RRS2E11 - Kettle & Fire - Episode Audio.mp3 | Accurately transcribe audio and video files with Sonix

RRS2E11 - Kettle & Fire - Episode Audio.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

RRS2E11 - Kettle & Fire - Episode Audio.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Jack:
It's like easy to look at all these success stories on Shopify and like CPG and think like, "Man, these guys really have their shit together. They're firing on all cylinders. I need to be like them." But like every company has the problems. Every company has challenges. And I think at the end of the day, you know, being resilient, being able to really hustle and get stuff done, that's pretty universal.

Kristen:
Retail owners have resilience in their DNA, and we're here to tell that story. From real life experience of struggle and break through to the insights your business needs now, this is Resilient Retail. I'm Kristen LaFrance. When we feel our best, we can do amazing things as human beings. For Kettle & Fire, the ultimate wellness routine often starts with a few sips of their delicious and nurturing bone broth. Now a dietary staple for many individuals, Kettle & Fire's products are available nationwide at stores like Sprouts and Whole Foods. Likely you've seen them on your local shelves, but becoming a household name was no accident. Kettle & Fire entered the wholesale market, running on all four cylinders. To grow their retail presence they ran innovative digital campaigns, coupled with good old fashioned phone calling and stamp licking. Rather than crossing their fingers and hoping for a wholesale success they took an active, creative approach by contacting local wellness practitioners in the communities they wanted to target with Whole Foods. Today, the brand's marketing strategy is elaborate and sophisticated, selling online, in hundreds of stores, and through their own subscriptions. But this powerful approach was built from the ground up by allowing their customers to inform every step of the way. Jack Meredith was employee number one at Kettle and Fire, and is now the company's VP of Marketing. He chatted with me about exactly how the brand went from zero to eight figures in revenue, despite the fact that the founding team had little to no retail experience. This includes advice like letting your digital experiments inform your physical retail decisions, perfecting your creative messaging, using customer feedback loops, and never, ever assuming that you've mastered your market. If you're looking to enhance your own growth playbook, you're in luck. Jack is also a consultant for DTC Brands and is in the process of rolling out his own incredible consulting service. You can go visit DTCPlaybooks.com to learn more and kick your brand's growth into high gear with Jack. Get ready for some damn good wholesale, retail, and marketing advice because we're about to dive right in. This is Resilient Retail. Our first topic is going to be really centered around wholesale retail as Kettle & Fire has done some incredible work in this arena. Before we really, really get into it, I think this is something we all know what it is, but maybe like don't really know what it all entails. Can you explain what actually wholesale retail means and what it is?

Jack:
Yeah, I'll do my best. So with wholesale retail, basically what you're doing is you're working with a retail partner, usually physical distribution to where you sell your products to them and then they sell to their consumers. It's like the most basic explanation I can give.

Kristen:
Yep, I think that's perfect. Just to make sure it's out of the way. We got it. We know what we're talking about. Now Kettle & Fire has a very elaborate kind of wholesale strategy. You guys are in multiple stores, multiple locations, also online. You have a subscription online. You've really harnessed this omnichannel holistic commerce that we are seeing is kind of the biggest, most important thing to be doing in 2021 and beyond. Can you kind of walk us through some of that wholesale strategy that you guys are working on?

Jack:
Yeah. So I guess to start, like when we were founded, the founding team, we we didn't really have any wholesale experience or retail experience. We were mostly digital focused online marketers. So at the beginning we actually had no retail presence at all because we didn't really know anyone in the industry. We didn't know how to tackle it. So we initially grew the brand through eCommerce, through our direct to consumer business. And once we started gaining more customers and really creating this brand footprint, we felt like about a year and a half into it, we were ready to jump into retail and wholesale. And from there we essentially just tried to figure out as we kind of went through it. So we brought on a consultant that had experience working with different brokers and distributors and that went OK. But we ultimately figured out that we needed someone full time to really manage everything. So we brought on our first sales hire who is now our VP of Sales. And that was a huge decision for us. It was a good decision because it allowed us to scale much faster, whereas if we tried to do it by ourselves, it would have been just a complete mess.

Kristen:
Yeah. And how many stores, do you know off the top of your head, how many stores you guys are in now?

Jack:
Oh, man, I should know this. Thousands, though. So we're in Whole Foods, Publix, Sprouts, and a bunch of like Nashville chains. We're also some smaller box stores as well. So that's my answer. A lot.

Kristen:
A lot. Yes. And I know that there are a lot of creators, online brands, and retailers with their own private labels listening to this show. And I've heard from a lot of them that, you know, wholesale seems like it might be an opportunity coming up at some point, but they're not quite sure. Can you kind of talk to that concern? Like, why is wholesale retail a good move? When is it a good move? How do you know if it is a good move? And really, what are the real advantages and disadvantages of going through this sales channel?

Jack:
Yeah, so I think what it comes down to is that you have distribution and scale through wholesalers and retail partners, like in our category we make bone broth and soups. And while we would love to continue to scale up our direct to consumer business, and we're doing so, we know that we're going to be missing out a big piece of the pie if we don't start getting into retail stores. But at the same time, you don't want to go into too prematurely because let's say Whole Foods wants to take you in and test you in a couple of the regions. If you do that, but you don't really have your shit together, it can really get sideways just because if you don't test well in these big box stores, then that's kind of like your one shot and you get discontinued and it'll be much harder challenging to carve that path into retail. So I think you have to be ready for it. And I think the way we approached it made a lot of sense. And if I had to do it all over again, I think we'd take the same route to where we built up our business online. We had a loyal customer base. We had all of our supply chain operation stuff figured out to where we just felt like we were ready. And also, I felt like once we started having those conversations, we had a lot of leverage going into it because retailers already knew about the brand. They knew what we were doing. Whereas if you're like just a brand new brand diving into this, you don't really have much leverage because you're trying to just do everything you can to get sold in these stores. And so I think creating that hype and that demand is a smart strategic move for sure.

Kristen:
Yeah, I think you're going to hear this throughout the whole season, too. It's this thread that I'm already kind of pulling on and I've only done two interviews so far. And it is this idea of, you know, there's so many opportunities in what we're calling omnichannel. Like you can sell from a Shopify store, you can sell wholesale, you could own your own store and sell there. You can sell on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook. Like it just becomes this place where it's like almost overwhelming. And I love what you said because I think this is the heart of how we simplify all of this, which is usually when you have a base of customers that really love your product and can build hype for you and can almost stand as you know, I can follow their lead on what they want, what channels they want to be engaging in, and also then use them to give some credit when I go into these conversations... I think a lot of what we're going to hear this year is like really coming into the communities to your customers and starting with them again to build up into these bigger, bigger kind of things that you do, which does kind of drive me right into one of my favorite stories that that you have told me about Kettle & Fire getting into Whole Foods and how you guys kind of had this scrappy, creative way that you made sure that when you had that test, it went really well, and it was symbiotic for both you and Whole Foods and was something that I remember when you were telling me I was like, "This is a little secret hack that you've done here." Are you free to tell that story today?

Jack:
Totally. Yeah, I would love to. So, yeah, when we originally got approached by Whole Foods, we were approached in like a very unique way. So typically you have like a sales team and you have your brokers that go in and negotiate and convince the buyers to bring you in. Whereas for us, like really randomly one of their buyers saw us on Instagram and that's what kicked off the conversation, which was nice because it showed that they were already interested.

Kristen:
I think also you just showed the importance of being on multiple channels and making sure that your brand is spread across these places because discovery can happen in so many different ways for so many different opportunities that you don't know could be there. Sorry I interrupted you. Most anti podcast host thing ever. {laughter}

Jack:
{laughter} One hundred percent. So yeah, once we kind of figured out what our approach was in the timelines, what Whole Foods typically does is they'll test you in a couple of regions. And this is like standard for most big box retailers because they want to see like, can you hit their targets in terms of like the sales velocity per week? And then from there they make a decision if they're going to bring you into more stores or bring you nationwide. So that was like a very important inflection point for us because we needed to prove to Whole Foods that we belong down the aisle next to all the other brands there. So I guess like the typical way to approach it is to like do a lot of in-store demos, a lot of coupons. Very traditional marketing tactics. Displays. But at the time, it's not like we were flush with a bunch of cash and we didn't have like a massive budget. So we had to get a little more scrappy with it. So one thing that we did that I think helped in the early stages, and this definitely doesn't scale at least the way that we approached it, was we knew that based on the data that we had for our customers online, that a lot of folks that were using our products, they had heard about us through a recommendation via like their doctor or their nutritionist who is like, "Hey, you have this problem, you should try bone broth." And so we thought about that a little bit. And we're like, OK, I wonder if we could approach these different nutritionists and like holistic doctors in these regions and basically say, like, "Hey, we're Kettle & Fire. You're probably likely already recommending bone right to your patients. But you should recommend dollars because of X, Y, Z. Can we send you some samples and send you some paper coupons to hand out?" So what we did was we basically looked at all the regions that we were in, and we did a lot of data digging and found all these contacts for these different like functional medicine centers and doctor's offices. And we just smiled and dialed essentially, but mostly through like email outreach. And that, I think, was actually something that really helped us in the beginning stages, because I think, while it was very hard to track if it was working because it was kind of like an offline initiative, I think what we were able to see when we were doing these big pushes and sending all these coupons out is that in these specific stores, in these regions, we were seeing like a little uptick in like our sales velocity. And so that was like a hack that we did. It didn't scale just because my approach to it was literally manually licking envelopes, stuffing coupons, and then, like, dropping them in like UPS. So there's probably a better way to do it. But I think as a kind of a fun way that allowed us to think about how to approach retail differently than what conventional wisdom said to do.

Kristen:
Yeah. I love that story for so many reasons, and I can already tell I'm going to lose my train of thought halfway through this response. So bear with me. One of the things I love about it is it's so relatable to, you know, an indie store owner who has to go to their store, unlock the doors, do all these extra things by themselves, and then to go above and beyond past that is really like you're asking them to do a second job. And yet those are the companies. Those are the boutiques that do that extra stuff that go the extra mile that. You know, there's three or five women owned businesses in Colorado Springs right now doing donation collection for female hygiene products that they're going to send to the homeless shelter when it's all done. And it's like they didn't have to do that. They have enough to do. But it's that extra step to just make sure things go well, make sure we're doing well. And that I feel so parallel in the story of you could have just kind of like cross your fingers and hoped that the community around these stores saw the products, converted on the products. Instead, you went, "OK, let's find a way to actually tap into this community and get them to walk into Whole Foods purposely to go get my product because they have a coupon on hand." Totally changes the entire situation. And I think that's just, like that's resilience, right? It's that whatever parameters you're playing in leveling up just a little bit, giving you a leg up in this game is, I think, really cool. And you mentioned something that I want to get into next, which is offline/online, omnichannel stuff. It's really, really difficult to advertise in retail, especially in wholesale retail, and it's really difficult to have attribution across all these different channels. You know, I know that you guys are super data driven, but traditional marketing things like end caps, displays, and sampling's can be nearly hard to track at all. How have you you know, how have you solved this problem? Have you guys done any creative advertising through your wholesale platforms?

Jack:
Yeah. So I think like about two years ago, we were kind of looking at our what our strategy was going to be from a marketing standpoint. And like we were doing all the traditional stuff, like you said, displays and end caps. We still do that today. But what we were wanting to figure out was like, how can we leverage our, like, online and digital expertise and all our performance marketing jobs and augment it to accomplishing the same thing in retail? And so we kind of went on like a big research dive into, like just figuring out like what the options were. And we kind of came out of that with some some interesting channels that we could potentially test in. So at that time, Instacart was just starting to roll out like their beta version of like their advertising platform. And I think we were like one of the first brands to do that. And what we found was like working with these different apps and online, like websites that were attracting folks to order, like a meal delivery, grocery delivery, all that, there's a lot of similarities to what we were doing from a performance market standpoint on DTC. Like running Facebook ads. Paid search. And so that was like a big, big win for us because like I said, it was easy for us to just take all of our knowledge and expertise and apply it to these channels. And also, it was we had a lot of first mover's advantage because, like I said, Instacart is still like a beta program. We got in like Kroger and a couple other ones as well. And it was just, it made things a lot easier, a lot easier, because we could not only jump right in and start paying for ads and running campaigns, but we also had the attribution fees, which we hadn't had in the past, which I think was critical. Because with retail, when you're doing all these marketing activations in your efforts, it's much harder to really drill down into what's working and what's not because it's offline. But these apps and these levers that we we were pulling allowed us to really connect the dots and make decisions based on the performance that we were seeing in real time. So I think that was incredibly helpful to getting us to where we are.

Kristen:
Oh hey you. Thanks for taking this quick little popcorn break with me. Look, I don't know about you, but I am excited to be back for another season. I feel like it's been too long. And if you haven't caught up on our preseason episodes, go take a scroll down so you know what to expect from the rest of Season 2. Spoiler alert. It's a doozy. I wanted to take today's break to make sure you know about our Resilient Retail newsletter, which is brand new to Season 2. Every Friday, we will be sending out key insights from our weekly interviews, most pressing industry news and trends, some quick action advice I've gotten from our experts, probably some dog pictures, definitely some awkward jokes, maybe some fun merch, and a lot more. So make sure to head to Shopify.com/Resilient, sign up for a newsletter and become an official Resilient Insider. Again, that is Shopify.com/Resilient. Now back to the fun. Yeah, I find it so interesting and creative, and this is why I love Kettle & Fire so much as you guys show this consistent ability to just adapt, react and adapt to the times and find ways to do things differently, like, OK, Instacart became much bigger in the last year and people started actually using it. And so it was like, oh hey, we see this opportunity. Like we have a place among this new shopping behavior that we can still fit our brand in. I think that's I mean, that's like the definition of resiliency right there is just being able to consistently keep changing and iterating on things like that. And it's funny because I have this note down from our first conversation that we had. Literally just in quotes I wrote "virtual shopping aisles," and I've been spending all morning trying to figure out like what we are talking about, where we were going with this topic. And I think I just realized it, where it's like if you're trying to imagine what does advertising look like on, say, like an Instacart or a coupon app, it is a lot like you are walking through the aisles of a grocery store, but then imagine, like we have on the Internet, you have a pop up that says like, oh, you're out of milk. You should probably go get it. It's right over here. Or Hey, I noticed brow broth... Bro Broth... Bone broth. Oh, that's going to be the first best one of the season.

Jack:
Bro broth.

Kristen:
Bro broth. Or, you know, pops up digitally next to you and then you can buy it or you can add it to your cart. It's like this you start to get this understanding of how the two digital and physical worlds are melding, whereas like, you know, maybe one day we're actually walking down a store and we see like a digital pop up come out. And that might happen. But right now, this is kind of that in-between. I just think it was such a creative way to get around the problem of not really having tracking, not knowing how those displays are doing and actually driving purchases versus hoping for a passive interaction with somebody in the store.

Jack:
Totally, yeah. It's like to your point, it's kind of like a virtual end cap or display, right? But you get to see exactly how many purchases are driving from it. And like, I mean, we can see, like, if a display earning cap program is working at like a high level. Like when we do those, you can see that spike in sales per week. But I think the nice thing about these platforms is that we can just lever up and down and turn our knobs in real time based on what we're seeing. And whereas with some of these offline initiatives, you kind of have to pay everything up front and then it's just a longer time horizon. And so it doesn't allow us to move as quickly and adapt.

Kristen:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that makes so much sense of like you put up an end cap, and I've seen one of your end caps in Sprouts, and there's so much that goes into it. The design, the packaging, how you want the products to sit. Where in the store can you get that end cap? Where's the best placement? But once it's there, it's there. And like there's not much iteration within its existence. Maybe you could get another end cap next month, and you change the design, you change the presentation. But that is a very long time to be waiting for information. And so being able to almost have that still going on, but also testing at a much quicker pace over an Instacart, being able to say, all right, today maybe our end cap looks blue and it says this, but tomorrow I could have it say this and be orange. And you're getting way more feedback quicker, which then like now my brain is just it's coming full circle to me. Like now all that information that you're getting from the Instacart can then go and impact what you guys do with your next physical end cap, because it's you know, you're learning from the two different iterations.

Jack:
Completely. Yeah. Yeah. And we've done that a lot. Where will you know whether it's through our, like, paid ad channels for DTC or these other platforms. A lot of the messaging and creative testing that we do will take the results from that and kind of apply them to these offline creatives that we have to build. So one thing that comes to mind was like we were doing like a I think like a shelf talker, which is like a little thing that sticks out on the shelf and says, like, "Hey, buy Kettle & Fire." You see them when you're walking down the aisles. And this is like a big investment for us at the time. And we had to get it right. But like you said, you can't like A/B test shelf talker because it's like a physical item. So what we did is like we basically did like a smoke test through our Facebook ads to where we have like a bunch of different headlines that we were thinking about using, different copy variations, imagery, and we ran that for a week to a broad audience that we knew was more than likely like a category buyer. And from the it allowed us to understand, like, OK, we should go with this headline, this piece of copy, this visual, to where we weren't, like, flying blind as we were jumping into that type of stuff.

Kristen:
Yeah. Now I'm just imagining like an A/B test for the guy who speaks off the shelf, like, could you load him with like today we're going to try to insult everybody who walks by, and tomorrow we're going to send out a joke. And the third day, why don't we try like a very lovingly welcome. One day maybe he's sad, and he just becomes his own little character that we get to mess around with.

Jack:
Like a little Costco ladies trade out their styles of approaching and selling people. Yeah, one day that will happen. But for now, it's just kind of the approach that we took. It works though.

Kristen:
Yes. And I love that you brought that up because it kind of brings us to the last thing I want to talk about, which is something that I know indie brand owners are dealing with right now for probably the first time ever, and especially at this kind of cadence is data and making data based decisions. If you think about a lot of our audience members are brick and mortar first. And just in the last year, they've shifted to online. They've had to go through like that eCommerce whirlwind. And so really, they have so much data now that a lot of them, I don't think, know what to do with it or what it even means. And they hear all these podcasts saying, like, "Data is king," and "That's the power of eCommerce is you have data," like I've said these things. Let me throw a thousand acronyms at you and tell you why this will change your business. But those numbers can actually just end up being really paralyzing when you don't actually have any guidance on what to do with them or how you can make any action based on a group of numbers. So I know that you guys partnered with a data analytics team to get some really valuable information on your market. Could you kind of walk us through that story of getting the data, analyzing the data, what you learned, and then ultimately how you turned just like something that feels so amorphous, like data, into actual actions that we can see on the Kettle & Fire brand?

Jack:
Totally. Yeah. So we nerd out of all this stuff, and I think we've always tried to have this feedback loop going with our direct to consumer base to where we were surveying them, jumping on calls, and doing customer interviews. And so we had this pretty good picture of who our online consumer was, why they're buying demographics and all that. But where we saw a gap was that we didn't really know what the category buyer was and what drove them to purchase and really drove them to decide what brand to buy on the shelf because we only had our Shopify customer base.

Kristen:
Yeah.

Jack:
So we needed that insight. So what we did was we partnered with a group that ran like an attitude and usage study for us, and what that means is basically they have all these data panels to where they will survey buyers in your category, and they'll collect all the feedback, set up all the questions and everything, and then they'll send you a deck and go over it with you. And what that deck shows is what's going on within your category, not only from a competitive standpoint, but also what's driving these customers to purchase. What are like the benefits or the call outs that we should consider on our packaging? Because we might think, like, OK, slow simmer times is incredibly important because it means we make better bone broth. But does the consumer think that? And we use all the stuff directionally because I think you got to just take it with a grain of salt. Not everyone is going to tell you, like what they actually do, they might predict what they want to do. But it's really good directionally because it just provides more clarity on where we should be focusing our efforts from a marketing standpoint, whether that's from a channel distribution perspective, where are they going to find brands? And also just understanding how do we match up to our competitors? Because I think if you were to ask me three years ago where I saw the bone broth category and Kettle & Fire, I would have made the very wrong statement that we're number one. We've hit the ceiling.

Kristen:
Yeah.

Jack:
We're the best.

Kristen:
Yeah.

Jack:
But when you have these data panels and you're able to access this type of information, for us, it really allows us to see, like, OK, we think we're hot shit. But there's still all this white space opportunity out there that we wouldn't have been aware of if we really didn't sink our teeth into it. And so I think that it's just helpful for just really setting the strategy and figuring out where you're going to go directionally from marketing standpoint.

Kristen:
Yeah. Do you remember any specific kind of learnings or things that came out of that that surprised you or verified something that then you went and changed in the marketing, in the branding? Was there any piece of that that was like, oh, OK, we've been saying, you know, these words, but our customers actually want us to say these words. Let's make sure it's changed on the packaging. Was there anything that came out of it that was very kind of tactical?

Jack:
Oh, totally. So like I mentioned, the benefits and the call outs, that's always incredibly helpful because if you think like the front of our packaging, it's like a sixteen ounce box. We don't have much real estate. So you only can choose like a couple of things there before it gets way too crowded. So I think that really helped influence our decision making. And we've used that data to tweak our packaging and what call outs we made. But also the other thing that we did last year was within one of these studies, we also did a product concept test for our cooking broth that we launched. And what this set up did is it allowed us to ask these category buyers, like, "Is this something that you'd be interested in?" "What are your expectations from a pricing standpoint?" "What does this product need to have to make you consider it on the shelf?" And that was incredibly helpful because it kind of confirmed our assumptions at the time that this was a big growth category for us to go into. And it allowed us to really kind of dial in everything from an ingredient standpoint, taste, flavor, what folks were expecting. And even just as importantly, what needs to be the positioning and the messaging for this product? Because at the time we were again using like our assumptions, but we wanted to mirror what the consumers were looking for. So that was incredibly helpful as well.

Kristen:
Yeah. I love it because it... What I'm hoping the listeners are really getting out of this is no matter what scale business you are, whether you are Kettle & Fire with products in thousands of stores and online and of robust, loyal fan community of subscribers, or you are someone who is owning a small boutique in Memphis, Tennessee, the strategies right now that we're seeing... And you're going to hear me talk a lot about this idea of retail rebuilding right now and resilience happening in action. And we're getting to these tactics. Like you're hearing these tactics from Jack on do this study, find this information, change this. Or get in wholesale and then create a creative way to make sure your launch succeeds. Like we are talking about the tactics. But the heart of all these tactics is no matter what size business you are, if you go inwards first and you make sure, OK, what do the consumers actually want? What do our customers want? You can even ask your customers, "Should we go into wholesale?" "Should we do this?" "Should I be selling it online?" If you start from that data point of your own customers, it makes all these tactics a lot easier because you're not kind of just like shooting in the dark. Like you said, Jack, it's a little more informed and it should kind of calm some of that anxiety.

Jack:
Oh, completely. Yeah. Like, I think it's it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you know everything about your industry in the space that you're in. Like, I think we all want to be like the Steve Jobs of consumer goods and be able to predict everything. And like, I do think there's something to that. You want to be on the cutting edge of innovation and understanding truly what's going to be happening a year or two years from now. But at the same time, having that feedback loop just makes things like ten times easier. When we launched our keto soups two years ago, a lot of the positioning of messaging was built from what our customers were saying. So we asked folks like "If you could wave a magic wand, what would make your life 10 times easier on keto?" And like the common thing they kept on coming up was like, "I'm just so sick of eating the same foods over and over again. And a lot of the stuff just doesn't taste good. It doesn't make me feel good. I know physically I feel good. But this is just boring." So we wouldn't have identified that if we didn't have that loop going. So I think it's always incredibly helpful to always be very close to the customers and hearing what they say and what they want.

Kristen:
Yeah, and that is the heart of really great retail at any stage, whether you are a single store owner or you are a billion dollar brand in Target and everything, it's the same thing I'm hearing from every single guest I talk to is it always comes down to if you make the decisions from the point of your customer, and you keep them in the loop, and you keep that feedback coming, a lot of the unknown becomes a little less scary because at least you're building for the people that are already buying your product. And so you know you're at least headed in the right way.

Jack:
Completely.

Kristen:
So we've got two questions left for you, Jack. One is... And I am excited. I feel like you're going to have some crazy ideas for me here. What is your just craziest prediction for retail in 2021? Like, maybe it's not even just 2021, but you know, the next couple of years who's going to do something wild and what will that look like?

Jack:
Yeah, it's a great question. I think you're kind of starting to see like this convergence between, like retail, direct to consumer, meal kits, ghost kitchens... I just feel like those are all starting to like mesh together, whereas right now they're fairly separate still, but you're starting to see that connection become stronger with the online platforms and Instacart and all that. But I wonder if at some point Amazon, since they own Whole Foods, is going to figure out, like, how to offer a subscription product in the retail aisle to where you can go to your Instacart app and buy bone broth but get it delivered on a monthly standpoint. Like you think about it, you know, the Whole Foods down the street is much closer to me than like our distribution center. So from a shipping and delivering standpoint, I mean, that's going to be much quicker. So I think there's some interesting stuff there. And like the ghost kitchen space is really intriguing to me. I know it's not like wholesale retail, but it just seems like there's a lot of cool stuff going on there. And I was following, like MrBeast, the YouTube guys when they launched all those burger chains overnight.

Kristen:
Yeah, that was crazy.

Jack:
Yeah, it was nuts.

Speaker2:
Ok, super quick interjection. Jack just mentioned MrBeast burgers and the insanity around that story. For anyone who doesn't know that story, I thought I'd give you just a little bit of context before we continue. So MrBeast Burger is a virtual ghost kitchen concept tied to YouTube star Jimmy Donaldson. In December of 2020, the brand launched in about 300 locations overnight. MrBeast did this by leveraging existing restaurants and delivery options to scale so quickly across 35 states, and his mass following and loyal audience allowed the brand to do it with such bravado, going viral for weeks. And we're still talking about it. In a nutshell, it's a crazy retail story birthed from the pandemic, if you're interested. OK, back to Jack.

Jack:
So it's like is it going to only get easier to where like maybe Kettle & Fire can have like a bunch of ghost kitchens, which could be not only great for awareness, but maybe also drive sales? Yes, I think those are like my two things that I know if it's going to happen in 2021, but it seems like we're headed down that path.

Kristen:
That was a great answer, as I knew you would have one. And now I'm going to spend the rest of my day just investigating all the stuff and going down a rabbit hole in my brain because that's what I do. And the last question for you, which we ask everybody, we asked everybody in Season 1, and it is kind of the heart of the show. What does resilience mean to you?

Jack:
Yeah, I think it means to be a cockroach. Like it's just really hard to kill you off and have you closed down the business and give up. If I was to look back at our timeline at Kettle & Fire, there's a lot of different points in the business to where we could have just given up or it was just a challenge after challenge after challenge. And we didn't really have a good framework to figure out a solution at the time. But I think because we were cockroaches, and we were resilient, we just continued to push through that resistance and figure shit out. And so, yeah, that's how I would define it. Be a cockroach.

Kristen:
I love that. Some people, you know, it's really easy to start to get very, like, overly eloquent... Eloquent... Two mess ups in one episode. Jack, welcome to the full Kristen experience today. {laughter}

Jack:
It's real. It's raw. I love it.

Kristen:
It's real. It's raw. It's great. Yeah. Often times people get a little eloquent with that definition. And I love that there is this just this grimy, dirty side of resilience of like I just will not give up. You cannot kill this dream. You cannot make me stop. And I will likely, you know, run out from under your bed in the middle of the night to scare you as well, which is what cockroaches did to me when I was growing up.

Jack:
Right? I think it's like easy to look at all these success stories on Shopify and CPG and think like, "Man, these guys really have their shit together. They're firing on all cylinders. I need to be like them." But like every company has their problems. Every company has their challenges. And I think at the end of the day, being resilient, being able to really hustle and get stuff done, that's pretty, I think universal. It's not going to be a cakewalk. And so, yeah, I think it's an important trip to have, especially in the early stages.

Kristen:
Awesome. Jack, I said two more questions, but now I have one more. If somebody was interested in trying Kettle & Fire, what would be the product of choice that you would say, "Go start with this?"

Jack:
Well, that's a great question. So personally, I really like the Chipotle Beef Bone Broth. It's got a little spice to it, a little kick. If you're in the keto diet and you're all about that, our line of keto soups are really delicious. We have a broccoli cheddar, mushroom bisque. But I think the thing is, like, we have just so many flavors. So give one a shot, go to the website, check things out, see what you like. I think you'll love it.

Kristen:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here today, Jack. This was wonderful.

Jack:
Thank you. It was fun.

Kristen:
Resilient Retail is a Shopify podcast hosted by me, Kristen LaFrance. Find more episodes and our newsletter at Shopify.com/Resilient. And be sure to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, guys.

Sonix is the world’s most advanced automated transcription, translation, and subtitling platform. Fast, accurate, and affordable.

Automatically convert your mp3 files to text (txt file), Microsoft Word (docx file), and SubRip Subtitle (srt file) in minutes.

Sonix has many features that you'd love including advanced search, collaboration tools, generate automated summaries powered by AI, automated subtitles, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.