November 27, 2023 • 42 mins
There is an alarming trend taking place in South America : the steady rise in obesity rates. Despite all the ads and talk about eating healthy, the truth is that getting access to nutritious foods is still a struggle.
In response to this growing health crisis, The Wild Foods has emerged as a game-changer. Our guest today is Patrick Hardy, the Chief Operating Officer of Wild Foods, is at the forefront of this revolution. Hailing from Chile, WildFoods is a consumer packaged goods company committed to disrupting the entire food and beverage industry by producing healthy and sustainable food products.
Patrick takes us through Wild Foods' remarkable journey, sharing the CPG company's strategies that include:
- Focus not just on Healthy products but one that is easily accessible, delicious, and appealing to consumers
- Leveraging unique digital marketing and bold ad campaigns, to set itself apart in the competitive food industry
- Growth to new markets like Mexico by adapting to local tastes and regulations.
Join us on the Things Have Changed Podcast to hear from Patrick Hardy and find out how Wild Foods is making healthy eating fun and doable, turning things around in a world full of processed food, and setting new standards for what's on our plates.
Helpful links:
- Patrick Hardy, COO The Wild Foods
- The Wild Foods Website
- US website — https://thewildprotein.com/
- Supermarkets pushing junk food
- Obesity in South America
About Wild Foods:
Wild Foods is a healthy food company focused on developing tech-enabled products with the aim of disrupting the Food & Beverages (F&B) industry in Latin America. They have developed a portfolio of +200 SKUs that has allowed them to capture +30% of the market share in Chile in the bars category, on-top of multinational incumbents such as Kellogs, Pepsico, Nutresa, among others. They have a business model based on innovation in product development, digital brand building, digital marketing, technology and talent acquisition. Wild Foods has built a strong, profitable, high-growth business that has experienced 2-3x yoy growth for the past five years with consistently positive EBITDA. Wild Foods continues with its growth and international expansion plans with presence in Chile, Mexico, USA, Colombia and Peru.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jed Tabernero (00:05):
Imagine this familiar scene.
You're wandering through thesupermarket.
Alice bombarded by anoverwhelming array of choices.
From whack-a-mole.
To soda.
To chips, making the rightchoice seems like a difficult
task.
This trend has played a pivotalrole in an alarming issue facing
(00:28):
the America's today.
The steady rise in obesityrates.
Despite the push for healthierdiets access to nutritious
foods, still lags behind theavailability of less healthy
options.
But in response to this growinghealth crisis.
Wild foods emerges as agame-changer.
Patrick Hardy (00:49):
Right now in Teale, we're probably one of the
hottest food and beveragesstartups in, in the country
every single year since ourfounding triple digit growth
year in year with positiveebitda, which makes us super
proud.
Jed Tabernero (01:01):
Our guest today, Patrick Hardy.
The chief operating officer ofwild foods is at the forefront
of this revolution.
Patrick Hardy (01:08):
we're not only going to produce protein bars,
we're also going to make sure.
That they're incredibly healthy.
Jed Tabernero (01:14):
Hailing from Chile.
The land of the Patagonia.
Wild foods is a consumerpackaged goods company,
committed to disrupting theentire food and beverage
industry.
We're basically a hypergrossing, fast growing nutrition
company from Latin America,specifically from Chile.
With a massive portfolio of over200 skews and a significant
(01:35):
presence in key markets, wildfoods is not just a company.
It's a movement.
Reshaping the way we eat andthink about food.
Patrick Hardy (01:46):
If you look at our ads online, they're just
completely different.
You'll see our co founder, likeour founder, Piet Paolo with a
chainsaw ripping through one ofthe one of the labels
Jed Tabernero (01:56):
join us on things have changed podcast.
As we unraveled Patrick'sjourney will the wild foods.
And the future of healthy eatingin a world, dominated by
processed foods.
Shikher Bhandary (02:44):
Navigating the food and beverage retail
industry isn't easy, right?
So much competition.
Just go to supermarkets.
Every aisle has like a hundredproducts.
You don't know which is theright guacamole to like pick.
Like you just don't know whichsoda, which.
Chips, nothing.
Changes are happening all thetime, especially with the
(03:06):
internet and the rise of theonline shop or e commerce D2C
brands are just mushroomingeverywhere.
But in all of this, there is areally interesting trend, kind
of concerning.
Now Jed and I were reading somematerial from the UN actually.
In supermarkets, there seems tobe a trend of promoting junk
(03:27):
food more than they do healthyfood or healthy alternatives.
And so what's this caused is,this is caused It being a lot
easier for, um, the everydayconsumer to pick up the more,
the less healthy version of thefood that they can get many of
us, even our friend Jed O'Heircan vouch for the fact that junk
(03:50):
foods are quite addictive.
I mentioned this on the podcastmany times, we used to, we used
to be roommates together inPhoenix and literally every
single day I used to walk in atthis, there was only one
constant thing, curing Jed.
Crunch on chips every singleday, every single hour of the
day.
Right.
Cause he used to work from home.
He used to be working loudmusic, but I could still hear
(04:13):
the crunching.
So, If I was Superman, mykryptonite would be chips.
yeah, so we have all seen thisneed for better transparency.
Within the ingredients that weconsume in the foods that we
like, right?
There's a big push for likehealthy sustainable diets and
(04:36):
this is where the wild foodscomes in and our guest today
Patrick Hardy Patrick is thechief operating officer of the
wild foods a consumer packagedgoods company cpg company
hailing And this is where welove what we do, hailing from
Chile.
The company hails from Chile,growing incredibly.
(04:56):
And one that stands at, theforefront of producing healthy
and sustainable food products,disrupting the whole food and
beverage industry in Chile andnow in other parts of Latin
America.
So Patrick, it's an absolutedelight to have you on THC.
Patrick Hardy (05:13):
Thanks for having me here.
And I think that was a greatintroduction.
I couldn't agree more with whatyou mentioned on, on the
abundance of just junk food onsupermarket aisles.
And I think that is, that is thebiggest call of action at the
wild foods, costing, an impactin the food and beverages
industry and changing whataisles actually look like.
Um, so sure.
(05:34):
I mean, as a, as a quick intro,I know there's tons of listeners
that probably don't know aboutthe wild foods and.
Jed Tabernero (05:39):
We're basically a hyper grossing, fast growing
nutrition company from LatinAmerica, specifically from
Chile.
Patrick Hardy (05:46):
And we're dedicated to developing and
marketing innovative, healthy,and tasty products.
Specifically for consumers thatare concerned, consumers that
are related to the health andwellness space.
And in a time frame of aroundfive years, since the company
was formally founded.
We've built a massive portfolio.
(06:06):
We've got over 200 SKUs, um, andalso a regional footprint.
We're present in Chile.
Which is our first market wherewe've reached over 35 percent
market share in a cereal barcategory.
We're now also present inMexico, which is a local
operation where we, all of ouroperation there is end to end
from manufacturing all the wayto distribution.
(06:28):
We're also present in Peru, inthe U.
S.
Um, and very shortly we're gonnabe in Columbia as well.
Right now in Teale, we'reprobably one of the hottest food
and beverages startup startupsin, in, in the country every
single year since our foundingtriple digit growth year in year
with positive ebitda, whichmakes us super proud.
Jed Tabernero (06:47):
Awesome.
Thanks for that intro, Patrick.
I'm super excited to have you onthe show.
We haven't had a lot of foundersfrom Latin America, so we're
always excited to get some fromthis region.
Um, rewinding a little bit tothe problem and what we talked
about in the intro, it's notjust junk foods.
Generally, I think I was lookingat Obesity rates in generally
(07:10):
America, and I'm shocked to seesince 1999, obesity rates have
been growing across our regions,both our regions, Latin America
and North America.
Um, and it's shocking for me tothink that.
After all of like the healthconscious ads, all of these, the
push for whole foods, um,there's still this growing
(07:35):
obesity rates.
It seems like it's a problemthat needs to be solved from
multiple arenas.
Like after we check, we're justmentioning it.
We read the UN report and Ithought, Oh, this, this looks
like an old page.
This report was in January of2023.
Like it's that fresh access tohealthy foods just isn't at the
(07:57):
same level as junk foods.
And so I guess just rewindingback, could you tell us a little
bit about the driving force of,starting something like this in
Chile?
Yeah, that's a huge issue of BCrates and globally, but
specifically they tend to beworse in Latin America.
After the us, Latin America isprobably the region of the world
that has.
(08:17):
Some of the worst rates andactually Mexico and Tita tend to
lead those ranks.
So I don't think it's acoincidence that this company
started in Tita and then oursecond kind of largest market
where we're expanding isactually Mexico right now
because.
There are markets where we canhave a massive impact, and I
think one of the biggest issuesright now is, on one side,
(08:38):
there's, health and wellnessawareness, seven years ago, all
the trends that you see inEurope, in the States, in terms
of protein rich foods, cleanlabel products, low carbs, these
trends weren't, really arrivingto Latin America until just
recently, okay, and then second,even if people are aware, there
(08:59):
just wasn't the access.
To kind of healthy products, Ithink that's where kind of, the
founders of the, of the wildfoods started to click, um, and
it was, it was pretty much backin 2015, where the founder,
who's Paolo Colanello he wascoming back from a trip in the
States and.
Just to give you a bit ofcontext, Pierpaolo is a outdoor
(09:21):
sports adrenaline junkie, hedoes massive big wave surfing,
rock climbing, parachutejumping, and he was coming back
from a trip from the States andhe brought all this bunch of
different protein and energybars.
And he was just so impressed bythe amount of breads and, and
how many options there wereavailable there.
(09:42):
And he would come back to Chileand he would come back to Chile.
And he would be like, I justcan't find any good, protein or
energy bars here.
And whenever I am able to findthem, they're at a three, 4
price per bar, which is just abit ridiculous.
And he felt it was super unfair.
People in Latin America shouldbe able to access to healthy
food at a, at a decent price.
(10:04):
And he decided to do somethingabout it.
And at the time he had astartup, like an outdoor
clothing startup called WhiteLlama.
And he decided to launch aspecific product line, which is
going to be an energy bar.
That's where he brought in cofounder Felipe Hurtado,
currently our country manager inMexico.
And they started developing ourfirst bar.
(10:24):
Our first bar was called WeighBar.
It was Inspired by Clif Bar, afantastic bar from the States,
and they tried to do somethingvery similar for the Latin
American market.
They were two years developingand putting it out there in the
market.
And it was kind of like one flopafter, after another, the
product was just not rotating.
There was something wrong aboutit.
(10:44):
And we continue to have it inour portfolio because we love
it, but it was just not gettinganywhere.
So after two years of continuoustrial and error, they decided,
what.
We need to kind of, at thattime, the clothing business was
kind of subsidizing the businessof the bar.
And they said, this is kind ofenough.
We need to kind of spin themoff.
And they did a very small, um,capital raise.
(11:09):
For the wild foods separate thebar business from the clothing
business.
And that's when they brought inthe third co founder, which is
Javier Castro, our current CEO.
Um, and of course, just like thecommercializing of the bar
hadn't gone well, thefundraising didn't go well
either.
They had to kind of recur to acrowdfunding platform from your
Chile and they were only able toraise 100, 000.
(11:33):
And that was pretty much justthe amount of money they needed
to be able to develop a new barfrom scratch.
Um, and kind of like buy allthe, like buy all the packaging
and design the packaging and beable to manufacture the first
purchase order they got for thisnew bar.
From the first supermarket herein Chile, and this new bar was a
(11:54):
protein bar instead of an energybar and it's currently called
wild protein, which is the mostlike the top selling bar in
Chile right now, and that thiswas, around 2017 2018.
And from then on, it was just ahuge success that bar actually
hit the market.
It was right.
(12:14):
It was exactly what the marketneeded, what the consumers here
were yearning for.
Um, and ever since it was beenjust kind of like a massive
growth two to three year, two tothree X growth year on year.
Um, and we've been able toposition this bar.
We've expanded into eightdifferent flavors.
Positioned in the marketcurrently have 35 percent market
(12:35):
share in the cereal barindustry.
And that's like including allthe low cost regular cereal
bars, not just protein bars inthe protein segment.
We've got around 70 to 80percent market share.
And it's been just massivesuccess.
Here in Chile for the past fiveyears, and then just early this
year, we decided we're going totake the success, rebuild the
(12:57):
story somewhere else.
And we said, Mexico, that's theplace where we're going to do
it.
But I think it's, it's afantastic story of actually kind
of, failing for two years in arow.
And then kind of finallyunderstanding what was, what was
it that the market was lookingfor.
And, and there's a couple oflike interesting parts of the
story there, like during thesetwo years of failures, Felipe
(13:18):
and Pierre kept on looking atdifferent trends in the market
and they started looking intodifferent type of like food and
beverages that were beingimported into Chile.
And I started seeing.
maSsive amount of proteinsupplements being imported into
Chile.
And that was a bit of aprecursor to say, there is a
demand.
There is a demand for proteinrich products that is finally
starting to arrive to this partof the world.
(13:40):
And then from an awarenessperspective, especially from a
health awareness perspective.
In 2015, Chile was the firstcountry in the world that
actually launched the front ofpackaging label law so you've
got your packages and big stopsigns saying, this product is
very high in sugars or very highin calories or very high in
sodium.
(14:01):
So people, and that law cameinto effect in 2017.
And as a mandate, we said,
Patrick Hardy (14:06):
we're not only going to produce protein bars,
we're also going to make sure.
That they're incredibly healthy.
Jed Tabernero (14:13):
So we define a set of guiding principles.
We said, we're never going towork with any added sugars.
We're never going to work withany added oils.
We're not going to work with anyadded fats.
We're not going to work with anyartificial colorants.
And our products are alwaysgoing to be front of package
label free.
And I think that kind of set usapart also from a nutrition
(14:33):
perspective.
So we were able to develop, thefirst protein parts.
Locally here in Chile, becausewe went with local manufacturing
and we said, we're only going tohave an impact on, on people's
nutrition.
If you're able to do this, andbuild this product and make it
accessible, we're going to beata dollar, a dollar 50 per bar.
That was just
Shikher Bhandary (14:52):
Wow.
Patrick Hardy (14:53):
And that changed the entire dynamics.
Shikher Bhandary (14:55):
Yeah.
You had mentioned two biginflection points.
The one probably more consumersfrom Chile being able to now
know what's out there, right?
Considering they are importing alot of, they, they want access
to more protein.
So they are probably more intune with what goes into their
body.
Now you have the regulation in2017 where now consumers are.
(15:19):
even more aware of what's intheir packaging, right?
No more high, high fructose cornsyrup, a lot more natural stuff,
um, so that was a big one.
And then the second one, I thinkwe had mentioned it earlier in
the call, healthy food is soexpensive in the U.
S.
and it probably is across theworld just because it's not like
(15:39):
mass manufactured, right?
The gap in the market isconsumers needing something at
the price point that theyconsume at.
Jed Tabernero (15:47):
The first time I heard.
Of a sugar tax, I think was inChile also, and not necessarily
the tax, there was some kind ofban in schools for sugary drinks
or something like that, whichwas adopted in the UK.
That's how I heard about it.
Um, kind of a big effect on howthe population thought about.
Um, health awareness, butregulators are going out there
(16:07):
saying, Hey, listen, these arethe new rules that you need to
abide by.
Clearly everybody was aware thatthere was a problem.
How did your brand fit into thatproblem?
What were those initialchannels?
Patrick Hardy (16:17):
So it was back in 2018, and the initial channels
were actually supermarkets.
We're selling a little bitonline, selling a little bit on,
no, quite a bit, actually, on,on specialty stores, convenience
stores, but it was actuallysupermarkets that were able to
kind of Give us the volume thatwe needed to continue to scale
(16:38):
the operation.
We operate a hundred percentasset light.
All of our production is donethrough co packers.
One of the first challenges wasactually getting people to try
out the products.
We did massive amount ofsampling.
All the co founders were,regularly in the supermarket
speaking with the consumers andgetting them to understand that
they needed to, prioritizehaving products with least
amount of these labels aspossible.
(16:59):
Getting them to try out thesenew products and at the same
time doing, you Differentiatedmarketing campaigns through our
digital channels.
And I think that's, that'sanother element that really set
us apart from a traditional CBGcompanies.
I believe that traditional CBGcompanies don't do digital
(17:19):
marketing all that well.
They have a huge capability gap.
They're very strong indistribution.
There's like no doubt aboutthat, but actually getting to
the consumer through digitalchannels is not their greatest
strengths.
And we use that on our favor, wehad built already a tons of, of
digital marketing capabilities.
(17:40):
While Lama, which is a retailand apparel company focused on
sustainability and that had amassive digital channel.
And we said, well, we've gotthis capability.
Can we start using it forselling foods as well?
That actually started goingvery, very well.
And we said, okay, what can wedo to actually do marketing
different?
And there's a couple ofinteresting things.
(18:01):
First of all, our content iscompletely disruptive.
Traditional CPG food andbeverages ads are going to be
very kind of family based,family having a nice picnic, um,
in the field and everybody'shappy, it's like a whole
different direction.
If you look at our ads online,they're just completely
different.
You'll see our co founder, likeour founder, Piet Paolo with a
(18:23):
chainsaw ripping through one ofthe one of the labels, the three
co founders getting, buckets of.
Greases or oils on their headswith tons of different, like
with all the ingredients that wewill just never use.
Um, because we very quicklyrealized that our consumer,
who's your consumer?
(18:44):
It's not persons that are goingto like a nice picnic on the
field.
It's actually people that arebetween 20 to like 40, 45 years
old.
Um, and they're consumingdigital media all the time.
And if you think about what,like the stop scrawlers, what's
going to stop you, it's notgoing to be a family or doing a
picnic.
It's going to be somethingcompletely disrupted.
That's going to catch yourattention.
(19:04):
And so we said, that's what,that's what we're going to
market.
That's the way we're going tostart doing all of our content
creation and all of the contentcreation is done, in house
because of course.
We're a very young startup andwe couldn't afford any kind of
very cool marketing agency oranything like that.
And we started building allthese capabilities in house and
(19:24):
then from a packagingperspective, I mean, our
packages were completelydifferent from anything else in
the market.
You'll find the word proteinthere in the top of the, of the,
of the package, very large.
You can see it from probablylike 10 feet away.
You know exactly what you'rebuying.
Um, it calls your attention.
What are you going to consume?
I'm going to consume protein andyou know, that you're going to
(19:46):
be consuming a wild, a wildprotein bar and we took over the
category.
Um, and then from, from actuallykind of from a performance
perspective, we built afantastic team of, right now
it's around 30 people that arejust doing performance marketing
all the time, optimizing thefunnel.
(20:07):
So, from, from Google and we dothis, nonstop all day long.
And we were actually able toreach, massive amount of people
was just a very little amount ofmoney because digital marketing
is just.
So accessible for new companies.
And I think that also played inour favor.
And probably 20 years ago, thewild foods wouldn't have been
(20:28):
able to be as successful as weare right now because we
wouldn't have had, you know,access to massive amount of
digital marketing.
Digital marketing actuallyleveled the playing ground for
small startups to be able tocompete with the incumbents,
David and Goliath story.
And to give you a couple ofstatistics, just last year
alone, 2022, we reached 10million people in Chile.
(20:48):
So that's one in every twoChileans saw a Wildfoods ad at
least once a week.
And in nine months this year,we've been able to reach 25
million people in Mexico.
So understanding that from dayone.
Actually helps you so much to beable to get your brand out
there.
(21:08):
No, I, I, I traveled to Mexicoevery month to, to like, see how
the operations go in andgrowing.
And every time I meet somebodyoutside the organization,
they're like, Oh my God, you'rethe guys from the wild foods.
I continue to see your ads onInstagram.
And, having that amount ofreach.
With, we're a bootstrappedcompany.
It was, limited capital issomething that just, 20 years
(21:29):
ago, 15 years ago, you wouldhave never been able to do that
in Latin America.
Shikher Bhandary (21:33):
of the internet.
You mentioned something sointeresting.
Old David versus Goliath story,right?
All of us know Jed is, wasraised in the Philippines.
I was raised in India.
The big brands in yoursupermarket, wherever you go,
are the Kelloggs, the CocaCola's, the Unilever's.
Jed Tabernero (21:51):
Not local.
Shikher Bhandary (21:52):
Multinational 40, companies, right?
So it is so hard going upagainst them, but you're seeing
this trend where, and this wasthe big unlock over the last 10,
15 years, where you have theseCPG companies where they're
focusing exact product.
And niche that they aremarketing to two big factors is
(22:15):
like product and brand.
And when you nail that, it'sjust a home run.
Patrick Hardy (22:19):
If you think about like, there's also
probably a piece aroundinnovation capabilities, and I
think young startups are able tobe extremely innovative on
their, in their productdevelopment and in their brand
building capabilities.
And I think large.
Multinational companies, justbecause of the way that they're
set up.
Sometimes it takes them a bitlonger to get the right
(22:40):
products, into the market.
Their time to market tends to bea bit of a little bit longer
sometimes.
So what they end up doing, andwe've seen quite a bit of this,
especially in the health andwellness space.
It's actually acquiringinnovation.
Um, and there's quite, there'squite a lot of fantastic
examples of, large companiesacquiring innovative and fast
growing, smaller companies.
(23:01):
You had RX with Kellogg's, youhave Cliff Bar with Mondelez,
um, Nestle recently acquiredPura Vida, which is a health and
wellness company from Brazil.
It maybe plays out a bit intheir strategy, because to be
able to innovate well, I thinkhaving a strong kind of.
Digital marketing or D to Cchannel allows you to have very
kind of quick and instantfeedback loops from your
(23:23):
consumer.
Yeah, I think something that inour case, we've built a, a
followership base of over 400,000 people between Chile and
Mexico and With that, we're ableto kind of very quickly try out
different products, uh, that wesee that, that are being,
manufactured in different partsof the world, in the world.
(23:45):
Bring them to Chile, launch themvery quickly on our, on our
e-commerce and, day 30, day 60,day 90, we understand, what to
and a consumer's reaction totheir product.
We see there's kind of a goodopportunity with that product or
not.
If there isn't, we, we ditch theproduct.
If there is.
Shikher Bhandary (24:03):
Just fast iteration.
Patrick Hardy (24:05):
Exactly.
We started them looking forlocal manufacturing and put it
into the markets.
And I think having thatinformation is always going to
give you a little bit of an edgeversus the, the large companies
that just don't do digitalmarketing all that well.
Jed Tabernero (24:17):
That's really rapid user testing.
You're like learning a ton fromthe users when you're doing this
for determining what product issuccessful within a certain
area, right?
You mentioned, look, take abunch of products.
You put it out there.
You see what works.
What is, what is what works likesales that would.
Triple, quadruple from the otherproducts that you have, that you
(24:41):
laid out in this specific area.
What's, what are those thingsthat you're thinking about as,
as like moving to the next stageof let's bring this to the
bigger supermarkets.
Patrick Hardy (24:49):
So any sort of product we say, okay, what are
we going to benchmark thisproduct?
And we say, okay, well, let's,we already have a success case
with X, Y, or Z.
And, in the first 30 days, 69,it sold this amount.
This is a way that.
The sales curve kind of behaved,we have reviews, we have NPS and
we say, okay, perfect.
Let's see how it behaved.
(25:09):
And if it's, equal or betterthan that benchmark, we'll start
saying, okay, we actually feelthis product will probably have
pretty good reception in the, inthe massive channels, the
supermarkets.
And then we kind of build, asmall group of products that's
performed were very well onlineand we'll go to the supermarkets
and say, guys, these are kind ofproducts that are kind of
killing it on our D2C.
(25:31):
What's the space and super likeon your aisles for this, where
could we actually put this?
And I think after having such agreat kind of success case was
while protein was a supermarketswhere we actually have the
Nielsen number one and Nielsennumber two in the category.
We built so much credibilitywith the supermarkets that
usually company of, our size.
(25:53):
Would have taken, 10 years tobuild.
We were able to do that inthree, four years.
And now they're actually alwayslike donking on our doors and
saying, what's a new innovationyou're going to bring to us?
And we're like, okay, let'sjust,
Jed Tabernero (26:04):
It's a good problem to have, man.
It's a good problem to have.
Patrick Hardy (26:06):
I know it is, it is be true and stick to that, to
that discipline because you canvery quickly.
Get tempted and start launchingproducts in the supermarket,
from day one without thatinformation.
And sometimes it will be asuccess, but sometimes they
won't.
And if they're not, you canmisuse a whole lot of working
capital, which is always such aprecious resource.
(26:28):
Company has bootstrapped fromthe start.
Jed Tabernero (26:30):
By doing tons of this customer research that
you're doing, you're burning offa lot of capital.
But I think the one differentialthat you have is this strong
brand.
That's the thing, right?
You said, look, we havecredibility with the rest of
these folks that we do businesswith.
And so they believe thatwhatever product you give to
them will sell.
(26:51):
And so I think those two things,it allowed that brand allows you
to be able to do this tons of,um, market research, which is
great, honestly,
Shikher Bhandary (27:01):
Bigger companies, larger companies,
supermarkets see consumer trendson a timeframe, which is a lot
longer than what you see withinyour company.
You figure what.
Is working and then go to thebig supermarkets and say, Hey,
this is working, you have topartner with us.
And they are like, Oh, wow, thisis a great source of knowledge
(27:24):
for us.
And now they want to keeponboarding more products of
yours, which is incredible.
So how did that, um.
sUpermarkets are hard to likebreak into because it's such a,
you need access into these,these shells, shells cost so
much based on whether you'redirect eye level or lower and
(27:47):
things like that, right?
So how did those relationshipsbuild with.
The supermarkets themselves.
I, I read some articles whereyou're expanding to the Walmarts
and other big, massive chains.
So would love to hear that sideof things.
Patrick Hardy (28:01):
yeah, sure.
I mean, we're, we're already inWalmart here in Chile, past two
years.
And I think, yes, supermarketsis always a challenge getting in
there.
I think our team did a fantasticjob in getting, in being able to
get in, get in the aisles fromthe start and doing that
directly, a lot of companies,our CPG companies, especially
startups will tend to work witha distributor or, an agent
(28:22):
broker in the States.
And that's also very typicalbecause it tends to erode your
profit margin.
And.
Because you need to give awaypart of your margin.
And if you're doing that on bothsides of the, of the value
chain, because we're also copacking, we work with co
packers.
Suddenly your margins start tokind of get very squeezed and it
becomes very difficult to beable to kind of finance the
growth of the company.
(28:43):
I think doing it direct was afantastic, fantastic move by the
founding team, at the start.
Um, in terms of therelationships, I mean, it is a
very easy easy and difficult atthe same time market to, to
penetrate because.
First of all, there's only fourbig, supermarket chains here in
Chile.
And the two biggest are, Walmarton one side and St.
(29:03):
Cosud on the other, they tend todominate the market.
And I think we were quite luckyat the time that the entire, you
know, the, the local regulatorwas pushing.
For greater health and wellnessawareness, Cinco suit also
developed a huge space in theirsupermarket dedicated to, to,
(29:24):
health and wellness predatedbrands.
They needed to be SMEs, smallmidsize enterprises, and then
also.
Ideally local and we kind offit, all of those three check
marks very well.
So that gave us, a bit of anedge on actually being able to,
enter the supermarkets.
And then when you complimentthat with fantastic brand
(29:46):
building on your onlinechannels.
The product started seeing,massive level of rotation.
And then of course you need tohave a fantastic product.
We have a very good product.
We're very proud of our product.
Um, and I think the combinationof those three things helped us
to get the product rotatingvery, very quickly.
And once a product starts,seeing, very high velocities,
(30:08):
um, it's, it's same, supermarketthat starts giving you more and
more facing on the aisle.
Um, because for them, it's just,it's, it's, it's an equation of,
what's the contribution marginthat your product is leaving,
for the supermarket.
Times how quickly does itrotate, which is your velocity?
Um, and when when that equationis good, they'll be able to kind
(30:31):
of they'll be incentivized togive you that additional space.
And I think in our case thatworked very well.
Jed Tabernero (30:37):
in this kind of Latin American market, I'm
curious to how you're tweaking.
The product in the differentcountries that you're entering.
For example, like you mentionedMexico a lot on this call
already.
Like what are the types ofthings that you pay attention to
when you break into a market,you have.
a pretty strong brand and prettystrong presence.
(30:59):
You care about sustainability.
You care that it's builtnaturally.
Um, you care about health,right?
Like when you go into a countrylike Mexico, or let's say in the
future, we're going to go far upnorth and, and hit America as
well.
What are these little tweaksthat you're finding that you
have to make to the products?
Patrick Hardy (31:18):
That's a great question.
I think we're kind of learningit on the way.
We kind of launched ourselvesinto Mexico.
And when we decided Mexico, itwas actually quite an
interesting process.
We said, Okay, First of all,Mexico is just massive market
compared to Chile.
The cereal bar category isaround four to five times bigger
than the one here in Chile.
Culturally wise, it's actuallyquite similar.
(31:40):
Even though we're probably twocountries that are furthest
apart in Latin America, we'reactually quite similar from,
from, from a taste perspective,from a communications
perspective.
Um, as a matter of fact, Mexicotends to be The largest market
for Chilean startups, as asecond market, where they go
after they start a company inChile, it's just fantastic.
(32:00):
It's just when, whenever I'mthere, there's just tons amount
of different founders are livingthere.
Certainly Mexico started thefront of packaging law around
four years, four or five yearsafter Chile.
So we kind of realized thatthere's this huge market out
there.
It's kind of untapped right now.
And when we look at the, likewhen we look at the Chilean
(32:22):
market, around 35 percent of thecereal bar category is composed
by protein bars.
When we look at Mexico, we'retalking about a category that's
about.
400 to 500 million a year, andaround 2 percent is protein
bars.
So it's an untapped market.
It's our responsibility to getin there quickly, before anybody
else does, and develop thecategory ourselves.
(32:45):
That was what made us successfulhere in Chile.
When we started here...
There weren't any coding bars inthe supermarkets.
They were all in specialtystores in Mexico.
It's, it's the same story, butwe're starting to see, we're
starting to see in a specialtystore, they're starting to come
around, starting to see, questbars around and other bars.
And I think we've, we've madethe right decision in getting
(33:06):
into that market, early.
And, and be the one, be thebrand that's going to develop
this, the, the segment.
Um, and then from a productperspective, we have to be
quite, picky on which productswe're going to take to the
market there.
While protein, which is ourbiggest brand is of course a
flagship product is, the one we,we chose to enter with.
(33:28):
But we needed to understand thelocal regulation, especially on
what puts, a label in yourproduct or not.
And based on that understanding,if we needed to tweak our
products, change the recipes abit.
So that was one thing we did.
Second thing we had to do is,because we do local
manufacturing, we had to startsourcing ingredients.
Either from the same place wesource the ingredients from
(33:49):
here, Chile, or finding localdistributors that would, provide
an ingredient that was just asgood as the ones that we're
using in the bars here in Chile.
So we had to actually have aproduct development, fly over to
Mexico quite a few times and doquite a bit of industrial trials
of the, of the manufacturing ofthe bars to, to make sure that
it's just as good from anutritional perspective, as well
(34:13):
as from a tastiness perspective.
Always remember you, you canhave the healthiest product, the
most accessible and pricingproduct, but if it's not tasty,
people are not going to consumeit and, and, and the impact
you're going to have on societyis zero.
So you need to have that, thattriangle needs to work perfect.
Jed Tabernero (34:29):
We talked to you about a lot of our listeners
being, in very differentindustries.
Shaker works for Microsoft.
I work, I work for Amazon andone of our biggest pain points
as a business is Whole Foods.
Um, it's just a very difficultindustry to be in.
We can afford.
To, to be in this type ofindustry where everything's
super, super tiny margins,everything's healthy, but tiny
(34:53):
margins for Whole Foods, right?
Um, wanted to understand whatyou're looking for in external
partners.
You're doing a ton of expansionsaround the globe.
And, for our listeners benefitwould love to understand what
you're looking for, for externalpartners, um, brands that you
want to partner with, et cetera.
Patrick Hardy (35:11):
Yeah, sure.
I mean, our, our soul bars,which is, part of wild soul, our
clean label brand, we had themin all domestic LATAM airlines
flights.
Here in Chile, which is, they'rethe predominant air carrier here
in Chile and people were tryingthem out, and it was fantastic.
It got our brand out there andpeople were actually starting,
(35:32):
getting much more conscious intokind of healthy food and
nutrition, because that's areally healthy brand brand and
bar.
But after a while, once, we kindof already built our brand out
there.
We already had tons of rotation,the supermarkets, and right now
we're always having to kind of,do a little bit of, of
understanding, a trade offbetween, any dollar I put or I
(35:55):
invest into a partnership orcollaboration, is it going to be
more profitable than anadditional dollar I put into my
performance marketing machine?
And that's something that goesvarying at different stages.
I think, in the early stages.
Collaborations is a veryeffective way to get out there.
Right now we've got such a widefollower base on our digital
channels here in Chile, thatit's maybe a little bit less
(36:17):
attractive right now.
Different story in Mexico,Mexico.
We know that we've got two bigchallenges.
One is generating brandawareness.
And second is actually gettingthe Mexican consumers to try out
protein bars, because we knowthat.
There is a need of people thatare super into fitness and, have
higher levels of income thatthey've been having protein bars
(36:39):
for a while.
But I'm talking about the massmarket.
We need to get those people tostart trying out the product.
And in a market like Mexico, ofcourse, collaborations and
partnerships are much moreattractive for us right now.
Jed Tabernero (36:49):
I'm learning a ton in this conversation.
I'm, I'm also learning that Ineed to, I need to buy some of
these bars, man.
Instead of snacking, instead ofsnacking at night, but
Shikher Bhandary (37:00):
I think it's really important for our
audience to also realize thatPatrick, his team, the co
founders, um, the leadershipteam have done all this by
bootstrapping.
Ultimately, you're seeing theones that have stuck with it
without taking the easy money.
(37:20):
And just learned a ton andfigured out a way to use their
existing cash flow as a way tokeep funding the business and
keep growing and keep learningis the most sustainable way of
creating and scaling businesses.
So I have to absolutely take aminute to give Patrick and his
(37:41):
team the kudos money's not freeanymore in the US and the rest
of the world Interest rates arehigher.
So Patrick how this wholebootstrapping Adventure has been
and what how you're looking atit in the coming years, right?
Because your ambitions are largeyour ambitions are global
international so, um at whatpoint are you like, okay, maybe
(38:04):
Getting some partners on boardhelps the flywheel a lot better.
Patrick Hardy (38:09):
And I think bootstrapping a business is
definitely not, not easy.
And I think the team here at theWild Foods, a fantastic job at
doing that.
And I think that's built adiscipline.
In the culture of the people andwe're 180 people that work here
in the wild foods between Chileand Mexico, and there's this
very well set cultural that,every dollar matters because
(38:30):
they're not free, and I thinksometimes that culture is not
all that like well instilled inother startups that have been
financed by, round after roundafter round that I think that
really sets us apart, but itdoesn't need to be like that.
Yeah.
Always, I think kind of in the,in the expansion stage that
we're right now.
And right now, I mean, Mexico isa huge market that we're, we've
(38:53):
just been nine months into thatmarket and we're already doing
well, but we know it's going torequire a massive amount of
capital, after Mexico, we'revery interesting in
understanding Brazil, anothermassive market.
I mean, these are markets, theseare Latin American markets that
don't have a predominantprotein, um, protein brand
player.
But this is going to definitelyrequire greater amounts of
(39:16):
capital that you can easilybootstrap your way into.
And then secondly, I think thatgross equity funds, for example,
are a, a fantastic partner thatwe could speak with because
they've done this.
2, 3, 4, 5 times before, whichis taking a great success story
in one market and helping themnavigate into their regional
(39:37):
expansion.
And to be honest, when we lookat our management team and we
discuss between the leadership,we, we, we hope we're taking the
best decisions that we can withthe information we've got.
But we don't have it all figuredout.
And if we can, like, partnerwith a fund that has done this
before, I'm pretty sure they'regoing to be able to help us
spot, five, six pitfalls that wecould potentially avoid.
(39:59):
And, if bringing in an externalpartner into the property of the
company that's going to help usnavigate this and maybe avoid
one in every two pitfalls, Ithink that would be a fantastic
opportunity.
Shikher Bhandary (40:10):
actually a great point.
There's a balance bootstrappingbrings the discipline, but then
getting advisors on board wherethey have been through this
journey, been through scaling inthe markets that you want to
scale.
And so there are these knowhows, these industry connections
that really help unlock the nextwave of the growth that the wild
foods.
(40:30):
We'll get through.
So on that note, Patrick, wewant to give you the stage to
kind of give a shout to yourentire team, the incredible work
that they've done and whatyou're looking for as a company
going forward.
Patrick Hardy (40:44):
Yeah, sure.
I'd like to use the opportunityto give a shout out to, all the
wilds from the wild food.
It's 180 people between Mexicoand Chile that are, every day,
showing up to work and justtrying to make a huge difference
at everybody's houses, on, on,on the way that they consume and
on the products that they have.
I say we have a.
A fantastic team, they bringtons of energy and they love
(41:07):
what to do.
And I'm super proud of whatwe've been able to do, which is
build an infrastructure for,great talent to be able to
develop and perform at itsfullest potential.
And if we continue to do that,I'm sure that we're going to
continue bringing the bestinnovations, continue to grow
our DTC channels and continue togrow our, our brand presence
(41:27):
everywhere across the region.
Jed Tabernero (41:31):
Through our conversation with Patrick Hardy,
we've witnessed how wild foodsinitially faced with challenges
has transformed into a force forchange in the food industry.
Advocating for better.
More informed choices.
Every item we choose to consumeis a vote.
For the kind of world we want.
(41:51):
Wild foods reminds us that ourchoices have power.
The power to drive change in thefood industry.
One conscious decision.
At a time.
Thanks for tuning into thingshave changed podcast.
And as always.
Stay curious.
The information and opinionsexpressed in this episode are
(42:14):
for informational purposes only.
And are not intended asfinancial investment or
professional advice.
Always consult with a qualifiedprofessional before making any
decisions based on the conceptprovided.
Neither the podcast, nor iscreators are responsible for any
actions taken as a result oflistening to this episode.
Imagine this familiar scene.
You're wandering through thesupermarket.
Alice bombarded by anoverwhelming array of choices.
From whack-a-mole.
To soda.
To chips, making the rightchoice seems like a difficult
task.
This trend has played a pivotalrole in an alarming issue facing
(00:28):
the America's today.
The steady rise in obesityrates.
Despite the push for healthierdiets access to nutritious
foods, still lags behind theavailability of less healthy
options.
But in response to this growinghealth crisis.
Wild foods emerges as agame-changer.
Patrick Hardy (00:49):
Right now in Teale, we're probably one of the
hottest food and beveragesstartups in, in the country
every single year since ourfounding triple digit growth
year in year with positiveebitda, which makes us super
proud.
Jed Tabernero (01:01):
Our guest today, Patrick Hardy.
The chief operating officer ofwild foods is at the forefront
of this revolution.
Patrick Hardy (01:08):
we're not only going to produce protein bars,
we're also going to make sure.
That they're incredibly healthy.
Jed Tabernero (01:14):
Hailing from Chile.
The land of the Patagonia.
Wild foods is a consumerpackaged goods company,
committed to disrupting theentire food and beverage
industry.
We're basically a hypergrossing, fast growing nutrition
company from Latin America,specifically from Chile.
With a massive portfolio of over200 skews and a significant
(01:35):
presence in key markets, wildfoods is not just a company.
It's a movement.
Reshaping the way we eat andthink about food.
Patrick Hardy (01:46):
If you look at our ads online, they're just
completely different.
You'll see our co founder, likeour founder, Piet Paolo with a
chainsaw ripping through one ofthe one of the labels
Jed Tabernero (01:56):
join us on things have changed podcast.
As we unraveled Patrick'sjourney will the wild foods.
And the future of healthy eatingin a world, dominated by
processed foods.
Shikher Bhandary (02:44):
Navigating the food and beverage retail
industry isn't easy, right?
So much competition.
Just go to supermarkets.
Every aisle has like a hundredproducts.
You don't know which is theright guacamole to like pick.
Like you just don't know whichsoda, which.
Chips, nothing.
Changes are happening all thetime, especially with the
(03:06):
internet and the rise of theonline shop or e commerce D2C
brands are just mushroomingeverywhere.
But in all of this, there is areally interesting trend, kind
of concerning.
Now Jed and I were reading somematerial from the UN actually.
In supermarkets, there seems tobe a trend of promoting junk
(03:27):
food more than they do healthyfood or healthy alternatives.
And so what's this caused is,this is caused It being a lot
easier for, um, the everydayconsumer to pick up the more,
the less healthy version of thefood that they can get many of
us, even our friend Jed O'Heircan vouch for the fact that junk
(03:50):
foods are quite addictive.
I mentioned this on the podcastmany times, we used to, we used
to be roommates together inPhoenix and literally every
single day I used to walk in atthis, there was only one
constant thing, curing Jed.
Crunch on chips every singleday, every single hour of the
day.
Right.
Cause he used to work from home.
He used to be working loudmusic, but I could still hear
(04:13):
the crunching.
So, If I was Superman, mykryptonite would be chips.
yeah, so we have all seen thisneed for better transparency.
Within the ingredients that weconsume in the foods that we
like, right?
There's a big push for likehealthy sustainable diets and
(04:36):
this is where the wild foodscomes in and our guest today
Patrick Hardy Patrick is thechief operating officer of the
wild foods a consumer packagedgoods company cpg company
hailing And this is where welove what we do, hailing from
Chile.
The company hails from Chile,growing incredibly.
(04:56):
And one that stands at, theforefront of producing healthy
and sustainable food products,disrupting the whole food and
beverage industry in Chile andnow in other parts of Latin
America.
So Patrick, it's an absolutedelight to have you on THC.
Patrick Hardy (05:13):
Thanks for having me here.
And I think that was a greatintroduction.
I couldn't agree more with whatyou mentioned on, on the
abundance of just junk food onsupermarket aisles.
And I think that is, that is thebiggest call of action at the
wild foods, costing, an impactin the food and beverages
industry and changing whataisles actually look like.
Um, so sure.
(05:34):
I mean, as a, as a quick intro,I know there's tons of listeners
that probably don't know aboutthe wild foods and.
Jed Tabernero (05:39):
We're basically a hyper grossing, fast growing
nutrition company from LatinAmerica, specifically from
Chile.
Patrick Hardy (05:46):
And we're dedicated to developing and
marketing innovative, healthy,and tasty products.
Specifically for consumers thatare concerned, consumers that
are related to the health andwellness space.
And in a time frame of aroundfive years, since the company
was formally founded.
We've built a massive portfolio.
(06:06):
We've got over 200 SKUs, um, andalso a regional footprint.
We're present in Chile.
Which is our first market wherewe've reached over 35 percent
market share in a cereal barcategory.
We're now also present inMexico, which is a local
operation where we, all of ouroperation there is end to end
from manufacturing all the wayto distribution.
(06:28):
We're also present in Peru, inthe U.
S.
Um, and very shortly we're gonnabe in Columbia as well.
Right now in Teale, we'reprobably one of the hottest food
and beverages startup startupsin, in, in the country every
single year since our foundingtriple digit growth year in year
with positive ebitda, whichmakes us super proud.
Jed Tabernero (06:47):
Awesome.
Thanks for that intro, Patrick.
I'm super excited to have you onthe show.
We haven't had a lot of foundersfrom Latin America, so we're
always excited to get some fromthis region.
Um, rewinding a little bit tothe problem and what we talked
about in the intro, it's notjust junk foods.
Generally, I think I was lookingat Obesity rates in generally
(07:10):
America, and I'm shocked to seesince 1999, obesity rates have
been growing across our regions,both our regions, Latin America
and North America.
Um, and it's shocking for me tothink that.
After all of like the healthconscious ads, all of these, the
push for whole foods, um,there's still this growing
(07:35):
obesity rates.
It seems like it's a problemthat needs to be solved from
multiple arenas.
Like after we check, we're justmentioning it.
We read the UN report and Ithought, Oh, this, this looks
like an old page.
This report was in January of2023.
Like it's that fresh access tohealthy foods just isn't at the
(07:57):
same level as junk foods.
And so I guess just rewindingback, could you tell us a little
bit about the driving force of,starting something like this in
Chile?
Yeah, that's a huge issue of BCrates and globally, but
specifically they tend to beworse in Latin America.
After the us, Latin America isprobably the region of the world
that has.
(08:17):
Some of the worst rates andactually Mexico and Tita tend to
lead those ranks.
So I don't think it's acoincidence that this company
started in Tita and then oursecond kind of largest market
where we're expanding isactually Mexico right now
because.
There are markets where we canhave a massive impact, and I
think one of the biggest issuesright now is, on one side,
(08:38):
there's, health and wellnessawareness, seven years ago, all
the trends that you see inEurope, in the States, in terms
of protein rich foods, cleanlabel products, low carbs, these
trends weren't, really arrivingto Latin America until just
recently, okay, and then second,even if people are aware, there
(08:59):
just wasn't the access.
To kind of healthy products, Ithink that's where kind of, the
founders of the, of the wildfoods started to click, um, and
it was, it was pretty much backin 2015, where the founder,
who's Paolo Colanello he wascoming back from a trip in the
States and.
Just to give you a bit ofcontext, Pierpaolo is a outdoor
(09:21):
sports adrenaline junkie, hedoes massive big wave surfing,
rock climbing, parachutejumping, and he was coming back
from a trip from the States andhe brought all this bunch of
different protein and energybars.
And he was just so impressed bythe amount of breads and, and
how many options there wereavailable there.
(09:42):
And he would come back to Chileand he would come back to Chile.
And he would be like, I justcan't find any good, protein or
energy bars here.
And whenever I am able to findthem, they're at a three, 4
price per bar, which is just abit ridiculous.
And he felt it was super unfair.
People in Latin America shouldbe able to access to healthy
food at a, at a decent price.
(10:04):
And he decided to do somethingabout it.
And at the time he had astartup, like an outdoor
clothing startup called WhiteLlama.
And he decided to launch aspecific product line, which is
going to be an energy bar.
That's where he brought in cofounder Felipe Hurtado,
currently our country manager inMexico.
And they started developing ourfirst bar.
(10:24):
Our first bar was called WeighBar.
It was Inspired by Clif Bar, afantastic bar from the States,
and they tried to do somethingvery similar for the Latin
American market.
They were two years developingand putting it out there in the
market.
And it was kind of like one flopafter, after another, the
product was just not rotating.
There was something wrong aboutit.
(10:44):
And we continue to have it inour portfolio because we love
it, but it was just not gettinganywhere.
So after two years of continuoustrial and error, they decided,
what.
We need to kind of, at thattime, the clothing business was
kind of subsidizing the businessof the bar.
And they said, this is kind ofenough.
We need to kind of spin themoff.
And they did a very small, um,capital raise.
(11:09):
For the wild foods separate thebar business from the clothing
business.
And that's when they brought inthe third co founder, which is
Javier Castro, our current CEO.
Um, and of course, just like thecommercializing of the bar
hadn't gone well, thefundraising didn't go well
either.
They had to kind of recur to acrowdfunding platform from your
Chile and they were only able toraise 100, 000.
(11:33):
And that was pretty much justthe amount of money they needed
to be able to develop a new barfrom scratch.
Um, and kind of like buy allthe, like buy all the packaging
and design the packaging and beable to manufacture the first
purchase order they got for thisnew bar.
From the first supermarket herein Chile, and this new bar was a
(11:54):
protein bar instead of an energybar and it's currently called
wild protein, which is the mostlike the top selling bar in
Chile right now, and that thiswas, around 2017 2018.
And from then on, it was just ahuge success that bar actually
hit the market.
It was right.
(12:14):
It was exactly what the marketneeded, what the consumers here
were yearning for.
Um, and ever since it was beenjust kind of like a massive
growth two to three year, two tothree X growth year on year.
Um, and we've been able toposition this bar.
We've expanded into eightdifferent flavors.
Positioned in the marketcurrently have 35 percent market
(12:35):
share in the cereal barindustry.
And that's like including allthe low cost regular cereal
bars, not just protein bars inthe protein segment.
We've got around 70 to 80percent market share.
And it's been just massivesuccess.
Here in Chile for the past fiveyears, and then just early this
year, we decided we're going totake the success, rebuild the
(12:57):
story somewhere else.
And we said, Mexico, that's theplace where we're going to do
it.
But I think it's, it's afantastic story of actually kind
of, failing for two years in arow.
And then kind of finallyunderstanding what was, what was
it that the market was lookingfor.
And, and there's a couple oflike interesting parts of the
story there, like during thesetwo years of failures, Felipe
(13:18):
and Pierre kept on looking atdifferent trends in the market
and they started looking intodifferent type of like food and
beverages that were beingimported into Chile.
And I started seeing.
maSsive amount of proteinsupplements being imported into
Chile.
And that was a bit of aprecursor to say, there is a
demand.
There is a demand for proteinrich products that is finally
starting to arrive to this partof the world.
(13:40):
And then from an awarenessperspective, especially from a
health awareness perspective.
In 2015, Chile was the firstcountry in the world that
actually launched the front ofpackaging label law so you've
got your packages and big stopsigns saying, this product is
very high in sugars or very highin calories or very high in
sodium.
(14:01):
So people, and that law cameinto effect in 2017.
And as a mandate, we said,
Patrick Hardy (14:06):
we're not only going to produce protein bars,
we're also going to make sure.
That they're incredibly healthy.
Jed Tabernero (14:13):
So we define a set of guiding principles.
We said, we're never going towork with any added sugars.
We're never going to work withany added oils.
We're not going to work with anyadded fats.
We're not going to work with anyartificial colorants.
And our products are alwaysgoing to be front of package
label free.
And I think that kind of set usapart also from a nutrition
(14:33):
perspective.
So we were able to develop, thefirst protein parts.
Locally here in Chile, becausewe went with local manufacturing
and we said, we're only going tohave an impact on, on people's
nutrition.
If you're able to do this, andbuild this product and make it
accessible, we're going to beata dollar, a dollar 50 per bar.
That was just
Shikher Bhandary (14:52):
Wow.
Patrick Hardy (14:53):
And that changed the entire dynamics.
Shikher Bhandary (14:55):
Yeah.
You had mentioned two biginflection points.
The one probably more consumersfrom Chile being able to now
know what's out there, right?
Considering they are importing alot of, they, they want access
to more protein.
So they are probably more intune with what goes into their
body.
Now you have the regulation in2017 where now consumers are.
(15:19):
even more aware of what's intheir packaging, right?
No more high, high fructose cornsyrup, a lot more natural stuff,
um, so that was a big one.
And then the second one, I thinkwe had mentioned it earlier in
the call, healthy food is soexpensive in the U.
S.
and it probably is across theworld just because it's not like
(15:39):
mass manufactured, right?
The gap in the market isconsumers needing something at
the price point that theyconsume at.
Jed Tabernero (15:47):
The first time I heard.
Of a sugar tax, I think was inChile also, and not necessarily
the tax, there was some kind ofban in schools for sugary drinks
or something like that, whichwas adopted in the UK.
That's how I heard about it.
Um, kind of a big effect on howthe population thought about.
Um, health awareness, butregulators are going out there
(16:07):
saying, Hey, listen, these arethe new rules that you need to
abide by.
Clearly everybody was aware thatthere was a problem.
How did your brand fit into thatproblem?
What were those initialchannels?
Patrick Hardy (16:17):
So it was back in 2018, and the initial channels
were actually supermarkets.
We're selling a little bitonline, selling a little bit on,
no, quite a bit, actually, on,on specialty stores, convenience
stores, but it was actuallysupermarkets that were able to
kind of Give us the volume thatwe needed to continue to scale
(16:38):
the operation.
We operate a hundred percentasset light.
All of our production is donethrough co packers.
One of the first challenges wasactually getting people to try
out the products.
We did massive amount ofsampling.
All the co founders were,regularly in the supermarket
speaking with the consumers andgetting them to understand that
they needed to, prioritizehaving products with least
amount of these labels aspossible.
(16:59):
Getting them to try out thesenew products and at the same
time doing, you Differentiatedmarketing campaigns through our
digital channels.
And I think that's, that'sanother element that really set
us apart from a traditional CBGcompanies.
I believe that traditional CBGcompanies don't do digital
(17:19):
marketing all that well.
They have a huge capability gap.
They're very strong indistribution.
There's like no doubt aboutthat, but actually getting to
the consumer through digitalchannels is not their greatest
strengths.
And we use that on our favor, wehad built already a tons of, of
digital marketing capabilities.
(17:40):
While Lama, which is a retailand apparel company focused on
sustainability and that had amassive digital channel.
And we said, well, we've gotthis capability.
Can we start using it forselling foods as well?
That actually started goingvery, very well.
And we said, okay, what can wedo to actually do marketing
different?
And there's a couple ofinteresting things.
(18:01):
First of all, our content iscompletely disruptive.
Traditional CPG food andbeverages ads are going to be
very kind of family based,family having a nice picnic, um,
in the field and everybody'shappy, it's like a whole
different direction.
If you look at our ads online,they're just completely
different.
You'll see our co founder, likeour founder, Piet Paolo with a
(18:23):
chainsaw ripping through one ofthe one of the labels, the three
co founders getting, buckets of.
Greases or oils on their headswith tons of different, like
with all the ingredients that wewill just never use.
Um, because we very quicklyrealized that our consumer,
who's your consumer?
(18:44):
It's not persons that are goingto like a nice picnic on the
field.
It's actually people that arebetween 20 to like 40, 45 years
old.
Um, and they're consumingdigital media all the time.
And if you think about what,like the stop scrawlers, what's
going to stop you, it's notgoing to be a family or doing a
picnic.
It's going to be somethingcompletely disrupted.
That's going to catch yourattention.
(19:04):
And so we said, that's what,that's what we're going to
market.
That's the way we're going tostart doing all of our content
creation and all of the contentcreation is done, in house
because of course.
We're a very young startup andwe couldn't afford any kind of
very cool marketing agency oranything like that.
And we started building allthese capabilities in house and
(19:24):
then from a packagingperspective, I mean, our
packages were completelydifferent from anything else in
the market.
You'll find the word proteinthere in the top of the, of the,
of the package, very large.
You can see it from probablylike 10 feet away.
You know exactly what you'rebuying.
Um, it calls your attention.
What are you going to consume?
I'm going to consume protein andyou know, that you're going to
(19:46):
be consuming a wild, a wildprotein bar and we took over the
category.
Um, and then from, from actuallykind of from a performance
perspective, we built afantastic team of, right now
it's around 30 people that arejust doing performance marketing
all the time, optimizing thefunnel.
(20:07):
So, from, from Google and we dothis, nonstop all day long.
And we were actually able toreach, massive amount of people
was just a very little amount ofmoney because digital marketing
is just.
So accessible for new companies.
And I think that also played inour favor.
And probably 20 years ago, thewild foods wouldn't have been
(20:28):
able to be as successful as weare right now because we
wouldn't have had, you know,access to massive amount of
digital marketing.
Digital marketing actuallyleveled the playing ground for
small startups to be able tocompete with the incumbents,
David and Goliath story.
And to give you a couple ofstatistics, just last year
alone, 2022, we reached 10million people in Chile.
(20:48):
So that's one in every twoChileans saw a Wildfoods ad at
least once a week.
And in nine months this year,we've been able to reach 25
million people in Mexico.
So understanding that from dayone.
Actually helps you so much to beable to get your brand out
there.
(21:08):
No, I, I, I traveled to Mexicoevery month to, to like, see how
the operations go in andgrowing.
And every time I meet somebodyoutside the organization,
they're like, Oh my God, you'rethe guys from the wild foods.
I continue to see your ads onInstagram.
And, having that amount ofreach.
With, we're a bootstrappedcompany.
It was, limited capital issomething that just, 20 years
(21:29):
ago, 15 years ago, you wouldhave never been able to do that
in Latin America.
Shikher Bhandary (21:33):
of the internet.
You mentioned something sointeresting.
Old David versus Goliath story,right?
All of us know Jed is, wasraised in the Philippines.
I was raised in India.
The big brands in yoursupermarket, wherever you go,
are the Kelloggs, the CocaCola's, the Unilever's.
Jed Tabernero (21:51):
Not local.
Shikher Bhandary (21:52):
Multinational 40, companies, right?
So it is so hard going upagainst them, but you're seeing
this trend where, and this wasthe big unlock over the last 10,
15 years, where you have theseCPG companies where they're
focusing exact product.
And niche that they aremarketing to two big factors is
(22:15):
like product and brand.
And when you nail that, it'sjust a home run.
Patrick Hardy (22:19):
If you think about like, there's also
probably a piece aroundinnovation capabilities, and I
think young startups are able tobe extremely innovative on
their, in their productdevelopment and in their brand
building capabilities.
And I think large.
Multinational companies, justbecause of the way that they're
set up.
Sometimes it takes them a bitlonger to get the right
(22:40):
products, into the market.
Their time to market tends to bea bit of a little bit longer
sometimes.
So what they end up doing, andwe've seen quite a bit of this,
especially in the health andwellness space.
It's actually acquiringinnovation.
Um, and there's quite, there'squite a lot of fantastic
examples of, large companiesacquiring innovative and fast
growing, smaller companies.
(23:01):
You had RX with Kellogg's, youhave Cliff Bar with Mondelez,
um, Nestle recently acquiredPura Vida, which is a health and
wellness company from Brazil.
It maybe plays out a bit intheir strategy, because to be
able to innovate well, I thinkhaving a strong kind of.
Digital marketing or D to Cchannel allows you to have very
kind of quick and instantfeedback loops from your
(23:23):
consumer.
Yeah, I think something that inour case, we've built a, a
followership base of over 400,000 people between Chile and
Mexico and With that, we're ableto kind of very quickly try out
different products, uh, that wesee that, that are being,
manufactured in different partsof the world, in the world.
(23:45):
Bring them to Chile, launch themvery quickly on our, on our
e-commerce and, day 30, day 60,day 90, we understand, what to
and a consumer's reaction totheir product.
We see there's kind of a goodopportunity with that product or
not.
If there isn't, we, we ditch theproduct.
If there is.
Shikher Bhandary (24:03):
Just fast iteration.
Patrick Hardy (24:05):
Exactly.
We started them looking forlocal manufacturing and put it
into the markets.
And I think having thatinformation is always going to
give you a little bit of an edgeversus the, the large companies
that just don't do digitalmarketing all that well.
Jed Tabernero (24:17):
That's really rapid user testing.
You're like learning a ton fromthe users when you're doing this
for determining what product issuccessful within a certain
area, right?
You mentioned, look, take abunch of products.
You put it out there.
You see what works.
What is, what is what works likesales that would.
Triple, quadruple from the otherproducts that you have, that you
(24:41):
laid out in this specific area.
What's, what are those thingsthat you're thinking about as,
as like moving to the next stageof let's bring this to the
bigger supermarkets.
Patrick Hardy (24:49):
So any sort of product we say, okay, what are
we going to benchmark thisproduct?
And we say, okay, well, let's,we already have a success case
with X, Y, or Z.
And, in the first 30 days, 69,it sold this amount.
This is a way that.
The sales curve kind of behaved,we have reviews, we have NPS and
we say, okay, perfect.
Let's see how it behaved.
(25:09):
And if it's, equal or betterthan that benchmark, we'll start
saying, okay, we actually feelthis product will probably have
pretty good reception in the, inthe massive channels, the
supermarkets.
And then we kind of build, asmall group of products that's
performed were very well onlineand we'll go to the supermarkets
and say, guys, these are kind ofproducts that are kind of
killing it on our D2C.
(25:31):
What's the space and super likeon your aisles for this, where
could we actually put this?
And I think after having such agreat kind of success case was
while protein was a supermarketswhere we actually have the
Nielsen number one and Nielsennumber two in the category.
We built so much credibilitywith the supermarkets that
usually company of, our size.
(25:53):
Would have taken, 10 years tobuild.
We were able to do that inthree, four years.
And now they're actually alwayslike donking on our doors and
saying, what's a new innovationyou're going to bring to us?
And we're like, okay, let'sjust,
Jed Tabernero (26:04):
It's a good problem to have, man.
It's a good problem to have.
Patrick Hardy (26:06):
I know it is, it is be true and stick to that, to
that discipline because you canvery quickly.
Get tempted and start launchingproducts in the supermarket,
from day one without thatinformation.
And sometimes it will be asuccess, but sometimes they
won't.
And if they're not, you canmisuse a whole lot of working
capital, which is always such aprecious resource.
(26:28):
Company has bootstrapped fromthe start.
Jed Tabernero (26:30):
By doing tons of this customer research that
you're doing, you're burning offa lot of capital.
But I think the one differentialthat you have is this strong
brand.
That's the thing, right?
You said, look, we havecredibility with the rest of
these folks that we do businesswith.
And so they believe thatwhatever product you give to
them will sell.
(26:51):
And so I think those two things,it allowed that brand allows you
to be able to do this tons of,um, market research, which is
great, honestly,
Shikher Bhandary (27:01):
Bigger companies, larger companies,
supermarkets see consumer trendson a timeframe, which is a lot
longer than what you see withinyour company.
You figure what.
Is working and then go to thebig supermarkets and say, Hey,
this is working, you have topartner with us.
And they are like, Oh, wow, thisis a great source of knowledge
(27:24):
for us.
And now they want to keeponboarding more products of
yours, which is incredible.
So how did that, um.
sUpermarkets are hard to likebreak into because it's such a,
you need access into these,these shells, shells cost so
much based on whether you'redirect eye level or lower and
(27:47):
things like that, right?
So how did those relationshipsbuild with.
The supermarkets themselves.
I, I read some articles whereyou're expanding to the Walmarts
and other big, massive chains.
So would love to hear that sideof things.
Patrick Hardy (28:01):
yeah, sure.
I mean, we're, we're already inWalmart here in Chile, past two
years.
And I think, yes, supermarketsis always a challenge getting in
there.
I think our team did a fantasticjob in getting, in being able to
get in, get in the aisles fromthe start and doing that
directly, a lot of companies,our CPG companies, especially
startups will tend to work witha distributor or, an agent
(28:22):
broker in the States.
And that's also very typicalbecause it tends to erode your
profit margin.
And.
Because you need to give awaypart of your margin.
And if you're doing that on bothsides of the, of the value
chain, because we're also copacking, we work with co
packers.
Suddenly your margins start tokind of get very squeezed and it
becomes very difficult to beable to kind of finance the
growth of the company.
(28:43):
I think doing it direct was afantastic, fantastic move by the
founding team, at the start.
Um, in terms of therelationships, I mean, it is a
very easy easy and difficult atthe same time market to, to
penetrate because.
First of all, there's only fourbig, supermarket chains here in
Chile.
And the two biggest are, Walmarton one side and St.
(29:03):
Cosud on the other, they tend todominate the market.
And I think we were quite luckyat the time that the entire, you
know, the, the local regulatorwas pushing.
For greater health and wellnessawareness, Cinco suit also
developed a huge space in theirsupermarket dedicated to, to,
(29:24):
health and wellness predatedbrands.
They needed to be SMEs, smallmidsize enterprises, and then
also.
Ideally local and we kind offit, all of those three check
marks very well.
So that gave us, a bit of anedge on actually being able to,
enter the supermarkets.
And then when you complimentthat with fantastic brand
(29:46):
building on your onlinechannels.
The product started seeing,massive level of rotation.
And then of course you need tohave a fantastic product.
We have a very good product.
We're very proud of our product.
Um, and I think the combinationof those three things helped us
to get the product rotatingvery, very quickly.
And once a product starts,seeing, very high velocities,
(30:08):
um, it's, it's same, supermarketthat starts giving you more and
more facing on the aisle.
Um, because for them, it's just,it's, it's, it's an equation of,
what's the contribution marginthat your product is leaving,
for the supermarket.
Times how quickly does itrotate, which is your velocity?
Um, and when when that equationis good, they'll be able to kind
(30:31):
of they'll be incentivized togive you that additional space.
And I think in our case thatworked very well.
Jed Tabernero (30:37):
in this kind of Latin American market, I'm
curious to how you're tweaking.
The product in the differentcountries that you're entering.
For example, like you mentionedMexico a lot on this call
already.
Like what are the types ofthings that you pay attention to
when you break into a market,you have.
a pretty strong brand and prettystrong presence.
(30:59):
You care about sustainability.
You care that it's builtnaturally.
Um, you care about health,right?
Like when you go into a countrylike Mexico, or let's say in the
future, we're going to go far upnorth and, and hit America as
well.
What are these little tweaksthat you're finding that you
have to make to the products?
Patrick Hardy (31:18):
That's a great question.
I think we're kind of learningit on the way.
We kind of launched ourselvesinto Mexico.
And when we decided Mexico, itwas actually quite an
interesting process.
We said, Okay, First of all,Mexico is just massive market
compared to Chile.
The cereal bar category isaround four to five times bigger
than the one here in Chile.
Culturally wise, it's actuallyquite similar.
(31:40):
Even though we're probably twocountries that are furthest
apart in Latin America, we'reactually quite similar from,
from, from a taste perspective,from a communications
perspective.
Um, as a matter of fact, Mexicotends to be The largest market
for Chilean startups, as asecond market, where they go
after they start a company inChile, it's just fantastic.
(32:00):
It's just when, whenever I'mthere, there's just tons amount
of different founders are livingthere.
Certainly Mexico started thefront of packaging law around
four years, four or five yearsafter Chile.
So we kind of realized thatthere's this huge market out
there.
It's kind of untapped right now.
And when we look at the, likewhen we look at the Chilean
(32:22):
market, around 35 percent of thecereal bar category is composed
by protein bars.
When we look at Mexico, we'retalking about a category that's
about.
400 to 500 million a year, andaround 2 percent is protein
bars.
So it's an untapped market.
It's our responsibility to getin there quickly, before anybody
else does, and develop thecategory ourselves.
(32:45):
That was what made us successfulhere in Chile.
When we started here...
There weren't any coding bars inthe supermarkets.
They were all in specialtystores in Mexico.
It's, it's the same story, butwe're starting to see, we're
starting to see in a specialtystore, they're starting to come
around, starting to see, questbars around and other bars.
And I think we've, we've madethe right decision in getting
(33:06):
into that market, early.
And, and be the one, be thebrand that's going to develop
this, the, the segment.
Um, and then from a productperspective, we have to be
quite, picky on which productswe're going to take to the
market there.
While protein, which is ourbiggest brand is of course a
flagship product is, the one we,we chose to enter with.
(33:28):
But we needed to understand thelocal regulation, especially on
what puts, a label in yourproduct or not.
And based on that understanding,if we needed to tweak our
products, change the recipes abit.
So that was one thing we did.
Second thing we had to do is,because we do local
manufacturing, we had to startsourcing ingredients.
Either from the same place wesource the ingredients from
(33:49):
here, Chile, or finding localdistributors that would, provide
an ingredient that was just asgood as the ones that we're
using in the bars here in Chile.
So we had to actually have aproduct development, fly over to
Mexico quite a few times and doquite a bit of industrial trials
of the, of the manufacturing ofthe bars to, to make sure that
it's just as good from anutritional perspective, as well
(34:13):
as from a tastiness perspective.
Always remember you, you canhave the healthiest product, the
most accessible and pricingproduct, but if it's not tasty,
people are not going to consumeit and, and, and the impact
you're going to have on societyis zero.
So you need to have that, thattriangle needs to work perfect.
Jed Tabernero (34:29):
We talked to you about a lot of our listeners
being, in very differentindustries.
Shaker works for Microsoft.
I work, I work for Amazon andone of our biggest pain points
as a business is Whole Foods.
Um, it's just a very difficultindustry to be in.
We can afford.
To, to be in this type ofindustry where everything's
super, super tiny margins,everything's healthy, but tiny
(34:53):
margins for Whole Foods, right?
Um, wanted to understand whatyou're looking for in external
partners.
You're doing a ton of expansionsaround the globe.
And, for our listeners benefitwould love to understand what
you're looking for, for externalpartners, um, brands that you
want to partner with, et cetera.
Patrick Hardy (35:11):
Yeah, sure.
I mean, our, our soul bars,which is, part of wild soul, our
clean label brand, we had themin all domestic LATAM airlines
flights.
Here in Chile, which is, they'rethe predominant air carrier here
in Chile and people were tryingthem out, and it was fantastic.
It got our brand out there andpeople were actually starting,
(35:32):
getting much more conscious intokind of healthy food and
nutrition, because that's areally healthy brand brand and
bar.
But after a while, once, we kindof already built our brand out
there.
We already had tons of rotation,the supermarkets, and right now
we're always having to kind of,do a little bit of, of
understanding, a trade offbetween, any dollar I put or I
(35:55):
invest into a partnership orcollaboration, is it going to be
more profitable than anadditional dollar I put into my
performance marketing machine?
And that's something that goesvarying at different stages.
I think, in the early stages.
Collaborations is a veryeffective way to get out there.
Right now we've got such a widefollower base on our digital
channels here in Chile, thatit's maybe a little bit less
(36:17):
attractive right now.
Different story in Mexico,Mexico.
We know that we've got two bigchallenges.
One is generating brandawareness.
And second is actually gettingthe Mexican consumers to try out
protein bars, because we knowthat.
There is a need of people thatare super into fitness and, have
higher levels of income thatthey've been having protein bars
(36:39):
for a while.
But I'm talking about the massmarket.
We need to get those people tostart trying out the product.
And in a market like Mexico, ofcourse, collaborations and
partnerships are much moreattractive for us right now.
Jed Tabernero (36:49):
I'm learning a ton in this conversation.
I'm, I'm also learning that Ineed to, I need to buy some of
these bars, man.
Instead of snacking, instead ofsnacking at night, but
Shikher Bhandary (37:00):
I think it's really important for our
audience to also realize thatPatrick, his team, the co
founders, um, the leadershipteam have done all this by
bootstrapping.
Ultimately, you're seeing theones that have stuck with it
without taking the easy money.
(37:20):
And just learned a ton andfigured out a way to use their
existing cash flow as a way tokeep funding the business and
keep growing and keep learningis the most sustainable way of
creating and scaling businesses.
So I have to absolutely take aminute to give Patrick and his
(37:41):
team the kudos money's not freeanymore in the US and the rest
of the world Interest rates arehigher.
So Patrick how this wholebootstrapping Adventure has been
and what how you're looking atit in the coming years, right?
Because your ambitions are largeyour ambitions are global
international so, um at whatpoint are you like, okay, maybe
(38:04):
Getting some partners on boardhelps the flywheel a lot better.
Patrick Hardy (38:09):
And I think bootstrapping a business is
definitely not, not easy.
And I think the team here at theWild Foods, a fantastic job at
doing that.
And I think that's built adiscipline.
In the culture of the people andwe're 180 people that work here
in the wild foods between Chileand Mexico, and there's this
very well set cultural that,every dollar matters because
(38:30):
they're not free, and I thinksometimes that culture is not
all that like well instilled inother startups that have been
financed by, round after roundafter round that I think that
really sets us apart, but itdoesn't need to be like that.
Yeah.
Always, I think kind of in the,in the expansion stage that
we're right now.
And right now, I mean, Mexico isa huge market that we're, we've
(38:53):
just been nine months into thatmarket and we're already doing
well, but we know it's going torequire a massive amount of
capital, after Mexico, we'revery interesting in
understanding Brazil, anothermassive market.
I mean, these are markets, theseare Latin American markets that
don't have a predominantprotein, um, protein brand
player.
But this is going to definitelyrequire greater amounts of
(39:16):
capital that you can easilybootstrap your way into.
And then secondly, I think thatgross equity funds, for example,
are a, a fantastic partner thatwe could speak with because
they've done this.
2, 3, 4, 5 times before, whichis taking a great success story
in one market and helping themnavigate into their regional
(39:37):
expansion.
And to be honest, when we lookat our management team and we
discuss between the leadership,we, we, we hope we're taking the
best decisions that we can withthe information we've got.
But we don't have it all figuredout.
And if we can, like, partnerwith a fund that has done this
before, I'm pretty sure they'regoing to be able to help us
spot, five, six pitfalls that wecould potentially avoid.
(39:59):
And, if bringing in an externalpartner into the property of the
company that's going to help usnavigate this and maybe avoid
one in every two pitfalls, Ithink that would be a fantastic
opportunity.
Shikher Bhandary (40:10):
actually a great point.
There's a balance bootstrappingbrings the discipline, but then
getting advisors on board wherethey have been through this
journey, been through scaling inthe markets that you want to
scale.
And so there are these knowhows, these industry connections
that really help unlock the nextwave of the growth that the wild
foods.
(40:30):
We'll get through.
So on that note, Patrick, wewant to give you the stage to
kind of give a shout to yourentire team, the incredible work
that they've done and whatyou're looking for as a company
going forward.
Patrick Hardy (40:44):
Yeah, sure.
I'd like to use the opportunityto give a shout out to, all the
wilds from the wild food.
It's 180 people between Mexicoand Chile that are, every day,
showing up to work and justtrying to make a huge difference
at everybody's houses, on, on,on the way that they consume and
on the products that they have.
I say we have a.
A fantastic team, they bringtons of energy and they love
(41:07):
what to do.
And I'm super proud of whatwe've been able to do, which is
build an infrastructure for,great talent to be able to
develop and perform at itsfullest potential.
And if we continue to do that,I'm sure that we're going to
continue bringing the bestinnovations, continue to grow
our DTC channels and continue togrow our, our brand presence
(41:27):
everywhere across the region.
Jed Tabernero (41:31):
Through our conversation with Patrick Hardy,
we've witnessed how wild foodsinitially faced with challenges
has transformed into a force forchange in the food industry.
Advocating for better.
More informed choices.
Every item we choose to consumeis a vote.
For the kind of world we want.
(41:51):
Wild foods reminds us that ourchoices have power.
The power to drive change in thefood industry.
One conscious decision.
At a time.
Thanks for tuning into thingshave changed podcast.
And as always.
Stay curious.
The information and opinionsexpressed in this episode are
(42:14):
for informational purposes only.
And are not intended asfinancial investment or
professional advice.
Always consult with a qualifiedprofessional before making any
decisions based on the conceptprovided.
Neither the podcast, nor iscreators are responsible for any
actions taken as a result oflistening to this episode.
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