Bar Bruhis - Building a High-Protein Couscous Brand In the Mountains

welcome to shelf help today we're actually pause
Founder CEO of Boost Kooz
gluten free high protein
couscous brand
that's making waves and growing super quickly
before launching Boost Kooz
Bar spent 10 years or so in the DDC world
running day to day at no commerce
helping start sumo.com just to name a few
and just left no commerce I think
in April 1st to go all in at Boost Goose after
after I think he hit 5,000 in daily sales
on track for 3 million this year
so super impressive get why you left
yeah super excited to have in bar
maybe just kind of first off
for some listeners
that aren't that familiar with Boost Goose
Love to just get quick lay of the land
just in terms of kind of origin story
why behind the brand
kind of core products in the lineup
and then I'll go from there
yeah yeah
and thanks for having me on Adam stoked yeah
I think you
you had a couple of friends on here recently
I think I saw Sam from Good Wipes most recently
he's the man yup
he's a he's such a character
but yeah
buscoos yeah
so we we launched buscoos in December of last year
I can give a little bit of backstory like
before that so yeah
I was born in Israel
that's where the name bar comes from
I lived there until I was 8
then moved to the States and um
always grew up eating couscous
I was kind of like
a big part of my diet um
and always loved like
how quick and easy it was to make like
you know you can cook it in five minutes
as opposed to like
rice or pasta to take at least 15
up to like
30 minutes and it's way more versatile right
you can eat it hot or cold
whether it's on your salad cold
or like
if you want to eat it hot
you can I eat it as like
a bed to stir fry or curry
kind of as a rice replacement
even as a pasta replacement
fast forward I
I lived kind of all over I ended up moving to Colorado
just outside of Aspen
a small little mountain town called Carbondale
I love to do a ton of like
outdoor activities like mountain biking
backcountry skiing and would always come home
looking for a quick and healthy recovery meal
I kept coming back to couscous
but realized it wasn't actually that good for you
it's normal couscous at um
people think it's actually a
it's a grain but it's actually just semolina
flour and water so it's just pasta right
and so yeah
looked for alternatives didn't really see anything
I think there's a ton out there
it's working in like
the better for you category
on the pasta and rice side
like Bonsai's great
so is Goodles you know
I don't think we're really competitive
to either of those companies
on the rice side there's right rice
who went out of business actually
for getting sued for having rice in their
in their name and now we
we see a lot of
right rice customers move over to couscous
but yeah
we saw that there's like a
a need here right
like went to the grocery store
literally
the only company that's making couscous is Near East
bad branding bad ingredients
so yeah
went to work tried to formulate a new product
it took about two years and now yeah
we have Boost Goose which is a protein packed couscous
18 grams of protein 11 grams of fiber per serving
it's three simple ingredients
so it comes from chickpea flour
lentil flour and pea flour
it's all non GMO glyphosate free
and like a naturally occurring protein
which I I think protein right now is like a huge trend
but like
do you really need protein sprinkles
probably not do you need like a
a good healthy source of protein
I think yes and so yeah
that's us
on the topic of the three ingredient formulation
chickpea lentil
and pea flour just tell me a bit about the journey like
that ultimately got you got there
I think from what I read you
you initially tried just adding protein to
kind of traditional couscous recipes
and for you ultimately got to where you are today
and I'd love to hear just a good bit about that journey
in terms of you know
that ultimately got you to
to the current form factor
yeah yeah man
that that's like
I feel like an entire story in itself
and I feel like yeah
people see products and you don't end up talking about
like the the
the origin story but yeah
we um
so maybe it could have been a little faster
obviously I'm
I was like
running no commerce and doing some other things
but I do think it would have still taken a
quite a bit of time um
we essentially yeah
like you said we started by hey okay
there is regular couscous is semolina flour and water
hey can we actually just infuse that with like
a pea protein or a pumpkin seed protein
and see how that like works
we tried that
a ton of different variations in our kitchen
you know bought a dehydrator
essentially like
there's two types of couscous
there's Moroccan couscous and Israeli couscous
Israeli or pearl couscous
we were going for the Moroccan
or you essentially like you
you sieve this like
water and semolina flour formula through a sieve
and you essentially try to like
dehydrate that rehydrate it
we tried a like
probably a hundred different variations in the kitchen
all of them like
were not good like
we would like
be stoked try'em our stomach would hurt and like
like this is not something I could like
actually try to sell then did a bunch of research
it turned out that there's like
some protein couscous in Europe
which was like a good sign for us
because it's like hey
if this is working in another market
maybe we can do it here yeah
found I'm like one protein manufacturer over there
we actually like
tested their product went and visited their facility
and like actually really liked it
and we were like down to
to use it and then Trump tariffs hit
and it was like this is the entire model is like
upside down also
the supply chain is gonna take way longer
then it was like back to the drawing board
probably like the lowest point of like
do we have a business here
like can we actually make this happen
then it was kind of like OK
you know what like
we know that there is a product that's working
let's try to like completely engineer that
and vertically integrate it in the United States
so we went out
found the biggest pulse flower manufacturer
which a pulse flower is essentially just um
a legume flower um
so you know
you take chickpeas and grind them up um
or lentils or peas
found the biggest pulse flower manufacturer
called around to like every co man you could think of
found a gluten free pasta manufacturer
um you know
took a long time but like
essentially
became friends with one of the operating partners there
older older gentleman that would just like
give calls and kind of like
butter up and ask questions
and really cool guy that like
wants to see innovation in the industry
and he was willing to take a bet on us
um we're able to
there's like
even another part of that story where we
we found the biggest um
dye manufacturer in the country who had like
essentially
the way pasta's made is it's extruded through
like a dye
and we found a dye manufacturer
that had a small pasta line
to test their dyes he'd never used it for R&D
always used it for like
die R and d essentially
and we were able to convince him to do that
so we flew out to him
got our first formulation kind of dialed in
and then
we were able to negotiate with our manufacturer
on an m o Q and kind of took a leap of faith of like
hey let's throw some money into this
see if like
people even care if not
we've just lost like
a little bit of money and now
I think it's safe to say that people care about it and
and want to eat couscous
traditional couscous is is typically
you know like
steamed or I don't know
absorb is the right word and I think yours is
you point out maybe
this is the difference
between the Israeli and the Moroccan
I think yours is like
more boiled and strained was that at all
in terms of like
and and I guess
if so how did you kind of address that
if I come back on in like
two or three months we
we do have another skew coming out that is the
the Moroccan couscous but yeah
there's two types of couscous
the Moroccan couscous is actually much easier
and quicker to to make
you can absorb you know
you you
you can literally just boil water in a kettle
and then pour it on top it absorbs it
you can like
cook it anywhere way faster
way easier
our current version is more of an Israeli type uh
uh
version of couscous which normal
like just semolina
flour and water couscous
the Israeli version you do also cook similar to pasta
where you know
boil water yeah
cook it drain it
rinse it so that's our current version
it was definitely you know
one of like I mentioned in the beginning
like there's essentially two value
props to normal couscous
it's convenience and versatility
both versions I think
are still versatile
the convenience factor was definitely a concern
but you know
I think it's one of those things that was like
move fast and fail and um
you know I think it's enough of a pain point to where
okay like
let's launch with one skew
this is the skew that we know we can produce
if we can get to enough product market fit
and enough signal
then we can actually launch a second skew and
and then eventually even more skews after that
but yeah
definitely a concern it hasn't seemed to come up
yeah like
if you look at our reviews
I'm very customer obsessed
I like
talk to our customers text our customers certainly like
you know I'd say like one in 1,000
like we'll have an issue
but I think that's like normal for like
any CBG brand totally
overseas tariffs
kind of totally threw things off to you
whether it's just the nature of their formulation
or they decide to do it intentionally
are a big part of their supply chain is
anything that I know comes comes to mind
or recommendations you might have that can help
and de risk it whether it's
you know dual sourcing
ingredient flexibility or just
it was a blessing in disguise
that we had to rebuild our entire supply chain
I think
not having to deal with overseas shipping and duties
all all the things um
uh tariffs
like it took us a lot longer to get to market
but we are way more flexible now
so if you can I think manufacturing like
onshore is it is definitely better
having said that our
some of our future skews will not be like
fully us and so we have learnings to do there too
I'm not sure that I'm like
you know we're just getting our chops there
so I would say if you can
try to do it in the US um
but I'm I'm certainly not an expert in
in that regard and we're very much learning on the fly
your other partner I think you guys put in a
each put in a good chunk of cash for that first order
just for some a really early stage founders
that are as very similar place
if they're gonna do this and
I guess a good chunk of cash is relative
like compared to other CPG brands
like I know plenty of CPG brands that require like
at least $100,000 to get off the ground
sure yeah
you know I can share that
we were like well under fifty
like I
I don't know that
I'm comfortable sharing the exact number
but it's it's around that and yeah
you know I think for us it was from the gecko
it was the approach was always
hey listen
this is a start up
both of us actually had like other jobs
and it was essentially like hey
can we like do something that's different
and can can this thing get legs
and from the gecko it was always
let's put in X amount of money
and pretend that that money doesn't exist
it's like
putting that money would have been either I put it in
like a bitcoin style style investment where it's like
super high risk or I invest in myself
and be willing to have it go down to zero
so like
as soon as I transfer that to the business account
I just like in my head wrote it off as like
that's going to zero yep
and then from there like
all the decisions get easier right
it's like okay
we have x amount of money in the bank
we are we need to prove out this business
with that amount of money
and ideally we don't put any in any more money
and so that's the way we thought about it and
and yeah obviously nerve wracking to like
go to go do that that first run
but you know we
we negotiate net 30 terms
so it was always like okay
if we can
if we can have this product land at our warehouse
we could start selling it even before like
it lands in the warehouse and we can start getting cash
to feel better about it uh
or to feel better about the debt that we
we carried but yeah
you know
I think my mindset from the beginning was always like
hey we're burning this this money is gonna be on fire
it's like either going to zero or going to
to more than zero yeah
and leave no commerce if that was
this is the data I need to see
I'm I'm going on this full time
burning the boats or whatever you wanna say
so like I said we we
we launched in December
and I had the conversation with Jeremiah at no in like
mid January to essentially say like hey
you know I think I
I have too much on my plate
and that was that was essentially the the
the conversation I had with myself is
you know I was stretched too thin
so I I
you know I had no
which you know
we had 60 five hundred merchants on there
and like a growing business software
I do DDC Ski
which is an event in Aspen every year where we fly out
30 of the biggest DDC brands
you know this year we had like Sam
like I said groons
like David Protein like some
some of the biggest and
and fastest growing companies that
like that took a lot of planning and coordinating
and all of that and then I also had Boost Goose
and it was just like this is too much
I need to take things off my plate
so I hired someone to help for Dita ski
the no and no was the kind of like
the first thing where I was like
this needs to come off the plate
because the only reason boost goose is gonna fail
is if I don't put in the right attention
like right away we saw like
we were getting a first order profitability
low CPAs really good reviews
customers were using it they were buying it again
and so right away it was like
there's enough strong signal
I wouldn't say there's like
one specific number I was looking at
but across the board I could just like
gut feel that there was enough signal
that there's gonna be a business here
and um yeah
I'm gonna all in or nothing type person
so I knew that I couldn't be like
you know one foot in
one foot out of like two different businesses
so I decided I just had to step away from now
about who the core customer is
of Boost Goose and anything that's been surprising
in terms of who you found
is actually the core buyer at all
yeah yeah
I think when we so it's
it's such an interesting like
experiment to
to think through who your customer is and build
like a customer demographic before you launch and then
like recalibrate it
and I think my time at know help me a ton with that
right like
post purchase surveys
you learn so much about your customer
who they are why they're buying
where they're from like demographic
all sorts of things right
and so going into it I
I think I I'd like to think that I had like
no ego attached to the persona
and wanted to just
let the customers tell us who they were
but yeah
like certainly I
you know I thought OK
like it's probably gonna be like that
the female that like
lives in New York LA
Austin that does Pilates
and is looking for a healthy
recovery meal after their workout
or like that gym bro in those same geos
yeah we've been really surprised to see who
who it actually is so
you know we've
I'd say we have like
probably five different customers
number one would probably be like
the mom or like the caregiver with kids
really quick and easy for them to make for themselves
they're also
a lot of moms in postpartum need high protein
so that that's been really interesting to see
but then also feeding their kids
it's high in iron and there's no choking hazard
I don't have kids so I like
didn't think through that
but um
it's it's a huge market right
and huge share of wallet so that's one
the kosher community was another really surprising one
we are fully kosher certified
and I think
they were already eating couscous in their diet and uh
you know then wanted a healthier version of that
um that community also has a lot of word of mouth
and so been really interesting there
the gluten free community
that's another one where um
you know at first I didn't think was gonna be that big
but it's actually been huge
and we have all sorts of stories of moms reaching out
and saying like hey
my my son or daughter was diagnosed celiac at birth
and I always wanted to try couscous
this is the first couscous they've ever had
really like
moving stories like that um
so yeah those
those are probably like the three core ones
and then and then the two other ones are those like
ancillary ones that I'd mentioned
like that that
you know 20s
30s something that's like
looking for added protein
um the
I think the most interesting one that's like
come up recently is like the GLP1 movement
you know they're looking for really high fiber
high protein foods
one in eight American is on GLP ones now
so that's that's been an interesting one to to
to explore they're all
you know that when you're on a GLP1 you're
you're pretty constipated
and so like having a high fiber
that's soluble fiber really helps you out
for no commerce but
for some of those first time founders
that are trying to figure out really
who their actual core customer is or is gonna be as
you know as fast as possible post launch
like what's the
what's the best way you think they can do that
yeah um
I think this advice probably is across the board
you have to be customer obsessed um and
and that will answer so many of your questions
so um
yeah certainly
like
no or any other post purchase survey is super helpful
you know when we started
no is always surprising
it's like 40% of people will fill out that survey
um I personally am in that 60%
so it's like even more surprising to me
but you know
getting like
you know two out of five of your customers to like
answer a survey and and designing that survey to really
to really help you right
so like
what are the main value props of your
of your product list them out and have people like
check off the ones that like
resonated with them for the purchase so that you can
like double
triple down on that right
like most founders are like
too obsessed with their product
and they give too many value props
like this is simplified
it's food like
give two value props
you know
I think also understanding why people didn't buy um
or what or like
why they didn't almost buy
that's like really
really helpful for understanding um
like customer hesitations um
but that's just one data source
like there's so many others right
like I look through our orders
if anyone's like order
you know we like
had someone order like
$200 worth of Boost Goose today
I'm like
texting that person and I'm like
getting on a call with them and like
understanding their story
there's like
I do think surveys are so
so important but like
at the end of the day there's nothing that
like a human conversation
especially a phone call ideally
like a like
a face to face conversation
will give you so much more context
and just continue to absorb that
um our first 500 orders
we did like
we just posted we
we like got a front page article in the um
in the Aspen Times and like some
some other newspapers here
and um essentially said hey
if you want free shipping
come a buy from bars garage
and they would like just literally come to our garage
and like that demographic skews a lot older
it's a newspaper reading article
or newspaper reading audience
so you know I
I took that with a grain of salt
but still very much asked them like
what matters to you um
looking at all of your Facebook comments
all of your Instagram comments um
seeing like what are the patterns there
and then yeah
certainly looking at your
your reviews and we have
I think we crossed 200 reviews today
we have like 190 five star reviews
but there's 10 that are not five star
and I'm like very much obsessed with that
and like emailing
texting those people understanding like hey
what do you not like about our product
you know who
what is your demographic and who are you
why did you buy so that I can understand like
how I can attract more of the right person
from a brand identity standpoint
as you're building out the brand
from a look and feel positioning
voice standpoint what was
that were top of mind for you
when you were
we were building all that out
yeah so
you know we wanted the product to be
we wanted we wanted it to attract and
and resonate with a wide variety of
of consumers right
like like I
you had asked for the like
customer profile and I think I named like
five or six right
so it's like I actually have a box right here
but like
you know the box
it looks like it might be a little glary
but like
the box is like
meant to be like
fun and light right
and something different than like
what's out there like I mentioned
like right now it's just Near East that's
that's uh
like producing couscous
um but yeah we
you know we kind of borrowed like
a lot of the colors are from like
Middle Eastern uh
like whether it's like um
like the blue is like
kind of like
coming from like
the Israeli flag or like
even like
Greece where like um
a lot of couscous comes from
we knew we wanted to be like
fun and light so we created these characters
and we have a bunch of these characters like
all through our website yeah
even like
you know this is like
all the different characters like
dancing on like
our hat so yeah
we knew we wanted to be fun and light
we knew we wanted to kind of grab some
some inspiration from like
where couscous comes from
which is like you know Africa
Greece the Middle East
and we let our designer kind of take their stab at it
and that's where we ended up
a lot of iterations between like
first and and what you see on the box today
but that's kind of the inspiration
Boost Goose is obviously I assume
people discover the brand
and try it for the first time
it just seems to be pretty clear what the product is
and what it does but I think the naming process is
it can be a lot more complicated and
and one of the hardest harder things that people do
when they're building a brand
you guys obviously hit it out of the park
what what did that naming process look like for you
and any other alternatives
that you guys were close to landing on
before you decided Boost Goose is the one to go with
yeah yeah
I can't take full credit for the name
my friend Steven came up with the name
but yeah
it's yeah
like you said it's
it's definitely an iterative process
making sure that you can trademark that name
making sure that you can get the domain
so super
super iterative but um
yeah my yeah
my friend Steven came up with the name
you know we
we saw that there's like
an opportunity for like
the domain for the trademark
and we just kind of kept building that out
I think you did you know
which is wasn't pretty awesome
and then you know
which is not uncommon at all after kind of a
a boost at the beginning
was there a moment where you realized alright
this organic momentum is
is not gonna carry us where we need to
and we need to start figuring out how to crack paid
yeah yeah
I think I
I kind of knew that that was gonna be the case
from the beginning um yeah
you know our first sales came from like I
I have a LinkedIn and Twitter following that
I've just been building for 10 years like
and it mostly came from from that
we had um you know
we had a couple of viral posts that like
there's kind of like this trend of um
like I hinted at it in the beginning
but there's like
protein is just such a trend right now that like
people are almost like
tired of new protein sources right
like um
like it's like a
like a like
I think the joke is like come on really
like um
like what like
I don't know I've seen like
literally like
sprinkles with protein like
I don't know brownies with protein
like all these like sources
so then um
yes someone uh
snacks shot which is Andrea
she's great she like
posted about um
like a picture of us and like
a protein couscous like
entered the chat or something
and it went viral got like 100,000 views on Twitter
turn and then from there like
a New York Times writer like
saw it and they also like
posted about it
and that got like another 250 or 500,000 impressions
and then from there it was just like
kind of this like
downstream effect of um
like a bunch of different creators made videos for it
like
it like this
this news outlet well worthy
so we just got like a ton of like
like organic PR honestly
that we couldn't have engineered
obviously like
net new product so there was some engineering there
but um
yeah we got lucky there
and you know
from the beginning it was always like OK
hey listen
like we could
we'll always post organic content
and we always like
want to be like
founder LED we want people to resonate with the story
and feel like they know the brand
and feel like they
they are early supporters of the brand and like
moving with us in the movement
but yeah we knew that like
in order to build a scalable
repeatable business we needed to crack paid ads
I'd actually never logged in to meta or like
Facebook Ads Manager before starting boost
surprisingly enough right
like I've been on the Sass side of DTC
but I'd never logged in
and it's kind of dove into the deep end
watched like so much YouTube
obviously
I'd already been following the right accounts on like
Twitter and LinkedIn and had the right network
um you know
Connor Roland has helped a bit
some of the other like operators that are like
operating really big businesses and
and know the ins and outs
so I was able to like
kind of ask questions along the way
but yeah it was mostly just like
self taught like banging my head at the wall like
trying to figure it out and then yeah
now like
you know it's still just me and my co founder
we are scaling meta like
pretty rapidly we've got a lot of white listing ads
a lot of creators that we work with are still
our top performing ad is an ad that I probably spent
like 70 hours creating
it's our founder ad where I just studied like
so many ads thought about our story
filmed it edited it in CapCut
you know like
test the different hooks
but that's like kind of what helped us get to this like
very low CPA that
that gets us first order profitability
and yeah now we're
we're continuing to scale that
we're all obviously on Google as well
we're testing acts on we're testing a
we want to launch on TikTok Shop and Amazon
but right now just doing it all ourselves
like trying to stick
keep that bootstrap mentality of
of staying lean even if we do raise money
it's gonna be like hey
like how do we stay as lean as possible
and do this as profitably as possible
in terms of the retail side of things
tell me about your Expo s strategy back in March
yeah uh
well so Expo is insane
it's like the Super Bowl and there's just like so much
just shit going on and so many people
it's exhausting you know
again like
going back to the like hey
we're bootstrap
we don't want to put more money into this
we want to
you know I think eventually we will raise money
but we wanna get to as far as we can without it
Expo to me is a massive opportunity to unlock retail
and you kind of have all these buyers in one room
we don't have like
connections to those buyers
like you go talk to
like a Peter Rahul from like
David Protein like
that dude doesn't need to go to Natural Expo
because he can just call the Costco buyer
and go fly out and see them
right but like
we don't have that and so yeah yeah
and then from there I was like
okay how do we get into the room
it's really expensive so yeah
I just like
finagled my way in for free to Expo
I don't know that I I should share
like everything that I did there
but
yeah we went to Expo for free
we were able to meet a couple buyers there
nice uh yeah
we we met the Gelson's buyer actually
that
hopefully we'll launch there in the next month or two
and yeah
yeah we we
we like
you know for the first year
it's like hey
we're just gonna go and like
literally absorb and meet as many people as possible
I think my favorite part about the CPG community is
especially coming from the sass
or software side like
everyone in software can be a frenemy
they can just pivot in especially now with AI
like they can pivot even faster into your lane
and yeah
where like CPG
like everyone is kind of like a real friend right
like um
like most companies that we saw at
at Expo it's like oh
we could like
partner with you guys do a collab like oh
you have a sauce company oh
you have a this company
so we made a ton of friends
which was really cool um
and that was like the
the main takeaway there that's awesome
with some of those first few retailers you got into
which I think were near Carbondale which
what the buyers cared about
what you felt like really resonated and
it's funny like that like
looking back on it it's like
when I first started I had no idea what I was doing
I had no idea what a distributor was
I didn't know what unifier a UNFI or K he was
I didn't know how like
margins work I was just like
okay well
there's these grocery stores that are here
let's just like
go knock on doors I would literally just take a box in
um we
I still have it but like
I would just take a box in with like
my picture on the front of the Aspen Times newspaper
I was like hey look
this is me this is my product
you guys want to sell it like
in so many words um
and um yeah
we got super lucky you know
like we
we live in a small community
everyone wants to help each other
um and they were like yeah
we'll buy 2 3 cases
see how it goes um
and you know I still have it set up this way where they
like text me when they need new cases
like we need to get off of that as we scale
but like yeah
it's insane velocity like
they are like we were out
we were sold out and they would like
text me like yo
or like
I would even go into their store and they're like
we had like this lady Kathleen
she came in and she's like
I cannot believe you guys don't have goose goose
like blah blah blah
like so yeah
good signal but yeah
but to answer your question
it was just
it was like me walking with a newspaper in our box
and just saying hey
do you guys wanna try it and I would leave
you know I would leave a box
let them try it
and come back the next day kind of thing
speaking with the retailers you're in so far
that's in terms of
what has actually had the biggest impact
from a velocity standpoint
thus far yeah
I think it kind of depends on the region we're in
some groceries in New York
some in in Colorado
and we certainly like
need to continue to improve our packaging
yeah adding
I can tell you that like
certainly online like
adding the core
like the kosher logo on the packaging helped a ton
but yeah I think um
and and now we're gfco certified
so we need to add that to our next packaging for
for the gluten free community
uh huh but yeah
I think uh
we a couple things we Learned one
we don't sit next to pasta
we sit next to rice farro and
and quinoa which
that aisle is far less competitive
then the pasta aisle and like
I'd like to say we like engineered that
but we just kind of got lucky and
and backed into that which is great
so that's the first part is
you know
are sitting in this aisle that has way less competition
like as opposed to like
the pasta aisle that has all these awesome brands
that are these different colors
but you still have to make a decision
you go to the rice fair on keenwild
like it's all like
white packaging that is pretty old school
so yeah we
we Learned that we made our
we Learned that it was like
harder to read our front of the box call outs
um we also Learned that the
our front of the box call outs were for the entire box
we said we used to say 46 grams of protein
and can't remember how much fiber
and now it's a per serving
which is what the customer wanted to see
yeah so we Learned that and adjusted it
but yeah a lot of those learnings
you know I'd say like
90% of those learnings actually came from online
and translated into retail versus like
talking to the retail buyer
like you don't own that customer
you can't talk to that customer
like online like
people that are like pissed off
that you have
46 grams of protein on the front of your box
will like blow up your ads and just comment until like
they can't comment anymore
which is actually good for the
the meta algorithm
cause they're actually feeding an impression count
but yeah we we learn from them
trying to stay as lean as possible
for as long as possible which totally respect
how you're gonna let your time
focus between DDC and retail as
as retail really continues to start to take off
yeah it's a good question
yeah I think it comes back to
I genuinely believe
right now is the best time to be building in CPG1
because of the tailwind of CPG right
especially like
if you can get on certain trends that are like
built to last like fiber and protein
I think it's it's a really good time
the other piece of that equation is like
AI is obviously in such a good place right now
to be able to automate and essentially make like
one person three people
and so yeah
to uh
back to your question
we're essentially building the company AI first
so anything that we can do to automate
whether it's like email design
whether it's responding back to customers
on customer support whether it's like
high touch items like
I'll give you an example if someone cancel their
cancels their subscription with us
they get a personalized email from me
and my email that is personalized via AI
and automatically pulls from our recharge API
builds it on a skill that I built
based on the first 10 emails that I sent
and then it automatically sends it to that person
we may
or may not win that person back into a subscriber
but like you know
10 out of 10 times that that person is now more uh
affiliated with Busco's and a happier customer
so all of these things are
are being built to like
essentially try to automate as much as we can
on the DTC side certainly
we'll still need humans and um
you know the like
one of the first hires that we'll likely make
is gonna be like
a chief of staff or like a growth role
to be able to take a lot of what I've got on my plate
off of my plate so that I can start to focus on retail
and have those retail conversations
and then eventually like
certainly we need to hire humans right
like the
the retail side is still very archaic
it's like 1980s
like you need to send a pitch deck
you need to fly out you need to shake hands
and make best friends with that buyer
and so yeah
like we'll
we'll need humans that have done that
that can bring connections to the table
and we certainly wanna do that
right now I think
we have so much more juice to squeeze out of DDC
and so much more to learn from our customer
and be able to build like
a better story like
the story I wanna tell a retailer when I walk in is hey
we not only know that we should be in here
based on the data from our customers
we've made 1,000 customers
800 of them are telling us to be in your store
we also know that we can drive you more foot traffic
because we have now a brand following
and people that are gonna come into your store
to go buy boost boost
but then put other things in their cart
and so we're we're trying to build that story alongside
you know starting to like
get some retail traction
so that we can learn from the retailers um
along the way uh yeah
so yeah
ideally we'll
we'll hire someone so I can focus more of my time there
how are you thinking about your kind of product roadmap
etcetera whatever
you're obviously comfortable sharing at this point
yeah yeah
I think um
you know the
the couscous market is is a big market
it's like a a 30 billion dollar market
I think there's plenty of room for us to grow into
the couscous market
I think the way that I think about it is
you know
probably 80% of Americans know what couscous is
they've either like of that
probably 50% of the 80%
has actually made couscous themselves
the other 30% probably had it at a restaurant
or has seen it whatever
um hundred percent of Americans know what protein is
and so we're looking for that Venn diagram
which is a very very large Venn diagram
so right now we're we're strictly focused on couscous
um there's like so much for us to do there
there's a lot of white space
um we like
you know there's two
two versions of couscous Israeli and there's Moroccan
we think that we can create both
right now we have an Israeli version
we think that we can create the best
better for you Moroccan as well
so we'll continue to dive in there and then from there
yes certainly
there's so many opportunities
when it comes to flavoring right
like whether it's
you know partnering with other companies like
you know like
like the Ollie Pop Times Grooms
or even Ollie pop times like good wives
like there's
there's so many like
opportunities there for partnership
but also like
our own flavors that we create
and then yeah
then you know
being able to create variety packs and things like that
so yeah
short term certainly like
very much focused on on couscous
long term you know
we do think we can boost other grains as well
but that's
that's not something that we're thinking about like
day to day yeah
fair enough
cool this has been great
what's the best place for people to follow along with
along with you and then
what's the best place for people to follow along with
with Boost Goose as well
yeah yeah
and and thanks for having me on
that was fun um yeah
best place to to follow me is uh
barbruhists on LinkedIn Twitter
I have a website barbruise.com too
I try to keep updated
but it's not that updated right now
um yeah
probably the only bar that you'll
you'll find certainly the only bar
bruise that you'll find
so I'm sure if you type in RB on anything
you'll see me
thanks to my parents for for giving me that SEO boost
um and then Boost Goose
yeah everything is at Boost Goose
so boost goose.com at Boost Goose Instagram
TikTok whatever
so yeah
you can find us there perfect
awesome bar appreciate the time
I think that's the pod I love it
today we're speaking with Bar Bruce
different variables to play around with
were you worried at all about consumer behavior
changing their cooking method
yeah yeah
so you are right if you uh
you had to go back to the drawing board
I mean I think the like
it's time where they have to pull the trigger
we put in um like
was there like one specific moment you're like alright
yeah it was pretty early on
a huge people why
10 k plus in like the first two weeks in market
sales kind of and kind of slowly dropped after that
in terms of what the pitch looked like
we're still obviously learning on the retail side
how are you how are you guys thinking about your
prioritization more flavors versus other grains
appreciate you coming on

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