The Startup CPG Podcast


00:10
Eric Wu
It comes naturally to us because it's just what we grew up with.

00:13
Eric Wu
I think that's the important part about the brand as well, is that we're not really faking it. When we say we love the product, we're not really faking it when we talk about these little anecdotes on the back of the bags. With the first time that we had these flavors like this is pretty authentic to us. There's a lot of brands out there that are trying to be authentic to something. They're trying to sell authenticity as a concept and associate it with their brands. But for us, our north star has just been be authentic to you. Like, this is very much an asian american comfort food brand. Adam and I were asian american dudes, and we love our comfort food. And as long as we stay true to ourselves, we feel like it's going to reflect.

00:48
Daniel Scharff
Hello, CPG ers. Welcome to the startup CPG podcast. I'm your host, Daniel Scharff. Today's episode goes into the exciting launch of a new plant based dumpling company, Sobo Foods. The founders, Adam and Eric, have so much experience in entrepreneurship and product development, it's no wonder their business is getting such high early praise. I'm really excited for all of you to hear what lessons they've gotten from their previous ventures that they're applying for this new company. And if you're a brand looking for help with product development, stay tuned for the end of the episode where Adam drops a couple great resources. Enjoy. All right, welcome, everybody.

01:24
Daniel Scharff
Today on the show, we have Eric Wu and Adam Yee, two remarkable founders revolutionizing the world of plant based foods with the launch of Sobo Foods, an unapologetically asian american frozen food brand dedicated to crafting delicious and sustainable plant based frozen dumplings. They were the hit of fancy Foods Las Vegas, and their dumplings got rave reviews. Eric is also the founder of Gainful, a New York based startup which makes personalized sports nutrition products. Gainful has raised $20 million to date, sold primarily direct to consumer, but launched this year in every Target store nationwide. Eric's also Forbes 30 under 30 in the food category.

02:02
Daniel Scharff
In late 2022, Eric stepped away from gainful in order to launch Sobo Foods, a healthy, sustainable asian american food brand that he co founded with Adam Yee, a brilliant food scientist and experienced founder who I have known for many years, especially because of his podcast, my Food job rocks, which I got to appear on when I was just a wee young lad. So Adam himself, he's a food scientist, a podcaster, and a plant based expert. He previously co founded alternative protein startup Better Meat Company, which he developed a product line for that was eventually sold to Purdue Farms and has since generated over $100 million in revenue. Adam was most recently the second food scientist and employee number 15 at Motif Foodworks, a plant based ingredient startup that's raised over $340 million in venture capital.

02:50
Daniel Scharff
Adam and Eric are also the co hosts of a podcast called hey, have you eaten yet? Which is a podcast by Sobo Foods that's available on streaming platforms. So, guys, welcome to the show. Usually I get through that, like, pretty well, but you laughing, I was like, okay, actually, this is a big mouthful for me, so thank you for joining, and it sounds like you guys appreciated the intro.

03:11
Adam Yee
Love it. We love it. Great job. Thanks, Daniel. You're a natural. The student has become the master in this.

03:15
Daniel Scharff
I know, actually, fun fact for everybody before we get started here. So, Adam was, like, the only person I knew had a podcast when were originally launching the startup CPG podcast. And so we hired him to actually train us on how to do a podcast. And, like, what equipment do we need? And, hey, how do you do a podcast? Those kind of basic questions. And actually, even before the show right now is like, hey, let's do a quick audio consultation, if you don't mind. So, definitely. Adam, how many podcast episodes have you done in your life?

03:42
Adam Yee
Oh, man. So my food Dropbox alone was around 275, not including bonus episodes. And I've done other projects not as successful as my food Jarvis, but still really fun. From actual plays for board games to just discussions with other people. Do a few kind of business to business podcasts, too. So, man, I'd say around 500.

04:03
Daniel Scharff
No big deal.

04:04
Adam Yee
Yeah.

04:05
Daniel Scharff
All right, so maybe, hey, why don't we just start off with some intros? Adam, do you want to go first?

04:09
Adam Yee
Oh, of course. I mean, you did a fantastic job with my intro. I think the big one is that, yeah, I'm a food industry person who has been industry for over a decade. Just got my bachelor's degree in Cal poly San Luis Obispo, and I've been kind of around the United States just working at different jobs, from making granola bars in Phoenix, Arizona, to working at WeWork, of all places in Austin, Texas, to living in Boston in the snow. And now I'm back here in California. I basically took this giant loop. I realized, like, this decade long loop throughout the United States, and now I'm back here starting solo foods, which I think is authentically kind of me in a sense. We're doing asian food, which I love. We're doing plant based, which I have been working on for the past decade.

04:55
Adam Yee
And I just feel like it's been a great circle from beginning to end to start, sellable foods.

05:01
Daniel Scharff
So, Adam, you mentioned WeWork and actually a little bit of startup CPG history for people. Our first meetups that we ever did were an SF at the old WeWork food labs, which was an incredible space. Yeah. That helped us get tons of people together. It was awesome. Whatever happened with them?

05:16
Adam Yee
Oh, you don't know about wework? Well, if you're in the venture capital space, it's a pretty, just spectacular story about how startups used to work. In a sense. Now it's kind of a little bit different story, but basically the founder told a pretty compelling story. Raised ton of money, and at the point of their highest valuation was like $47 billion. They started putting a lot of money into so many different projects. One in particular was focusing on food. And so they developed something called food labs, which is kind of a weird word because there was actually no lab equipment in this food labs.

05:51
Adam Yee
It was just a place where you help entrepreneurs just build food companies, but in general, because they spread them out so much, because they thought they could, once they realized, like, this thing was burning cash and just was not a good business, the valuation sank solo that they didn't ipo, and they just scrapped almost everything. And now I think it's at the verge of bankruptcy after just a tumultuous time through not only this, but also COVID.

06:17
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. I would have liked to have seen one where you could actually cook stuff up like we cook. You know, that would have been New York.

06:23
Adam Yee
New York had it. New York had a really good one.

06:25
Daniel Scharff
All right. A very beautiful space, though. Thank you for all that vc money, for letting us do our early meetups. They were big, and that was.

06:32
Adam Yee
That was sick.

06:33
Daniel Scharff
All right. And then, you know, hey, speaking of the pandemic, Eric, I remember you and I actually had a call, I think, during the pandemic. I remember vividly taking it one of my long COVID walks in SF, where I would always go up to Golden Gate park.

06:44
Adam Yee
Yeah.

06:45
Daniel Scharff
So, yeah. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background?

06:48
Eric Wu
So I started my first company when I was still an undergrad in college. So my journey started with me mixing up protein powders in the basement of my dorm room in college. And that's like a crazy way to start. It was very breaking bad. I looked like a total maniac in the basement, mixing up all these protein powders that I bought from online. But that was because my first company was a personalized sports nutrition startup. It's called gainful. It's still around. It's being run by my co founder and an experienced CEO that we hired out in New York. But that company was really born out of the fact that me and my co founders, one of my best friends from childhood, we had always played soccer growing up.

07:20
Eric Wu
We had friends who would go to the gym and take all these crazy supplements, pre workouts, hydration powders, protein powders, creatine. And we just thought all this stuff was really, for lack of a better word, gnarly, right? It's super macho. It's really over the top. And then on top of that, they have all these ingredients you can't pronounce, and you feel like if you eat these ingredients, you might turn into the incredible hulk or poison yourself or both. And so we just wanted to create something that was more down to earth, more gender neutral, and, of course, personalized, because we knew that everyone had different fitness goals, different dietary restrictions, different types of exercise. And for us, as two soccer players, like, we didn't want to be the gym rats and the muscle heads and the bodybuilders and the Arnold Schwarzenegger.

07:55
Eric Wu
So we just wanted something that was right for us. You know, I'm an asian guy. I'm a little bit lactose intolerant. So we wanted something that had a little bit less lactose as well. We just couldn't find it. We couldn't find it online, and so we decided to make it ourselves. We began blending up things in Tupperware containers, and turns out this touched a nerve, because our little weird summer side project ended up becoming a fully fledged company. We went through a big startup accelerator here in the Bay Area in Silicon Valley called Y Combinator. We raised venture of money. We grew the team to, it's now 25 people in New York City. And then most recently, I think you mentioned a little intro there.

08:27
Eric Wu
Last year, in 2023, we launched into every single Target store nationwide after being mostly an e commerce company for the first six years. So, yeah, definitely has evolved and grown a ton. I've learned a lot about CPG. I've fallen in love with consumer brands and gainfuls, originally, how I became inculcated, indoctrinated by the amazing community that is startup CPG as well. And now it's fun to be on to our second adventure, a very different one, and still part of the community.

08:52
Daniel Scharff
Awesome. So I actually have a couple of quick questions on that. Number one, how did you eventually then get into target? Like, was it just, hey, they eventually just came around because of the growth of the brand, or was it like a rebranding or something?

09:04
Eric Wu
It wasn't a rebranding. I think what Target was looking for was just very well aligned with what gainful had to offer. So the supplement aisle in Target suffered from, I think, a lot of the same things that I mentioned when were first starting gainful.

09:16
Daniel Scharff
Right.

09:16
Eric Wu
There's a lot of kind of old school brands, big tubs of protein powder. And personalization is something that target recognized was doing really well in other categories. So you saw companies like function of beauty, for example, do personalized hair care where they had a multisep system where you could create your own shampoo and conditioner that was right for your hair type. Very similar concept to what we're doing with body types. And for that reason, were able to do one of the biggest supplement launches in target's history. We brought in 13 skus, and we're looking forward to even more growth at target.

09:43
Adam Yee
Whoa.

09:45
Daniel Scharff
That's amazing. Congrats. And then, okay, on. I know a lot more about, like, food and beverage that I do about, like, performance nutrition. So, I mean, you know, I, like, see the big tubs of protein powder. I don't really necessarily think that probably is for me. I don't know, but. And then I, now I'm seeing all of these biohackers, and they'll say, here are the 74 different things that you should be taking every day. And so. But do you have, like, three supplements or performance nutrition products that you would recommend for just, like, an average Joe? Like, I'm not in the best shape. Like, I could definitely do better. I'm doing my best. Like, get to the gym and do some cardio and do weights and stuff.

10:23
Daniel Scharff
Like, what are the top couple things that somebody like me should really think about putting into their routine?

10:28
Eric Wu
I've got a total cop out answer for you. And the answer is, it's different for everybody. That's the beauty. That's the, that's the whole point about what we're doing at gainful is, I mean, shameless plug. If you go to our website, gainful.com, and you take the quiz, then you'll be able to see exactly what your regimen, what your dietary restrictions, what your needs, and what your goals should be dictating about the supplements that you take. If you want to hear about what I personally do, protein powder, hydration, creatine, fiber. Those are the things that, for what I'm doing and my needs and my goals, that's what's ended up being the best combination for me. But then within each of those products, there are variants, too, that you want to dial in to make sure that you're getting the most out of them.

11:01
Eric Wu
And not everybody is LeBron James. Not everybody is Lionel Messi. You don't need to have a team measuring your blood glucose and figuring out when exactly you need to be micro dosing each minutia.

11:12
Adam Yee
Right.

11:12
Eric Wu
Most people can get what they need from broad strokes. And what gainful does, especially in target, right. Is give you that level of personalization that you can't get anywhere else unless you had somebody giving you advice. And then if you want a little bit more, if you want to get a little bit more granular, you can reach out to any of your registered dietitians. There's a little QR code on the bottom of every gainful jar where you can talk to your registered dietitian. This is a licensed nutrition professional who will give you advice on anything related to your nutrition.

11:41
Daniel Scharff
That's cool. I've never heard of something like that.

11:43
Adam Yee
That's awesome. I want to interject that I'm also a consumer of gainful. Thanks, Eric.

11:48
Daniel Scharff
What do you take?

11:49
Adam Yee
Just take the protein powder, which comes in a nice gusset bag with your name on it, I found was nice.

11:56
Daniel Scharff
Do you take it? Take it, like, routinely or pre workout?

11:59
Adam Yee
I do a post workout. What I do is two scoops of whey powder and creatine, plus one of those handy little flavor packets. I saw, actually, the strawberry flavor, Eric, by the way, it's drawing on me anyways, and that's all I take, really. But, yeah, it's delivered every month to you, which I think is very convenient and stores well.

12:15
Daniel Scharff
Cool. All right, so, yeah, I'm always curious about that stuff.

12:20
Adam Yee
Cool.

12:20
Daniel Scharff
Thank you. Sobo foods, what is your guys meet? Cute. How did you guys meet up originally? How did you start talking about doing this together?

12:28
Eric Wu
Adam?

12:29
Adam Yee
Yeah, I've told this story a lot, and people have said kind of like, oh, that's a cute story. So we actually met in our old companies, a place called Kitchentown, which I'm sure many people who are listening are pretty familiar with in San Mateo. Spoiler alert. We actually produce in Kitchentown at Sobo Food. So it kind of, it's a nice, full circle story, but we met because better meat company, my old company, we're doing a little bit of kitchen town. We're trying to get some essentially commercializable product, and that was the only place to do it at the time. And I had to scale up, like, something I would just essentially shake in a bowl, and I would have to scale up to a 50 pound kind of product, and I really didn't know how to do it.

13:04
Adam Yee
And then eventually, when I was, like, working kitchen town, I saw essentially protein powder all over the floor in a certain room, and a cement mixer over there, and a bunch of people making protein powder gossip bags with essentially a food grade, keyword food grade, which you can find on Uline cement mixer. And I was like, what? This might actually work for our product, too. So I pretty much, reached out to Eric at the time. He was, he and I think probably regrand were probably the bigger clients over there at the time. And I just were talking, I was like, hey, can we, like, I forgot, buy it or work on it or something like that. But we eventually pretty much copied his tech in a sense, and we're able to scale better Meco's product using that cement mixer.

13:48
Adam Yee
And obviously, things have changed for both of us and both companies, but I don't know. It's a really nice story. So we just kept in touch. And I think with, over the years, Eric would contact me about kind of more sustainable opportunities. And when I left better Meco doing other things, I kind of had this entrepreneurial itch, and Eric and I, through a mutual friend, met up and consciously. Okay, let's start a company.

14:08
Daniel Scharff
Cool.

14:09
Adam Yee
Dennis, anything? Eric?

14:10
Daniel Scharff
No.

14:10
Eric Wu
You got it. That's a med mixer. Really brought us together. Food grade.

14:13
Adam Yee
It was a very popular piece of equipment.

14:17
Daniel Scharff
Better me co. You did that with Paul Shapiro, correct. I know Paul, because to this day, we're still on a Facebook message group chat about.

14:25
Adam Yee
Oh, that's nice.

14:26
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. We have one major thing in common, which is, sadly, we are both Washington commanders fans. Yeah. Nobody out there do that to yourselves. It's been 30 years of shame for us, but it's going to get better. That's why every year, so we trade messages with a couple of our, like, which we have some childhood friends in common.

14:44
Adam Yee
So nice.

14:45
Daniel Scharff
We all commiserate together. All right, so cool. Eric, what's it been like then to work with Adam finally? I'm sure. I mean, you guys knew each other a little bit from afar, and then started getting to know each other a little bit. When you start working with somebody, you always learn so much more about them and figure out areas that they can go deep on that you wouldn't necessarily expect. Maybe even outside of Adam's core product development experience. Yeah. What have you learned?

15:08
Eric Wu
I think the cool thing about working with Adam is that we're both passionate about a lot of the same things at work, but we're both really different people outside of work, too. Like, we have super different interests outside of work. Adam could tell you about his, but I'm obsessed with soccer. Adam, I would say you probably couldn't care less about soccer, right?

15:23
Adam Yee
Nope. Don't even know. Only no line on se. That's all I know.

15:26
Eric Wu
But at work, the things that we care about are often very similar.

15:29
Adam Yee
Right.

15:30
Eric Wu
For example, we both got into this because we have personal missions of seeing how much industrial animal agriculture we can offset. If we can show people that at scale, when Sobo is a big, massive company, hey, you can actually eat delicious foods. They can be convenient, they can be priced right, they can be good for you, they can be satisfying, and they can really scratch that kind of nostalgic comfort food itch.

15:51
Daniel Scharff
But they don't actually have to be.

15:52
Eric Wu
Packed with really gnarly ingredients, and they don't have to be full of factory farm meats, and they don't have to have high sugar, high fat, high salt, all that. Then we've done a great thing. That's kind of why we got into this in the first place, because were mission aligned in that sense. And I think that's where co founders have to start, right. They have to start having a shared vision for what the big dream is. Right. And then they can work out all the kinks in between. But now that we both got into it. I don't want to speak for you, Adam, but I feel like something that we've shared is something that kind of surprises us about what we love about Sobo is the fact that we kind of get to tell our family stories here.

16:22
Eric Wu
We get to think and eat and interact with people who share the same love of the flavors that we grew up with. All these nostalgic comfort foods of our childhoods as the children of immigrants, as third culture kids, that's something that's been really touching, personally, for me. And the fact that Adam shares that cultural experience, the fact that both chinese american dudes from the suburbs of California, means that we kind of have that shared language, that shared understanding of how we want to build the brand together. And that's something that, honestly, we did not, I don't think, find out until we actually got into the trenches, got into the weeds of it, because we came in saying, let's do plant based for environmentalism. Oh, we're both asian guys.

16:58
Eric Wu
I feel like it would make sense to do dumplings, but then dumplings part became so much more.

17:02
Daniel Scharff
And tell me a little bit about the branding and the name of the company. Sobo Foods.

17:05
Adam Yee
Sobo.

17:06
Eric Wu
The name is actually something that people ask me less frequently than I would have expected. They ask you all the time, Adam.

17:12
Adam Yee
Ask me all the time. Based on the street name, I. Go ahead, Eric.

17:16
Eric Wu
It is a fun name, right? Like, it's short, it's punchy, it's easy to pronounce. And our logo, for those of you who can see Adam's sweatshirt on the video, it's a big, fat, chunky dumpling logo.

17:25
Adam Yee
We love that logo.

17:26
Eric Wu
And it's vaguely inspired by a street in my hometown. So I grew up in a place called New Bear Park, California, a sleepy suburban north of Los Angeles. And there was a main drag in towns called Portrait Road. I grew up south of Portrait Road. Nobody calls it Sobo, but I decided that I wanted to name the company after my hometown because me and Adam, like I said, we share this in common. Where we grew up, in the suburbs of California, there are these melting pot places where a lot of our friends were also children of immigrants from all over the world.

17:54
Eric Wu
And I had this amazing experience that Adam shared, where you can go to your friends house and their mom, their grandpa, whatever, would cook up a comfort food meal from a place that you'd never even heard of, with ingredients that you had never tasted, and you would be transported, and you'd be able to taste all these flavors and learn about this family, learn about where they come from, learn about their values, and figure out who they are, really, from comfort foods, from these simple home meals. Right? And that's the feeling that we're trying to convey, is learning about people, learning about places, and connecting with people through their comfort foods, but doing it in a way that's just a little bit more accessible and convenient and just down the street from you and your local grocery store.

18:29
Adam Yee
If I can put a little bit like I think I really enjoy about building Sobo is the people I've connected with, especially from all walks of kind of my life, my family in particular. I think my mom and dad really get it, I think. And they. Eric and I kind of had this same thing where when we used to talk about our jobs, they kind of didn't understand what were doing. Always said, oh, we make dumplings. They're like, oh, great. And my parents constantly listed, like, my podcasts which, and they always talk about, they pretty much get. The only updates they get is through our podcast. Hey, have you yet what we're doing and all that, which I think is really nice. My extended family, like my aunt made a full on mascot plushie of our little mascot named oboe.

19:07
Adam Yee
It's also, and it's just, it was so surprising when she did that, and it allowed me to reconnect with a lot of friends. A lot of the podcasts we have, for instance, are not actually food related. They're actually, like, from our past and, like, from college and stuff. So I think the brand is a lot more relatable, which people resonate with that a lot, and people love to talk about it.

19:26
Daniel Scharff
What so, and the name of that podcast, I mean, I know that there is a greeting in Mandarin, which is Cherlema, like, hey, have you eaten yet? It's like how you say hello to a lot of people. You say, have you eaten yet? And I think it's steeped in. You know, when there were times where there were a lot of people who were suffering from a lot of hunger, especially in a lot of rural parts of China, that was just a really pleasant thing to ask people. Very hospitable. But now it's just like saying, what's up? And you say, cherla. Yeah, like, I've eaten, but it's not really even about that. Is it related to that?

19:53
Adam Yee
I think it's multicultural. We've gotten a lot of comments from, like, from Malaysia to Korea about, like, this being a common saying. So we kind of put a little bit more of a modern twist to it. Food is very integral to asian countries, and I think that is, there might be some correct historical context to that, but for us, it is something that we're asked a lot throughout. I think our friends and family, we decided to put a little modern twist by putting the word hey into it. But pretty much it's just something that we notice people say a lot, and it's also, we've noticed to be a really good opener when we talk to our guests, what we say, have you eaten yet? And sometimes they're kind of shy about their answers. Like, they said, oh, I ate breakfast.

20:31
Adam Yee
But, like, what breakfast did you eat? Oh, I ate overnight oats. Oh, I ate spam and eggs. And so that, like, that influences a lot of, like, your personality, just your cadence of how you eat. And I think that colors a person's character.

20:44
Daniel Scharff
What do you guys eat today? Don't be shy.

20:47
Adam Yee
Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, you caught me. Off guard. I personally, I don't know why I usually don't eat around this time, but I did today, which. But it was leftovers, has this amazing vegan bulgogi that what I do is I soften up some carrots, or I cooked this last night, soften up some carrots with brown sugar. Put in that bulgogi, put a little bit of hoisin sauce, and just chop, like, green onion chunks. And eat that with rice. It's delicious. Some people like it whenever I recommend it. Like, maybe half the people think it's too mushy. Half the people who love it. So very divisive product, but I enjoy it.

21:17
Daniel Scharff
I wish we lived closer, and I would just try to come and eat all the delicious stuff. And I'm sure you're over there. That sounds awesome. All right, Eric, cherlaba, have you eaten yet? Would you.

21:26
Adam Yee
Yeah. Yeah.

21:27
Eric Wu
I actually don't know if this is a dish that other chinese people eat. It might just be, like, a my mom original, but maybe it's really popular. I don't know. It's a zucchini crepe. So you take a zucchini, and you just grate it super finely, and then you mix it into flour with some eggs and some water, and you just flat fry it up on a nonstick flat top, like crepe, and you make a bunch of those. And I made some of those. And you douse it in black vinegar, which is a very normal thing. All my parents are from Beijing area, and black vinegar is, like, you could live without. So you just put black vinegar on everything. You could live without soy sauce. So that's definitely a flavor of home for me, and I think pretty topical.

22:03
Eric Wu
It's very much a comfort food for me, and I'm glad I got to.

22:05
Daniel Scharff
Make it all right. I really love that saying also, which I was excited to talk to you about, because I spent about six months in China when I used to work for Mars chocolate, and I always liked to learn what sayings and try to make people laugh. And so, like, me saying that to people would always make them laugh. Just since I really do not look like somebody who should even know what that means would always catch people off guard. And then the other thing that I always thought was funny to say to them is the team had taught me how to say woosher by chocolate, and I worked for Mars chocolate.

22:36
Eric Wu
Oh, yeah.

22:36
Adam Yee
Nice.

22:37
Daniel Scharff
That means I'm like, if they'd asked me my name, I'd say my name is white chocolate. Chocolate.

22:44
Adam Yee
It's pretty good.

22:45
Eric Wu
There's nothing that chinese people love more than a white guy who can speak good Mandarin. They have full on celebrities who are celebrities solely for the reason that you wouldn't expect them to be able to speak really good Chinese, and then they become national tv stars because they're just like. I don't know. It's just a fascination.

23:02
Daniel Scharff
I know I actually brought this up on the podcast the other day, but I watched some of the influencers, like the super white dudes who were totally fluent and just hit up local restaurants. I don't love watching. I really like it. And so, yeah, back to sobo a little bit. So what was the moment where you guys were, like, talking about it when it became a real thing? Like, yeah, let's do this. All right. Let's pay for branding. Let's start to actually commercialize the thing. I know because you were working out of a commercial kitchen, probably had a little more flexibility. It's not like you need to order 100,000 minimum order quantity from a Coman or something.

23:36
Adam Yee
But can you tell me, I think for some context, we actually started this on the east coast, Eric and I. Eric was in New York, and I was in Boston, and we got on a virtual call, and I think we're trying to think of, like, some big ideas. And then we eventually kind of narrowed it down to dumplings. And what I would do is I would ask some friends to borrow some ingredients, make some dumpling protests in my kitchen, and every month would fly to New York to hang out there, because New York is great. And also share with Eric the prototypes for our pork and chive dumplings. And we've done that for maybe three or four times until we kind of were decided like, okay, this has legs. Let's do it.

24:13
Adam Yee
And since we both have company experience, I think we kind of shotgunned it pretty fast. At least it felt really fast. Eric, do you have. What's your side of the story?

24:22
Eric Wu
Yeah, I think were able to go fast because we knew about some of the little B's stuff that we needed to worry about and some of the little B's stuff that we didn't need to worry about early on. From having started companies together previously or having started companies separately previously. We had some grandiose ambitions, for sure. We talked about whether or not we wanted to even do, like, a software startup or an ingredient, play something higher up in the supply chain. And then I think we kind of just, like, looked at ourselves and we're like, dumplings. Are pretty cool. Like, this is pretty relatable. This is actually exciting for us. Like, maybe it's not as lucrative as starting something in a separate category.

24:57
Eric Wu
Maybe CPG isn't, like, the, quote unquote, sexiest type of industry to get into, but it's what, you know, it gets us excited. That's kind of, I think, a reason why a lot of people get into CPG, despite the fact that it's the grind of all grinds. And we thought, hey, you know, if we're not going to do it now, if we're not going to do it with our skill sets and our demonstrated experience, then. Then who, right? Like, why not? Why don't we give this a shot?

25:17
Daniel Scharff
So, actually, I think about that a lot because, you know, I just finished up my first CEO stint. I was CEO for beverage company for three years.

25:23
Adam Yee
Congratulations.

25:24
Daniel Scharff
Thank you. Thank you. And I loved it. I loved the learning. I've been in CPG for over a decade, but had never been CEO, had never launched something from absolute scratch. And so thinking back on the process of, like, man, getting the prototype done, you know, finding the partners for that and then figuring out where we're going to get ingredients from and who are the people out there and then certifications and all that. But, like, all of it, I was doing from, like, without any prior knowledge. Right. So, like, I had no knowledge of who the partners could be that could really help me in the industry. The focal people who really just make happen. I didn't understand exactly the overlapping timelines and where to push one thing a little bit faster than something else, and then that would create a bottleneck somewhere. Right?

26:02
Daniel Scharff
So, like, so many learnings. And so I think a lot about. And then, obviously, from, like, a sales standpoint, too, I built most of those relationships from scratch. I'm really proud of the friendships, honestly, that I have with so many retailers now who believed in me and the brand and the mission that we had. But, man, if I did, you know, I'm like, I love just doing startup CPG now, but I also think, like, man, if I did that again, I would just light it up because I know all of that stuff now. So, Eric, for. Especially for you, because you founded gainful, which has all of this distribution and everything, what's it like for you now doing it the second time? What are the main things that you learned that are helping you go so much faster this time?

26:38
Eric Wu
I'm sure Adam would agree with a lot of things I'm about to say, but there's just so much stuff that you don't know the first time around. And it's not complicated stuff. It's just little things that people don't teach you when they're on a podcast. Right? Like incorporating a company, like what sort of corporation do you want to incorporate as what kind of accountant do you want to find? Who should you go to for setting up your initial financial model? When you're raising money from venture investors? What kind of thing do they want to see when you're giving them a data route? Like all these little things, that was all a bunch of finance stuff.

27:10
Eric Wu
There's a lot more outside of finance, but all these little things that for me and Jahan, my co founder at gainful, we would just wring our hands over for weeks and weeks. And now for me and Adam, these decisions don't have to be weeks and weeks decisions. We can just snap our fingers and make a decision super quickly. And that kind of velocity of decision making definitely helps a lot in CPG when there are so many things that are out of your control, right? Like ingredient timelines, supplier relationships, co manufacturers, three pl distributors, brokers, retailers. Like, it feels like everybody is trying to get stuck in sandpit. But if you, as the founders, can kind of hurry up to slow down, if that makes sense, then you have a pretty strong superpower. I think.

27:52
Daniel Scharff
I like a lot the way you just said that about velocity of decision making. And at startup CBG, that's a lot of what we try to do. You know, for anyone doesn't know, we have a 20,000 person slack channel. And you can ask any question. So when you are just starting, if you haven't done it before, you can say, hey, like, can I get a tip on which way to structure the company? Right. But that's great, and we love to be able to help that way. But there is no replacement for you just having done it before and intuitively knowing, because you've been through it and you saw the things that you did wrong and you experienced it and you're like, all right, now I want. I know what I don't want, and I want to do it this way.

28:20
Adam Yee
Right?

28:20
Daniel Scharff
So I love that frame on it. Adam, what about you? Any of those kind of learnings from the past companies, whether it was about the, you know, formulation or anything else related to the business?

28:29
Adam Yee
Yeah, I recall talking to a friend of mine from Pride roots, and he was talking, he started the company like, maybe a decade ago or, I don't know, something like that. And I also have a decade of experience. So we've been just chatting on and off. But, you know, he stuck in one company and spent a good amount of capital in terms of, like, how much they've raised just going through that business. And I've kind of done a different approach where I popped around and technically took other people's capital in a sense, as they were paying me a salary to learn a bunch of stuff. And it just tells you two paths get to the same point. In this sense, I'm not saying that we're at prime level, but because I respect their company a lot, but me and the founder are chill.

29:05
Adam Yee
And so, like, I think the big one is, every job I've had, and I've had a lot of jobs, which, and I think job hopping is fine. I think it also helps you validate just how people work, how things go through, and just kind of the absurdities of certain situations. All those have been vital in terms of how I formulate. Dabi said Sobo I think a lot of them has to do with communication, specifically with ingredient suppliers and co packers and which levers to pull or how you can kind of manage not only them, but also your kind of chain and be collaborated with them.

29:42
Adam Yee
I think what has been kind of vital in a lot of things we do at sobo just kind of in the, like, in the weeds b two b stuff is just that method, methodology of creating a product is almost kind of formulaic, which makes sense. So whether you're doing a protein bar, you're doing a plant based meat, or you're doing essentially bioengineered blood, they all kind of follow the same path in terms of how a product development, there's a few things that manufacturing wise, are a little bit different, but other than that, like, it is the same type of people you're talking to. It is the same type of, you're leveraging experts on very specific topics.

30:17
Adam Yee
And I think that has been kind of the most vital skill I've learned through kind of my career, is communicating and understanding what is important to the people that you're talking to. This has been very vital, actually, this has been for my food. Job rocks, where by interviewing hundreds of people who have different roles in the food industry, you have a better understanding of what is important to them. And I think that I wish more people could focus on that. Other departments have other focuses besides the focus that you're trying to push, in.

30:48
Daniel Scharff
A sense, makes sense. And so, and one thing you actually, you mentioned, I want to come back to Eric, was around financing specifically. I actually, I'm very interested in this topic. It might be the most challenging thing for brands out there right now. And so I posted a question in our slack yesterday, kind of like under the radar, but I'm going to do a bigger push on it later. And I said, what do you think is the best funding option right now for early brands? And I posted as options, angel investors, crowdfunding financing options, po accounts receivable financing, bank loans and credits and stuff, credit cards and venture capital. Any guesses for what was the most popular option?

31:27
Eric Wu
Fascinating.

31:28
Adam Yee
I'm going to guess crowdfunding, but I don't have as much experience as this.

31:31
Daniel Scharff
And I'll couch this by saying, actually, I did think I knew what people were going to say and I was wrong.

31:35
Adam Yee
Yeah.

31:36
Eric Wu
What did they say? None.

31:38
Daniel Scharff
So far, there have been ten votes for angel investors. There are only 16 responses so far. Ten for angel investors, one for crowdfunding, two for financing or for credit cards, two for venture capital. And then so far today, I have additional write ins for things like Kickstarter. I mean, it's kind of like, it's almost like, I don't know. I think Kickstarter is more like GoFundMe, but for products, they sell it ahead of time. So, like pre sales. And then someone said cdfis, which I don't even know what that means. And. Yeah, so I'm excited actually to throw that out even broader because I, I think it's going to be very interesting to see what everyone's doing. But so what are you guys doing, though?

32:14
Daniel Scharff
Because, I mean, Eric, like, I don't know, maybe you just have a lot of money because you founded a successful company and some stacks of cash and you can just fund this yourself. Or maybe, you know, like Adam has a wealthy benefactor or something like that. So I know you guys are being scrappy. I mean, you're working out of a commercial kitchen and I suspect you've learned a lot about how to make efficient use of capital. But what is your plan around funding? What are you thinking to be successful investor business right now?

32:37
Adam Yee
Yeah.

32:37
Eric Wu
Adam secretly a Middle eastern prince.

32:39
Adam Yee
Foreign prince. Foreign prince. We'll tell you what country.

32:44
Eric Wu
And I'm sitting here in my living room that is also my kitchen, that is also my dining room that I share with my roommates. So I haven't made it made a big debt either. Don't worry. We have gone the VC route for Sobo. But if I were to be giving advice, right, to, like, the startup CPG community on fundraising I would say if you're the CEO in particular, your job is to keep the company capitalized full stop. Doesn't matter how you get to that end. You just want to make sure that the lights are on and your bills are paid and that you're still spreading your brand and your product to as many people as possible. And they're loving it, right?

33:15
Eric Wu
It doesn't really matter where the dollars come from, as long as you're doing it in a way that still incentivizes you and your team to keep going on this thing. That's going to be difficult and there's always going to be another hurdle to climb. So we can be VC. We do VC because we have backgrounds that are amenable to raising venture capital. We know the mechanics of raising venture capital. We have some interesting ip that Adams worked on that's also helpful when it comes to raising venture capital. And we just speak the language. But if you have another way of doing it, if you're really good at crowdfunding, then you should absolutely be speaking that language if you know how to work with cdfis. I think you mentioned it's like community development finance, right?

33:50
Eric Wu
Like if you can do that, then by all means, please do that. It's just your mileage may vary when it comes to this. And what ultimately matters is what you can actually accomplish.

33:58
Daniel Scharff
So that kind of makes sense to me because, okay, you guys are very accomplished and you have a network, right? So like Eric, you have a really good track record and. And I don't know, maybe you just know some vc's already. So when you went to go and ask them, you had a warm relationship and a lot of credibility to talk to them about, right? Whereas probably for an early brand, yeah, maybe that's just off the table now. I don't know. My impression of the industry in general is the early stage venture capital companies have left the building, they have all gone upstream, and very few of them are taking risks on early brands. Does that like if you were talking to another brand that maybe didn't have your assets and relationships, do you think it would be different for them?

34:36
Eric Wu
I think so. Certainly its definitely a different capital raising environment than it was a couple of years ago. When I first started gainful, when Adam first started better Meco. Its definitely less focused on consumer, its definitely less focused on CPG, especially the early stage money.

34:50
Adam Yee
And a lot of folks want to.

34:51
Eric Wu
See you be at one to $5 million in annual revenues before you even raise venture capital because they feel like they dont have enough data and the capital markets are too unstable or the outlook is not good enough for them to get a return. So right now, if you have a way of bootstrapping, by all means do bootstrapping. If we could have bootstrapped, then we would have liked to as well, but weren't in a position to do so ourselves. So that's why we raise venture capital. We are really blessed to have a bunch of people in our personal lives, as well as from our previous ventures who want to support us again, who find it really fun and exciting to be on this journey with us.

35:21
Eric Wu
And we have professional investors, institutional VC's, who see the vision, who understand that even though other people are investing in consumer right now, even though other people may be nuts, maybe are not investing in pre revenue CPG right now, they wanted to make that risk and they wanted to make it alongside us.

35:36
Daniel Scharff
That's so interesting. And actually, the first thing I tell people is I recommend the side hustle route to help you, moonstrap. And there are some founders out there who are very public about this on LinkedIn, and they'll say, if you believe in it, you must quit your job and go all in. That's the only thing will like, sink or swim will help you succeed. I'm like, don't do it. I actually, like, keep your job and just do an okay job at it and like, grow your business and then you have the money to pay for the things that you need, like a commercial kitchen or branding, because you want those to be high quality. So, yeah, I mean, like, probably not a lot of people out there have the 20 5100k just sitting around to, you know, really try to do that.

36:12
Daniel Scharff
But I mean, yeah, having a nice paycheck and working those extra cycles, I think is a great way to go about it. So when you're talking to those VC's, obviously like, hey, elephant in the room, plant based, like, there are a lot of headwinds right now. There were tailwinds, now there are headwinds. People like, beyond meat, whatever, like, however people feel about those kind of products, thinking they're ultra processed. I actually, I mean, I don't know, I don't get that feeling about your product, though. And so how did investors ask you about that and how are you talking about that?

36:39
Daniel Scharff
And again, I just, like, I mean, your product is delicious and, you know, I just, I don't know what it is about it, but I actually wouldn't think about it in the same way that I would worry about maybe some other products of, like, oh, like, maybe being really processed or, like, oh, no, I should just. I don't know about that. I maybe just have, like, some vegetables or something. Like, yeah. How are. How are you guys thinking about that?

36:58
Eric Wu
Adam, you want to have a stab at it?

36:59
Adam Yee
Yeah, I'll try it. I think you color it out with the VC kind of thing. So in a product perspective, we have three products. We have a pork and jack that tastes like meat, but it's not meat. We have a kimchi dumpling that is full of more traditional, I would say, meat alternatives, like tofu, glass noodles, like, from Korea, and mushrooms. And then we have a potato curry, which is honestly just potatoes, curry, carrots and peas and all that stuff. So, to be frank, our products are really vegetable forward, and we have a lot of vegetables in our products. Just in general, I think what is funny is that our top seller is our pork and chive product that tastes like meat. So, you know, you do hear a lot of news saying, like, we don't want products that taste like meat anymore.

37:37
Adam Yee
Anymore or something like that. But our sales data, and also when we do polls, surprisingly, we see everyone choosing the products that taste like meat. So people are aspirationally wanting something that tastes like meat but isn't meat.

37:52
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. Interesting that you say that, because. Yeah. What are the top selling plant based products out there? I mean, oat milk. And the point of oat milk is that it gets really close to regular milk, right? And, I mean, it's, you know, branded. Like, it just happens to that. Like, oats are viewed as really healthy, right. And it is creamy, and, you know, it'll have, like, some sugar in it or something that gets it close to that flavor. But, like, people don't think that way about oat milk so much. You know, maybe some people would talk about the sugar or something, but, like, yeah, I wonder. And it is so vegetable for. I get it. But also, yeah, those meat flavors. But is there anything that you guys wanted to do with your branding also?

38:27
Daniel Scharff
Just to make sure that consumers understood, like, hey, these are just really thoughtful, better for your ingredients rather than the risk of that? Like, yeah, big bim thinking, oh, it's just another processed thing.

38:39
Adam Yee
I think Eric can speak more to the branding and how and the feedback we've gotten there for us.

38:45
Eric Wu
We found that what people care about, and also this is great because what we care about, right, is making delicious asian american comfort food. Full stop. It's delicious asian american comfort food. And then on top of that, it's super nutrient dense. We have as much protein as a protein shake, up to 19 grams of protein per serving. We have a quarter of your daily recommended fiber, up to 7 grams of fiber per serving. So this is really packing a punch nutritionally. This is something that if you're trying to feed a family in between soccer practice and music practice and whatever it is, like, you can whip these out and you can feel pretty good about it. That's the most important thing for us about SopO, is that it's delicious and it's super nutrient dense and super healthy.

39:25
Eric Wu
And then we kind of whisper the plant based. Like, a lot of our customers end up buying the product, and for them, they're like, oh, it's plant based, too.

39:31
Adam Yee
That's great.

39:32
Eric Wu
Like, plus one. That's even better. I'm glad to hear that because it's like a cherry on top that there's less environmental footprint for this product. It's a cherry on top because I'm trying to get my family to eat less red meat, whatever it is. But the first reaction is always tasty, healthy. Oh, and it's a pot sticker. My kids are obsessed with dumplings.

39:48
Adam Yee
That's great.

39:49
Daniel Scharff
So is this. The new protein shake is just blend up some delicious dumplings. That sounds like a world I want to live in.

39:57
Eric Wu
I couldn't let go of the past, you know, coming from a sports nutrition background, creating a dumpling company with Adam. He hears me say it. What can we do about the protein fiber here?

40:05
Adam Yee
What can we put more protein? I guess the rapper. I guess we can put more protein in.

40:09
Daniel Scharff
I can't wait for you guys to really get into that space and to, like, one day see the Super bowl winning coach instead of Gatorade dumped on him. It's just, it's all dumplings, baby. A waterfall of dumplings. I'll sign up to be the person in the ad. All right. And so how about the target consumer? I mean, I hear you saying, you know, who's kind of looking for that stuff? But, like, is it a lot of is, are you seeing early adopters to be primarily asian consumers or just anybody who is looking for great, nutritious protein options? What are more plant based people? What do you see?

40:43
Eric Wu
So me and Adam had this theory. When we first started, were like.

40:46
Adam Yee
Yeah, it's going to be, like relatively.

40:47
Eric Wu
Affluent coastal asian people. Also, to be fair, we're only available right now, the Bay Area. So by default, it's coastal people. But we've been pleasantly surprised and happily surprised to see that it's actually mostly caucasian folks who are buying the dumplings in store, loving the product. Also, way more parents than I would have expected. The people who lose their everlasting minds when we do demos in grocery stores are kids. And the kids, those are the ones who are pulling the purse strings in the house when it comes to mealtime. So parents love us. That's been a really great surprise, especially the japanese curry and potato dumpling. It tastes like junk food, but it's got a ton of protein from chickpeas, a ton of fiber from carrots and green peas.

41:28
Eric Wu
And it's just super amazing flavor that I feel like a lot of your typical Americans maybe might not have had yet, but I think they're going to have in the next couple of years they haven't already.

41:36
Daniel Scharff
That is really interesting to me to hear you say that, because. So I used to be the head of insights at a plant based food tech company, and so I was deep in the research. And actually, so there were a couple demographics where I could not believe the numbers when I saw it. So specifically for African Americans, they actually over index something like two or three to one on plant based. And there was nothing out there that I could google that would tell me why. And it was only when I spoke to a guy named Kevin Walker, who at the time was at a 360 insights shop that really focused on multicultural stuff. And he explained it to me, and I was just eyes wide open like, oh.

42:12
Daniel Scharff
And he was saying, yeah, actually a lot of this is because, number one, it's a lot about the parents, and it's actually also with african american communities, he explained to me is there are also a lot of single female households, and there has been in that community a lot of history of things like heart disease, and they are so focused on their kids being healthy. And actually, they are also relatively affluent households, especially the single female, african american led households. Like, they have good incomes, they're working hard, and so they just are out there wanting what's best for their kids. And they, and African Americans and also have, like, a lot of cultural history around it as well.

42:48
Daniel Scharff
Like back in, I think it was late eighties or maybe early nineties, you had artists like KRS one who he, like, put out this very popular rap song just about, like, about veganism and just some really influential athletes, obviously then more recently, like Chris Paul and people who were just, you know, that people pay attention to and then some incredibly high visibility vegan influencers as well. But, you know, I didn't really know anything about if that related also to Asians. Asian Americans. What do you see in the asian american community around plant based?

43:22
Eric Wu
So youre totally right, Daniel, about people of color moving toward veganism and vegetarianism at disproportionate rates compared to white Americans. Theres actually, im trying to pull up right now, frantically looking through a slide deck that I have this stat that I saw thats really interesting. So 31% of non white Americans cut back on meat in the previous twelve months compared to 19% of white America. And it's like a surprising kind of stat at first because you think about foods traditionally associated with asian people who are like pork dumplings, chicken, like all these very meaty, very indulgent foods.

43:54
Adam Yee
Right.

43:54
Eric Wu
But that's like a pretty recent phenomenon. And there's thousands of years of tradition in history of making delicious things that just happened to be made without meat because it wasn't like there was a ton of meat going around when my mom was growing up. Like, meat was a scarcity they would get, I think she was telling me they would get like 100 grams of pork every couple of months and they would just pack it with veggies to make things taste porky.

44:13
Daniel Scharff
Right.

44:14
Eric Wu
But that's neither here nor there.

44:15
Adam Yee
The point that I'm trying to make.

44:16
Eric Wu
Also is in the US, in the modern food system, populations of color are disproportionately impacted by the negative health outcomes of eating factory farm meats. That's what you're talking about with the health disease. Right? So it makes perfect sense to me that we'd be the folks who are gravitating more and more towards veganism and vegetarianism compared to your average white american. And these rates also differ between Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and black Americans. I think it goes in order of Asian Americans and then Hispanic Americans and black Americans from lowest to highest in terms of who's converting over to veganism. You can actually see that in like the restaurants that are cropping up around the US as well.

44:49
Daniel Scharff
God, that's so fascinating to me. And I also, I think just for me personally, when I spent a lot of time in Asia, I kind of liked their approach to, I think, eating meat where it almost felt like more like meat was used as a topping for things rather than the main focus of a lot of meals. Like, you know, not us going to outback steakhouse. And the main thing is like a 20 ounce rib eye or something, you know, but more like, oh, you could have a beautiful soup and there is some meat in there or something because, I mean, I don't know, most of the stats that I've read on protein consumption on average in the US is like, people saying, like, actually, on average, people, like, probably we're getting enough protein.

45:25
Daniel Scharff
I mean, you know, like males in general, based on what you eat. Like, actually, it's like, okay, so I'm like, yeah, I probably don't need to eat that big of a steak or something. Like, I could. Yeah, I like, nobody knows. Yeah, like a nice salad or something with some proteins mixed into it. That's super interesting. Okay, so gainful, heavy, direct to consumer play, sobo foods. I know you guys really are planning to focus more on retail, which makes a lot of sense to me because one man, that is where a lot of the volume is. Number two, direct to consumer costs have absolutely skyrocketed. And three, it's frozen. And we know that doing frozen direct to consumer, not only are the customer acquisition costs high, but the shipping costs and potential for product risk is pretty enormous also.

46:07
Daniel Scharff
So for your plan to retail, what is your plan? What are you thinking? What do you want to get done in the next year, for example?

46:12
Eric Wu
So Adam and I, we moved back to the Bay Area very intentionally. We didn't necessarily have to move back.

46:17
Adam Yee
To the Bay area.

46:17
Eric Wu
There were multiple places that we could have started sobo. But we really love the bay for a couple of reasons. One, critical mass of people who already understand dumplings and love dumplings. Critical mass of people who care about vegetarian veganism, plant based, and are familiar with those concepts already. And then also Bay Area, theres just a ton of amazing local, independent grocery stores that communities like to support. And that those grocery stores like to support communities. That was important to us because now, me and Adam, we can rock up to any grocery store in the Bay area and say, try our dumplings.

46:46
Adam Yee
Right.

46:46
Eric Wu
We can ask them to actually make a decision about our dumplings on the spot, which is something that doesnt often happen in every single other geography that you could launch of retailers.

46:54
Daniel Scharff
And what are some of those independent stores or independent chains that you're going to be looking at in SF? And by the way, that is super smart. I never put that together, but like, yeah, SF with the history of it and like, you know, heavy asian population, like, oh my God, that makes sense. You guys are pros.

47:09
Adam Yee
Yeah. I mean, we also have grid relationship with manufacturing over there. And also a lot of our ingredients can be, we've talked to a lot of local kimchi or tofu makers to work with them to kind of enhance our products a bit. So, you know, just in terms of the community on a manufacturing side has worked out really well for us.

47:26
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. And then back to my question. Yeah. What are some of the independent stores? I know there are a bunch of distributors in SF that are really friendly for early brands like buy. Right. But who are there any, like, chains that you're really hoping to get into that are local to norcal?

47:39
Adam Yee
Totally. Yeah.

47:40
Eric Wu
We're talking, honestly, all these usual suspects you would expect, and we're probably talking to them. Currently we're in Berkley Bowl, Luke's local, Gus's Bayrite, like these Bay Area institutions of natural grocery. But we're also talking to a lot of the bigger players as well. We're talking to up here in the Bay Area, Molly stones up in Norcal, Raley's. We're talking to Whole Foods. We're talking to sprouts down south and SoCal. We're talking to Erewhon Gelson's. All those folks, all the people that you would expect and the people that you see walking.

48:09
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, that's super interesting to hear. And I also, I mentioned it before, but I've had two buyer spotlights on the podcast recently. One was town and country Dwight Richmond, and the other was Jonathan Lawrence from fresh time. And both of them specifically called out asian set that they have, how they have to absolutely kill it because their shoppers really over index on being asian or asian Americans, and they need to have really good products for them. And so it just seems like, man, this is a category that is really heating up and that when that happens, buyers are really open to bring in new products and you guys obviously have a great product. So I expect that this is going to be a little bit easier of a sell in than it could be otherwise.

48:48
Eric Wu
We like to think so. I think it also definitely helps that, you know, for me and Adam, it's pretty natural, right, to think endlessly about delicious asian food. It comes naturally to us because it's just what we grew up with, right. I think that's the important part of about the brand as well, is that we're not really faking it when we say we love the product, we're not really faking it when we talk about these little anecdotes on the back of the bags. With the first time that we had these flavors like this is pretty authentic to us. There's a lot of brands out there that are trying to be authentic to something. They're trying to sell authenticity as a concept and associate it with their brands. But for us, our north star has just been be authentic to you.

49:21
Eric Wu
This is very much an asian american comfort food brand. Adam and I were asian american dudes, and we love our comfort food. As long as we stay true to ourselves, we feel like it's going to reflect in sales.

49:33
Daniel Scharff
Awesome. All right, I have two more questions that I really want to ask you guys. So the first is, I know you both care a lot about sustainability. Can you tell me a little bit more about what does sobo foods to do to really help out sustainability in general?

49:46
Adam Yee
Yeah, I think a big one is that's kind of pretty obvious, but surprisingly, a lot of people miss is that we just don't use animal products in our products. So we don't use meat, we don't use dairy, we don't use eggs. We think that just by the numbers alone, animal agriculture, commercial animal agriculture is just extremely destructive to the environment. So we want to be. We essentially want to be a player that doesn't want to use those. And we think we can achieve great tasting products without needing to use those animal products. And that's really important to us. I think what really helps, too, is just having the flavors that you may not need to, like, make me taste good in a sense, like, you know, with curry or kimchi.

50:24
Adam Yee
Like, those really speak a lot of volumes in terms of, like, how we can kind of replace meat but still have a flavorful experience.

50:31
Daniel Scharff
Awesome.

50:32
Eric Wu
To the point about where the business is located. We're located in California, which is much closer to where all of our ingredient suppliers are. Therefore, the inputs into our supply chain have to travel fewer miles to get to where we're making the product. We also don't sell direct to consumer right now because I think it's still to have $20, $20 of shipping air freight, $20 of packaging to sell, $20 of dumplings. We're one of the very few. Most of the products in the freezer out right now are using virgin plastics to create their pouches. Ours are made with up to 50% post consumer recycled material, which is about as high as you can get while still being food safe. And then there's little stuff, too. Like, for example, we ship all of our cases to retailers in corrugate boxes.

51:10
Eric Wu
But then the tape that we use is also paid instead of plastic tape so that they can easily recycle the box altogether. Otherwise, when you have plastic tape on top of a paper box, it's really difficult to recycle and often doesn't get recycled at all. And this is not something that consumers see, like customers and grocery stores don't see this. We're doing this just because we feel like it'd better if we could recycle more of this cardboard that's going to our grocery stores.

51:30
Daniel Scharff
Interesting. Okay. Actually, now I have two additional. I've put additional one. I lied because you just brought out something I'm curious about. So you've done d two c, which was heavily around social media marketing.

51:39
Adam Yee
Right.

51:39
Daniel Scharff
What is your guys plan? How are you thinking about Instagram, TikTok, whatever. What kind of investments are you going to make into it, given that you really are going to be a retail focused brand?

51:47
Adam Yee
Just having fun with it. Right.

51:48
Eric Wu
Honestly, today we're just kind of posting stuff that we'd be interested in. Like, we have an amazing part time social media manager whose day job is the social media manager for leven bakery. And, well, now they're everywhere. But she just asked us for funny prompts and we film recipe videos. I do some day in the life type stuff. We go to food festivals. Like, it's all just stuff that we feel like we would want to consume on TikTok and Instagram anyways. And hopefully that catches on people over time, but it's way less, you know, heavily over indexed on any sort of paid social media marketing. We did plenty of paid marketing at gainful. We have spent exactly $0.

52:22
Daniel Scharff
I very much like that approach for you. Are you going to go on Shark Tank?

52:26
Eric Wu
We'd love to. Any shark Tank producers listing? You know my name.

52:30
Daniel Scharff
All right. Yeah. Mindy listens to some of these. I think so. I think you guys, I asked that because I think, oh, my God. I think you guys would crush it on there. Okay. And then, so last question that I really wanted to ask is for Adam, which is around your experience as a product developer. So for all of the brands out there who are just starting to create their products and hoping to work with somebody like you, let's say, you know, when you were more of a consultant doing product development for people or working across different brands, what tips do you have for them? Because, I mean, you have worked across so many different products. You've done, I think, chocolate, jams, deli meat, protein bars, nutritional shakespeare, extruded products, plant proteins. What would you tell for?

53:08
Daniel Scharff
Tell somebody for, number one, finding the right product developer. And then two, just tips on how to best work with them to get the best product.

53:14
Adam Yee
Yeah, that's a great question and I appreciate the compliments, saying I'm cool. So the big one is that I'm trying to push this a little bit more to like kind of junior product developers, but think one step ahead of where you initially are. So I think especially with businesses, you're in a you step, you have a step scale. So to get to like, we'll give a great example for Sobo. Like we started hand folding dumplings and we started making 400 dumplings a ship. When we got into a machine, we could ten x that output to essentially 4000, and then most likely we're going to ten x our output once we shift to the next stage, which is pretty much contract manufacturing. So that is important to understand.

53:50
Adam Yee
And a lot of people have a hard time understanding those step changes and just how drastic and different those step changes are. If you want some to work with a product developer, like essentially either hiring them full time, they should. That's probably the most important factor it takes to develop and scale product. Even just a simple formula with benchtop to scale up that there's so many nuances, there's so many specifically, not even just the machines, but the people that you work with too, is also a huge amount of nuance as well. A great product developer understands the nuances between essentially a kitchenaid mixer and a whole bar mixer. They understand how to weigh things essentially metric or on a digital scale.

54:33
Adam Yee
And they understand where to source certain ingredients and if in a pinch, where to source other types of ingredients that would be the same as you originally have. So there's just so many nuances in that. And I think a great, to vet a great product developer, you need to ask about how they work from benchtop to scale. Because I think something that people miss, and probably a budgetary reason, is that they work on a bench. And then they take like for maybe two months, and it takes like two years for them to scale because the bench just doesn't work on the factory line. And I think that is, that just takes a lot of experience. It takes a lot of know how. And though every product is different, it's still chemistry at the end of the day.

55:12
Adam Yee
And if you have kind of a good understanding of just how biochemistry works and how proteins and fats and sugars interact, you can cover a lot of.

55:19
Daniel Scharff
Basic suits for people who aren't yet ready to bring someone on full time. Do you have any people who are your favorites or companies that you think people should reach out to? Do you mind just dropping a couple names or company links?

55:29
Adam Yee
Yeah, I think Rachel Zenzer in California is really good. She's a good friend of mine. There's someone who does drinks really well, I think her name is Lindsey Wiesner, so she does specifically a good amount of work for beverages. And I think that's, you know, a lot of people love to, whether it be powders or rtds is great. I do like Colonel X. Kitchentown also does have consulting services as well. Those are a bit more pricey, I would say. A really good site, if you are on a budget, is called Collabtree. I used to actually get a lot of deals from there. So if you go to collabtree, there are a lot of food product developers who essentially, it's almost like upwork for scientists, and it's really cool. It's a really cool thing.

56:11
Adam Yee
You get really weird proposals, to be honest with you, and a lot of people don't understand it. So the best way to work on that is to really, one, be responsive, but to sharpen your scope, because you just, not only the scientist might think you're not competent, but also you might not think the scientist is competent unless you sharpen your scope.

56:27
Daniel Scharff
Really? Well, that is super helpful info. Thank you for dropping those tips. You just. You probably just helped about a thousand brands out there.

56:33
Adam Yee
I hope so. Yeah.

56:35
Daniel Scharff
All right, great. Hey, thank you guys both. This has been very interesting, just for me personally, to learn a lot about your backgrounds and how you're doing this so well, because I think everybody who saw you guys, probably a lot of people for the first time at fancy Foods, was just blown away. And so that's great to just now understand a little bit of, like, how did that happen and where are you guys going? So thank you. And then just kind of, you know, to close out. Is there a good way for people to stay close to you guys and follow up with you? Is it LinkedIn or. What do you guys suggest?

57:03
Eric Wu
Well, we just launched a new website, which I still need to post to LinkedIn about, and sobofoods.com. That's where you can find all the different stores. That's where you can find some of our online grocery partners, where you can order online as well, even though we don't personally do direct to consumer ourselves. And then, of course, most importantly, go check us out on Instagram and on TikTok. As we've already guessed up in this episode at Sobofoods, s o b o f o d s is the handle on Instagram and TikTok. And then if you're more of the business persuasion on LinkedIn, me and Adam are pretty active as well. So you can follow us on LinkedIn, too.

57:34
Adam Yee
Yeah, if you like our personalities? We have a podcast too, called hey, haven't you yet? So Eric and I, we do a little bit of banter before we interview a guest who has a very unique background. So, yeah, again, if you like us based off this interview and you want to hear more of our voices, that's how you can do it.

57:51
Daniel Scharff
That's awesome. All right, hey guys, thank you so much. Really appreciate you just telling our whole community a little bit about your journey. Thank you everyone, for listening and just, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

58:03
Adam Yee
Loved it. Yeah.

58:04
Daniel Scharff
Bye, everyone.

58:05
Adam Yee
Bye. Thanks, Daniel.

58:08
Daniel Scharff
All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast today, it would really help us out if you can leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I am Danielle Scharff. I'm the host and founder of startup CPG. Please feel free to reach out or add me on LinkedIn. If you're a potential sponsor that would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnershipstartupcpg.com and reminder to all of you out there, we would love to have you join the community. You can sign up at our website, startupcpg.com to learn about our webinars, events and Slack channel. If you enjoyed today's music, you can check out my band it's the super fantastics on Spotify music. On behalf of the entire startup CPG team, thank you so much for listening and your support. See you next time.