Griffin Spolansky - Scaling Mezcla from Boston Bodegas to 9,000 Doors

On this episode, we're joined by Griffin Spolansky, Co-Founder & CEO of Mezcla - the plant-based puff crispy protein bar brand that's gone from Boston bodegas to 9,000+ doors and $17M raised.

We dive into how Griffin started iterating in a co-founder's kitchen at 20 years old, how they landed on the puff crispy format, and the gut-driven flavor decisions behind their launch lineup. 

Griffin shares hard-earned advice on formulation, finding co-packers, and why keeping things simple beats trying to look sophisticated.

We also get into the real mechanics of scaling from 50,000 bars in year one to a target of 20-30 million this year, why they stripped country qualifiers from flavor names to unlock supply chain flexibility, how their rebrand was driven by shelf clarity needs in mass conventional and club, and the door-to-door hustle that got them into their first 50 Boston bodegas before cracking Costco.

Griffin also breaks down his profitability-first approach to growth, how he evaluates demos and secondary displays against trade spend budgets, and why he believes a founder's job is to create FOMO.

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Episode Highlights:

🍫 Origin story: creating a protein bar that's actually fun to eat
🧪 Formulation R&D and why they chose the puff crispy format
🏭 Finding co-packers and keeping your co-man honest
🚚 Supply chain shifts (removing country qualifiers to scale)
🎨 Packaging rebrand for shelf clarity in mass retail
🛒 Door-to-door in Boston bodegas and cracking the distributor code
💰 Growth with profitability: unit economics as the foundation
🎯 Getting into Costco through Expo West
🛍️ In-store demos, secondary displays, and trade spend math
💸 Raising $17M total and the Series B journey
🔥 Why a founder's job is to create FOMO
👀 Brands to watch: Coconut Cult and Fish Wife

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Table of Contents:

00:00 – Intro
00:37 – Origin story and the idea behind Mezcla
02:10 – Formulation, R&D, and choosing the puff crispy format
05:04 – Advice for up-and-coming CPG founders
06:44 – Finding and working with co-packers
09:07 – Supply chain and raw material sourcing at scale
10:36 – Packaging design and building brand identity
12:01 – The rebrand and designing for shelf clarity
15:09 – Go-to-market: door-to-door in Boston and New York
15:57 – Distributors, DSDs, and the chicken-and-egg problem
17:48 – Growth with profitability and unit economics
19:55 – Building out the board
20:51 – Pricing strategy on shelf
21:50 – Getting into Costco
23:41 – In-store demos, secondary displays, and trade spend
27:02 – Fundraising and the Series B
29:22 – Creating FOMO and the Boshon's model
32:40 – Brands and trends to watch

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Links:

Mezcla – https://eatmezcla.com/
Follow Griffin on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/griffinspolansky/
Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams, check out https://www.kitprint.co/.

Shout out to Glimpse, the go-to partner for automating retail-related back-office operations and unlocking margin trapped in invalid fees and manual processes.

Transcript

0:02

today we're speaking with Griffin Splansky co founder CEO of mescla plant based Puff Crispy Protein Bar that's gone from I think door to door sales in Boston bodegas to 9000+ retail outlets last time I checked probably a more at this point Griffins are I think UVA grad former Walker on the cross player ended up uh on the 2019 national championship team Griffin just first off for the maybe the small amount of listeners in the CPG world that maybe are are not as familiar with Mezcla love to just get quick lay of the land just in terms of kind of the origin story why behind the brand core products in the lineup and then we'll take it from there yeah well first off Adam thank you for having me really appreciate it and yeah for those that are not aware mezcla is essentially a functional treat so we sit between high protein bars that are dense and chalky have some have a lot of functionality but aren't enjoyable to eat and then snack bars that have no functionality and don't really do much for you so we really sit right in that in between space and this started I was an athlete in college I was surrounded by protein bars after practice and I thought the options were boring they were generic from a flavor standpoint they were like I mentioned before dense and chalky and just unenjoyable from an eating experience standpoint and I really wanted to create something different I thought there was white space because I wanted something different myself and I knew that my friends and family would want something different as well so that's what I went after right and it was how could I create a bar that was light and airy and left you feeling good but something that felt like it was made thoughtfully something that had unique flavors and different textures and that was really the emphasis behind Mezcla I met a lady named Coco Citello she's actually from Mexico and we started literally making recipes and testing ideas out in her kitchen and that's what we called the mezcal means mixture in Spanish and it was all about the mixture of flavors and ingredients and textures that went into the bar so that was in uh in 2019 that we started working on it and then we officially launched in August of 2020 with your co founder Coco you guys are starting to test recipes in the kitchen and then I think it sounds like you think you ran into some obstacles along the way LED you to start working with a food scientist to kind of hone in from a formulation R&D standpoint but um doesn't one question I had was I think one thing that I love about the mescal bars is just that they're like you said they're not some of that more dense protein format it's more that puff crispy format did you know you wanted to go with that format right from the beginning or were you guys testing a bunch of different kind of textures formats before you eventually honed in on that specific yeah I mean we tested so many different textures and formats we tested everything from like bars to chips right like we were literally testing everything we could the whole idea was just like the snacking market feels really generic and feels very mass market and we wanted to create something that felt more thoughtful so again like we tested so many different things when it came down to bars our perspective is that we wanted something that consumers could see when they were eating as opposed to just like a blended mix of everything and they kind of didn't really know what was in it so we like the idea of having you know pea crisps and initially we had amaranth in there and we had like all these ingredients that people could actually see and feel and taste and that's what carried over to what Miska is today that really resonates in terms of everything blended together don't know what you're eating for sure that definitely resonates for sure and then it too it just like it just doesn't feel like real food when it's like blended like that right so I think that was my issue as well when I had so many bars I was just I was eating these bars for functionality but I wasn't eating them for the experience and to me just like that that equation didn't make sense right it's like why can't you have functionality but also have that experience and the eating experience to me is one where you typically right like see what you're eating and like taste those different textures and bars you didn't really have that so yeah that the only way I could eat them was when I was drinking them with water so I could like but um how did you guys decide what flavors you guys were gonna launch with first I mean I for the record I was 21 when I started the brand or maybe 20 so I had no idea what I was doing and you know I'm I've Learned a lot I still don't fully know what I'm doing but I don't think anyone really does but I would say for me it was it was all gut like our first three flavors were peanut butter chocolate hot chocolate and matcha vanilla peanut butter chocolate was just obvious right like there has to be a peanut butter skew on shelf I think that just like inherently made sense matcha vanilla was one that was just a passion project for me I always loved matcha growing up and I was like wow like there's no again like going back to the whole premise we wanna make bars fun and exciting we wanna make the flavor story fun and exciting and there were no matcha bars in the market I was like why right like they're they're very well could and should be so that was that was really important for me and then we had a hot chocolate it was kind of simulated a Mexican hot chocolate and that was really a collaboration between me and Coco trying to think through like what would be really interesting and unique that isn't out there already yeah the Mexican hot chocolate flavor is probably my my favorite protein bar out there in the market it's it's amazing yeah it's it's a really good flavor for some other up and coming founders that are just really in the kind of early phases they're just about to start formulating a let's just say the kind of a better for you bar today in 2026 what's I don't know a few things that come top of mind that like recommendations you'd have for them or things that kind of tell them to watch out for that might trip them up along the way because we don't want more competition but uh but yeah I I think I think what I would really say to anyone starting any any brand right in the in the food space not just bars is and I said this I was I was speaking on a panel a few days ago and I said this right like number one well I'm not gonna go in particular order but like number one is when you talk with your investors do what you say and say what you do I think there are a lot of people that promise really big things early on and get themselves into a lot of trouble slash like aren't able to raise in the future so that's like one really important thing two is keep it simple I think a lot of people try and make things so complex and so sophisticated because they think that's the smarter way of doing it I would argue the best operators do things the simplest um three is unit economics matter right like margins are really really important and like economies of scale do help slightly um as you scale but in the end of the day like having a really poor margin just expecting one day that that's gonna flip due to economies of scale is a bad strategy in my opinion and then number four like just create a product that people want and a product that's really good again like it's really simple the equation is really simple like you need a product that people wanna buy and you need a product that can make money right and then like the middle part is like how do you get it from like your warehouse to them in a very efficient way so like that's kind of how I think about it simple but not easy I think is pretty common for sure testing you know and doing that kind of bench top R&D at some point I assume you got to the point you nailed down the formulation and then you started searching for co packers finding the right one and it's gonna be a good fit for you what did that process look like in terms of transitioning to one from kind of the bench top what did that look like I mean shameless plug for for keychain now but I think it's much easier to do it now than it was in the past so go to keychain and find a co man that way if uh if you're in search of one that's what I would say I would do now if I were starting a a new CBG brand but in the past I mean I was just literally hitting people up on LinkedIn hey like do you know any good bar commands um hey do you know any like good commands in general that could connect me to bar commands right so like it was all about just connecting it was also on social media too in terms of like Instagram not really Facebook I guess anymore but like Instagram right like hitting these people up and just literally asking them for help I think that was the biggest unlock for me is realizing how receptive people in the CPG industry are to helping um so I would definitely push that that angle for sure very hard and by the way like we're we're still how do I put this diplomatically like it's never easy to find the perfect co man right you're never gonna find the perfect co man so I I would say in general it's important to find a really good co man that you can scale with but it's also important to always have conversations and we're still having those conversations with other co mans yeah so I think that's really important a to like you know keep your comment honest and b to understand what else is out there yeah once you found that one that much you found was gonna be a great fit at least for that you know phase of the company was it hard to convince or I guess get that co packer excited about I would see some some young founders and and assuming that was the case uh what you feel like got them excited and kind of got them on the same page as you yeah I mean it's super hard I went down had this whole presentation ready to go for them it was clear that I was very thoughtful about you know what I put on paper so I think that was really helpful and and scored points for me for sure I also know that they were looking for business because one of their big customers was just acquired and went to a new command so that was really helpful for us as well but yeah it's it's very hard you have to sell yourself you have to sell the idea it's always helpful when you show that you've raised some money as well because they know you have some backing but yeah I mean everything everything in life is is a sales job in my opinion you know whether you're selling your co man whether you're selling the company whether you're trying to raise money whether you're trying to sell to a buyer so yeah just another another aspect of sales and this time you're you know you're selling yourself and and the dream yep totally on the same topic of kind of supply chain production side of things I think I saw recently you had posted on on LinkedIn asking for recommendations which kind of just got me thinking like what does a supply chain look like for meslas as much as you're willing to share and kind of how have things like raw material sourcing changed as you scaled up from what I'll say is is a few things number one when we initially launched the brand we always had a country qualifier in front of our flavor name so for example we had like Japanese matcha vanilla we had Italian pistachio chocolate and we had to source all those ingredients from that country so that actually really restricted our supply chain for example Italian pistachios right like if there's a drought one year there's an issue with the crop one year it's very hard to get pistachios from Italy and by the way like Italy is not one of the top two or three producers of pistachios in general so like off the bat even if the even if there's a good year for Italy right as you scale it gets harder and harder to get supply pistachios so we remove the country name because that was really constricting our supply chain and now what we've done is two things one try and lock in annual contracts to make sure that we have the supply there and two have secondary and tertiary suppliers to make sure that if there's an issue with our primary we can move on to that secondary and tertiary option so I would say like that's the biggest thing for us and your point we went from producing 50,000 bars year one to you know producing hopefully 20 to 30 million bars this year right so like that that obviously equation changes a lot as you continue to scale packaging design side of things thinking back to way those early days what were some of those kind of key variables or most important things that were top of mind for you when you were building out the brand identity positioning voice packaging design for the brand and maybe another way to put it like what do you remember was kind of key items that you put top of mind in the brief for whoever agency designer whatever you were working with well again like what I did and what I would do are are two separate things we'll take both of them I do I do want to be very clear on that I think early on I tried to be very sophisticated in terms of how we were showing up on shelf so very high end look very high end feel very and this is redundant I hate when people say very unique cause it doesn't make sense but I'm still gonna say it like you know very unique flavor names trying to be really differentiated and I think that almost hurt us in some ways because when you're so differentiated I think it's almost confusing to the consumer you need to actually spend money to educate the consumer so for us what we tried to do was just be a little bit more clear and it's not like necessarily like an issue with being sophisticated or an issue with being unique but I think it's an issue with with not being clear enough on who you are and I think that is ultimately what boils down to for us now is we need to be extremely clear on our value proposition and on why the consumer needs to buy us if you're not extremely clear on those two things you lose people in the in between my next question you guys did a a fairly large fairly significant rebrand and and packaging design I think like a year or two ago I think it was in 2024 what was the what was the y behind the rebrand meeting you may be seeing some updates coming again soon oh nice but uh but yeah I mean for for us the trajectory has been online then to natural then to like mass conventional and to club and what we've realized is the packaging that works online and in natural isn't always the same packaging that's going to work in mass conventional and club so for us the big thing is and it goes back to what I was saying before like how do we even be more clear on shelf and that's what we're trying to do and that's what we were trying to do with that updated branding was like how do we have more clarity you know when consumers walking by the shelf and they look at your brand for two seconds like how do they exactly like immediately know what you are and what you stand for and that's what we're trying to do like before our flavor names were smaller before our calories and protein calls were smaller so we just tried to like make everything a little bit more clear and a little bit more effective yeah communication how I know you you know the brand wasn't 10 years old at that point but it was still I mean I definitely had a strong fairly strong brand presence in the market definitely had some some loyal following loyal fans I imagine when you decided to go to this rebrand and going through the process how were you thinking about balancing that need for a fresh look obviously there's a reason you're doing the rebrand in the first place the redesign in the first place versus keeping some of those you know legacy familiar brand elements to those existing you know loyal fans when they're walking down the aisle in the store you know one can be able to find it right away and two just feel like it's still what they kind of know and love to to a certain extent if that makes sense well yeah I think I think there are two things here number one is we did a soft change over so basically what we did is we had all the boxes on shelf that were old and then as we had new boxes coming to market the new box would be sitting right next to the old boxes so it would be very clear hey like this is still mezcla like this is just a different an updated version of mezcla you would have called like an old Mexican hot chocolate flavor next to a new hot chocolate flavor so people were very very clearly understood like this is the same brand so that number one was really helpful for us outside of that we still kept core elements of what we were doing before so for example the product showing up really large on the front of the pack is really important for us the brand name showing up very clearly on the front of the pack is really important for us the flavor names by and large staying the same is really important for us so they were improvements and updates it wasn't like we went from you know mezcla with this big bar in the front with this Mexican hot chocolate flavor to you know a different name or even mezcla with like different flavors and not showing the bar in the front right so we were still had a lot of consistency between the two packaging formats and that was really helpful for us as well I think there's a happy medium right if you're if you're shifting things too frequently I do think you run into issues and I think I've been a culprit of that honestly in the past but I think if you're not changing things based off of clear direct feedback and clear direct signals like for example like velocity signals or Amazon reviews whatever it is right like whatever you're looking at then I also think that you're stagnating so I think that's an issue yeah from a go to market retail standpoint started going door to door in Boston selling into bodegas up there ultimately I think getting into I don't know 50 75 doors before you landed with a a distributor in the northeast which I imagine started scaling up doors more rapidly rest is history at this point might just be obvious we're already living in the area but why why Boston specifically is as a starting point it was really New York and Boston Boston made sense because one of my friends Will Bernaki was actually working for us part time and he lived out of Boston so he was literally like going door to door hitting all these places talking to a few distributors in the area so it made a ton of sense whereas I was in the city I didn't have as much time to go door to door cause I was focused on so many other things in the business so that was like more of a natural market for us just given the the personnel that we had at the time problem when it comes to distributors is you need accounts to land distributors and you need distributors to land accounts like how did you figure out how to climb over that wall let's say I mean my perspective on this is if you can accumulate caught like 30 to 50 accounts in a large city in the US caught like like for this example like Boston or New York right cause that's where we were and you start to make it much easier and and by the way like those accounts need to go need to work with one distributor right or need to at least work with the same distributor only put it that way so for example if you can get 30 accounts that work with rainforest in New York City right or 30 accounts that work with checks in uh in the Boston area right like then it's easy to go to to check sort of go to Rachel's and say hey look like we're already selling into 30 to 50 of your accounts why not just take us in and at that point they know that they're gonna be getting cash because it's a decent not large but at least it's a decent business so like that's kind of the way we did it and then we got a small distributor on board and then for the larger distributors like the UNFI and the case of the world you really need to get one of their anchor accounts so you need to get Whole Foods or sprouts or Fresh Market and that's how we went that angle now if you had to ask me like would I go about doing it the same way again I would probably say no I would actually probably I would focus geographically and I would focus channel specifically but I think I'd go after a larger retailers in the beginning I'd start ECOM and then I'd go after a larger retailers from there and then build out the smaller retailers after that's probably what I would do right now just cause it's a very expensive and difficult game to play and it's not very high dollars but it is good for visibility so there's a trade off totally what should brands understand about DSTs that maybe some don't and how they differ between those you know the bigger guys like the unfas and the kgs be careful with DSDs that's the one thing I'll say I mean they they can be really great but they're expensive and the contracts can lock you in so just be careful that's all I would say cool that's super helpful I've definitely seen you talk about getting growth but with a a really focus with a big focus on profitability which seems obvious but maybe not as obvious to some people but definitely respect that approach and seeing you talk about how you saying you know you say no to accounts if you don't think you're gonna be able to hit profitability fairly quickly what is that actually look like in practice of an account you decide to say no to because the metrics or whatever data you're looking at indicated to you that you were you were not going to be able to hit profitability fairly quickly so to me it's more like broad PNL based if you will so for example I think that sometimes bringing on accounts that will help the business grow a lot can maybe justify if they're not profitable in the first call like six months to a year of course there needs to be profitability on the horizon but what I would say is the way I think about it is it's number one profitability but it's also a function of how much cash you have as well like there is this balancing act between growing and being profitable especially in the beginning like if you want to push growth harder sometimes that means you need to invest more which obviously in the end of the day means you're probably going to be less profitable if you want to grow a little bit slower that's okay you invest less and the EBDA is a little bit higher right so like there is that balancing act so for me like it really is a function of cash and like our plan basically my goal has been like how do we about 2 x year over year and how do we do that with being as profitable as possible and again like if cash in the bank is really high then we can talk to our our board of directors and say hey like maybe we're gonna push a little bit more aggressively and we'll be a little bit less profitable but instead of 2 x we'll 3 x and then vice versa cash in the bank is a little bit lower then maybe we pull back and say we're only gonna one and a half x this year but profitability is gonna be a little bit higher but the one that I will say like by and large the most important thing I said this earlier in the conversation is unit economics need to be in a good place because if that's the case you can pull back on spend pretty quickly and again like it does depend on the top line numbers like typically like get to a decent place profitability wise unit economics are a mess it doesn't matter like you're kind of just like on a hamster wheel raising money you're never gonna get to a point where you can actually be profitable or at least will be very very very difficult yeah kind of brought up a question for me in terms of um how did you go about building out your board I assume you know some of the board members are just part of what their what their terms were to it to invest I imagine uh yeah how did you go about building out your board and what's like a what have you found to be a I don't know the best way to put this good effective board dynamics let's say yeah for sure so right now our board is technically five people it is me it is Steve Platt is one of our advisors and he's incredible he's been with us now for about two years as an advisor and then we have three of our largest investors so that is the board composition inherently the board the largest investors typically take seats on the board so that's how that worked out Steve is someone that I felt really comfortable adding to the board he is really thoughtful really smart and I think he's a really good presence on the board so to me like it made a lot of sense to add him I have one person I can elect to the board and made a lot of sense to choose him as that electee Yep makes sense um from a pricing standpoint in those early days and where it looks today compared to you know what the bar market looked like and has that evolved over time since it's hard I mean there there are like two ways that I think about it one way is what makes sense for us from a margin standpoint and a unit economic standpoint and then two is like what makes sense on shelf and sometimes those like those two pieces of the pie don't actually like create a whole pie if you will um so there is some there is some you know some nuance to that to say the least but yeah that's the way I look at it one is like what margin do we need to have in the end of the day to build a really strong business and then number two is like where do we need to sit on shelf and we're like even playing with that right now because in some places you know the consumers more price sensitive and some places the consumers less price sensitive so what does that look like you know as we build the business so I guess the hard and fast rule for me is there isn't a hard and fast rule but you do need to look at like your unit economics number one and then what the shelf looks like and try and find that like that middle ground that makes sense for both that's helpful let's talk about Costco for a second always a big milestone for brands getting into Costco what did that journey look like for you guys in terms of getting that first buyer meeting getting the commitment and then once you got that commitment all the steps leading up to a successful launch in the northeast region yeah I mean to to me early on the idea of getting into Costco was unfathomable I just even even the operations behind it was was like such a like strenuous thought for me to think through um just like building a brand like truly like mass scale but we actually met our point buyer last year at Expo West he is incredible a huge brand advocate and he's a great person to work with and we essentially like worked through what the pack was gonna look like with him the pack size what the offering was gonna look like from a pricing standpoint and you know he made it much easier to figure out you know the the maze that is club retail if you will and that was a really big unlock for us on top of that we did bring on a broker as well who had a lot of expertise with Costco because when you're launching into Costco with no previous Costco experience like I mentioned before there's a lot of there's a lot of nuance that goes into it and there are a lot of costly mistakes that you can make if you don't have the right people in the right place to help support you so you know the way we thought about it was like we need support from a great buyer which we have we need support from a great broker and then we also need internal support and we have an incredible VP of sales and and director of sales underneath her who uh who have really dropped the ship there and then the last thing I'll say to you is like all that is great and you can get a huge order from Costco but you also need to be able to make good product you need to be able to deliver product on time and in full you need to make sure that pallets are in good shape so our ops team also does an incredible job just keeping up with that demand as well yeah totally merchandising tactic standpoint pretty sure I've heard you say that in store demos educating the consumer and you know where to buy are really how you've kind of overcome I think you called it subprime shell space and you really push pretty hard on secondary displays as well on the demo side of things what is a what have you found is what a well executed demo program looks like number one before we kind of go into like the metrics of how we think about success from a demo standpoint you need to have a great product like if you don't have really good product that people actually enjoy eating with good retention which you can easily see online then I would say avoid demos at all cost because they are really expensive number two as I would also say that demos are very different per retailer so I think that's really important right a Costco demo is very different than a Whole Foods demo which is very different than a target demo so I think that's like really important context to go into it with now what I'll say for demos is typically the ROI is not there in the short term because they are expensive but what I think is important to think through is that LTV of the customer right the retention of the customer and then also like how you're just building general brand awareness and then the last thing I'll say too is a lot of buyers appreciate you getting in the stores and working with the stores to actually push product so that's another like intangible way of you know kind of thinking through the importance of demos but you know I think everyone has their own equation how they think through success of a demo but to me it's like what is the price of the demo all in including your cost of goods cause obviously you have to sample some of your product you know what does the return on that look like how many units are you selling essentially and then from there what do you think LTV is and how is that gonna essentially like push to velocity lift on shelf yep totally like how do you go about securing that space like especially as a up and coming challenger brand when I imagine some of the bigger well capitalized brands are trying to box every other competitor out and then you know in the top on the topic of you really focusing on growth with a profitability mindset what's the kind of cost versus trade spend math that you use to kind of decide when a secondary display opportunity is gonna be worth it I mean look so I think I think a lot of that boils down to your annual trade spend budget so for example let's say you're budgeting 15% trade spend you know what I would say is display opportunities are really can can be really great they need to be the right opportunities and sometimes right like you can get a display and the increase in velocity can counteract how much you end up paying for the display right typically there's a promotion layer into it as well so like it doesn't that's obviously not always the case but sometimes that that could be the case where you actually are net profitable on the display so that's a different story but by and large for us it's like the more displays we can get the better you know if they are not net profitable then how do they fit into that like trade spend budget if you will sure and that's really the way that we that we think about it and again like especially in newer retailers it doesn't it typically does not work out this way but the goal is like if you're launching with a newer retailer and you're more of that like up and coming brand I think it's really important to at least push for a display on launch again like often times that does not happen but I would always push for that because I do think you know you're launching at target for the first time no one knows who you are in target or whatever let's say out of 100 buyers 10 know who you are it's really important for you to get that end cap or secondary display opportunity right off the bat so you expose yourself to people very quickly you guys closed a little less than 10 million bucks in in March as a Series B total of raised I think just a little under 17 million so far just kind of zooming out on that fundraising capital journey just for kind of a first time CPG founder which is what what you were as well getting ready to raise their first institutional round in today's market what's just a few things that you tell them to focus on and keep top of mind and give them the best chance at success say what you do do what you say number one like you know we raised so our two largest investors have collectively put in eight or nine million dollars into the business so like literally half of what we raised has come from two two investors and both of those investors put less than $300,000 into the business in total between the two of them the first time they invested and the reason they kept doubling down on their investments is because every time we told them that we were gonna do something we did it and again like that won't always be the case right there will be years where there are down years there will be years where you don't do as well as you expect to do fine but by and large it's really important that you hit the numbers that you're projecting or at least get close to them and I see a lot of founders pitch going from zero to 100 in three years when they know that's not going to be the case because they want to get money in quickly and I think short term actually that can help you raise money sometimes at a faster clip but I think long term it gets much harder to raise capital when you don't say what you do and do what you say so to me that's really important and again I I do want to like qualify not every year is going to be the year that you expected to be and there will be some years that you don't have those numbers and that is okay that shouldn't be a year after year thing where you're like basically saying that you're gonna do X and you end up doing you know X minus 30% or 40% yeah and I would imagine at least at least in my experience in those years where it's not even going nearly as expected is like one of the really important things is being totally upfront and honest and keeping for sure communication lines open rather than the opposite of uh you know the investors getting surprised at some point where things are not going as they should be or expected for sure let's say completely agreed yeah honesty um that's the thing I was saying before like it's so simple when you boil it down right but it's like being an honest person is one of those things right like sure you can try and lie your way out of things you're going to get caught at some point and it's not going to work out for you so agree yup yeah um I heard you say something that that jumped out to me you talk to me you said a founder's job part of a founder's job is to create FOMO what do you mean by that but I I really do believe that and to be honest it actually kind of frustrates me I wish especially on the investing side I wish that more investors were just rational with their decision making and this is not a dig at any investors but I think a lot of investors get really excited about momentum and hype and they do have fear of missing out so they really want to be in that like cool brand and a lot of times not even a lot of times but sometimes those cool brands may not actually be great brands at their core and then sometimes you have really great brands that are more boring in terms of how they approach things but you know investors aren't excited cause there isn't as much FOMO built up so what the thing that I probably said which I do 100% believe is when it comes to fundraising and just in general you need to create a bit of FOMO and a bit of excitement around your brand of course on the retail side that's not even a question but like more on the business side just because people want what they can't have and people want the the new shiny object and again I kind of hate that it is that way on on the business side but I do think that's a really important thing for for founders to know is like how do you create FOMO when it comes to to raising money specifically but the other thing I heard you say was that um you had pointed to boshons and and Justin Gill as I think you said I quote the model of how to build it right today can you talk more about what you meant by that yeah I mean look I just think that they did a really nice job they stayed really narrow in their product focus and they built year after year very consistently with great talent and obviously had a really successful exit um and then on top of that like I said earlier they had delicious product so I mean I think they just they they they did things the right way from the outside looking in of course I don't understand the intricacies or pretend to know the intricacies of the business itself but from the outside looking in I think they did a really nice job um it's interesting though right like let's say botsons didn't sell and let's say botsons ran the business for another Justin ran the business for another two years right and for some reason they just had a downturn and like it just didn't end up with this like picture perfect story I wonder if you would still point to it as such like a success story right so that's always the funny thing that I talk about is just like there's literally one degree where it goes from like this was a home run to like this is just another another business right again clearly they crushed it because they sold the right time but it is it we I obviously play the cross in college and we always talk about this where it could be a tie game and you go into overtime and if you win you're like wow we just did things right like we're preparing the right way like we know exactly what you're doing we're doing and then if you lose you're like oh we need to reevaluate things right and it really really is such a small degree of difference between winning and losing when it gets to that level so just something interesting to think about for sure no it's so it's funny you said that and they were basically saying like did Groon sell too early and I was like I mean sure you probably make that case but would you have turned that down after three years I absolutely not absolutely not no I think they they crushed it absolutely so haha last question for you I did you're just and you know super knee deep in the CPG space outside of mezcal maybe let's just even say outside of the bar category in general any specific brands or and or just kind of trends in general in the CPG world that I've just been kind of piquing your interest lately things you've been tracking not that something you'd necessarily like pursue or related to mesh club but just something that just piqued your interest in general I mean I think I think Coconut Cult's a pretty incredible brand definitely a brand that I I admire I think Fish Wife is a pretty incredible brand a brand that I admire yeah so those are two brands that like you know we're we are not competitive with them at all and I don't plan to ever be competitive with them but just two brands that I think are doing a really great job and and building the right way there are obviously a lot more but those are two that just come to mind pretty quickly I agree with those both those yeah Griffins has been awesome um what's the best place for people to fall along with you specifically and then what's the best place for people to fall along with what's going on with the brand these days as well for sure well more importantly mezcla follow us at eat mezcla.com you can buy us at retailers from Whole Foods and sprouts to target and select Costco's as well as obviously online on our website and on Amazon I would say for me people can follow me Griffins plants on Instagram I am trying to build my TikTok account but it's pretty brutal right now so that's gonna take a little little time to figure out but uh but yeah most importantly mezcla by mezcla I think you're gonna love it if you haven't tried it before and if you wanna follow me obviously you know where to find me and LinkedIn too so perfect awesome thanks Tristan going to your board how did you think about pricing mescal in the market just retail in general from a velocity for sure so a few things which ever you talk about secondary displays you were on Allison Kane's podcast not too long ago and I don't know exactly what I said I saw someone post something on LinkedIn this morning there's so many of those protein bars over the years force it down force it down easier number one don't do it from a a commercialization standpoint fast forwarding a little bit out from those early days different formulations asking for dice pistachio supplier recommendations for sure well timely question it's a great question it can you share an example you talked about um