Ep. 17 - Free The Hummus with Nick Wiseman

Nick Wiseman started cooking in D.C. kitchens at 15, trained under Fabio Trabocchi in New York, then came home and opened a Jewish deli named after his grandfather's grocery stores. Little Sesame was born in the 500-square-foot basement of that deli in 2016, inspired by the hummus his co-founder Ronen Tenne used to make for family meals on the line. When COVID hit, Nick turned the restaurant into a community kitchen that served 100,000 free meals — while simultaneously building a CPG lab in the back room. That packaged hummus launched at 14 Whole Foods in 2021. Today Little Sesame is the 5th largest and fastest-growing national hummus brand in the country, available in 4,000 stores.

In this episode, George and Nick talk about culinary-first manufacturing and why Little Sesame has always self-manufactured rather than co-packing — including a framework Nick borrowed from Patagonia: automate where human craft doesn't make the product better, and never touch the steps where it does. They dig into Nick's decade-long direct relationship with Casey Bailey, a regenerative farmer in Montana, how a $2.2M USDA grant helped scale that supply chain, and why Nick believes regen ag is "the purple bridge" between left and right. The conversation also covers the tension between mission and venture-backed growth, why the risk-reward profile for food founders is getting less compelling, and how Little Sesame is thinking about storytelling as it moves from natural channel into mass retail with a new snacking lineup at Target.

Find Little Sesame at eatlittlesesame.com and on Instagram at @eatlittlesesame. Connect with Nick on LinkedIn. Little Sesame is available at Whole Foods, Sprouts, Target, Wegmans, and independent retailers nationwide.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Hello everybody and welcome to Gross to Nut, the podcast where I talk to entrepreneurs, artists, writers, and thinkers about what they optimize for in their businesses and lives. I am your host and the co-founder of Yellowbird Foods, George Milton. Today's guest, you're gonna love him. He started cooking in DC Kitchens at 15, trained in New York's fine dining world, then came home and opened a Jewish deli named after his grandfather's grocery stores, and a hummus pop-up in its 500 square foot basement. When COVID hit, he turned that restaurant into a community kitchen that served a hundred thousand free meals while simultaneously building a CPG lab in the back room. Today, his company, Little Sesame, is the fastest growing national hummus brand in the country, sold in thousands of stores across the country, and as of literally yesterday, I think, launching a new snacking line at Target. Please welcome the co-founder and CEO of Little Sesame, Nick Wiseman. What's up, Nick?

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Hey George, how you doing? Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

I'm doing good, man. It's uh it is great to have you here. You're you're actually, I don't know if you follow this pod at all at all. You're you're my second hummus co-founder and CEO on the podcast. It's turning into a hummus cast.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Heavy on hummus. And I I believe Chris as well got his start cooking in DC restaurants. So he did, yeah. A similar path to hummus we've taken.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Yeah, it's well, it's interesting to me that it's like I also started cooking in restaurants at 15, like way crappier restaurants than you were cooking in. So I want to talk about the culinary world a little bit, but it's interesting to me that two of the because I mean uh Ithaca is taking market share in a big way from you know the the big guys, and you're doing the same thing, right? So you're the number five hummus, I think, in the in the country. Is that right right now? Something like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah, we're we we launched our product in late 2021, early 2022 as a CPG product, and yeah, now we're the fifth largest in total grocery. Um, you know, Chris and Ithaca crew have done a great job of kind of building and premiumizing the set. Like it was the two big legacy players that were there forever, and so we are certainly like riding in the wake of all the work that's been done before us, and um, you know, excited to kind of bring our own fresh approach to hummus, and that's sort of you know why we showed up and thought there was an opportunity and a lane for us in the hummus space, even albeit pretty crowded. And so excited to just you know kind of bring our restaurant roots to CPG and you know that level of like hospitality and quality um on the grocery store shelves. So it's been a fun run and excited to um as you just meant just you know shared, we're we're launching a target a whole new line. So it's an exciting moment for us. Like a lot, a lot of new is happening at Little Sesame. And so it's been a been a fun ride.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

And you guys have raised some money too, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:19

So y'all are yeah, we've been on the you know, we we we we actually, as you, as you mentioned, we're restaurant guys, like that's sort of how we grew up. I grew up sort of steeped in restaurant worlds, starting as a cook at 15. We kind of worked every single role in in the restaurants, and so um, you know, my my business training was certainly not like, you know, I didn't come out of business school with a plan and and like a path to raise venture money. Um it was certainly that's all been learned here as I've we've tried to grow and scale a CPG brand. But you know, we kind of like learned in the trenches and restaurants how to operate a a business. And um, and so yeah, that was Little Sesame. The first iteration was, as you mentioned, a pop-up in a 500 square foot basement. We were making hummus in a tabletop mixer. Um, it was with my partner now Ronan in Little Sesame. He was we met cooking on the line in New York City, um, similar, similar backstory. And um he was he was famous for his family meals. You know, everyone, folks that worked in restaurants know him. It's kind of like the bit of a sacred moment before dinner service starts. Everyone comes together, shares a meal. Um, and there's always like the cook or two that makes the best family meals. It's just sort of like been my experience in every restaurant. And every everyone always wanted Ronan's family meal, and hummus was always a signature. And so um that was sort of my first taste of like what hummus could be um versus what I was used to getting off the grocery store shelves. And um, yeah, then we when when we kind of had the idea to launch a pop-up in DC, it was like, how do we bring that that that experience to a restaurant format? And so that's where we started as a as a small pop-up restaurant in DC back in 2016.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

I love it. I I want to talk a little bit and and uh because like Chris had a similar story. I'm gonna like we're we're not gonna spend the whole episode uh talking about another hummus brand, but uh I kind of regretted not asking about the family meal because I was is am kind of from restaurants as well. I just kind of glazed like right over that. But can you for for the people who didn't start cooking in restaurants at the age of 15, which is probably most of our listeners, can you talk about what the family meal is, why that's got such a a special place in the culinary world?

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Yeah, you know, so it is like restaurants are fast-paced, busy, intense, and it's hard, rare to get like a moment, right? Like most of the meals you've you eat are like out of a core container on the fly, right? It's like rare to have kind of a quiet moment. But in some restaurants, I think there is like this sacred moment where everything stops for a second and everyone gets to you know share a meal. And obviously, like restaurants are built upon this experience of sharing meals and the conviviality of that. And so, like for a second, actually, everyone who works so hard every single day to execute on that for others gets to do it themselves. So I think there is like this really special through line to it for people that work in restaurants. Um, and again, like you know, generally a cook every day would step up and be the one that cooks the family meal, and it's it's often like a true reflection of like the food they really want to cook. Right. Um, so it's a good you know, we we all used, you know, where everyone's cooking the chef's food, and um, and for once you kind of cut to taste what what people would actually cook on their own. So it's it's fun and it's always diverse and different. And um, and again, there were some that were better than others, and and again, Ronan for us was was everyone, everyone was excited when Ronan cooked family meal. So that was that was the genesis of of Little Sesame, really, was the those family meals, those shared experiences, and wanting to bring that quality of hummus to to more people.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Dude, I I love it. I love the family meal. In fact, I'm gonna pitch you uh a CPG uh meal kit brand called Family Meal right now. Uh just kidding. But that that's it's really great. And it's like I don't know, whenever somebody says family meal, I always think of the the movie Chef from whatever like 10 years ago. Where it's just like the you're getting not every cook, not every line cook at a restaurant has some amazing like ethnic background that they're gonna bring, but it's like you're gonna get some really interesting stuff that is definitely off the menu at family meal. Like just I think an underappreciated part of our like culinary society is is family meal at the restaurants.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

So totally, yeah, and it's like you have the resources of a restaurant around you, but you're cooking food like you'd want to cook at home, and so like it is the sweet spot, and you're not also worried about like you know, you obviously have your peers you want to impress, but like you're not worried about the external feedback of like and and the the parameters of a business. So it is like unrestrained, but with all the tools of a restaurant. So it is a it is it is special. If you could bottle that up, I think it would uh it would be a good business.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Yeah, we're just we're gonna bottle it up today. That's that's what we're doing on this call. We're starting a new business. Uh JK, JK. You guys at Little Sesame, like speaking of craft and culinary, you guys are self-manufacture, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yeah, I'm sitting in our new facility today. We've we've always self-manufactured. I think that was, you know, we came again, we were in like B school kids that were like trying to scale a product. Um, you know, we we were we were chefs that wanted to make a product that could reach more people. And so, you know, making it was always important to us. When we, you know, the feedback we got initially when we, you know, we we got into 14 Whole Foods, that was how we launched, and so we were making it nights and weekends out of the restaurant. It was like hardly manufacturing, right? I mean, we were still making it to the to the same spec we would really in a in a restaurant context. And so when we started to actually meaningfully scale the business, we you know, every all the feedback we got was like you have to go to a co-packer, like you can't don't build this yourself. It's so capital intensive, it's not the right move. And um, we scoured the country looking for a cop-acker and and honestly just couldn't find anyone that would kind of honor the integrity of the process that we built. So, like soaking the chickpeas and juicing the lemons and handpicking the herbs and conf feeing the garlic, like all this culinary work that was happening that we felt made the product different and special. Um, we just couldn't find anyone that was willing to do it. And obviously, we were smaller and like yet we had no real leverage with these large co-packers. Um but even still, so we we ended up building our own manufacturing just to really protect that quality. Uh, and then even when we just we just built this new facility, it's oh just shy of 30,000 square feet, it can produce a whole lot of hummus. Um but we ran through the same exercise, even at the larger scale, you where you'd think like, hey, a copacker is gonna want to you know want this business, you know, we still couldn't get folks to move. And I just think it's like the way we our our lens of manufacturing, this like culinary first manufacturing is just very different than like the way most food is made in America. And so um we felt like that was super important to protect, like that was the moat around Little Sesame, and we really wanted to make sure that you know, for us we could protect quality um even through this like neck big next chapter of growth that was coming.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Yeah, I I love that. Obviously, I you know, like same, same at Yellowbird, but um it it is interesting like when you are looking for a co-manufacturer, because I was having this conversation uh yesterday with an ops friend of mine about like what's the what's the best way for a small brand to start, and it's like everything being equal, I would point somebody towards like a co-packer, like all things being equal, but when you go to a co-packer, they start I mean, they it's not like they're bad people, it's just like they start looking at like, well, what about uh what about like garlic oleo resin? We can just kind of give it the hint of like we could just hint at garlic in there, right? It'll taste fine, it'll taste like garlic. But culinary first manufacturing is like you know, that the there's a number there are a number of brands who are doing that. I think that we are hopefully moving in a direction where that becomes more the norm, or like, because there is like this this kind of line that you cross where you're like, okay, it's culinary, culinary, culinary, and at some point you cross a line, like it's mass produced. And like where you cross that line, I think can be up to the brand. Uh but but but a lot of times you have to create that capac like you have to create that capability yourself. So you guys how how did you um how did you think because I know just from my own experience having like not been a food manufacturer before, having you know cooked in kitchens and done at a small scale, like hey, I can whip up something and like squeeze, you know, for us it was like peeling limes and you know, like uh like peeling garlic and chopping onions and stuff like that. But it's like how did you approach the you know scaling process of like okay, I'm gonna go from making 20 tubs of hummus to making like 2,000 or 20,000? Like, how did how did you approach that?

SPEAKER_01 12:09

You know, a lot of testing and learning. We we surrounded ourselves with good people, right? I mean, that was the first thing. We we kind of like knowing what you don't know is I think the first key to to working through challenges and um asking questions, you know, to f to fill the gaps and and hiring people to fill the gaps, right? Both those things were have been key to our growth. Um, you know, I think then from there it was like a test and learn, right? Like how do we scale? Where are the bottlenecks? Like, you know, at each at each iteration, you kind of like learn where there's a new a new challenge emerges. And so I think it was for us, there was this tension of like how do we maintain quality and the integrity of our process and our supply chain that we'd built, you know, but like also become good manufacturers. And so there was like a natural shedding that had to happen, right? So it was like, how can we protect our like fine dining roots, um, but also know where it makes sense to shed to create efficiency? And I talked to a technologist at Patagonia a couple years ago and found it like it was like one of the most insightful comments I'd ever heard, which was like you use technology where like the human craft doesn't make the product or experience better. And I found that really interesting. And so we've really like taken that lens, the art manufacturing process. So it's like, where do we create automation where again it doesn't impact quality, but where it where human touch makes quality better, we we never touch that. Like those are non-negotiables. And so really like dialing in, and again, we think about manufacturing, it's like it is a thousand little steps to make our product and really analyzing every single step along that journey to make sure that like again, we're optimizing where we can to really protect this like human touch, which again, we have like a lot of those steps in our process, but also being knowing where like automation um will help too. And again, like that sweet spot um or solving for that sweet spot and that tension between like culinary and efficiency is sort of like what we has been like the constant learning and how we continue to do that. Um and so it's in, I think there's like and it's in that's a never-ending journey, and I think we're we're certainly still on it as we scale. And it's uh it's so interesting to me that like every um we find like at every major growth moment, like it is always a reanalysis of everything we thought. Like everything we had thought, the assumptions that all everything we'd like based everything on till that moment is kind of thrown out the window, and it's like a new beginning. So it's like when you to make 2,000 pounds, to make 20,000 pounds, you know, like at every iteration is is really like a whole new set of foundational like learning that happens to build to the next level. So yeah, the manufacturing journey for us as cooks has been incredibly fun. I think also, you know, I think in the restaurant context, you're used to cooking so many different things all the time. So like on really like honing this singular craft of making this one thing every day, like I think we've both found a lot of joy in that. And um, you know, it's uh, you know, there's not like I think when you look at like American food more broadly, like there that spirit of craftsmanship is has been lost a lot and I think is now coming back. Like there's a major renaissance, and I think it is like this culinary first manufacturing where like that renaissance can really happen, where there's like a real I mean, all we do every single day is make hummus, and that's it, you know, and it's it's really the same formulation every time. So um dialing that in and getting slightly better every day, like that's that's the joy of of what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Yeah, I I love that man, and well said. I I uh I I think about this the same way, and you said it really uh you said it really well where the you know where where human craft doesn't add anything, like figure out how to I'll give you an example for us because I want to ask you for an example for for you too. But like we, you know, we use vinegar, we use some vinegar in our products, and so like we would have you know people like measuring out like weighing vinegar in the you know in these little three-pound tubs, right? Or like a you know, a little like two-gallon tub and weighing that vinegar and then dumping it into the kettle, and it's like setting up a vin a station where it could weigh out you know all of the vinegar all at once and then pump the amount over and just have the person like hit a button instead of like dumping you know 120 like small buckets of vinegar in. Like there's no there's no added just transporting that liquid from one place to another place is not like add anything in a culinary sense. So that one was pretty easy. What do you have like an example of like where you've like, hey, it doesn't matter how we do this or anything?

SPEAKER_01 16:45

You know, the the where it doesn't matter is like exactly what you're talking about, those steps that like you know, where you just can't, you know, it's it's really just like technical steps, right? That don't actually impact end product. And then there's also the steps that like, hey, you might, but like the impact is not enough to justify the lack of shedding. So like we were hand cutting onions until a year ago, you know, like pallets and pallets of pallets of onions. We'd stop doing that because we can buy a pre-cut onion that is, we feel like as good of quality. Fresh picked herbs is a non-negotiable, right? Like you can't get a frozen, like an IQF herb is not gonna ever be the same as a fresh herb. Like it's just a fundamentally different product. So that will never change. So, you know, like there are the knowing the moments, like the things that you can let go of and shed and the things you can't. That's I think the harder balance for us. And it's like none of those, you know, even the onions was a fight, you know. It was like it's always, you know, I think that's the the hard part of coming from that world of fine dining, is like, you know, in that space, like you do everything, you do the most all the time, you push the limits every you know, at every turn. Like, so it is always that tension always exists for us, but um, I'd say that's like a good for me example of like a dueling one where it's like okay to let go, but you can't, and then you on the herbs you can't let go.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Yeah, I I agree with that, man. I think that there's stuff that like uh that gets built in or that gets hammered into you because like at the age of 15, I was also doing like they put you, they start, they started, you know, the young cooks, at least were where I started in like prep. And so you were just like they they were like because because prep is kind of like the least pressure, I guess you can have in the kitchen. You do it ahead of time, right? But it's like every day you're like chopping, you know, for like I remember prepping the salsa, and it's like every day you're like chopping fresh onions and like put you know, putting fresh tomatoes in the cuisin art and stuff like that. And you go from that to being like, okay, well, like we were looking at because we use onions, like there's we use fresh onion in our product as well. And so we spent a lot of time looking, and maybe you've looked at these things too, where like the like the bulk onion cutters where you have somebody sit there and like put onions on the thing and it chops them up and peels them and stuff like that. But you're just adding like you're adding a lot of cost and a lot of like maintenance just to get chopped onions, and yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

And again, we found is like you know, the farms we work with, like they have a lot of them do cut their cutting onions on site and IQFing and freezing them right away. So there's like no quality degradation, right? It's actually arguably a fresh a fresher product than we get like a cured onion that's coming to us, then we're you know, that's through many, you know, levels of distribution that lands in our facility that sits there that then gets cut. So, you know, I'd say like again, knowing when to shed and and then understand the supply chain, like you know, not all products are created equally. And so that deep dive and that like maintaining that like uh for us, like we it's rare we make you know, we're very slow about making decisions on supply chain, and they're then those partnerships are enduring because like we you know we try to find partners that really have like the same short of shared values around quality. Um so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Speaking speaking of part partners, like I I had read um about you a little bit about your chickpea uh supplier. So I'm gonna I'm gonna use this to segue us over to like talking about chickpeas and regenerative agriculture because I think I also saw that you made a comment about uh regenerative agriculture being the purple bridge between left and right, kind of a political statement about uh chickpeas. But let tell tell me tell me about your uh chickpea supply, regenerative ag and kind of like what makes what makes that special and why you're into regenerative ag.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Leave it to the DC kid to dabble in politics. But yeah, I'd say um dangerous ground uh in this day and age. But we um we worked with a singular grower in Montana guy named Casey Bailey. That's how we started the brand. You know, what I didn't realize, I grew up on the East Coast with small diversified vegetable farms, you know, little pieces of land, a few hundred acres would be a huge farm here.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Um and so what I didn't realize is like they were growing a few thousand acres out there and that like they didn't sell by like the case, they sold by the truckload. And so I uh he took a flyer on us. You know, I had many calls later, um, he was like, look, I'll send you chickpeas. And it took years before he was like, hey, that was worth it, but it really immersed me in um this like whole world of regenerative agriculture. He grew up out of this group called Timeless Seeds, who started by a guy named Dave Owen back in the 70s, and what they realized that was that like by growing organic crops in rotation, you could build soil health um versus like the commodity wheat that they'd grown forever in the Great Plains. That was like really destroying soil health. And so, but what they had to do, and the tricky part was like creating value for these other crops. So you're still growing wheat in that rotation, which there was always a market for, but the other crops, including chickpeas, there was hard to find those markets. So I had to go build the market share for it. And that's what those guys did in the early days. And so um, Casey kind of grew up in that world, he was growing in. That co-op of growers at Timeless. And so I got like immersed in all those in those growers and kind of started to understand more about the impact that regenerative agriculture could have. I was also lucky I went to school in Calor at Berkeley and was surrounded by like some pretty big food thinkers, did some stash at Chapanese. So like was able like in early days of food for me, I started to like understand like provenance of ingredients and relationships to farmers and like kind of that through line to that you know food and agriculture could have on climate. And so all those like things were happening and swirling for me as we started to build. So um I cared about agriculture and agriculture story, and also saw in fine dining, how that like there were those we were buying the best quality products, but it didn't necessarily relate to like any relationship to farm or um or sort of the impact downstream that like the way farming happened would would impact like communities and health and all those other things. And so, you know, for me I saw an opportunity with Lil Sesame to scale that. And so we started with Casey. Now we worked with you know a network of growers in Montana. Um and we got a big USDA grant a couple years ago because I think what we were doing is interesting. We created these direct markets that gave farmers a reason to break away. You know, many farmers in the US, they either are you know buying you know, wheat subsidized by the by the USDA by the government. So there's like a reason to grow it. The because and because of that, like crop insurance on wheat is much easier to get than other crops, especially these other cash crops in rotation. So, but if you create a direct market for them, then hey, they have a reason to grow and they have the same level of assurance that like there's a market for their product, so they can break away from some of these tools that have kept them constrained in in growing just like commodity wheat that's been beating up their farms and so and and and the health of their communities. And uh, and so you know for us, it wasn't a hard sell to them. Um, they wanted to break away, but we had to the commitment we had to make was like, hey, we're gonna buy your chickpeas and we're gonna contract these and give you that level of security that you've had before and and work through the transition together uh through the ups and the downs. And so that's sort of like the partnership we've had that that's what the grant has helped us power us to. We got two and a half million dollars to like really expand this supply chain. And that's you know, we've really led with that story, and um, you know, we're obviously proud to do it. You know, our goal is to have 10,000 acres just for little sesame under regenerative management by 2027, and it looks like we'll we'll hit that goal.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

We're that's that's huge, man. And 2027 is right around the corner.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

I know it felt like a long time when we uh first said it, and you know, time time is moving fast here. But yeah, we're uh we're super excited, and we're actually we're building in the early phases of building a regenerative transition program um where we'll actually work with young farmers that are growing organic but want to reject trans transition to regenerative, and we'll help them with both like technical training, uh administrative support, provide him an agronomist, and then actually pay for some of the like actual fees of certification to move to regenerative. So we're like really trying to also usher in the new generation of farmers that are willing to farm this way and like help de-risk it for them to make this kind of big and often scary jump.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Yeah. You're you you've talked uh just already in in the first part of this episode about stuff that I think is kind of fundamentally shifting in food. Right? This is I mean this is my view of it, but talking about like culinary first manufacturing, being able to scale manufacturing that thinks about um that thinks about product quality first and has this like culinary first, like, hey, the food's gotta be really good. And I believe like I'm a big product, I guess, product in quotes saying that like this this food is the product and people have a choice. So like if you give them a better experience, like if you give them something that is culinary versus you know, Sabra, which is not necessarily culinary, then they're they're gonna know the difference, right? And it's that's a lot of these brands that are starting like you guys did, like we did in natural, but then finding uh broader audiences. And I think there's another there's a there's another big thing that is happening where we are connecting the dots to real farmers in a bigger way. And I th this is one of the reasons that I thought it was important to start the company that I started, right? Is that you you have to connect, like there needs to be somebody to connect the dots to consumers for farmers. I I think that food brands, like CPG food brands, restaurants to a certain extent have the have the uh kind of ability and responsibility to connect some of those dots. It sound I mean it sounds like I'm not putting words in your mouth to say that like you're you're trying to connect some of the dots here between like um you know, and I would say that like what you're doing as a brand in general, a brand is a you know, brand is a story and a promise and all this sort of stuff, but like you guys are telling the story about the um about the regenerative agriculture, you're telling the story about you know heritage chickpeas and stuff to your consumers on behalf of uh on behalf of farmers and your uh like brands have to do a lot of that that's kind of what I see food brands purpose is kind of in the future, I guess now and moving forward is to connect those dots for consumers because I I just don't think that consumers have the time to go research every product they make. So like I think brand becomes really important in that aspect.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Oh yeah, and I I a hundred percent agree, and I mean I think that's what I saw the power of like chefs to do, right? Like in restaurant format, like and you saw that happen early days there, and then what I was so excited when I when we jumped into CPG and I saw the opportunity to scale was like but the actual impact on the ground and number of acres, like the the speed at which you could move in CPG was just so incredible, and the actual impact on the ground, like real impact, you know, was was just um made it all feel really meaningful to me and and kind of gave me purpose as we built Little Sesame.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Yeah, I I agree with that too. I I the the ability to come in and say to a farmer that you believe in, I can give you a contract and know that that's like that's their lifeblood. And like we did the we had the same thing where you where we came in and said to farmers who who had never had a contract, that you know, people who were growing for the fresh market, like growing for the fresh market is not the fresh market like capital fresh market, but like growing for like the market, like who wants to buy you know organic kale or whatever. A lot of that work is done without a contract because they know that you know these people this grocery chain or this restaurant bought a certain amount last year, but so much of that farm work gets done without a contract. Like I I remember in the like first going to farmers and saying, like, we want we would like to help, like, we want to give you a contract, and just having that conversation where they had never had a contract before at this you know 200 acre farm, which for to me is a huge amount of acreage, but like in the US, it's like 200 acres is a small farm.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Uh absolutely no, it's been the the the transition watching these farmers grow. I mean, it's just yeah, and there's just so much excitement. I think the far young farmers like which are disappearing in mass, but I also think there's an an another generation of young farmers that like see the opportunity in these partnerships. And like what's interesting is like the and why I'm encouraged is like the you you do see this new generation of brands that are being built that like this way of sourcing is actually like built into the DNA of the brand. Like this is Little Sesame exists only with this supply chain. It's not like, hey, we're gonna scale a brand and then like we're gonna graft onto it some like corporate social responsibility or ESG strategy in 10 years once we've like made it, and that's gonna like okay, we're gonna move 20% of our sourcing to regenerative, which is like how you see the legacy brands now reacting because they feel pressure, bottom-up pressure in the market, where it's like the DNA of our brand is rooted in this style of agriculture. And so I think I'm hopeful that, and I'm starting to feel it, especially in the farmers we're engaging with. Like, hey, there's excitement, they believe that like that we can be really synergistic and like there's actually an opportunity for them to make a good living farming this way if in these kind of direct relationships with brands that are scaling that are rooted in this type of agriculture. So, yeah, I'm I'm a I'm a huge believer in um again, it gives me a lot of hope about like the future of the food system in the US and what's possible.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

Yeah, I love that. It it gives me a lot of hope too. We're gonna take a quick break. Uh, I want to come back and talk about some of the tension between scaling and uh the type of food brands that uh that we're building. Uh because I do think there's some tension there when you raise money when you've got uh when you've got a a mandate to grow, uh mandate to cut costs. So we'll talk about that uh in just a minute. We'll be right back. Uh co-founder and CEO of uh Little Sesame Hummus. We're talking about regenerative farming, we're talking about the responsibility of brands. Nick, when we went to break, we were uh we were talking about the future of the food system, which is kind of the now of the food system. And I am I mean I'm really optimistic about where we're going with food and where we're going with food brands. I I do think uh one of the things I've seen and one of the things that just kind of exists out there is that there is a there is there is friction right between uh between scaling and uh having these uh having these missions. Um baking it in, like starting with starting with the mission gives you a big leg up, right, saying like this is who little sesame is, right? And if you start peeling these things away, then at some point it's not little sesame anymore, right? Like if it just becomes kind of mass manufactured slop hummus, that's not little sesame. But there's uh there's pressure and friction to you know, as you're scaling to move fast, right? You talk about the opportunity of moving fast, but sometimes like you you I could see a scenario where there's more demand for your hummus than you've been able to kind of flip farmers to this regenerative program that you know what I mean? Like how how do you think about the tension there and how how do you deal with that knowing that you have investors and that there might be growth? Well, not that there might be, let me not let me not soft pedal that there are growth expectations and return expectations on the money that has been invested. How do you think about that tension between kind of like mission and scale and cost and all of those things?

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Yeah, no, it's it's a perpetual tension, and I think it's like the same philosophy of technology and that we've applied there, which is like you know, optimize where and and get very efficient where we it doesn't impact process for quality and then you know protect at all cost the things that do that drive quality. And so, you know, it is but it's a constant battle, and I think that's you know, there is you know building a national food brand in this environment requires capital. That capital, largely right now, is is venture money, and so and venture money does have pretty significant demands on growth and returns, and there's a clear time horizon that that needs to happen. And so it's very different than like the last generation of businesses, like or I feel like our parents' generation of businesses where you you could you know you you borrow money from like the local bank, and you know, you you had a relationship with the banker, so you didn't necessarily have to collateralize everything in your life, and um you could build slowly, you incrementally build over 30 years, a few a few points of growth every year. That's what that's very different. That doesn't really exist anymore. Like, I don't, you know, there are this really scrappy founders out there that build that way, and uh huge kudos to them because it's just so it's so grueling. Um, not that going the venture out's not grueling either, but like there is a I always I'd have a lot of like deep admiration for those that are able to build um independently without injections of cash. And so, you know, I think that once you get on the venture treadmill though, that and there are those demands, it is sort of a balancing act. Now I think we've tried to protect ourselves by like, hey, the business is rooted in these values and like the core economics work based on buying this and and building the supply chain that we've established, right? And so like we had enough proof of concept there before we uh made commitments to venture that like, okay, this is this can work at scale. Um, and then again, you know, luckily for us, like even in this inflationary environment where things are getting more expensive and there's headwinds in labor and there's this you know shrinking labor market that's getting more and more expensive, like there's all those challenges that exist. But luckily for us, like our growth has kind of like dovetailed with that. And so we've able to get efficiencies as we've grown, even though against like a macro climate that's pretty hard. Um, and so we've been really aggressive at every turn of like, where do we optimize? How can we get cost savings? How can we contract more? How can we leverage cash we have on the balance sheet to buy more and push pricing down? Because for us, it is really like, you know, forget the venture guys, it's like for us, like, how do we drive margin so we can get value to the consumer on the shelf? Because that's what's going to win, right? And so, like, for us, that's that's the through line is like anywhere we can optimize and drive savings, like we can get more value out to the consumer. And especially as we're now, you know, as you know, mentioned, like we're breaking out of natural channel where there's a bit more price elasticity, like we're going into conventional and mass this year and next. It's like, well, how do we get the best price on shelf to actually win that consumer? And that's hard to do. And so for us, like the savings are always about like driving that value. Um, and we feel like, you know, again, without compromising your values, and that's the challenge, right? It's like we're an organic, certified organic product. So there's that like baseline, you know, where there's pretty much the only hummus brand out there that's entirely certified organic, and that's like a hard baseline to hold, period, especially when we're trying to compete on price with these other brands and the especially the big legacy brands.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

Yeah, yeah. When you talk about you talk about like it does take the amount of capital it takes to to run a a food brand, a CPG food brand, I I think just is probably uh underappreciated, if anything, or underrepresented, if anything. Like it is it is hugely expensive to do, right? Like there's some scale that there's some scale where you can do it, kind of bootstrap it. Now you still have to have like you still have to have a little bit of money to bootstrap it. Like you've got to be able to, you know, day day one for for for me, I was, you know, buying jalapenos and habaneros and stuff at like with my savings. So it's like you still have to have something, but like once you launch, once you're like, hey, I'm gonna go launch into retail, you have to have some you have to have some money, you have to be ready for the spend, or you have to be ready to go out of business, even if you've got a great product.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

Agreed, agreed. It's it's it's cash intensive. And look, the shelf space is coveted, and like the big guys don't want to give it up, so yeah, you gotta compete for it. And you know, that it's an expensive game. Building brand awareness in a very crowded and noisy market just takes cash, you know. I think like what we hope for brands like ours is like, hey, well, the consumer will taste the quality, and and then and it's a sticky product, so like our that return on investment should be strong, but like we gotta drive trial. And so we spend a lot of money, like, how do we actually get people to taste the product? And our hope is that like that will translate to an enduring consumer. And so, you know, I think that's that is the challenge, but and it is 100% very expensive, and and capital's gotten more and more expensive, and that's like one of my you know, I'm optimistic in some ways, and then I'm you know a bit cynical in others, and it's like, well, capital has gotten so much more expensive in the past few years, and it's like, well, and for founders that are taking huge risks in their lives, it's like the the upside outcome is just getting smaller and smaller as capital gets more and more expensive. Like you give away more and more of the company to get to that outcome, and it's like at a certain point, for what, right? Like the risk-reward profile starts starts not as compelling for founders, and so it's like, why take the leap? You know, and it's um, and that's my concern is like there, especially in food that's now really funded this way, CBG food that's funded through venture, it's like, well, are we gonna limit the number of great products out there because like the as hard as it is and how expensive capital is is really gonna limit like the number of founders that are willing to take the leap and do the hard work when like the outcome is really you know is shrinking. And so that's my that's my bit of cynicism in the whole world is like I wish there was an alternative funding world that existed that like looked a little bit more like our parents' generation where you could build these great regional brands that like made the best quality product supported regional agriculture, um, but didn't necessarily have to have like a hundred million dollar outcome, right? Like I wish there was a different, there was a there was that medium path, and um, you know, maybe there there is a world where that could happen, but it's certainly not like it's not the it's not the mainstream or status quo of of how food is and CPG food is being funded today.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

Yeah, I I do think that there are there are groups and people who are working on that. Because you because you're right, it's like the you find yourself or we find ourselves in an in an industry where we're stuck right now on like you gotta go get money from venture capital to like make hummus, and that's like that's tricky, right? It's it's tricky to say like okay, the same venture capital that's gonna, you know, that could go fund some new AI startup or or some SaaS, whatever. I mean I guess SAS is dead, but they but but like some something that like could do you know you know 200% growth every year for 10 years or something, and that same pool of capital is funding like a hummus brand or a hot sauce brand, and you're like it it seems it it does seem kind of uh kind of messed up that that's the main option, right? That that you're going to VC as like a bank and you're saying like okay, well okay, can you grow 100% year over year? And it's like, yeah, it's possible. I mean you guys are doing it, right? But like how many how many years can you sustain that? And like, is there a is there an is there an outcome out there for I'm not asking you to answer these questions, but saying like is there an outcome that is fast enough uh for venture that they don't get stuck on a plateau at some point, right? Because that they're they're not gonna be they're not gonna be happy with being on a plateau. So so so it is there there is that there is that weird tension there. Um but it it it it is it does make founders think about like what they're optimizing for, and I'm gonna use I'm gonna use this opportunity to kind of like segue into the question of like what are you optimizing for? Because I do think that there is this getting somebody to take the leap, like a like success somebody who's gonna be successful as an entrepreneur has got to have a whole lot of qualities, and those qualities might be really valuable inside other companies, right? So like it's uh what what do you think like for you, Nick Wiseman, but not for like you don't have to speak on behalf of like the company or on behalf of your venture partners or whatever, but like for you, what what makes this worth it? Like what's what makes it worth it to go take the risk that that you're making that you're taking to be a founder and be an entrepreneur in this way?

SPEAKER_01 42:37

I mean, I again I grew up in restaurants, so like food and hospitality and you know cooking for people, that was like always um deeply meaningful to me. Like I I I I love sharing meals, I love traveling and eating. Like that experience of food is um is the thing that like excites me the most. Um and so being able to do that and knowing that we're in you know the fridges of hundreds of thousands of families across the country is just like very powerful to me. And that we're doing it in a way that like is good for them, is good for their family, and is delicious and like uh deeply satisfying. And so if we can do all those things, it's just like so rewarding. And um, you know, there's nothing better. And I know like you know, every CPG founder feels this to some example, like seeing your product on the shelf, seeing a consumer take the product, you know, just in like walking through my local Whole Foods and you see someone take the product and you have a short interaction, it's like, oh, I absolutely love this product. And you know, that's just there's that same reward you get for cooking and sharing a meal you feel in that moment, and I think that's the driver for me. And I think you know, I have two young kids at home as well, and so like you know, there's also a piece of me that like wants to leave the world a bit better than I found it for them, and um, that's sort of I feel like the onus on any g every generation is like to to leave it better for their kids, and you know, so I think also we're actually making a real impact that like we're proving that you can scale a brand with this type of agriculture at the Core, we're treating our team well, like you know, the values are steeped across the org that, like, hey, there's a different way of building business now that there ever was. And again, we're not like grafting on an ESG or corporate social responsibility strategy after we're like building that into the DNA of our business. And so, like, can we prove that it's possible to do business in a new way that actually leaves the world a bit better than we found it and and takes care of people along the way? And if I can do that and like show you know show show my kids that that's possible, I feel like it's again, my hope is that we like usher in a whole new generation of of of how we do business in this country, which again, that that's where I get really excited.

SPEAKER_00 44:36

Yeah, I think we can, man. I think we're doing it. You're doing it.

SPEAKER_01 44:39

Um you know, day at a time, ups and ups and downs in there, but yeah, they're uh largely it's up and to the right, and yeah, that that does feel like it is possible. And um, yeah, again, that's it fires me up to keep going and um see where we can take this thing.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

Yeah, up and to the right. I mean you can't help but go to the right. That's how time works, but that's right, that's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

Uh that's what I tell the investors, you know.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Up into the right. I just uh I just have a slide. Uh I just want everybody to pitch a slide that just has that just has the growth curve on one slide. No numbers, no years. It's just like here's our plan. Just up and to the right. Um I I'm interested in like you've made some pivots. I think some of this stuff, you know, being in restaurants, you had some there was some stuff around COVID that was a code was a forcing function for a lot of people and a lot of businesses to do different things, try different things. And you were in restaurants. I mean, you were in restaurants when COVID hit, right? You were basically running uh you know, Little Sesame was uh was kind of this pop-up. Um I'm I'm always interested in people who can kind of see the next thing. This is this is one of my like themes on entrepreneurship, is I think that a lot of entrepreneurs just have the ability to see something as an opportunity that somebody else might have like like I think my I think that entrepreneurs have the ability to kind of like see what is around them and in front of them as opposed to just seeing what's behind them. I think a lot of people say, like, well, I've got my degree in nursing, so nursing is what I do, versus like something very uh obvious could present itself to you know a hundred people and maybe only one person would say, I see what's being presented, and I'm gonna grab onto it. Uh and I think that you did that, and I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs who are like, what is entrepreneurship is an interesting question. So I'm gonna I'm gonna package two questions for you. One of those questions is like, what what what does entrepreneurship mean to you? Because I think that it's uh hard to kind of like put in a box. It's sort of a lot of things to a lot of different people, but like what first of all, what does entrepreneurship mean to you? And second of all, like how have you uh dealt with those pivots or those opportunities um as as you're as life has come along and said, Hey, here's a here's a thing you could do. What what are you gonna do with this?

SPEAKER_01 47:17

Totally. Heavy questions. We could go we could go deep.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

Um, hey, well you're a site, you're a psych psych psychology major from UC Berkeley, right?

SPEAKER_01 47:26

That's right. So let's let's get after it. And I um you know, I'd say like entrepreneurship is you know, there's a heavy dose of naivety built into the entrepreneur brain, right? Like you don't know what you don't know, and you're willing to take that leap. So I think like um, and I think deep sense of optimism. I think those are like the two traits that I find of of most entrepreneurs of like you gotta believe in what you're building and more than anyone else, and you're gonna be told no, and you're gonna face uh what feels like insurmountable challenges and you still keep going. And I think those two things are like a little naivety and a little bit of heavy optimism, like are what makes a good founder, operator, uh entrepreneur. And you know, I'd say like for me, restaurants are such a good training ground for entrepreneurs, right? Like every day you're throwing a million challenges, it's an environment that's like demands scrappiness. Um, you know, there isn't there's rarely like a bunch of venture money thrown at restaurants, so like cash is king and you have to really build these things sustainably. And so I definitely was like steeped in an environment where I um I learned to be a good operator by being inside restaurants. Like I credit all of that, both like the constant problem solving and optimizing and deep focus on quality, but really like being a good steward of a business, and like you know, you gotta be um there's just a level of precision that has to happen to make a restaurant work. And so I I learned that the hard way, right? Like through failures and through wins, like of how to be a good operator in for me in in the restaurant world. And so that's sort of like my view on entrepreneurship. And like, you know, I think to you to your point, it's like I I can't necessarily say like I think a lot of entrepreneurs is like, hey, there's a problem I'm trying to solve. And I don't really, you know, and I and I think everyone was like, hey, when you're building your venture deck, like make sure you articulate the problem you're solving. It's like, well, we're making good quality products, and right, we we believe that we can reach more people with those products. And um so I think there is like not everything fits squarely in that box, except for us. I think like we're in this large macro moment where like people are demanding better quality food source, better that they can feel good about feeding their families, and so like we're solving a macro problem, but you know, I just say like we're we're at the end of the day, like there's not like a whole lot of IP around the product. We just we feel like we make it really good product that we can um and we can do it at scale and reach a lot of people at a at a reasonable price point. So that's sort of like my view of little sesame, a bit humble, I'd say, but um, you know, not that we're like changing the world, but uh, but we're just making something good every single day and really focus on how we get better. Um I guess your second question is about like how you work through the pivots like and the survival. I think another bit of good advice I found was like, you know, 90% of business is surviving. And um and I found that really interesting, which is just like, you know, the longer you're in the game, I think you you realize that. And um opportunities do arise. And so like that's where the entrepreneur brain does help, where it's like, hey, as long as you're surviving, then like how do you see opportunities and chase opportunities and optimize? Um, because like it's it's never gonna be clear. Like, I don't think anyone wrote a business plan and you know, it was a straight line to that end goal, right? I think like it's always a zig and zag. Little says to me the logo is a M of the road uh exactly for that reason, right? That like Ron and I love the journey of the road and learning on the road and all that experience that's like built in. And so it's like that's what we preach to our team all the time of like, you know, we're constantly learning, we're constantly optimizing, we're constantly improving, and like, hey, let's keep our heads up so we're aware of when opportunities do come and that we're well positioned to actually go after and achieve those things. Um, and so I think like there's a those two things kind of like to meet dovetail together. And so, and we've learned a lot along the way. I mean, you know, in again, both from my early restaurant days, but then through CPG, it's like, you know, ever at every turn, you know, there is always challenges. We've all faced them all the time. And it's um whether it's as you build your team or as you scale the manufacturing, you know, being aware of those things. And I think it's just like that constant, um, almost psychotic push to like optimize and improve. And it's never like complacency around, okay, that it's good enough. It's always like, well, we can make it better. And so for us, it's like that mentality hopefully bleeds into building like an org that all everyone feels that way and has that deep level of care and ownership, and then that product is ultimately reflected because that's the hard part as you've as the company gets bigger, you know, it's like you you lose some of that level of control you had, right? Like in a restaurant environment, it's like the chef has so much control, right? You see it and touch every single plate, and that's like as the org grows, it's hard to do that. And so, how do you steep that spirit um of care, of hospitality into like the core of the business and in the team? So as it grows, that's really like felt out in the product and then as it goes out in the world. So um, all that complicated and layered, but yeah, hopefully that was answered your question to some extent.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

Yeah, yeah, no, it does. I I and there's no I mean, there's no like right answer to the question. It's just kind of like how are people approaching it? I I mean there's a huge I I agree with you. I would even say more than 90% of business is just surviving. And you know, sometimes surviving means sometimes surviving means pivoting. We all did that. Like anybody who was running a business of any kind in during COVID had to pivot mass massively, and then we've had to pivot and pivot again with like supply chain issues and like global issues that affect everything, right? Like how do you deal with you know, it's not a question I'm asking you to answer, but like how do how do you deal with the fact that people are, you know, like people at the grocery store are just overwhelmed by the price of everything? Like they're not just the price of groceries, but like they're overwhelmed by the price of gas that it costs them to get to the store. And now how do they think about like the money that they have to spend on hummus or hot sauce or you know, ground beef or whatever it is? So it's like there's always, you know, it's always these problems that that that you're kind of expected to have an answer to, right? Um I I'm interested, I mean, I think that like I can't believe we've gone so far in this podcast without mentioning uh little Sesame Yellowbird spicy hummus. How have we gone so far? That's my fault.

SPEAKER_01 53:54

Yeah, you know, we're not good self-promoters, but that's that's why we have good marketing teams. But um, yeah, I'm so I'm so stoked about it. Again, like I think when we saw you guys from afar, we were on a team trip in Montana visiting our chickpea farms, and we were staying on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, and so we like got a bunch of groceries and the whole team was out there, and Yellowbird was at the center of the table. And I and one of our teammates was like, Hey, we why don't we make a Yellowbird little Sesame Collab? And because we were just like pouring it straight on the top of the container and eating, and it was so delicious. And so um fun how these ideas happen and uh and come to life, but it's such a delicious product. I think like we always I always admired the way you guys as well, culinary first manufacturers and the ingredients you use and stories you were telling. And um, so such a like you know, it started as a really as a personal fan of the brand. It's always in my fridge, and uh so fun to see like the products come together. I think to your point, they like tell such a similar story and excited to see what they can do hit at a at a sprouts store near you available.

SPEAKER_00 54:51

Yeah, find find find a spicy yellow bird little sesame hummus uh at a sprouts near you. Go ahead and get it right now. That's our that's our shameless self-promotion. But it is cool, it is cool to do like product collabs like that where you can be like there's no like fl weird flavor matching. We're not being like, okay, well, you guys have to come up with some synthetic version of yellow bird. We were literally just like, okay, how much yellow bird do we put in and how much little sesame do we put in? We're just missing mixing yellow bird and little sesame. What you what you guys were doing uh at that farm in Montana, just like, well, how much do I put in? How much of the hummus and how much of the hot sauce? It's uh it's great collabs. Only great minds like these can think of a collab like that.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

Exactly, exactly. Um no, it's so delicious. Like the sweet heat, all the fruit you guys use in the product, and it's just prepares so well. So yeah, we're excited. It's definitely curious to see how uh how the folks out there think about it.

SPEAKER_00 55:52

Yeah, yeah. Write us, write us a note. Let us know. Let us know what you think about about the hummus. Um, speaking of new product dev, like launching in Target. I mean, that was literally announced what yesterday? I was I was looking at your LinkedIn. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:06

It just went out, just went out yesterday. So yeah, we're kind of debuting this whole world of snacking at Target. And so um it's like a ready-to-eat line. You know, we've kind of um we view as like our everyday line or the core cups you see in most hummus assortments, and then we really wanted to enter this world of snacking, like you know, powering everyday adventure was kind of key to how we thought about the brand, and so it made sense this extension into snacking. So, yeah, we're launching our kids line, um, which is optimized for kids, taking it on the go for snacking, for lunch boxes, etc. And then we launched a protein line, which is fortified with an organic pea protein, um, you know, trying to like how do we build and and you know, like get hummus into almost like a functional, the functional world and get like a consumer that hasn't necessarily like played in the hummus space to at least try. Um, you know, look at those protein maxers out there. And then we launched the ready to eat line as well, which is um, you know, just hummus and pretzels. We partnered with pretzelized, like how do we, you know, make it easy for people to eat it anywhere they are? And um so we're excited about all three, and all three are at target nationwide as of uh yesterday.

SPEAKER_00 57:11

Yeah, congrats, man. Big move. And I'm guessing with pretzelize, you were like, all right, Product Collab, it's your pretzels, our hummus. That's right. How many pretzels do we put with our hummus? Um how are you how are you guys thinking about we you know we talked we've talked a little bit about storytelling, about marketing. Entering this uh, you know, like the natural category is a really great place to build a brand like yours or mine where you can come in and there there's a little more uh I guess of a want or a reception to the kind of stories that we're telling. But first of all, I I want to make my I want to make a statement here that I think that it's important that the stories of marketing be true. And if we if you think of if you kind of look at the you talk about like the ESG comments and stuff like that, like a lot of times those things aren't true, like hey, I've got a goal to hit a certain whatever carbon you know footprint by 2030, and somebody like PepsiCo is making that, and it's like a lot of what they're gonna be doing is just like paying carbon taxes or something like that. Which is just kind of like guilt tax. I mean, it's like it's like they maybe haven't even changed their uh core practice or core mission at all, but they're marketing that stuff. So I think it's important that the core like stories that we're telling as marketers are true. You're nodding your head, so it sounds like it maybe you agree with that. But how do you think how how are you thinking right now as you're like on the precipice of like, hey, we're killing it in natural, where people are ready for these stories, where people are saying, hey, we need these stories. We actually require the story in natural because that's what we're buying, right? And we're gonna pay, like, if we're gonna pay 20% more for a hot sauce or a hummus, we require that it be that there be a better story and that the story be true to a certain extent. How are you how are you guys thinking about storytelling as you're as you're going into like more conventional channels? And not to say that people shopping in conventional channels don't want um don't want stories and don't want you know better mission-driven products, but how are you guys thinking about the difference here?

SPEAKER_01 59:25

Oh, and it's different, but I think it all ladders up to the same story, right? Like the regenerative ag story you can talk about is like the the the downstream impact on the farmers and the farmer communities, but you can also talk about like the upstream impact on like your health and your family's health, and right, like the the reason we do that as well as like it's a better quality product, right, for the end consumer. Like they can families can feel good about feeding into them. And so like we were the we were the certified organic, the whole line, and we were the first hummus to get clean label certification, which is like they actually go lab test the product for for hard metals, for glyphosate, for other toxins that are used in growing food. And like we were, you know, it's again they're actually going physic physical lab samples, glyphosate residue-free, which is like a big issue. It's been prevalent in in uh across you know hummus over the past years. There's a big environmental working group that did a big study that was like in um over 70% of hummus had trace amounts above the recommended amount of of glyphosate, and that's because it's used to desiccate most chickpeas that are grown in the US. And so having that organic certification is huge, right? That's the only thing that guarantees against using glyphosate. And so, you know, all those things for us, like so that consumer probably, you know, is a bit more invested in the health outcome and maybe less outs in the environmental outcome, and or at least the priorities and like how those higher the hierarchy of those priorities shifts. And then it's also thinking about like what innovation makes sense for that consumer, right? Like where we just launch a tomato basil product, it's like you know, really like how do we create mainstream appeal for hummus? Hummus is still only in 35% of households in the US, so it's like how do we build flavor profiles that get like the everyday mass consumer really excited? And tomato basil, we know like every house has a tomato basil product in their house, right? Like that's marinara is everywhere, and so um how do we kind of make hummus more accessible to the everyday consumer and kind of broaden its appeal? And so we think about that through flavor innovation as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

Yeah, I've seen uh I mean I am have said this previously, but like I'm a uh half Lebanese, so I grew up eating hummus, and it was thrilling to me when like Saber came on the scene and made it uh something you could get at the store. Now, I as as somebody who grew up eating fresh hummus, I was not a big fan of the stuff they were putting in the store, but like it was cool that it was out there and that hummus started to be on menus as like something you could put on a sandwich or like have as a appetizer or whatever. I I've seen a bunch of different uh versions of hummus, like that like uh there was a company based here in Austin that did like hummus-based salad dressings for a while. I don't think it was like it was like people weren't ready for that. Like what what if you made uh what if you made hummus-based hot sauce? Like, I don't think people would be ready for that. I've made hummus-based hot sauce because I've you know freaking love hummus or like tahini-based hot sauce or something like that. So like uh the adoption and like household penetration uh is a is a big thing. Like, how are you how are you guys thinking about that? From I know you've got, I mean, you've got the snacking, you've got the like, here's how do we work it in. Um, so it seems like you're taking it and saying, like, here's how do we work it in with where people are going? How do we meet people where they're at?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:28

Yeah, I think we like free the hummus is how we as like kind of our push around that. Like it's it's not just like hummus as a snack or a dip, but like how do we put it the center of the table? And so, you know, more and more we see like that storytelling is important, getting people to think about using it in new and creative ways and like opening up the use occasions for hummus, and whether it's on a sandwich or a topper on a salad, you know, we we were um at Blackseed Bagels, like one of the cool bagel shops in New York City. We we ran an LTO, we ran an uh we run an everyday salad at Sweet Green across the country, we run a fried chicken sandwich at Bird Call in Denver. They have about 10 stores. So it's like you know, we also actually go out in the world and like show people in the restaurant context like how you can use the product in creative ways and not just like necessarily like you know, a dipper as a snack, um, but like how hey, how how can you use the product that's actually gonna like elevate your everyday meals and hopefully get people to try that at home as well? And so that's definitely a big key. I I do recipe videos. Um, it's like the rare time I get to cook, but I do recipe videos for our social media, um, not enough anymore, but where I really like that's exactly the whole storyline is like how do you open up the use case and you know, we're adding it to cooking be, you know, cooking chickpeas, and then you add a scoop of hummus to get that rich in creaminess, or you put it on a sandwich, or um use it in a salad dressing, you know, we use it as a base of a or preserve lemon as a base of a as a salad dressing, it's delicious. And so, you know, there is getting people to really think about different ways to use the product and showing them how to do it, um, and then actually go partnering with restaurants that are actually doing it, and so they get to try it. And um, I think all all that hopefully um shows the consumer that like there is opportunity to do it, you know, use the product more broadly. And that all that seeding work, you know, it takes time, it's effort. It's like all you know, we we partner with influencers, we we do the work ourselves. You know, I think a great example of how that works is like the the good culture team did an incredible job of that with cottage cheese, where it's like you saw the seeding that happened over years and years and years, and all of a sudden there was like this sort of like what felt like just an explosion, but it was really the product of a lot of hard work that had been done over years to like get people to think about using that product differently. And so um Jesse and his team at Good Culture definitely are like for us um real like we really inspirational in terms of like how we that that work takes time, but it will pay off. And so, yeah, we we we we put in that hard work of like how do you get free the hummus and get people to think about using the product differently.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:49

I love free the hummus. Yeah, that's right. Keep up the free the hummus work, man. I we're we're kind of uh we're kind of coming towards into the home stretch here, but I want to pivot away from hummus just for a second, because I think you're uh you're kind of aside from being a chef, aside from being a dad, aside from being a uh CEO, you're also kind of a outdoors guy, kind of a fitness guy. Is that right? I think you're I think I read that your wife's a pretty avid runner. What what do you do when you're not when you're not hummusing it up? Like what what are you gonna do? If the weather's nice this weekend, what are you gonna go do?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:23

Spring is spring is here in on the east coast, so that's good. But yeah, I mean I we we my wife is an avid runner. I I I can barely keep up, but I um yeah, love getting outdoors, hiking, cooking outside on fire, those two things I'd say, you know, drinking some good wine, you know, all those things, having fun, uh gathering with friends, you know, uh all those things are um I try to make sure I carve space for. And it's a lot of time, obviously, both building the business and raising the kids, but like making sure that there's that quality time to take care of myself and stay relatively fit as a near 40 year old, but also um, you know, have some fun along the way. It's it's key. And Run and I You know, we preach that to our team and we make sure we try to like l lead by example, actually live that life, which is like, you know, sometimes you gotta you gotta peel off early and go have some fun and that's um and that's fine. So, you know, it's that certainly it um it's been a you know it's a hard, hard journey building these things, but you gotta make sure you have your your your your share of fun along the way.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:20

Yeah, take care of yourself along the way because it is a marathon to to do it right. Um I know we all just we all just saw uh we all just saw some major acquisition news that happened in like three years in our industry, but like that's not normal, right? And the and it the team behind those things is often like you got a ton of experience, you get a ton of funding. But for most of us, it is a marathon. You gotta keep yourself in in shape, physical shape, mental shape, emotional shape. Uh, I'm gonna let you peel off uh a little early and have some fun uh from here. But first of all, tell tell the people where they can find Little Sesame and where they can find Nick Wiseman.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:02

Thank you, George. It was it was a pleasure chatting. Um you can find Little Sesame Whole Foods Sprouts, um, Target now, Wegmans on the East Coast, a lot of indies and secondaries. You know, we're in a lot of like the co-ops across the country. Um so definitely like a lot of small and independent stores. We're we're super proud to be on on those shelves as well. And uh then some more big announcements coming soon. So some definitely some oh stay tuned. Some reaching coming your way in 2026.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:27

You can also pop over to eatlilsesame.com and you guys are on Instagram at LittleSesame. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:33

At eatlittle sesame as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:35

At eatlittle sesame on Instagram. So follow them. You can follow uh Nick over on LinkedIn. I'll drop all these links in the episode description. Uh also thanks for joining us for this conversation on Gross to Net. You can uh like, subscribe to the podcast, these come out every Monday. So please keep it locked here and uh give us like, I don't know, I think five stars is the most, but see if you can give us seven or seven and a half stars. Uh thank you very much. Uh, look forward to talking to you guys later. Uh love you talk to you soon. Bye.