In your opinion, what are the biggest hurdles for the hybrid category to grow?
Money. Plain and simple. Flowers grow where water flows. Compared to processed plant and cultivated meat (lab grown) that have both received billions of dollars in invested capital, our nascent category has received merely a drop in the bucket. If we are going to have a chance, we need investors to get on board. And frankly, they should because not only do we deliver a product that consumers actually want to eat, we win on margin as well…as a pound of our veggies costs less than a pound of beef. At scale we are a better business than the beef business (unlike plant and cultivated).
What are the key milestones you have achieved at Both, as a company?
- We are the first and only USDA approved 50/50 burger.
- We are the first and only company that is allowed (by the USDA) to make a ‘by weight vegetable label claim.’ Meaning, we are the only company that can advertise the percent (50%) of veggies on our retail packaging. You’ll notice no other blended/hybrid/plant-rich product will tell you the % of veggies in their product. Longer story, but we're the only one that can.
- We have two great co-packers with almost 20 million pounds of capacity today, so we have (almost) no capacity constraints. We can scale tomorrow.
- We are vendor approved at Sysco (for food service) and UNFI (for retail), two of the biggest distributors in the country.
- We are the first 50/50 burger in the market, and the first 50/50 burger on the menu of a public company (Disney, at Disneyland).
- We are doubling Disney’s initial sales forecasts.
- We are in 142 retail outlets and we’re about to launch a new 2lb sku at Thrive Market.
- We’ve done all this after only raising less than $1 million. Imagine what we could do with more!
Tell us about your best consumers, who are the enthusiastic early adopters?
Our core demographic is flexitarians (a large and growing population). But anyone who cares about health (especially moms who want their kids to eat more veggies, i.e. “stealth health”), and the environment are also large and growing affinity groups. But honestly, we sell a delicious burger that also happens to be good for you, and good for the planet, so it’s a win-win-win for all consumers.
Tell us your vision for Both, 5 years from now?
The mission is every menu, and every shelf.
What wakes you up at night, and what gives you the drive to dream big?
Trying to still grow with limited resources is our biggest bottleneck, and what keeps me up at night. I’ve had to turn away some retailers because we couldn’t afford to enter the market (slotting fees, promos, etc), which is the worst feeling for an entrepreneur. But we can only grow as fast as our bank account allows right now.
And what drives me…my kids. It’s all hands on deck time. Win or lose, at least they will know their father was in the fight.
