The Startup CPG Podcast

Philip Teverow
To get visibility for any product in the store, you need display, right? Display drives much more trial and sales than any other promotional method. You know, the yellow tag is okay, but in the lower price, even two for one is pretty good. But if you put it out there at full price on display and everyone notices it and sees it, they'll buy it. So we started thinking we need to use Fonio in products in a category that is display oriented. And so we made Fonio chips, salty snacks, and we've been much more cautious about gaining distribution for those because it's a very competitive category, expensive to play in and it's got a limited shelf life and you want to be sure.

01:01
Grace Kennedy
Hello everyone and welcome back to the startup CPT podcast. This is Grace and I'm here with another founder feature. Today I'm talking to Phil Tevereau, the co founder of Yolele, a brand on a mission to bring the food and flavors of West Africa to American tables. Their superstar ingredient is Fonio, ancient grain grown in West Africa that is gluten free, low glycemic and cooks in just five minutes. Phil has decades of experience in the food industry and actually helped bring quinoa to the American market in the 80s, so he has a wealth of knowledge to offer his fellow CPT founders. In this episode, I hope you enjoy and as always, let me know what you think. Hello everyone, this is Grace and I am here with Phil Tevaro, the co founder of Yolele. Welcome to the podcast, Phil.

01:58
Philip Teverow
Well, thanks for having me. My name is Phil Tevaro. I'm the co founder of Yolele, which is an African food business. My business partner, Pierre Cham is a chef from Senegal, moved to the US and found that there was no African food even though he's working in the top restaurants in New York City. There is a big problem here. The food I grew up with is delicious. People could only be exposed to it, then it would change their lives. And he had been working in bringing African food to wider audience. That was his life's work. And as he was writing his first cookbook, he realized the ingredients that are used to cook in these vernaculars are not available to most of my readers. They had to get substitutions.

02:43
Philip Teverow
I had to write substitutions for the critical ingredients in and if I could bring these ingredients in, not only could people cook this in true the West African food, but it could provide a source of income, livelihoods back home from sustainable agriculture. But he didn't know how to do that. Pierre And I knew one another in the food world in New York City. I've been in the food industry for decades, like forever. And I had been looking for a way to make my work life meaningful, not only to me, but maybe to the world to do something positive in the world. And I've been kind of looking for this for some and hadn't found the right opportunity.

03:19
Philip Teverow
And when Pierre talked about his goals and I understood that he couldn't do it, but that it could really support livelihoods from sustainable agriculture, I thought, well, this is something I know how to do. He was in particular talking about this ingredient called fonio, ancient grain. Gluten free cooks in five minutes. I knew there would be a market for that. It's a drought tolerant grain grown by women to feed their families and it's just not known or consumed much outside of the growing areas. And he was looking to bring and didn't know how. I imported Team watch of the US in the 1980s. I've been down this road. I knew that I would be able to help them. And we together formed Kilali.

04:00
Grace Kennedy
Wow, that's so such a great story and it is so true. And I've interviewed other foodies or CPG founders who are from Africa and I have had this sort of similar realization and been like, why is there not no like African food at the supermarket? Unless I go to like a specialty supermarket in, you know, a neighborhood that supports, you know, large communities from the those areas. So it's such a cool project that I feel like Yolele has embarked upon and I'd love to hear a little bit. If you're listening. Phil is sitting in front of a large array of Yolele products.

04:32
Grace Kennedy
And I know that you guys started with this idea of Fonio, but I'd love to hear a little bit about some of the products that has branched into as well, just so our listeners can understand really like the large project that Yoleley has become.

04:44
Philip Teverow
Yes. So it's actually Yolely ended up being a kind of a combination of Pierre's initial ambition, which was to create an African food brand, and the impetus to drive impact. Right. To support livelihoods. And so it's not just creating an African food brand. You know, you can make sauces that are endemic to the region from California grown ingredients, but that wouldn't have any positive impact except for maybe cultural making Africa positive. But if what we wanted to do was to support farmers, then we had to use their ingredients. And we've chose to Focus on this ingredient, Fonio as our flagship because gluten free ancient brain cooks in five minutes. It's just so simple. Such a good story we knew would resonate with retailers. We also knew and with journalists as well.

05:36
Philip Teverow
We also knew from the outset that if were successful at getting Fonio to be as widely consumed as, say, quinoa, then it would ultimately become an unattractive business for us if all we're doing is selling Fonio, because private label would end up taking the day. We'd have no brand equity in a commodity. So we knew from the outset that we wanted to use Fonio as an ingredient in foods that people that resonate with American shoppers and that people would consume. We started just plain Fonio and then our first customer was actually Whole Foods. They were opening a store at that time in Harlem. And there's a significant West African immigrant community in the area. And of course, Whole Foods has got this ethos of catering to their local community.

06:26
Philip Teverow
We knew they'd want West African food and so we pitched it to them and they said, yeah, of course. Yeah, definitely. And we made sure it succeeded, did demos like crazy. And they expanded our distribution and they eventually expanded our distribution nationally. And along the line, they suggested to us that if we wanted to have products in other categories, that the first category to go into would be pilaf mixes. And so those are basically Fonio with seasonings in a package and you add water and cooks in five minutes.

06:59
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that's so smart and great. And I feel like I see that done with other grains for sure, like a couscous or akima. And something I wanted to return to that you were talking about is this idea that you're using the fonio grains and as sourced in the West African communities that they're known for. And I'm curious about what that process looks like. Obviously, you guys are an American based company, you sell in America. How does it work to sort of bring Fonio from these farms in Africa to America?

07:32
Philip Teverow
Supply chain is a really complicated business. So here's what happened. We started selling our Fonio in that one Whole Foods store. And because the story is resonant, we started getting coverage like right away. We had one product in one store. We got covered in the New York Times, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. And we started getting inbound emails from literally the world's largest food companies saying to us, oh, this ingredient thonio sounds like it could help us to meet our sustainable development goals. Which we commit to publicly and have a hard time meeting. And it's a grain, it can be used in grain based foods. We make grain based foods. Can you supply it to us? And we had to tell them no because thonio is super easy to grow. The farmers just broadcast seed.

08:22
Philip Teverow
They don't really pay any attention to us at the beginning of the rainy season, when it's ripe, when they have a chance, when they get around to it, they harvest it. But it's really hard to turn it into food, that crop. And it involves a lot of post harvest loss. It's very inefficient manual processes. There was no way, using the existing supply chain of tiny microprocessors that transform fonio from a crop into an ingredient that we could meet the volume or food safety requirements of big companies. So we knew that if were going to meet our impact objectives and business objectives, we would have to somehow install industrial scale processing capacity in West Africa. And we're a couple of people in the US and we're not agroprocessors, but we had to do it.

09:15
Philip Teverow
So we had to find local partners who were adept at that, who knew how to do that. And we did. We found partners in Mali and in Senegal and together with them we're partnering with funders of impact driven projects. Because, you know, the explicit purpose of our of yolele is to support livelihoods for sustainable agriculture smallholders in West Africa. And with that objective, the appropriate funders for that are organizations like the World bank and Gates foundation and usaid. And those are the entities, the organizations that are funding our development of the supply chain that can go from farm all the way to an ingredient that will meet the quality and volume requirements of the world's largest food companies, with whom we're still engaged.

10:07
Philip Teverow
And we are in fact selling fonio as an ingredient today to beer brewers all around the world who are making Fonio beer.

10:15
Grace Kennedy
That's so cool. And I'm sure. Has it been like surprising to you in any way to see how people have used fonio or come to you? Like, was it a surprise at all that all the ways people are using.

10:26
Philip Teverow
Fonio beer was the biggest surprise? And actually when we started going out into food service because we knew that were introducing an ingredient that most people don't know. If a professional chef cooks it for them, it's going to be delicious. And if they tell them it's fonio, then they'll know what fonio is and when they see it in the store, they'll say, oh, I had that at the restaurant. It was delicious. So we asked chefs to play with it. And one of the most exciting things that I saw unexpected was someone made essentially a papadom with it. Like they made a batter and, or a dough and then put it into a deep fryer and it puffed up huge in a second. That was like, we had no idea.

11:05
Grace Kennedy
That's so cool. It's so exciting to see different people play with it in different ways. And that reminds me of another question I had, which is you sort of started with this first location in Whole Foods in Harlem. And I'm curious about how you took the steps to expand into other retail beyond that. Obviously, you guys are in lots of retailers today. Plenty near me here in Philadelphia and plenty, I'm sure, in New York as well. But I'm curious what your approach was to sort of introducing this grain to communities that maybe aren't as aware of Fonio as somebody might be. You know, who's, if they're a West African immigrant in Harlem.

11:42
Philip Teverow
So there are two questions there, right? You're talking about expanding distribution and you're talking about building awareness. And so for distribution, we've tried to be cautious because I've been in the industry for a long time, and I know that when you're introducing something that is new, you want to go to the low hanging fruit distribution first. Not only the retailers that will put your product out there, but the ones that cater to shoppers who are open to trying new things, curious even about trying new things. And when we started, we identified probably three consumer segments that would be interested in Fonio, and that included people who are culinarily adventurous, just the curious and want the new thing, people who are from West Africa and want a taste of home, and people who want to explore their own African heritage.

12:36
Philip Teverow
Maybe they've never been to West Africa, but the idea of exploring African heritage is of interest. And so we tried figuring out, well, where are each of these segments? Health conscious, nutrition conscious people, and whether that's because you're avoiding a nutrient like gluten or because fonio is also low glycemic, it's appropriate for people with diabetes. So there's a health and nutrition aspect there too. So then trying to figure out, one, where do these shoppers shop? Where should they find us? And two, where do they turn for information that we can place information about Fonio there so that they will become aware of us? And that's Been our approach, basically.

13:16
Grace Kennedy
Yeah. It makes so much sense. And I feel like you hear these things that, you know, identify where your customers are and go there. That always feels like easier said than done sometimes to me. But that's because I'm. I haven't been in the business for decades as you have. So I'm curious how that has gone that approach and like, how that rollout has worked for you in terms of identifying those customers. And, you know, were there any roadblocks along the way in terms of like, oh, we thought this customer would be like all in on Fonio and then they were different things like that?

13:45
Philip Teverow
Yeah, we have learned along the way. Let's put it this, we've learned lessons along the way. So there are regions where we do better than others, even within Whole Foods, where we're nationally distributed now, you know, you can see which regions do better. We don't know how much of it is due to demographics, how much of it is due to shelf placement within a region or operational issues. There are some retailers that we expected to be all in and completely open and haven't brought the product on to like, what so yet they will. And then in addition, we've, you know, you asked about a little bit earlier about using Fonio in products, and I talked about our Fonio Pilafs, but pretty early on what determined that to get visibility for Fonio in a store, you.

14:31
Philip Teverow
To get visibility for any product in the store, you need display. Right. Display drives much more trial and sales than any other promotional method. The yellow tag is okay, but in the lower price, even two for one is pretty good. But if you put it out there at full price on display and everyone notices it and sees it, they'll buy it. So the category of Fonio and the category of Fonio Peel off mixes doesn't lend itself very well to display. So we started thinking we need to use Fonio in products in a category that is display oriented. And so we made Fonio chips, salty snacks, and we've been much more cautious about gaining distribution for those because it's a very competitive category, expensive to play in, and it's got a limited shelf life and you want to be sure.

15:23
Philip Teverow
But we are focusing our distribution primarily here in the New York area right now, somewhat in expanding within the Northeast. And then for whatever reason, airport stores go bananas over it. So we do well in airport stores too.

15:37
Grace Kennedy
I love it. I mean, I feel like there's something about the airport that makes you open to trying something New because you're already going somewhere new. So you're kind of like, sure, might as well try these Fonio chips that I've never heard of before. So that's great. Another thing I wanted to return to that I was curious about is it sounds like you almost run two businesses, right where you're supplying fonio to these large companies, people who are brewing it and then also a CPG business. And I'm curious about how you guys manage those sort of two facets of Yolele. And like it sounds like a lot of work.

16:11
Philip Teverow
Tell me about it. We manage it not as well as we want to, but it really is two businesses. And in fact recognizing that we are forming a separate company called Yalele Ingredients with a part new partner who comes from that ingredient supply business. She has a lot of experience, old like us, has been down this road and is helping us to set up Yole Ingredients whose focus will be on supplying not only major companies, but you know, small companies too. It's always especially food and natural food companies tend to be run by entrepreneurs who can make their own decisions. It doesn't have to go by committee and it can be a faster way of getting small increments of industrial sector purchases.

16:55
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, definitely that makes sense that you would want to have, you know, a whole. As I said, it sounded like two separate businesses and you're like it is. So what do you focus on now? Do you like have any hands in the pot of the supply chain or do you focus more primarily on the cpd or is it kind of everything?

17:12
Philip Teverow
Well, unfortunately it's everything. What really drives me is the supply side. So I, I think it's ultimately what will drive our business. So I try to offload as much as I can on the domestic and CPG side but I still am responsible for it, but really spend a lot of time on the supply side because we're building aggregation centers and staffing them with agricultural extension agents and working directly with farmers and negotia with them on price and then helping them. We've conducted agricultural trials in Mali on farms to and come up with an agronomic method that improves yield of fonio and therefore improves farm productivity and farm income so we can make more fonio available. We've come up with ways to reduce post harvest losses.

18:06
Philip Teverow
Had to investigate industrial scale equipment for processing fonio because it has never been done and it's the same type of equipment that you use to process other grains. But because fonio is really tiny Size of a grain of sand. I'm looking at some fonio in a bag right here. Size of a grain of sand. And every seed comes off the plant with an inedible husk that has to be removed. And it grows in sandy soil. And when they harvest it gets mixed up with the sand. And how do you separate out sand from the fonio? Those are real challenges. And we've come up with some technical solutions for these.

18:41
Philip Teverow
And with the support of Gates and World bank, we're looking forward a facility like a centralized facility that can transform that fonio patty in the hall, the tiny seats in the hall, into edible Fonio at scale 2 tons per hour instead of basically a ton a day, which is what goes on in most of West Africa today.

19:04
Grace Kennedy
Wow, that's so amazing and exciting and really cool to hear about, you know, a CPG business that's kind of working in tandem with this, like, major innovation in West Africa and I'm sure supporting communities, you know, in West Africa and also supporting communities here who just want to eat fonio or people like Chef Pierre, your co founder, who want to cook fonio or bring it to restaurants and things like that. So very exciting. Another question I wanted to ask is, you know, we're at the beginning of 2025 now, and it sounds like you guys have a lot sort of coming down the pipeline and maybe you're building a facility. It sounds like, what are some of your plans for the year to come as you look to 2025? Are you hoping to kind of keep sustain where you're at now?

19:48
Grace Kennedy
Are there any points of growth you're looking for this year or new product? What are you just seeing ahead in this year?

19:54
Philip Teverow
So we are renewing our focus on food service this year. In fact, we are just today producing a very large run of tiny bags of fono chips in new packaging for distribution at over a thousand food service like business, institution and college campus mini marts and stuff like that. So we've got a big order and we're producing for that. And we intend to focus on getting fomeo onto the menu at colleges and universities and in corporate dining services. We think that's a great way to build awareness. And we had been going in that direction prior to Covid. Covid, of course, terminated the food service industry for a little bit. And we didn't get back into it because of course it also accelerated the directory to consumer business and the retail distribution.

20:44
Philip Teverow
And so suddenly all of our attention was there and we dropped the ball on food service. We're picking it back up again, as I mentioned, the industrial sector, establishing yoli ingredients. And if we find that we're able to improve our velocity enough to give us confidence to expand distribution of our CPG products, we will. But as I'm sure so many people that you've spoken with, entrepreneurs in the CPG business find how challenging it is to not lose money in cpg. So we're being cautious with that.

21:20
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. I, I hear that from everybody. It's such a dance of wanting to expand and also wanting to stay, be cautious and stay financially responsible. And even for brands like Yulele who have a large presence across America, and you guys have been around for eight years, you know, it's always still that game of how much you can push and pull over your expansion, but all very exciting things. And I love the idea of a food service again. And it just reminds me too of, like, that Covid was such a big lurch in so many people's plans and that, you know, it's taken some time for these things to get back up and running. But I'm really excited to hear that Yulele is going into some food service locations and hopefully other, you know, brands listening are doing the same.

22:03
Grace Kennedy
I'm curious if you have any advice for brands who are looking to get into food service, such as in that way, either with something like a chip or any other snack that they might be curious about getting into, like a mini mart or things like that. Do you have any advice for people?

22:17
Philip Teverow
Well, as we've been looking into food service, we are constantly faced with the conundrum of end user versus distributor. Like the large account says, oh, this is interesting. Where can I find it? You know, does my distributor have it? And distributor says, well, do you have any customers for it? And so I do believe that the thing to do is to get anchor customer to commit because they will drive a distributor to pick it up. But it needs to be available to the customers. And once it's in that distributor, just like in retail, you have to fill in other users for that distributor so that it makes sense for the distributor to keep on carrying the product.

22:59
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, definitely. That's another. What, what comes first, the chicken or the egg problem that I feel like a lot of CPG brands talk about is like, okay, distributor wants it, but we don't have a retailer, or the retailer wants it, but we don't have the right distributor. And I think that's great advice. And I'm curious thinking a little bit more broadly, and I always ask this of founders and co founders, but particularly co founders is as you've worked with, you know, Pierre and I know you guys have other people on your team. How have you guys sort of balanced the workload between you two? And you know, I hear from solo founders that they're like, I wish I had a co founder.

23:33
Grace Kennedy
And I hear from co founders that they love having a co founder or, you know, but there's also problems on both sides. But I'm curious how you and Pierre have managed sort of your working relationship. And I know that it sounds like Pierre has, you know, his hands in other sort of avenues as well. And so how has that sort of co founder relationship worked out for you guys?

23:51
Philip Teverow
Yeah, I'm glad I have a co founder. Yeah. And we have complimentary strengths and complimentary attitudes a little bit. I'm more cautious and he's more all in. And so we, you know, he spurs me and I restrain him and we kind of made a, I won't say made a pact, but agreed right at the very beginning, if we're going to be founders, one, we have to be completely open with one another and we have to figure out what our responsibilities are, what our roles are and, you know, make an agreement, an explicit agreement that outlines those. And I am one of the least suited spokespeople imaginable for an African food brand. Right. So that's not what I am, but I know how to run a food business.

24:37
Philip Teverow
And so Pierre is out there inspiring people and educating people and building awareness in so many different segments. And of course, you know, very well connected in West Africa and a very smart strategic thinker. And so we get together all the time to talk through the larger directions.

25:00
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it's definitely, I feel like important with being co founders that you have an explicit agreement and also though, that your sort of temperaments complement each other because it would be hard if you were both, you know, both cautious all the time or if you're both wanting to get out there all the time. And you know, either one. And so the complimentary sort of attitudes feels. Feels important.

25:20
Grace Kennedy
Another question I love to ask is also a hard one, but if you were a founder on day one, I mean, I know you've been in this business for decades, but if you were a founder on day one, what sort of advice would you give yourself or any other founder that might be looking to start their own CPG company or their own company where they're bringing a grain or a product or a food from another country. What sort of advice would you give them?

25:48
Philip Teverow
Start with Amazon, start selling directly to consumers. Work in the beginning directly with small retailers that are right near you, where you can, you know, go in there, sell to them. Learn from the experience of selling directly to consumers, doing demos in those stores. If you can be at a farmer's market, do that. But even selling online, your own website on Amazon, learn from those consumer interactions, what you can do to improve product market fit. Do as much of that as you can before expanding distribution. Because once you get products into distribution, it's a ball that's rolling, it's a flywheel, right? And it's hard to, you can't stop it and your products are already out there. How are you going to take them off the shelf, you know? So you have to learn before you get your products out there.

26:39
Philip Teverow
And I would avoid the dominant distribution channels in retail. Just avoid them. Figure out another way.

26:46
Grace Kennedy
Got it. Okay. Interesting. That was very delicate. Good job. I want to ask more, but I won't pry. So I love to end too with just asking. How can the startup CPG community support Yolele?

27:00
Philip Teverow
Thank you for asking that question. The very best way, besides talking about it with everyone you know and talking about phony with everyone you know is think about how you can use Fomeo in your products. It's a grain. You probably include grains in your food. It doesn't matter what you're making. There's probably a grain in there, even if it's just, you know, a couple of grams as a coating of something else or as a flow agent or. There are so many applications and it's a gluten free one. We grind it into flour, we have the whole grains. It's hydrates in minutes. When I talk about how we cook Fonio wheel, I said it cooks in five minutes. It's on the heat for one minute and then it just sits off the heat for another four minutes and it's done.

27:45
Philip Teverow
So the tiny grain size has its advantages, but yeah, think about how you can include Fomeo in your products and then come to us because we'll supply you with fonio that meets your requirements.

27:56
Grace Kennedy
I love it. And where can people learn more about Yuleley if they're curious?

28:00
Philip Teverow
Us yolele.com and on the About Phonio page there, we just finally, ridiculously, belatedly put up a want to use Fonio in your products? Click here and it gives you a little bit more information and explains to people that we're not just a CPG company. We are in Fonio supply.

28:21
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And you could brew some beer with Fonio or make any other item you want. I'm so curious to try Fonio beer.

28:27
Philip Teverow
Now, but you know, Brooklyn Brewery, I'm going to give a shout out. Garrett Oliver, brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, is. Has been responsible for like 100% of the brewer purchases of Fonio. He has gone out and secured partnerships for Brooklyn Brewery all around the world, making Fonio beer, Carlsberg and Guinness. Guinness Fonio Stout just launched a couple of months ago, so all of that. Hats off, Garrett. Thank you, Garrett. And Brooklyn Breweries. Fonio beer, unbelievably good and widely available.

29:00
Grace Kennedy
Absolutely. I'm gonna. I'm gonna look for it next time I get out there. All right, well, thank you so much, Philip. It was such a pleasure to talk to you and learn more about Yalele and everything you guys are doing. Really exciting stuff and yeah, enjoy the rest of your year, I guess.

29:16
Philip Teverow
Thank you, Grace. Thank you, Startup cpg.

29:21
Grace Kennedy
All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, it would help us out so much if you left a 5 star review on ratethispodcast.com startupcpg I am Grace Kennedy, the host of the Founder feature series. So feel free to add me on LinkedIn or reach out to me on Slack. I'm always on the hunt for new and exciting brands to feature. And if you're a potential sponsor who would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnershipsartan. And finally, as a reminder for anyone listening, if you haven't already, we would love for you to join our community on Slack. You can sign up via our website, startupcpg.com.