Rebel with a Cause

A cashew, a cave, and a credit line changed everything. We sit down with Rebel Cheese co‑founders Fred and Kirsten to map the real path from an elegant 1,200‑square‑foot deli in Austin to a D2C‑first brand backed by Mark Cuban—without losing sight of profit, people, or product quality. You’ll hear how they bootstrapped the first buildout, kept margins front and center, and then weathered COVID by turning front‑of‑house staff into delivery drivers, setting up online ordering in days, and using PPP and EIDL the way they were intended: to protect jobs and buy time.

A New York Times feature resulted in new customers and orders from coast to coast, exposing gaps in operations that they quickly closed. With demand rising, they secured multiple rounds of SBA financing first to build out a 9,000‑square‑foot facility and later to acquire it.  They applied an operator’s lens to every dollar: if CapEx didn’t lift contribution margin, it waited. That mindset paid off when Shark Tank called. Mark Cuban made his fastest offer after tasting their cave‑aged vegan cheeses, and closing the deal meant meeting diligence as extensive as SBA underwriting. The upside wasn’t just capital—it was discipline. They rebuilt fulfillment for cold‑chain reliability, turned spikes into systems, and made D2C their primary engine.

We also get into the strategic acquisition of a stall in NYC’s Essex Market, why owning more of the vertical reduces marketing costs, and how a team that started with dishwashers now includes leaders who grew from day one. Expect candid talk on ROI‑first growth, balancing speed with sanity, and the playbook for combining equity and debt without losing control. If you care about e‑commerce logistics, CPG financing, and building culture while scaling, this conversation delivers practical insight and genuine heart.

Enjoyed the episode? Follow and rate the show, share it with a founder who needs a realistic financing roadmap, and message Keith on LinkedIn at Keith Kohler1 with your biggest takeaway.

Connect with Keith on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithkohler1/

Transcript

Opening And Guest Introduction

Keith Kohler 0:03

Hi everyone, it's Keith Kohler, your financing man, and excited to welcome you to episode number eight of how I financed it. You may recall that I'm a combination of getting you the right financing at the right time, that's transaction Keith, as well as helping you to better manage your business finances, which is transformation Keith. So transaction plus transformation equals financing, man. And the genesis again of how I financed it is to for us to look at the entrepreneur journey primarily through the lens of financing and how that resulted in different strategic decisions, pivots, um, mindset discussions, all those different things that chronicle, again, the entrepreneurship journey. And so today's episode is really quite special to me. It's episode number eight. It's my lucky number, and I was very intentional in who I chose to feature as a guest. And today's episode features probably the company that has been the most instrumental in my professional and personal development over the last couple of years, and that is Rebel Cheese. So I'm excited to bring co-founders Fred and Kirsten to the stage for this special episode of How I Financed It. Welcome, Fred and Kirsten. They're the big smiles. That's the best way to start off a podcast.

Kirsten 1:30

Hi.

Fred 1:30

Hey, I'm Fred, and this is Kirsten. We are the founders of Rebel Cheese.

Origin Story And Going Plant-Based

Keith Kohler 1:35

Yeah, and really excited to have you both today. As I said at the top, um I'm really blessed to have you both in my life because again, so much of what I've been able to do with you and in in collaboration with you really represents all that I've done on the transaction side and on the transformation side. So really I'm showing up with a lot of gratitude and also a lot of excitement because clearly the Rebel Cheese story and then the collective story of Fred and Kirsten, plus the individual stories of Fred and Kirsten, I think will provide a lot of lessons to our listeners and to our viewers. So really grateful and excited to have you today. And really the way we always start out our podcast is talking about the origin story of Rebel Cheese. So we'd love for you to share what inspired you and how Rebel Cheese got started.

Kirsten 2:26

Yes, it's it's crazy. Um, we've been around now for six years, nearly. Um, October will be our six-year anniversary. Wow. Um it's been a while. And of course, it feels like 60 years is so much that's happened. It's dog years or presidential years, however you want to call it. COVID years. Yeah, COVID years. A lot of yeah, lots happened. We're grateful for all of it. Um, we started Rebel Cheese. We each have our own reasons, so I'll start with mine and then turn it over to Fred. We decided um over a decade ago to go plant-based overnight due to a variety of reasons. And um, prior to that, we loved cheese. We would have it all the time. Um, you know, date nights, picnics, when we had friends over. Basically, every meal there was some kind of cheese on the plate. Um, we really do feel like it's a food that people gather around and celebrate. And when we decided to go plant-based, the first thought was how are we gonna survive without cheese? What are we gonna do? We're gonna die. Like this is gonna be so hard, but we're committed, we're doing this, we can figure this out, we can make this happen. So we started experimenting um because we're determined little people. We can't I'm six foot, I'm a little person. You're British, we're stubborn, determined people, we can't let stuff go. So we're like, we're gonna figure this out, and we started experimenting, and we were like, Whoa, this is amazing! Like what you can do with a cashew, we had no idea because it didn't exist on the market. So that planted a seed, or I guess a nut. Cashew nuts. Fred's like, please stop. No, please don't please. I know you're gonna do the same thing. So I'm just that's Kirsten's story. Um that planted a nut and we went from there. So over to you, Fred.

From Consulting To Opening A Restaurant

Fred 4:43

Thank you. I guess I'm the little person, Fred. Um, so um both Kirsten and I uh the question was how did we start Rebel G? So um both Kirsten and I were consultants. We owned a uh a fairly successful consulting company prior to this. Um Kirsten kind of specialized in software and um implementation and development of software. Um and I specialize in construction management, um, doing a lot of um doing some food manufacturing, oil, gas, uh a lot of different um uh CapEx projects, you know. Um so but we are very, very successful with that. We you know, very stable, very, you know, upward trajectory. Um, as Keith can probably attest, being a consultant is there's you know zero overhead expense almost. Um so you know, a lot of positives, but we roll and all those different oh yeah, many things. Yeah, it was it was causing me to have to leave damn near 75% of the time. So I would have to go up to Oregon, have to go up to these all these little um um all these little different towns and stuff like that that were really hard and remote to get to, so it would cause me to leave Sunday night at 9 10 if we're tracking time, and I get home Friday morning at 3 a.m. So I would do that um you know every week, and it was just it was um physically, mentally, it was just kind of tolling. So I wanted to be closer to Kristen, so we decided to start Rebel Cheese. Um coincidentally, going to these small towns, um there's no plant-based options and out of plant-based. Right? Oh gosh, no, it was uh it was brutal. So that's when we were kind of kind of the start of Rebel Cheese was we wanted to create something that would offer plant-based options to um to people. Um, my plant-based journey was I was born without an esophagus flap in my throat. Um, and the um American Medical Society decides to see how much prescriptions they can put down you, you know, to see if they can decide whatever nothing worked and had weird side effects until they were finally talking about doing surgery. I inquired what the surgery was for, they didn't know. Um, so that's when I kind of decided, like Kirsten says, um, we decided to kind of change up our diets. Going from omnivore to vegetarian, I noticed there was probably you know a 75% cure of all the symptoms I was encountering. My throat started growing back, so on and so forth. And then ultimately, when I went plant-based fully, it was you know, I just stopped having any of the symptoms. So um, but that's what led us to kind of start Rebel Cheese was that was my journey. So mine was uh do it out of love and romance for Kirsten.

Kirsten 7:38

He's a romantic one. You we should add two, because um, you know Keith was getting ready to ask a question. Well, I just want to also keep going. We we started as a brick and mortar, um, so we went full in, um, because that's what we do, I guess. And we opened a restaurant. We're like, we're going for it. There was nothing like it at all. We had no idea how it would do. There were no wine and cheese, vegan wine and cheese delis really in the world. So it was like the first of its kind, and that's how we started. It was with this restaurant. We're like, let's just do this, and you know, we hope for the best.

Fred 8:19

And I know episode eight is your luckiest episode, Keith, but this will probably be your most unstructured episode as well.

Keith Kohler 8:26

So unstructured is good.

Fred 8:27

Um, that's kind of what Chris and I bring to the table as well.

Keith Kohler 8:30

You know, we have our eight here, so it's just a continuous loop, right?

Fred 8:34

Uh-huh. Is this like a Google thing?

Keith Kohler 8:37

No, it's a piece of artwork that a friend made for me knowing and didn't know that eight was my lucky number because it was more about being an infinity sign. Nice.

Kirsten 8:46

Oh, that's cool.

Keith Kohler 8:47

Combination of the two. So when you when you started out, did you know from the beginning you knew it was going to be a restaurant? Were you considering other options for launch? What kind of drew you to the restaurant?

Kirsten 9:00

Yeah, it's a good question. Um, we just had this dream, right? We had this like picture in our minds of you know, having a place. We we loved to go to um stores similar to ours that weren't vegan before we were vegan. We would go Peruse, you know, try different things. We love to look at the accroutements, see what was new, because we're foodies, we love food.

Keith Kohler 9:29

So that would made a lot of sense then. You wanted to recreate and improve upon experiences that you saw out in stores and other places and restaurants and things like that.

Fred 9:39

We yeah, so uh we met each other in Seattle. I'm originally born and raised in Seattle. She's born in London, or she was raised in London, or around London, not in London, but around it. Um, so the store kind of was supposed to mimic for us Pike Place Market. So that's kind of has that Pike Place Market kind of Parisian kind of street feel to it that's inviting but elegant. Um, a lot of plant-based restaurants don't necessarily have the adjective elegant used with it, um, you know, for whatever reasons. Um, but it was that was what we were kind of trying to get to. Um, again, mine was was it a uh I believe it was. We never had any ambitions of starting up anything other than uh um brick and mortar at the time because that was just such a big step for us. Um, but again, mine was to kind of have something that might generate some revenue. We weren't looking for something to be crazy, but something that might generate revenue where and then I could work alongside Kirsten. That was always my goal because my head works like a Disney fairy tale with a masculine.

Kirsten 10:46

Mine does not.

Fred 10:48

No, I know.

Kirsten 10:49

I'm very aware of that, Kirsten.

Funding The First Store And Buildout

Fred 10:51

Kirsten looks like uh, you know, um a Christopher Nolan picture.

Keith Kohler 10:58

I love this. You're gonna get me off track, which is perfect. Um, so when you knew the restaurant was the option, and what was the about the initial capital you knew you needed to get it started? And how did you source that?

Kirsten 11:13

Oh my gosh, yeah, that is such a great question. I mean, we worked right up until we opened that thing, and it was their work that was funded. I mean, it was very bootstrapped. We we'd pay for ourselves, we also we to get out a loan, um, you know, a couple like a line of credit and a loan and um the HELOC, you know, um, because it is expensive to put a restaurant. And luckily, you know, one thing that has helped us immensely throughout is Fred's construction background. Because if he didn't have that, it would have cost significantly more. Um, because that's how it, that's just how it works. If you don't understand, you know, the subcontractors and how stuff should be priced and how to shop around for equipment and stuff like that, it can get very unruly and expensive and out of control. So that helped tremendously um save us. If if not for that, we probably couldn't, we wouldn't have been able to open it, right? On our own based on our own funds.

Fred 12:18

Yeah, I mean, like we kind of said before, is we were blessed to have our capital that we had saved up from our consulting company.

Kirsten 12:26

Yeah.

Fred 12:27

Um, and we knew we were there, and I mean it wasn't a crazy stretch for us. Um, I was still working all the way through, and I even worked, uh, we even saw our construct our consulting firm open all the way up until COVID.

Kirsten 12:41

Yeah, and then when COVID hit, that's when we kind of stopped because you couldn't travel.

Fred 12:45

Yeah, focused on that. Yeah. Um, but with that being said, um we personally financed essentially the the opening of our brick and mortar. Uh, we learned that that was probably one of the more stupid things for us to do, but that at the time that was kind of what we did um because we were idealistic um entrepreneurs.

Kirsten 13:08

So I will say, you know, one thing um that helped us start this business and bootstrap it ourselves was keeping our personal costs really, really low. So even as we were making more and more money, you know, we didn't upgrade our home or our cars or anything like that. And the way I saw it in my head, because I knew I always wanted to start something else, was you know, by not getting a bigger mortgage and all these other things, it's like that money instead will be for starting a business. It's like you could get a rental home or a bigger home or a new car, or you could start a business. That was that was how I saw it in my head.

Fred 13:50

Or you could do payroll.

Kirsten 13:51

Yeah. But it's scary though, because then you know we started this, and then four months later, COVID hit.

COVID Shock And Rapid Pivot

Keith Kohler 13:58

There you go. So you set me up perfectly for the next thing. So here you are with all that ambition. You put lots of money in to get it started and off the ground, both in the CapEx and the equipment and hiring people and sourcing product and producing the product, and then COVID hits, right? And did you have to shut down your operations completely, or how did it you go to food service, or what was the mix that you chose?

Fred 14:24

So we were always in food service, that's where we started, right? As a restaurant. Um, it's kind of the irony of it is that we started as this little restaurant um that is 1200 square feet, and our back of our house was 400 square feet at most. I always call it like a double wide food truck. Um, and so um, you know, you can hardly even move, and we're like, oh, we're gonna we're gonna build the world in here. And we actually have in our restaurant, we also still have this one vertical thing. If you're ever been in our restaurant, um, one vertical strip. If you look in the back of the house of the refrigeration, that used to be our old our first brief cave ever. Yeah, that we sold cheese out of. Um, that construction lasted us up to about COVID. And then once COVID hit, even though we were kind of on a um we had a line out the door, we had a line around the block every day of the week. Um, COVID hit, our line stopped, but we figured out that we had to kind of start going more into delivery. So we turned all of our front of the house team onto delivery staff drivers, or that was even really before DoorDash really even kicked off. It's like DoorDash opened like right around the same time in Austin.

Kirsten 15:37

We were delivering orders to customer stores. We all were.

Fred 15:40

I was like, man, I went I went a few rungs down from being a fancy consultant to a delivery driver, but that was fine. It was great, it was it was awesome, it was uh it was fun, and so well, not the situation, yeah. Yeah, you get what I'm saying. Um, but it was uh um and so once we kind of did that, we kind of were able to keep our cost down, and then we can continue to expand. So even though our we didn't have that line per se, our food sales kept going up, and we're like, okay, this is interesting. Um, to and our labor was now down because when you open up a store, if you open up a restaurant, you always staff it very light, and then you're like, Oh my gosh, I do not want to do this rest of my life. Then you staff it super heavy, and you're like, now it's like, okay, now we're back down to reality, our baseline, I guess. And that's kind of what kind of kept us going through COVID. That allowed us within a month or two of COVID to start uh at a different commissary kitchen, and that's kind of the birth of where we are today with our C with our um retail and with our uh D2C.

Keith Kohler 16:48

So when you knew the decision had to be made because you're outgrowing the restaurant to move to the commissary kitchen, right? Did that require additional upfront financing or was it continued income from operations? Did you put more money into the business? How did how did that transition look like?

Fred 17:07

That was we we sourced that funds from uh continued operations from the business. That wasn't that much. A lot of that was existing. That was um uh Kirsten, even though she's a self-proclaimed introvert, is actually an extrovert. So she will uh people like to talk to her, they don't like to talk to me very much. Um, so they you know she was making a lot of friends, and like these friends started saying, Hey, we got a little space for you. So it was pretty much already built out, we just had to go move our people there.

Keith Kohler 17:36

That's great. So you didn't have to have any investment.

Fred 17:38

No, no, it was a lot of family at that stage.

Delivery, Takeout, And First Wholesale

Kirsten 17:42

So that didn't last forever. Um, yeah. Yeah, the other interesting thing too, when we opened the restaurant, we didn't even offer takeout. We had no way. Oh, really? Okay, yes. And so when when we had to close in-store dining, you know, or people coming into the store, I'm like, oh no, um, I need to set up our software so people can order takeout. So I remember I spent like multiple nights like building it out, taking pictures of everything, putting up descriptions and pictures and stuff like that, so that people can even order takeout. Um, because yeah, if we didn't offer that, it wouldn't have really been a business model. Um, so that was something new, and then that's what started our direct to business sales. Like we never imagined we would do that. But then when COVID hit, we're like, oh, we need to to survive. So it was kind of like at that in those earlier stages, it was building up these other business lines. That's what helped us with the initial growth. But of course, we reached a point where you know we needed financing to continue to grow.

Keith Kohler 18:54

Yeah, so COVID kind of forced the pivot in addition to, I imagine, cuss customers who were trying your cheese, and then organically others became aware, hey, can I carry this product?

Fred 19:08

Yes. Um, so yeah, COVID, COVID really forced us to pivot. Um and and actually probably in a good way too. I mean, I've I've always kind of thought about like what would happen if COVID didn't happen, um, and like where we'd be at today. Um, but at the same time, it is and uh so COVID forced us to pivot, but then also as COVID fatigue started hitting in and sales started dropping, that was when we were we got the first PPP grant. Um, and then we got a second one, then we get the EDIC, EDLC um loan as well. Um, so there was some government funding that that occurred that kind of helped keep our team working and employed and also helped with our uh with the cash flow issues as well.

Keith Kohler 19:56

Yeah, so you used all the pandemic financing available effectively. To keep the doors open, right? And you used it for what it was meant for, which was if you're continuing to employ people throughout the pandemic, that was the whole idea of the PPP. It's to say it was kind of like saying as a thank you for keeping payroll going and keeping people employed. And um those loans were both forgiven, right? The PPP loans.

Fred 20:22

Yes, absolutely.

Kirsten 20:25

E D O I C, I think.

Fred 20:27

Uh the other acronym loan was too. Yeah, yeah, E I D L, right?

Kirsten 20:30

E I D L, that's it.

Keith Kohler 20:32

That's right. And I had one of those myself, and I really and actually I did PPP too. And I think it was chaotic times, but thank God our government did do something really well in providing those, particularly now. For me as a single operator, that's one thing. But for you, who had how many employees at that time?

Fred 20:51

Uh 28, I believe, is where we were at 28 with the store.

Keith Kohler 20:55

Wow.

Fred 20:56

Yeah, it was um so at that time we were starting to get into that other commissary. We had commissary as well, yeah. And then that that the second PPP is kind of what allowed us to kind of grow into our our second because we outgrew our commissary, and then that financing from the the second PPP allowed us to uh go over to our um um our second com it wasn't commissary, our first kind of um solely based warehouse or uh factory.

Kirsten 21:27

Uh for the first one we went into was shared uh with another vegan company, and then um you know we outgrew that, like Fred said, and then we're like we need a dedicated space to make sure it's safe and you know meets our needs and everything. I mean, it was really a garage. That was fully sealed, it was fully sealed, yeah.

Keith Kohler 21:49

Make sure we know, yeah. So that's great. You add to all your other accomplishments, you are indeed a garage-based business at some point.

Fred 21:56

I like to think the curson is like my Steve Wozniak.

Keith Kohler 21:59

So uh for for some of our younger viewers and listeners, we can let them know Steve Wozniak was one of the originals of of Apple, if they don't know that.

Fred 22:09

And and Apple is a vegan company as well, because it's got an Apple as a logo.

Keith Kohler 22:14

So it all comes together. And one thing I want to, I didn't, I had not recalled it got to 28. When you had to when you knew you were expanding and you're hiring that amount of people, was there any hesitation in that? Was there anything like like okay, we're going from founders very quick to being leaders and managers?

Kirsten 22:33

Oh, yeah, especially during COVID, too. Like I I remember thinking, you know, looking at our sales each day, and I remember when I was, you know, trying to hustle up, you know, um retail accounts, partnerships, you know, direct-to-business accounts. I remember each time I got an additional one, I remember thinking, okay, we can keep that cheesemaker, this secures that cheesemaker during COVID. Like that's how I was thinking of it in my head. And I'm like, okay, I need to get four more to keep this other person employed, and and so on and so forth. Like for me, back then during COVID, it was like, how do we keep this team employed during these like really uncertain times? Um, because of a lot of our team, you know, some of them, you know, were high risk, so they're like, I want to, you know, um, go on on unemployment, you know, like a handful of them, but a lot of them wanted to stay and they wanted to be employed, so it's like, okay, how do we keep this team? Um, so that's how I remember looking at it back then. It was like, this is the amount I need to keep our people.

Pandemic Financing: PPP And EIDL

Fred 23:44

It was also that, but it was also because we couldn't. I mean, regardless, the restaurant revenue did come, was what we originally projected, and what it actually became was a lot less, right? Because, you know, we turned from having a 100% come in, dine in, take your food, you know, to now a 100% takeout, right? Where you can barely creak open the door to kind of hand a little bag out the door. Um, but it was uh, but we also knew that we could we knew that the the footprint that we had was too small for even that. So we had to continue to scale, but we also knew we weren't making enough, I guess, enough revenue out of the restaurant house existing to afford that scaling, right? Um, so that was one of our issues that we are one of our first challenges is uh, you know, like Kirsten was saying, that kind of led to our wholesale. Next thing you know, and and our first wholesale was absolutely sad. Um we were using like blue tape, we didn't even have stickers, so we're using blue tape to seal up wedges of cheese. Um, it was it was so bad.

Kirsten 24:53

We learned a lot. Who were your first customers? Dreamary was a big one. Um, and then um mashup market. That's what I was trying to remember. And it I'm so grateful to them because we did learn so much, they were very patient with us, and um, they would share feedback on ways we could improve to you know to better ship our products and keep them safe, and that's how ultimately we were it gave us the confidence to launch our e-commerce platform because we felt like we had learned enough from those experiences to ship at a larger scale. So forever grateful to those wholesale partners, you know, for their patience.

Fred 25:35

Yeah, the first feedback came in the the forms of a PowerPoint presentation. Um PowerPoint from them essentially, it was uh it was an Excel spreadsheet. Um, but no, it was great, and then that led us to our e-comm, and now um our e-com is kind of the predominant ironically, the e-com is what is actually our predominant business line in our business right now, which you never expected when you started all right, and that was born out of COVID.

Keith Kohler 26:05

And so, yeah, so what's interesting is here you are, you start with the retail store, you you start going in the B2B or direct direct-to-business as you call it, and then e-commerce comes out of that. When you and happily, as you said, you had those two partners, those two great retailer partners who gave you a lot of feedback on product and everything. This was your laboratory, you knew you could have trial and error in a in a safe environment without really risking your business, right?

Fred 26:36

Yep, yeah, absolutely. We we had guardrails that we can kind of keep it on. Um, and then every time we kind of exceeded a guardrail, we kind of come back a little a step or two, and then we go past it, you know, and kind of keep moving the goalposts essentially.

Keith Kohler 26:50

And how many products did you have? How many SKUs available did you have when you knew, okay, we can start an e-commerce business and we think that's gonna do something special?

Scaling To Commissaries And Early D2C

Fred 27:00

Uh, we still don't even know how many skews we have right now. We I mean, that was the that's what I guess kind of makes us different is that we always use the restaurant kind of like a petri dish for uh essentially, is we'd always have people petri dish, yeah. We'd always have people try our product, you know, and then be like, this is horrible, this is great. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we curse and I used to love or love to work behind the the cheese case, um, you know, and kind of get that real life feedback, you know, kind of see reactions, kids are the best, right? Where you can kind of they'll spit it out at you, um, or they'll they'll say, Yeah, this is great, all right. And you know you kind of landed somebody there. Um, but so when we opened up the restaurant, how many skews? We had probably had not including sandwich cheeses, we probably had eight skews plus the sandwich cheeses. Um when we kind of started doing D to C, um, we probably had 12, 14, something like that.

Kirsten 27:58

That sounds about right, yeah.

Fred 28:00

And then we kind of COVID was actually or uh not COVID, uh directed customer was kind of good with this because it forced us to make new skews too. Yeah, so we if it forced us to make like our Chabris, um, and it forced us to do a bunch of other cheeses that we would have never came up with besides that, because you know you have to keep your an enticing offer that's not the same thing you're you're sending out to the customer every week, right? So um it forced us to start up our Fromagerie box, which had like two new cheeses every month.

Keith Kohler 28:32

You knew you needed to have some fresh consumer news, exactly, exactly.

Fred 28:37

But remarkably, that kind of that mindset of always adapting and Kirsten's mindset of you know um being able to kind of pivot and like kind of doing new SKUs led us to our first kind of breakthrough, which was the New York Times, was one of those cheeses, which was the chapter.

Keith Kohler 28:54

So how did the New York Times recognition come about? Did they contact you and say, hey, we're gonna do some an article about you, or was it a surprise? And how did that work and what impact did it have on you?

Kirsten 29:07

It's funny you bring that up because it I always sometimes I reflect and I'm amazed, you know, how the dots you know got connected. And this is one of those cases. Um, they actually found us in a vegan store in Hollywood called called um Besties Vegan Paradise. So, you know, I laugh at this because we never imagined we were gonna do retail, like seller cheese and retail, but we did because of COVID, which led to the New York Times finding us because the food critic she lives in LA and she just stumbled upon her cheese in that store and decided to do an article on how far vegan cheese has come and included us and you know, four other brands, and she wanted to focus on the cave-aged cheeses, like the true specialty gourmet style cheeses. Um, and she reached out, it was just like one sentence. Um you know, you could have easily missed that email, actually, looking back. Um, it's like, hey, I'm with the New York Times, I'd like to interview you. And that was that.

Keith Kohler 30:16

That was your first press experience, right? Or outside it was our first national press experience. First national one versus a local one in Austin, right?

Fred 30:26

So because that was right around the same time that a restaurant won the best new restaurant award, too, wasn't it?

Kirsten 30:34

I think it came later.

Fred 30:35

Okay, yeah. But that was a much more minor than the New York Times one.

Keith Kohler 30:39

Okay, but still some big recognition, right? Even your early stages to win a best new restaurant in a hot, foody city like Austin is a big deal, right? And then this started a trajectory of more discovery because people are seeing press articles. And were you able to measure a tangible bump in direct to consumer or visits to the store because of the New York Times article?

Kirsten 31:02

Absolutely.

Fred 31:03

Direct to it was really kind of the first recognition of the direct to customers, and I we we sold, I think it was like 200 orders that day. Oh, we were we were it was that was like the that might have been like the second coming right there. It was like, oh my god, how are we gonna deal with this? We just got 200 orders, you know. You know, and we were walking around like chicken little, and um, it was uh it was actually as I look back on it, that was kind of actually funny. Um, and you know, what we thought was like ping ping ping, like a Shopify thing. It was like um it was it was just it was fun. It was like our first big challenge with D2C, and yeah, we got it all out.

Keith Kohler 31:44

And were the orders coming from new geographies?

Fred 31:48

Oh, yeah. This was like New York, um, just everywhere, LA. And that's when we actually kind of that was our first kind of time, because we had launched D2C a little bit before that, but it was always like local people, you know, that were just trying to be extremely supportive. And this was actually like our first time thinking, oh my gosh, why does somebody in New York know us? You know, and why does somebody in Florida know us? Why does um all these people know us? And then that kind of kept in. Um, but obviously this was without pay this was way before paid media, and yeah, it just led to um where we are today.

Keith Kohler 32:26

And the New York Times article, what was the date of that again?

Kirsten 32:29

Well, we were in there twice.

Keith Kohler 32:31

Um was like 2021.

Kirsten 32:33

Yeah, we were in there initially for the article on vegan cheese and how far it'd come, and then she did a novel one, a gift guide, and didn't tell us about it, and included us in in their um Christmas vegetarian gift guide, and and like Fred said, or Shopify just kind of blew up out of nowhere. We start getting all these like ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. And I'm like, what the heck is going on?

Fred 33:03

I like the remember you ran over next door and you're like flapping your hands, like trying to fly, trying to take flight.

Kirsten 33:09

What is going on? Where are all these coming from? And then a customer reached out and they said, Hey, you're in this gift guide. So we were in there twice, and that was 2021 and 2022.

Fred 33:19

I think it was early 2021 and later 21.

New York Times Press And E‑Com Spike

Kirsten 33:22

Okay, yeah. Um, so that was huge for us, and we learned a lot from that too, because it helped us get set up for or for Shark Tank because we had this huge lift, you know, from those two exposures, but then we didn't maintain that lift. Yeah, we we we didn't know how we we didn't we weren't looking ahead and like asking ourselves how do we keep these customers? We should get their email addresses and phone numbers and you know, all the stuff that we do now. We weren't doing any of that, so we had this huge bum, but then it went away and we're sad and we're like, oh no.

Fred 34:03

It's like how do you require what a we didn't even know like a PR or a publicity bump would they even existed to be honest with it? Yeah, because we were like we're still like at this point in our our phase, we're still like two restaurant entrepreneurs or restauranteers where we're like, we can go make some sandwiches, and then all of a sudden Shopify starts going crazy, and we're like, we don't really know what to do with that yet. So we're gonna go deal with that on Monday. Um and so yeah, it was great. And then yeah, like restaurant.

Keith Kohler 34:32

So at that time, restaurants going, B2B is growing, and now here's emerging direct to consumer, right? Yeah, so now you knew, hey, we're not sure how these are all gonna grow, but then you thought, what was the next phase of expansion or growth, and what was the financing that you needed to accomplish it?

Kirsten 34:57

That would be here.

Fred 34:59

So fast forward, um, e-com, wholesale, they were always kind of going neck to neck, kind of with revenue. Um, but it was enough to, and that was kind of the big one, too. It was like after that moment is where Kirsten and I started paying ourselves, you know, and it was it was kind of small at that point, but that's for any entrepreneur listening, is that would be that's like your first big, big step, right?

Keith Kohler 35:27

Because you're you're you're and a lot of entrepreneurs never get there either technically, right? Because of the the way the finances are working, or even mentally, because there's something about a mindset shift about paying yourself that can be sometimes people hold themselves back, sometimes people are like, No, I I've earned this. There's all kinds of things, scarcity, abundance, it all comes in. And wait a minute, if I get paid, will I not have the money for my employees or to get my product produced? It's a big decision.

Fred 36:00

Well, it's for us, it was more that latter portion, and it was it was always still everything was so in flux because this is all still during COVID. And this was like kind of during that second flare-up. Um, I remember that second wave, yeah. So it was like, is there gonna be a third one? Well, this is right when our consulting money was starting to run out, too. So we're like, well, it's time to you know essentially get off the pot and we gotta kind of just take the leap. Um, so that kind of started at the time. We were working with a different consulting agency that was maybe potentially looking at getting us into distribution or uh retail, you know, on a national level. That didn't work out, but through that we met um an amazing person um who we got the the uh introduction through. Uh his name was Keith Kohler. Um, and so no plug intended. Um, no plug intended at that time too, kind of in this whole I guess, melting pot. We look we started running out of space here, yeah. And more importantly, in Austin, rent was starting to go crazy at that time too. So we're like, shoot, we we have a location that we have. Um, and the place that we ended up looking at and and secure or in securing was this place in North Austin. Um, but all it was was four walls, it didn't even have much, right? And it was essentially the developer that was building this building ran out of money. He's like, I just gotta get rid of it. So um we worked with Keith to get to secure our first loan. Um that first loan was hey, we're gonna go from these two essentially units to a 9,000 square foot place, you know. So, how do you build that out in COVID with you know, essentially at our time, very little pennies to our name, and um uh with new equipment, because our equipment was much too small to be in this place, um, and still be able to have enough working capital to you know operate. Um so that was kind of what led us to our keys leading us to uh a couple loan options or a loan option that got us to where we are, and that was really our first, yeah. I'll call it our second scaling.

Learning To Retain Press Traffic

Keith Kohler 38:24

And that was another part of a great leap forward for you. And I I think now that again you reminded me of the beginning story in the restaurant, you had several advantages working for you. And Kirsten, you highlighted it about Fred and your collective experience in contracting and knowing that you could do this project far cheaper than if you had had to rely on outside contractors or outside vendors. Um probably in the when you write the history of Rebel Cheese, they need to know that yes, you put your own walls in, right? The the panels, you took them off the truck yourself and built out that facility, and you were not afraid of doing the hard work and rolling up your sleeves and doing everything that was required of you. And I think Fred, you've mentioned this in the past, which I think needs to be brought here, is you knew that when you founded this business, it was important for you to be mindful of profit from the beginning. You knew that you wanted the lines of business to be profitable.

Fred 39:29

It so that's kind of how Kirsten is, even though she looks like she's 35, is a little bit of an old person.

Kirsten 39:36

So she kind of always runs trying to get slapped on the camera.

Fred 39:41

So and myself, I look like I'm 70, but I'm actually 21.

Keith Kohler 39:45

Um is uh ID for it.

Fred 39:48

Yeah, exactly. But we run our business how we've always and this kind of comes from the restaurant, right? Where you don't go raise funds or you don't you could do equity calls for

Kirsten 40:00

Have to watch the margins, you have to watch the margins, everything is like razor thin in the margins, right?

Keith Kohler 40:05

Yes, and food service.

Kirsten 40:07

Oh, yes, you learn that fast in the restaurant. That is like that was one of the first pieces of software I set up was to monitor our restaurant margins and monitor them closely, and you just carry that mindset everywhere else, right?

Fred 40:22

Well, yeah, and so in the restaurant, it forces you to understand exactly all your waste, yeah, all your shift meals, all your payroll expenses, all your everything. It forces you to do that, which is great if you're that kind of person, but if you're you know, sometimes in CVG, it's like it's so much of a pay-to-play, which runs counterintuitive to how we were running a restaurant. We decided early on that we're gonna always run a restaurant in the black, right? So we always we don't we we still don't really we don't really care about top line, all we care about is bottom line, right? Is how much money at the end of the day can we actually say that we earn, right?

Keith Kohler 41:08

And I think that's really you're drawing an important distinction, right? You've always looked at things from a primarily an operational lens, right? What it what we what does it mean to be a good operator?

Kirsten 41:21

Right.

Keith Kohler 41:22

You knew at a certain point scaling meant wait a minute, what does a finance person look at? And not uh and balancing that because again, financing, particularly in Equisider, thinking about okay, maybe you're spending a lot and you're investing for a future outcome versus an operational one, which is focused on that bottom line day to day, right? And now with growth, you're looking, you're gonna have to ex you had to expand your thinking and perhaps grow your perspective beyond that original one, which was very operationally focused.

Fred 41:59

So we've always kind of learned the the way that I'm I mean, and we're even working um on even expanding right now, but we've always looked at things a little bit different, right? It's not so it's a weird question for myself, and it's a weird distinction for myself personally. Um, Kristen probably a little bit different on this, is I don't ever really look at CapEx as like a capacity an increased capacity, it's more like a return on investment. So, and that return on my investment will funnel down to my bottom line. I don't care if I have the capacity to make another, you know, 10,000, 20,000 in sales. It's how much margin can I get from all that to get to my bottom line. So if I do an example, if I do another $10 million in CapEx, but I have to hire another million dollars in labor to get that, that doesn't do me any good, right? Because it just makes it forces me to operate in the red now with uh with a more expensive operational expense.

Keith Kohler 42:57

Absolutely, and I think that's a very unique perspective. A lot of founders might not have that capacity, like you all do, to think of that ROI and tie the tie the two together in a very demonstrative way.

Fred 43:10

Yeah, I mean it's it's um you know they run in conjunction when one like when the scales get too far out of whack is where you know it's um is where your business starts to become out of sync, essentially. You know, if I if I'm running something that doesn't have the capacity, then I need to kind of worry about that, right? And that that pushes me too far to the conservative side. But if I have a vacant 20,000 square feet on my facility right now that I'm not using, but it's for future expansion, that doesn't do me any good either. You know, so it's always kind of ebbs and flows.

Financing A 9k Sq Ft Facility

Kirsten 43:47

It's also what you're comfortable with too. Like that's something I think about a lot is you know, you can grow really, really, really fast, but that comes at a mental and and you know mental, physical, and financial cost. It really does. Um, so that's something that I'm constantly assessing and thinking about and you know, asking, is this too fast or too slow? Because the faster you go, the more money you need to support that growth, right? And if you go slower, you don't need as much, but then you're not growing as much. So you have to figure out you know what speed works for you. What are you comfortable with? Um, because you will have to, the faster you go, you will, the more money you'll need, right? The more loans, more financing, more fundraising, and all of that. So there's a trade-off that has to happen there.

Fred 44:43

And that sorry, go ahead.

Keith Kohler 44:46

Sorry, I was gonna say, and that trade-off came fast and furious for you because after that first loan was executed and you you're in the facility, you built it out to a certain level, then we know the next game changer was Shark Tank.

Fred 45:01

Yeah, so I mean, I I guess I'll I'll quickly hit upon what Kristen was just saying. No, but please do that. Yes, it's um for Kurt and myself is is different, right? I I I hear all the time that we're rare because we're actually a couple that can work together and we actually still love each other somehow. Um, yes, you are rare, yes. Um, but is it's knowing how your partner kind of works. I am a very aggressive person. I know financially I'm aggressive. I just hey, you know, can we throw a little nitrous oxide in this thing and make it go faster? And Kirsten is hey, if we're if we're going at three percent, we're good. Let's just like pump the brakes. It's like a turtle. Um, so somehow or another we met in the middle, and that's kind of where we're at right now. But I mean, I would have failed epically if I was by myself, and she would still be probably we, you know, um she probably would have failed as well, to be honest with you. And it's because we're together it succeeded.

Keith Kohler 46:01

So that was a you have a you have a comment on that?

Kirsten 46:08

No, no, I agree. Um, well I do I do wonder, I do think about gosh, this would be a hard thing to do alone. I couldn't imagine, you know, not having a partner. Um, so yes, it'd be really hard to do alone. Um but go ahead.

Fred 46:26

Uh no, I was gonna mention the Shark Tank.

Keith Kohler 46:28

Yeah, yeah, let's transition into that because now Shark Tank, did you reach out to them? Did they reach out to you? Kind of tell us how that germinated and and up until you go on camera.

Fred 46:38

I'll let Kirsten tell you about this one because she is very proud of this one.

Kirsten 46:42

Well, during COVID, we were applying to absolutely you know everything, grants, pulse we were applying to. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're just in like survival mode, right? And doing everything we can to make sure you know we come out of this thing.

Fred 46:57

You were spending like eight hours a day applying to stuff.

Kirsten 47:00

I was. Um, yeah, so we applied and they reached back out to us, but it it's a funny process because like the whole time they're telling you you may not make it, you may not make it. Um, like even when you film, they tell you you may not air. It's not until you actually air on the screen that it becomes a real thing. So you're excited, but trying to not be too excited because they keep telling you this the whole time. So it's like it's like and then the other thing that was happening, we were building this factory while we were preparing for Shark Tank. So we were literally practicing our pitch while we're driving around the forklift and installing panels, fridge panels. So we're we were practicing because that was the only time we had to practice our pitch. Uh, because we were working all day and then building this all night and on the weekends. I'm amazed that we honestly made it as far as we did because we didn't really have that much time to prepare.

Fred 48:03

Yeah, it just shows what Sony Entertainment will take these days. Um, it was uh yeah, it's kind of funny because we kind of missed a little bit of it though as well. Is I mean, she was spending eight hours a day applying for stuff. It was brutal because in the very, very beginning of COVID, when the PPP when the first PPP happened, is they were like, if you don't apply within the 20 minutes, you're not getting this thing, right? All the funds are so dried up, and you're looking at the thing like, okay, if if that thing's gone, I'm gone. So you're just essentially doing the whole refresh button, like you're trying to buy concert tickets to Taylor Swift. Um, and it was uh it was it was crazy. So then somehow or another, there might there might have been an adult beverage included in this. There might not have been a I'm not saying it was, but it's she found herself on Shark Tank page, she starts paying for Shark Tank or starts planning for Shark Tank. Don't think anything of it. Fast forward, it was like two years later. It was a while, it was like two years later.

Keith Kohler 49:03

Two years, yeah.

Operating For Profit, Not Vanity Metrics

Fred 49:04

So we're out of COVID, or oh, we're out of essentially COVID survival mode at this point. You know, we're still growing, we're still scaling. All of a sudden, she gets a call from um, you know, the uh system producer or somebody like that, and like, hey, we have some questions. We're a shark tank, we're like, shut the heck up, you know, and so we got thought we got spammed, and then we ended to take the uh took the questions, and we were like one of the last contestants. Uh I guess they had another contestant drop out or something like that. We were like the last contestant in for that season.

Keith Kohler 49:34

There you go. Thank god that person dropped out.

Fred 49:37

Yeah, crazy. It was it was insane. So it was like from us starting our interview process to us airing, it was like four months, something like that, four or five months. And there were people that were like, We aired, um we aired a year and a half ago, and we still are we we filmed a year and a half ago and we still haven't aired, you know. We're like, Oh yeah, we we filmed, you know, last month ago and we're already airing.

Keith Kohler 50:03

And it's like, oh so anyways, yeah, that window was very short, right? Because you got notification soon after taping that yes, this is gonna happen.

Fred 50:12

Yeah, because they wanted to have our our the nature of our product on during the holiday season. So we we ended up filming in uh early September, and then we got our notification actually beginning of October.

Kirsten 50:28

December 9th.

Fred 50:30

Oh, look at that. We're celebrating our was it, our three-year anniversary with Keith.

Keith Kohler 50:36

I can't believe that. Um, and so Shark Tank airs, right? And probably a lot of our viewers or listeners have seen the episode and know that yours was very brief and was a bit of an outlier and in the Shark Tank circles and is celebrated a bit, I think, for how you arrived at the investment. So could you briefly summarize kind of how that was unique experience for you and how that wound up?

Kirsten 51:02

Mark made an his fastest offer ever. Normally, Mark Cuban normally waits until the end. He hears what everybody's you know, what all the other investors propose or not, and he'll he's gonna be the last one to make an offer, but in this case, he was the first one, and it happened very, very quickly in record time.

Fred 51:24

Yeah, when you go into Shark Tank, it was literally our big my biggest thing, and I think Kirsten's as well, is it's the pitch, right? You gotta get the pitch right. Everything else like that is just talking about your business, and we are comfortable with that. It was just the pitch, and we are not showmen at all, so you're supposed to act figures in life and all this kind of stuff. We're like, you know, we struggled to smile, you know, and so it was uh um uh there was that. So we said the pitch, the sharks tried the cheese, and all of a sudden Mark makes an offer, and we're like, what? And we're like, we haven't even talked yet, you know. We're like, I felt almost a little dejected. I was like, Well, I I practice all this time, let me tell a little bit more stuff here, and we didn't even actually get to anything we actually practiced.

Keith Kohler 52:12

And great, right? Why why did you even have to get to that? Um, he was so convinced, and I think it was mainly as a result of tasting the product and being very sure of the product quality, and he grew very enamored of it. And so I think what's interesting about shark tank folklore is people have probably accurate perceptions and misperceptions. Um, some people say, well, yeah, it's all show on camera and no deals ever happen. And yeah, a lot of those deals do fall apart, right? And yet yours came together afterwards. You had Mark and Lori make you an offer, and then it wound up being Mark. And can you share a little bit about from the time it was aired until the time that you closed the deal with Mark Cuban?

Fred 52:56

So it was it was it was a crazy year because we went from Shark Tank, and this was this was 24, right? Yeah. Um, so it was we went from Shark Tank to closing Shark Tank, which takes about uh three, four, five months, six months. And um and then all of a sudden we go from you know, so they're asking for all this due diligence stuff that we, you know, essentially pant size, you know, of due diligence. And we're like, so we had all the stuff put together, not knowing this it was gonna come into handy, you know, four or five months later when we had to finance our um our factory. So it was almost like a rinse and repeat. We almost did shark tank due diligence twice, um, with once with Mark Cuban and once with Keith Coller. And it was, I don't know which shark was harder. Um, but it was uh um, but it was it was crazy. It was like, oh, if you did this, what would you do? You know, kind of thing. And there's a lot of questionnaires. The questionnaire that Mark Cuban's team sent um was just you know, it was just as hard as anything SBA sent us, if not harder.

Keith Kohler 54:14

Yes. Um yeah, it really is. That's an interesting point. That's here you have an a one of the most recognized equity investors probably on the planet, and here you have SBA debt lending, and you're right, similar levels of questions, diligence, scrutiny, documentation, um, all those different things.

Balancing Growth Speed And ROI

Fred 54:38

So so the first loan we closed with with you, I guess, or with the banks or with SBA was nowhere near as hard as the second one. The second one was because that had construction involved with it, that had a lot of other things involved with it, very, very different. And so this one also had land involved, so we ended up buying our factory. But I could see how people that would be extremely overwhelmed by that if it wasn't for our experience with Mark Cuban and trying to close that deal, right? So that allowed us to know hey, hey, we we just did this like two, three months ago. This is an easy, easy paper, right? And it's so easy to get swallowed up by all the documentation and paperwork by SBA and by you know, um, even um uh equity financing is uh at the end of the day, you know, SBA, I would always thought it was probably a little bit easier than what equity financing was.

Keith Kohler 55:37

So yeah, so what great is the Cuban deal gets closed and that comes in, but from the time you aired until that happened, the growth took off.

Fred 55:52

Yeah, so again, this is like our New York Times talk we had earlier, is you know, there's certain time certain times in our business, and we've been extremely fortunate enough, and we're so grateful for this actually happening to us, is we've had these hockey stick moments, right? You know, where the New York Times was that first, nowhere too near the volume of Shark Tank, and then we had our Shark Tank moment, and that was insane all in its own respect. Um and we learned we learned from that as well. We did a lot better after um after New York than we did at the during the New York Times, but we still um we were nowhere near as good as we could have been, or even what we are right now. Um, we had some issues with freight during that time. We had a bunch of issues, and but you know, we got through it, but we allowed it uh it allowed us to learn, grow, and sustain after that. That's kind of like you know, it's um that's like a train, right? We had to stay on the wheels to get to where we are right now to get traction.

Keith Kohler 57:00

Yeah, so the direct-to-consumer business takes off like no one could have ever expected.

Fred 57:07

That's correct. Yeah, so then the New York Times then the the direct-to-consumer business took off more than ever expected, and that was December 23, is when we aired. So then that brought us after the closing of the Marquiba loan and after the closing of the SBA loan, that brought us to um uh holiday at Q4. This is kind of the culmination of all of our lessons learned, is now we're getting better and better, better, and we're able to harvest the data more and more and more. Um, so that's kind of what I guess slingshot us or propelled us to have a much more successful even 2025. And now after 2026 or the holiday season of 2025, we're gonna even learn that much more, even cultivate that much more to exponentially learn more than we did last year.

Keith Kohler 58:00

So it was this interesting combination of equity plus using the debt financing strategically, right? As you said, the first one was build out phase one of the facility, and then what we got to work on phase two was you actually purchasing the building that you're sitting in today, plus additional construction, and yet uh what you know you needed to do different is wait a minute, now we're primarily a D2C business, but the first loan was thinking, well, what if it's going to be more business to business, right? So now where you are today, it's like the the facility became as much shipping and logistics as it became a manufacturing facility.

Fred 58:42

Correct. So this last one, uh, this last loan that we did with uh SBA allowed us, like you said, to buy the factory, but it also allowed us to own our own vertical, which is a very important thing. Um it all that first financing um that we did with SBA was more based upon production, where this next line that we're doing right now is going to be based upon fulfillment, um, to fulfill said D to C's. The equity was more for working capital to get us to where we are right now, and if we do go to another round of equity, that would be more to uh grow um our GNA or our marketing and stuff like that.

Shark Tank Path And Prep

Keith Kohler 59:26

So here you are today, right? With starting at a restaurant, not knowing where that was gonna go. You move through opportunistically opportunities and challenges as they as they arose. You took on all these different new lines of business. We didn't get to talk too much about the purchasing and the acquisition of the New York store as well. Um, but maybe you want to talk about that for a quick minute.

Kirsten 59:55

Yeah, that one that one just kind of landed on our lap. Um So we own a stall in the Essex Market in the Lower East Side in New York. It used to be owned by another vegan cheese business, and they wanted to do, you know, retire and do something else. So they reached out to us and said, Hey, um, we're thinking about selling. Are you interested? At first, we were like, No way, that's so far. How are we going to do this? But then we started looking at the numbers, and it was just too great of an offer to um to pass on. So we ended up going for it.

Fred 1:00:33

Yeah, kind of how I told you about Cursons in my mindset a little bit earlier is I was kind of originally against this one, and Curson was like, let's do it. And then it kind of like kind of started shifting the paradigm, kind of started shifting a little bit, but we ended up kind of going with it. Every box that we tried to talk ourselves out of it with kind of was like, no, it this is already this is going to be profitable. And again, it kind of goes back into that mindset of if you're gonna start a new line of business in your company, does it operate in the black or the red? Right. And this expansion definitely operated in the black. And not only that, it helps supplement our D2C with marketing cost or lack thereof, marketing cost. You know, is this the best marketing we could ever have?

Keith Kohler 1:01:19

Is this yeah, it really was the uh all these progressive great leaps forward, right? Yeah, by opportunity, by press, by exposure, by you all putting yourselves out there too, which you've done a lot more of in the last year between speaking engagements and podcasts and different media. And so, you know, as we conclude our time together, because I really think what we can close on is a couple things. One is when you think what the future holds, what are you most excited about?

Kirsten 1:01:53

Well, that's a big question. Ooh, what are you most excited about in the future? And um, hmm for me, like gosh, what I think about, you know, as things I feel like we're starting to stabilize and become, you know, if we've had all this growth and survival, growth, survival growth, right? And of course, there's still a lot of growth, but we've learned so much, and it's starting to feel like there's some breathing room coming to get back to um you know, the yeah, life and the things that I love, like cheese testing, AI coming at AI. Do you love AI? Um, coming up with other, you know, AI and wine. Cheese a lot, AI and wine. That's what I'm looking forward to in the future. That's a new podcast, please. I'm down for it. Let's do it. Um so you know, when I think of the future, I think about getting back to innovating and creating, coming up with more cheese lines, um writing, sharing some of these experiences, just having a little bit more breathing room to get back to some of those, some of the drivers that, you know, the reasons we started this, right? Getting back to that, because we've just been so heads down in this survival growth mode, we haven't really had space for that.

Mark Cuban’s Fastest Offer

Fred 1:03:15

You know, I've been kind of reflecting upon um kind of the business. That's an interesting question because what I kind of just previously said, where we kind of go in those little hockey sticks, you know, what if what if that was just a micro hockey stick, where in the macro sense our business as of what we are right now was the hockey stick, and now we need to stabilize. Yeah, you know, so we kind of look at it from end, and um, you know, maybe these little blips weren't actually that, they were just little notches on the the hockey stick, right? Um, so what I kind of look forward to is we enjoy D2C for us or for myself is a great way to kind of still have interaction with the customers and still scale, right? Well, restaurants are just tough, right? But with D2C, I can still we can still talk to the customers, we can still understand if they like it, if they don't like it, what resonates, what doesn't. Um, and uh we have a complete control. A lot of times when right now we're uh in retail, we have no control over our product as soon as it leaves our door. Um, so that is it's tough for us. Um so what I'm looking forward to in 2026 is we have another skew that we're looking at potentially bringing on board, um, or another two SKUs that um uh we're looking at bringing on board, and then we're kind of looking at trying to bring on more uh, you know, kind of building out our cheese board more, you know, as of in a vegan version, like crackers and kind of jams, nuts, so on and so forth.

Keith Kohler 1:04:52

Yeah, brilliant. And as we conclude our time together, there are two questions I always include as part of the how I financed it podcast, and uh they can be very brief, and don't worry. So, I want to ask you, what are you most proud of?

Fred 1:05:08

That's easy. I'm still married.

Kirsten 1:05:12

How am I supposed to follow that on?

Keith Kohler 1:05:14

I you'll probably say some kind of you embrace the brief question answer there.

Fred 1:05:19

Oh no, I mean, everything else is being an entrepreneur is so hard. Being an entrepreneur that's married is a leprechaun. Um, you know, and so that's kind of where we're at, is like that's the most proud that you know I I still wear a ring, so that's pretty exciting. Um, and it's just we still talk to each other and we still love each other. So that's I I know that's not what this podcast is about, but it is, it is, it is absolutely about that. It it's also where we've surrounded our we're starting to understand or the importance of surrounding our people with people like yourself, not to toot your own horn, but is that you're a very important person to us because we would rather work with people that we understand, people that understand us, you know, we're we're goofy people, um, and understand us and understand our quirks rather than try to understand than people that try to you know push for growth and is more insensitive to our goal, which was always created with kindness.

Kirsten 1:06:27

Yeah, and to add to that, like the first thing that pops into my mind, I do is the team. That's something I think about a lot. Like to add on to what Fred's saying, you know, everyone we work with, you know, longtime friends, or we have a lot of families that work here. And I I just love, you know, we have a lot of people that have been here since day one. You know, our procurement manager started as a dishwasher at our restaurant, you know, two weeks after we opened the restaurant.

Fred 1:06:56

And our production manager started as a front of the house.

Kirsten 1:06:58

Yeah, and I love I love seeing that, you know, I love seeing that growth over the years. I know all of their family members at some point have worked with us. And um it's like Fred said, you know, one of the best things about owning a business is you do get to select who you work with, and we're so close to everyone we work with here. Um and you know, we laugh and we have fun and we also work very, very hard.

Fred 1:07:28

But we also get sad too when things have happened, right? It's they it's incredibly cliche, but we care about everyone. I mean, we can still list off every one of our employees' names, all 63 of them right now. Yes, and that is something is we cherish, right? It's people aren't just people aren't just cogs, people are you know, uh very important to us.

Keith Kohler 1:07:51

I think that's really and very aligned with who you are. I I think more than any people I've ever worked with, your business and who you are as people is the most aligned I've ever seen.

Fred 1:08:06

Well, now I'm about to cry. I'm a six foot 240 person, down person getting ready to cry.

Keith Kohler 1:08:12

Which leads us to the final question, which is um, and you can again be very brief, Fred, like you started the last one if you want to. What would Fred and Kirsten today tell Fred and Kirsten when you first started?

Fred 1:08:24

Don't do it.

Keith Kohler 1:08:25

Don't do it.

Fred 1:08:30

I mean, these are easy questions, these are like layoffs.

Keith Kohler 1:08:33

Well, I can spend on hard ones.

Fred 1:08:37

Uh no, that's not true. Um I know what I would do. What would you do? I'd be I'm curious on this one.

Due Diligence And Closing The Deal

Kirsten 1:08:44

So when you when you bootstrap it's really it's it's really hard to spend money on things, right? Uh you don't want to spend on anything. And if I were to do it over again up front, I would invest in um more finance help, more legal help. Um, you know, because we've tried to we do do nearly a lot of stuff ourselves, right? I mean, you've helped a lot with finance, Keith. I mean like CFO. Like I think I would have hired a CFO a little bit earlier to help. Um that's something I would have invested in. Um, and um the same is true. Um what was the other role I said? Um legal, yes. Um, because it's you know, when you're bootstrapping and you're watching every penny, it's like, oh, we can we can figure that out, we can get that done. But I think it's like I think it should be like number those things should be number one priority because they could save you so much time and pain later if you do them right from day one.

Fred 1:09:55

I I think you know, I think a little bit of that, I don't know, I think a little bit of that is too is just a product of when we started. Yeah, you know, um, I don't think again, if if we would have kept, and like we kind of previously said, if we kept the trajectory that we're going as a restaurant, I don't know if we would have ever needed to finance or um or if we would have been where we are today, yeah, right. And it's just amazing how much your life changes with effects, right? Um I think one thing I would have probably told myself earlier was there's so much white noise with different oh, this is gonna sound bad. There's so much like white noise of different podcasts and different um, you know, what people have this stereotype of what you should do and what you know shouldn't be doing, and what you could do, and how much you're gonna make here. And you know, you talk to this person that says you're gonna make $300 million if you just sell right here, right? And it's it's these stereotypes and these um, I guess, expectations. Uh if I would have told myself, I would have said probably just lean into e-com and paid media so much sooner because it was um, I mean, our our growth would have been so much different now if we would have started doing you know, leaning more into that, um, even two years earlier.

Keith Kohler 1:11:22

And there you have it. Um, right, Kirsten, thank you so much for being with me today, and thank you for all you've done for me personally.

Fred 1:11:29

Thank you, Keith. Thank you, thank you, Keith. And I'm sorry about all the video editing you probably have to do because of our segment.

Keith Kohler 1:11:35

Ah well, that could be possible. But on here on how I finance, what we always do is we roll with it, we go where the energy takes us. And thank you for allowing me to dance a little bit around different parts of your journey and yet illustrate a journey that I think is best summarized as you rode with it, right? As uh to use your illusion, your your not illusion, your metaphor of the hockey sticks, you really embrace them. Absolutely them. And yet it's all of this longer term, as you said, instead of just one, you know, little hockey sticks here, it was part of your longer-term growth arc. Yeah, it's a large giant hockey stick.

Fred 1:12:17

And to give you credit, actually, um, is you're the one that kind of opened our eyes to see that.

Kirsten 1:12:22

Yes.

Fred 1:12:23

So thank you.

Kirsten 1:12:24

Thank you, Keith.

Keith Kohler 1:12:24

Yeah, I appreciate that because it's part of, I think we all met ourselves where we are and where we have been and where we were and where we're going. And that's what makes a big difference. So thank you again, Fred and Kirsten, for all that you've done, all that you will do, and all the amazing rebel cheese you'll be providing to customers all around the world. So really appreciate you being with us today. Thank you so much, Keith. Thank you. Okay, this concludes episode eight. Thanks everybody for cutting joining us. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of How I Financed It. I encourage you to reach out to me on LinkedIn at Keith Kohler1, and I look forward to connecting there.