs, the company goes from one to nearly $10 million in less than a year. What happens on air day for you guys in terms of sales? So air day was incredible. It was sort of like, I call it like life changing for us on Shark Tank. It was pre-streaming. 9 million people watched the show. We sold out nationwide. We sold out nationwide. Sold out nationwide. So we just had Tia Lupita on who just aired. And what they said was they did their annual revenue. So the, so last year's revenue, the total, they did that in three days. Yeah, I believe it. From the air date to two days after. I believe it. Which is like, it's crazy. It's crazy. So what happens to us was like this. We are frozen foods brand. We were only in grocery stores. So people, I had never seen this happen. And I haven't seen since with any food company, especially in frozen, people got in their cars and drove to the store with such a sense of urgency to get the products from watching the show. And try Brazil bikes. Like they had to have it. They had to have it. And so they ended up, there was this frenzy that lasted almost six months. Every time a bag would touch the freezer of a retailer, that bag was immediately sold. People would buy like at a rate, you know, normally a family will buy like two or three bags a week. They were buying like 12. They were cleaning the freezer. It was like scarcity, like feeling. So there was this huge like momentum, but not only that, we flipped the way we ran the company. So up until that moment, I was like begging to get shelf space, right? I was telling my story. Literally the next day, I started getting emails from retailers and saying, can you come tell me about you? Come present to me. We had gotten into Costco before the show and the timing was ridiculous in our favor in terms of luck. Because every entrepreneur's story has luck, right? This is a piece of luck for us. We had lunch at Costco the week before we went on Shark Tank. They sold out a truckload of our products in like a couple of days. And they called, they called their office and they were like, can I have 10 more of those? And we're like, you know. Palettes, we need palettes. Wow. We wanted just like truckloads. And we obviously didn't have the capacity at the time, but it was the beginning of an amazing relationship that to this day is very strong and important for the brand. Yeah, that's amazing. But it really gave us the exposure that we needed to, like we knew we had something amazing, right? We hadn't created a great product. We knew it made sense. We had all the things, but we didn't have the exposure, you know, until that moment to really scale and get to a much like amazing place that could take this brand to the next level. Did you guys end up raising capital on that exposure also? We sold so much product that we became highly profitable. Highly profitable very quickly. Part of it because the brand also had no operating expenses because we were so small. So it's kind of like, it came to bite us a little bit down the road because we're like, oh, hey, now we're like this $15 million brand and we have four people running the company. That's why we were, and by the way, when you're selling that much and there's so much demand for your product, you don't need to promote. So we ended up canceling any promotions. Like when you see sales at this grocery store level to get attention, to remind consumers you're there, that wasn't needed, right? That was his frenzy. And so the company did very well. Like a few years later, we ended up raising money from private equity to really take the brand to the next stage, which is kind of what we're doing today. Okay, so basically, but for you guys, it was like a catalyst to get to probably like the acquisition point and then you raise capital to sort of tighten everything up, probably hire the right team or more people, COO from maybe a former food brand, something like that. Exactly. And really prime yourself for the acquisition. Exactly. To sort of like really organize the behind the scenes, the infrastructure of the brand to further scale. Yeah. Right? Because you can go on Shark Tank and really get that massive exposure. And so, but I think there's a kind of a breaking point in my space, in the CPG space, like when you get to about 15 million in revenue and you usually have achieved some sort of like you have some following, you have relationships, you have some traction, there's a reason consumers are buying your product, but then you're going like, okay, what now? How do I take it from this point to the next level? And at that point for us, we had to kind of, okay, let's look at the infrastructure, let's look at our innovation pipeline, let's organize this and create a company that can scale. Yeah. What just user are you guys at today versus at that moment, let's say from Shark Tank to today? The biggest difference is we had one product line, so all we did was Brazilian cheese bread, right? We were laser focused on that, which was very good for the brand, very good for us. That's what we did. When after that we said, okay, consumers want more from us, what can this brand deliver on? What makes us special? So we did a lot of branding work and look at like, you know, why people are buying, who was buying and how we were kind of being part of people's lives. And, you know, became sort of created this foundation to become a Latin inspired, better for you platform. So after that, we launched mini empanadas. So we take the cheese bread and we filled with savory ingredients. Then that line evolved. So that line evolving to our current pizza bite line, which is incredible. So out of the empanadas, we had a pizza flavor and that one took off or like, wait, hold on, there's something here. So we pivot that into- Also gluten-free. Everything always naturally gluten-free. And then we created breakfast sandwiches. Our consumers were coming to us and say, like, this is what we want next. And we're missing that in the freezer. And we actually have another innovation coming up this fall that I'm pretty excited about. Oh, what is it? I can't tell you that. You're gonna have to follow us on social. It's coming in August, we're stoked. It's gonna unlock a lot of opportunity for the brand. So it's more about product lines, right? So it's a multiple product lines with the same sort of theme on what makes it special. Truly when we looked, Diego what makes our brand special is the deliciousness. You know, we started looking as like, oh, it's actually not the fact that we're selling Brazilian cheese bread that's authentic, that's my culture. I love those things and those things are behind the scenes on what makes it special. But we created a product that delivers on the delicious and people are like, I just love this. And so we have a huge kid following, family following, gluten-free following. And so it's multiple product lines around the same kind of foundation that makes the Brazil brand successful during the shark tank. Give me a window into the day-to-day for you now. I'm the CMO of the company. Yeah, so we got acquired, right? We didn't get fully acquired. So we did a private equity deal where there was a majority stake taken in the brand during that time. We decided that I wanted to stay and continue to run the company. Congratulations, by the way, still huge. Thank you. Thank you. You know, kind of for me, I wanted to see what the next thing was gonna be like because I had- You wanna learn the curious. I wanna learn. I'm like, what is this like, you know, being under private equity? What's like to scale to these new heights? So I wanted to see what that was like. I moved from the CEO to the CMO role. We brought in a professional CEO that had run other CPG that has done a wonderful job and is a great partner. My husband continued as the CEO. Really incredible at what he does as well. So the three of us are the leaders of the brand run the company and with a team. You have amazing professionals because we wouldn't be able to like have scale without this incredible team. We have a headquarters in Portland. So I go to the office most days. I run the marketing. So I run all the branding, the marketing, the consumer side. So like I have a team of content creators. We're on TikTok. We're on Instagram. We are launching new products. I'm branding. I'm listening to the consumers. It's crazy to think about. So you started it in 2010 when the iPhone was new, relatively to the BlackBerry. So social media is a thing, but it's not like it is today, which is crazy and pre-streaming to your point on Shark Tank. So then you go on Shark Tank and this is like the biggest moment in terms of eyeballs any brand could probably wish for delivers. And in that, after the Shark Tank appearance, you're now in a whole new world from a marketing perspective, right? It's like now it's all video today. It's all TikTok. It's all Instagram. And really just like content all the time to grow your brand and to get product. And so how do you view marketing today? And like what do you see as the levers for actual sales? So not just branding, but really just like these are the things that we see working that people buy from. So seeing like in my lens, running this brand for the last 13 years, it's a constant evolution. I think it's always be willing to evolve and be willing to drop what's not working. So I had the sort of like luck and sort of opportunity to work with amazing agencies, especially on the marketing side over the last few years after the company kind of became bigger. And I'm very quick to like keep my agencies on their toes. Even there's incredible big agencies. And the moment I'm seeing something is not working, I'm having those honest conversations and going like guys, like you're not doing it. So recently I moved, I just did a pivot like six months ago where I moved all the content creation in-house again. And I've had like content creation outsourced. I've had in-house, I've gone back and forth. I'm like, this doesn't work. It's too fast. It requires too much volume and quality that outsourcing is not working. So that's a very recent pivot that I'm like, I love my partners, but I'm coming in in-house. So I brought more creators in-house. I'm really working to elevate all their skillsets and we are just on top of it. We're constant on trying to break through TikTok and Instagram and look, those platforms are changing every week themselves. So you have to stay on top of it and constantly be open to like, okay, that's not working, fine, let's go. Let's move. And so what makes something successful today? I think for MySpace I'm focusing on a couple of things. One is this piece on like the content creation and reaching consumers and being discovered is a big priority for us and my team there. But the second one in MySpace because I'm a frozen foods company and I am primarily sold through the retail channel is really understanding what's going on with each individual retailer that we're working with, partnering with them and marketing according to their needs. That has always worked and continues to be very important because you can go out and blow up your content creation, isn't that? But if I don't understand how Whole Foods, what's going on inside Whole Foods right now, what the changes they are making, what are the levers they're working for them? Post Amazon, like all that stuff. Then I'm gonna have all this cool buzz on TikTok but then I'm gonna fail in my relationship with Whole Foods. I may lose my shelf space. That's not gonna work. So it's having to maintain this sort of two fronts, right? My background helps the brand in that regard because I ran sales for 10 years. I thought you were gonna say your civil engineering background. I was like, tell me how that helps. Before we were able to build a team, I was kind of the marketing and sales person, right? As a founder, usually in the beginning, a founder takes a sales hat. So I did sales. So I got very intimate on like, what drives the buyers, the retailer. So I'm constantly working with my sales directors very close to like, what are these accounts need? How do we leverage, I'm sort of this balancing person that I'm like with my creative team doing all the social stuff and then trying to support sales to continue to strain these partnerships with retailers. So those two things are hugely important for us. So I'll give you an example. This product that we're launching in August that I shout, not name names, but I'll say it's very cheesy and it's awesome. We have a bunch of content that we're kind of starting to pre-build for it. But none of it would work if we hadn't had one big retailer partner who looked at this idea like months ago and we were showing them and they were like, oh, I want that. I got it. And then we said, okay, cool, what does that mean? Like I want that to us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. We showed them at a trade show and say, hey, this is where we're going. This is our next innovation. They said, oh, I want that. I want to be first with that. And I want to be your partner with that. Okay, cool. Let's build. So then we created this innovation. We started doing all the things to bring it to market, holding hands with them. Now in August, when social comes life, it's out there in a way that a lot of people like half of the country can have access to it. So otherwise, I have to be very mindful frozen, very mindful frozen. So it's balancing those things, constantly evolving. This industry is nuts, man. It's just interesting because I think about it like for me, I think at some point, probably this year we'll launch a CPG company of some kind. When I think about it, it's always like, there's two ways of looking at it. You can look at it as what's missing into the world, which is I think how entrepreneurs operate usually. What do I think the world needs? And then there's the lens of what do the retailers needs? What is the space in the retailer world, which is a completely different set of operating principles? And can I address a need for them? And if so, to what you're doing now with the content side, can I marry content to facilitate that need, which is gonna bring them revenue and then you revenue? So it's like a next level way of thinking, which is super intelligent. And I think you have to be really mindful of your category, really mindful. So there's so many things in the beverage space that work beautifully, both on the content and retail partnership that won't work on the perishable side. Like if I'm frozen, if I, but you know, frozen has a great play at it, which is shelf stable, right? We have like one year shelf life, so we can scale this thing a lot. And then you have other products where the shelf life is a week. So you have to be really mindful of your category and see about how you're gonna deploy those things. You can do social content all day long and really blow up, but if people can get your products or if you're in the access and the price is not right. So it's a balance to find that sweet spot. I wanna talk about your fund. You just launched a fund. You had your first recipient. Tell the world about it. So last year we launched, it's an accelerator. It's called the Latino Entrepreneur Accelerator Program. We launched that because I wanted to give back and share the lessons. I love sharing like all the trials and tribulations and the obstacles in the food industry and help people. And I wanted to take this as an opportunity to uplift and support minority leaders in CPG as a Latina myself. And so we created the accelerator program and what it entailed was the winner would get this $10,000 in just cold hard cash that they could deploy at their need. And then most importantly, a lot of mentorship from my team and my partners. And so it was an amazing experience. We had nearly a hundred submissions, tons of like it was incredible. And it was very restricted to the Latino founder and a certain revenue that was kind of really early stages because we wanted to see, I felt like based on my experience, when you're under a million in revenue, nobody gives you the time of day. It's really hard. It's like, oh, keep grinding, come back another time. So I'm like, that's what happened to us we kind of reached that scale and were able to, okay, now you're listening, now I have something here. And so I was like, okay, can I help and kind of give back on what I had learned to be true? And so we kind of restricted that and had an amazing program. So the, call it like the first 1.0, the first time went live and the entrepreneur was very happy with it has already got into Whole Foods with our support and guidance. Wow. Is it in person or how do you structure that? Like the mentorship portion of it is it? So the mentorship took place over 12 weeks and we met with the founder and customize it for their needs. It was like, what are your needs? And then we assigned people from my company and my partner. So like I have a lot of agency partners and a lot of, you know, support team in addition to the people that work at BrasiBytes. And so if the need was like legal, and I was like, okay, my attorney, then they donated time. If the need was like, let's look at your branding then my branding agency, you know, which was cool to be in a place where we have those partnerships that are strong enough with those high caliber people. And my team was so stoked. Everybody in our company was so like excited to help and kind of became its own like team building that benefited internally and externally. So it was an amazing program. We just wrapped up the mentorship and we're gonna do it again. We're gonna do it again. Amazing. And then organizing it to launch again in September which is Latin Heritage Month. Where can people find it? Go to brasibytes.com for now. Sign up to be a subscriber. You can follow us on Instagram. We'll be posting when we're open for entries as it like Latin Heritage Month approach. So around September timeframe. Right after your new product launch in August. I got a lot going on. I got a lot going on. Yeah, the team was like, oh, you know, it looks like it's a go to market in August with the Sprott and I was like, and there's Latin Heritage Month, right? Let's go, you know? I love it. We just get pumped to like the more, you know, it's fun. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast, sharing your story. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. If you made it this far, I bet you loved the episode. So you should join our YouTube channel membership for only $2.99 a month. This gets you access to one, the whole on a bridge conversation. Two, you get the episodes on Monday, one day earlier. Three, you get two additional entries to our giveaways. Check out our Instagram to see what we've given away. And four, you get access to seasons one through three. That's over a hundred episodes of wisdom and life-changing advice. What are you waiting for? Join.