Founder Feature: Bar Bruhis of Boostcous

In this episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, host Caitlin Bricker sits down with Bar Bruhis, founder of Boostcous - the world's first better-for-you couscous, built to fill a gap in a grocery aisle that hasn't seen a single innovation while pasta brands like Banza and Goodles have completely reinvented their category. Boostcous delivers 18 grams of protein and 11 grams of fiber per serving using just three ingredients - chickpeas, lentils, and peas - with zero fillers or xanthan gum.

Bar was born in Israel, grew up eating couscous, and spent two years and over 100 kitchen batches formulating a version that actually tastes good. He comes from a DTC and SaaS background, launching direct-to-consumer first to prove product-market fit before ever approaching a retailer - hitting 10,000 Shopify orders in six months.

Caitlin and Bar dig into his immigrant mentality and why he built such a strong network early, the genius post-purchase survey question that got him a call with a Costco buyer, and why he's now in Lieber's Locavore and pitching Whole Foods and Walmart after his first trade show at Summer Fancy Food.

Listen in as they discuss:

• Why the couscous aisle has seen zero innovation while pasta has been completely reinvented by brands like Banza and Goodles
• How a licensing deal with an Italian protein-couscous manufacturer collapsed overnight because of Trump-era tariffs
• Betting a small, capped amount of personal capital with a U.S. co-man just to test product-market fit
• Hitting 10,000 Shopify orders in six months and why starting DTC-first was non-negotiable
• Bar's immigrant mentality, early mentorship from Noah Kagan, and building an entire events business (D2Ski) just to deepen his CPG network
• The one post-purchase survey question that turned into a Costco buyer call within three days
• Going from zero in-person sampling to landing on shelf at Lieber's Locavore through Startup CPG's Denver grocery run
• Key lessons from Boostcous's first major trade show at Summer Fancy Food, including new conversations with Whole Foods and Walmart
• Why gluten-free shoppers and parents of toddlers have become two of Boostcous's strongest customer demographics
  
  

Episode Links:

• Bar Bruhis – Founder, Boostcous LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbruhis/
• Website: boostcous.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/boostcous
  
  

Don't forget to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode. For potential sponsorship opportunities or to join the Startup CPG community, visit http://www.startupcpg.com.

Show Links:

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• Questions or comments about the episode? Email [e-mail]
• Episode music by Super Fantastics
  
  

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Creators and Guests

Host

Caitlin Bricker

Managing Editor @ Startup CPG

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.

Bar Bruhis
The number one question people ask us when they find out that it's protein cousins is like, how do you add protein in there? And it's all natural. Like, we just use three ingredients, chickpeas, lentils, and peas. And we're not infusing it with anything. There's no xanthan gum, there's no filler. So, like, the product speaks for itself. And so it felt great to like, get that recognition regardless of, like, how it was featured.

00:32
Caitlin Bricker
Hey, everybody, this is Caitlin Bricker, managing editor at startup cpg. We are back with another founder feature. Today I'm sitting down with Bar Bruhis, founder of Boostcous, the world's first better for you couscous with 18 grams of protein and 11 grams of fiber. Bar was born in Israel, grew up eating couscous and spent two years formulating a version that actually tastes good and has benefits. And he's doing it using just three simple ingredients. Chickpeas, lentils, and peas with zero fillers or xanthan gum. He comes from a DTC and SaaS background and launched direct to consumer to prove product market first, hitting 10,000 Shopify orders in six months. We're diving into his immigrant mentality and why he built such a strong network early.

01:17
Caitlin Bricker
His genius post purchase survey question that got him a call with a Costco buyer, or why he's now in Lieber's locavores and pitching Whole foods and Walmart and what he's learned from his first trade show at Summer fancy food. We hear from founders on this podcast every week. If you're a brand and want to get new opportunities, right in your inbox, text CPG to 833-60-57002. That's 833-605-7002. And we'll get you hooked up. And as always, enjoy. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin and today I'm here with Bar Bruhis, founder of Boostcous. Bar, welcome to the show.

02:01
Bar Bruhis
Yeah. Stoked to be here. Thanks for having me.

02:03
Caitlin Bricker
Caitlin, I am psyched to have you here. You and I both know protein is everywhere. It's on everybody's minds. It's on everybody's plates, hopefully. But you are doing something different than I've seen anybody doing in this space, which is a. A pretty unique accomplishment. So before we go any deeper, can you tell us what boost cous is?

02:24
Bar Bruhis
Yeah. So Boostcous is the world's first better for you couscous and it has 18 grams of protein. 11 Grams of fiber per serving. And, yeah, we're really excited to share a little bit more.

02:36
Caitlin Bricker
It's so interesting hearing you say the world's first better for you couscous because you would think a couscous is already better for you since it is essentially a single ingredient product. But what you have done. I just had leftovers for lunch. It's great as leftovers, and I had it for dinner. What you have done has been something, like I said, it's unlike anything I've seen before in this space. I just gotta know more. So my first question for you is, why couscous?

03:04
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, I think, like, just back to the world's first, too. I feel like I saw a slack message from you or something at one point where, like, everyone says it's LinkedIn or LinkedIn. Yeah, it was like, everyone says world's first, but we're like, actually the first better for you couscous. So I sometimes am hesitant to say that just because I feel like it's overdone. But, yeah, I appreciate you trying the product, and that's awesome. You had some for dinner and leftovers. Yeah. So I was born in Israel. That's where the name bar comes from, and lived there until I was 8. And, yeah, grew up eating couscous. I've always loved, like, how quick and easy it is to make, like, just even a regular couscous. It cooks in five minutes. It's really versatile.

03:43
Bar Bruhis
You can eat it hot or cold, either in a salad cold or, like, hot. I use it as a rice replacement. Put it. Your stir fry on top of it just soaks up that entire dish's flavor. And I just always loved everything about it. And as I got older, I, like, kept coming back to it as, like, a recovery meal. I do a ton of. I live out in Colorado and do a ton of, like, mountain biking and skiing and all these activities that kind of require you to have, like, good nutrition after. And. Yeah, and then I just kind of realized that there wasn't, like, a better for you option out there. Like, I'd go to the couscous aisle and see literally, like, no one has done anything in that aisle while at the same time, like, one all over in the pasta.

04:21
Bar Bruhis
It's like some incredible businesses, right? Like Bonza, Goodles, Brammy. So many incredible businesses have made, like, a better few pasta. So, yeah, got the idea of, like, hey, can we do something that's better for you on the couscous island? It took two years to formulate it, and, yeah, we launched Six months ago. And here we are.

04:39
Caitlin Bricker
Okay, you launched six months ago, but what did this process look like for you from inception, from the concept that you had for boozcouss today, one.

04:50
Bar Bruhis
Of the most common questions we get asked is like, is couscous a grain? And it's actually not a grain. It's just semolina, flour and water. Right. So essentially pasta. So the way we started was, hey, can we infuse protein into this, like, pasta? You know, maybe we started with like, pea protein. We started with pumpkin seed protein. And we're just doing, like, experiments in the kitchen. And, like, there's probably like a hundred plus batches that we tried. And every single one I get, like, so stoked on. And I'd try it and it didn't taste good or hurt my stomach. And I'd like, trick myself into thinking that it was like, okay. And then I'd like, let my girlfriend or a friend try it and they'd be like, no, this sucks.

05:30
Caitlin Bricker
True friends.

05:31
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, true friends. Yeah. And then, yeah, we essentially like, okay, is anyone else doing this? We found that, like, actually in Italy, there is a small manufacturer that's doing protein couscous. And like, right away it was like, okay, someone else is actually doing this. This is proof. And like, can we get some samples? We got samples, talk to them. And were actually on track to like, white label their product and private label it. And then Trump tariffs hit last year, and then that entire, like, model just didn't work. Like, we would have had to charge like $10 per box. I was like, no one's going to buy that. So then went back to essentially like, can we use a co man in the US and do this?

06:09
Bar Bruhis
And we eventually found a co man that was willing to work with us and was willing to kind of work on a minimum order quantity with us and just kind of like sent it and said, okay. Like, me and my co founder each put in a little bit of money and we said, okay, like, if we lose this money, like, we're okay with it essentially, like burning this money. But this is the only amount of money we're willing to put in and we're going to, like, see if there's product market fit. So, yeah, that's how we got to having a product.

06:36
Caitlin Bricker
And your process now, you've just recently come from D2C to trying to get on store shelves. Am I correct in saying that?

06:45
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, exactly. So we launched. Technically it was like the end of November, but I just say December because it was like, pretty Much the end of November, like after Thanksgiving kind of thing. So we launched in December. It's about six and a half months ago. So my background's also in direct to consumer, mostly on the software side of things. And I knew right away that I wanted to start in direct to consumer. One, to prove if there's product market fit, can we acquire customers profitably there. And two, to learn from the customer. Like retail is amazing and at the end of the day this product, it's insane. Like we just crossed 10,000 orders on our Shopify store. It's no way should that be possible, Right.

07:22
Bar Bruhis
I personally like don't think that I would buy six boxes of couscous online, but obviously 10,000 people have done that. So like that's product market fit.

07:31
Caitlin Bricker
I did.

07:31
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, you did as well. Yeah, thanks for the support. But like at the end of the day, couscous is like a retail pantry staple. Like you go, you find a recipe, you go buy a box, put in your pantry, maybe you buy two boxes. So the problem with retail for me early on is you're not connected to that consumer so you don't get that feedback. Right? Who is your customer? What do they like, what do they not like, what direction do they want to see you in, what they resonate with. And so yeah, I knew I wanted to start and direct to consumer so that we could very quickly learn from our consumer. Iterate really quickly. And then that way once we're on shelf, we already know what's working and have good confidence. There be velocity there too.

08:12
Caitlin Bricker
I have some so many things I want touch on with you. First I just want to ask, you have this background in DTC which I would love to talk about and love touch on. But before we do that, can you just tell us what it looked like to start from the absolute bottom floor with this brand? What did you put in place to help set yourself up for success from platforms to advertising to where you are today?

08:36
Bar Bruhis
So yeah, in terms of E commerce, I personally think that you have to be on Shopify. There's other platforms out there, but Shopify just makes it so easy and they're like affordable for new brands. And then in terms of customer acquisition, like if you're just getting started, you gotta just focus on meta. We've played around with others like Google and there's Snap, whatever, there's like a million other things but like if you are going from zero to one, your audience, your future customer lives either on Facebook or Instagram. And so yeah, that's how we got started. The cool thing about Meta in recent years is that you can literally spy on anyone. Like you can just go to the Facebook ads library and you can just go look at whatever brand you want to look at and you can see what ads they're running.

09:22
Bar Bruhis
And to start I just started with static ads. Static is essentially just going to be like an image and I just looked at to see like hey, what are these brands that I like respect and look up to what static ads are they using? And I just recreated them that similar format for Boostcous, like not stealing anything from them, just obviously these are brands that spend millions of dollars a month and if they figured it out it's going to work for us too. And so yeah, started with static ads and then moved into more video ads and like our top performing ad is something that I shot and edited and so on and so forth. Yeah, those Shopify Meta we use Klaviyo for email and we use Aaliyah for a pop up.

10:07
Bar Bruhis
To get started I think you should just start with like minimum cost. Like I'm a firm believer that you can use Canva or like Even now with AI like you can use ChatGPT image generator, Gemini's image generator, feed it an input, feed it your product, get an output of an ad, upload it to Meta. But you should not be spending a lot of money up front. You should be grinding and trying to do it as frugally as possible. So those are platforms that I use.

10:33
Caitlin Bricker
And did you have a pre sale or pre orders before you actually went live or did you just full send launch your product into the world? Dtc?

10:43
Bar Bruhis
Yeah. So I think when were launching I had this grand plan of like I'm going to reach out to all these creators and like do this big launch strategy. And then eventually I was like whatever, like there's thousands of CPG brands out there. If this product is good enough it will stand out. And so we didn't do a pre sale or anything. You know I was working on the idea for like call it a year and a half to two years and Boostcous.com I bought that domain right away because that name is like also a big part of the brand.

11:11
Bar Bruhis
And for a year and a half or two years like while were working on the ideation it was just a splash like landing page of here's what we want to build if you're interested me your email, you know I would just casually be talking to someone like oh what do you do? And I'm Like, I do this, but I'm actually passionate about this. And they're like, oh, what's it called? And they're like, oh, boostcus.com, like, put your email in, and when we launch, I'll email it to you. So I think we got, like, 500 or 600 emails through that.

11:36
Caitlin Bricker
Wow.

11:36
Bar Bruhis
And then, yeah, once we launched, Andrea from Snack Shot tweeted it, and that got, like, a hundred thousand impressions, and a New York Times recorder, like, posted about it. And none of that was planned, but we got, like, some virality around it. But, you know, none of that is scalable or repeatable. But it's, like, nice to have that first sales bump. And then, yeah, we just kept growing from there.

11:56
Caitlin Bricker
It is really exciting to see that organic discovery, like, with Snack Shot andrea and in other places, too, because it doesn't feel like it's planted. It doesn't feel like a force. Like it's something that you're meant to discover totally or forced to discover. It feels like something that you are meant to discover for sure. Like, somebody's found this that they think it's so cool. They're sharing it. They're organically talking about it. What did that feel like to you to get that recognition and be like, oh, my God, I'm featured. Look at this.

12:28
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, it's kind of funny. Like, now I've been following Andrea for so long, like, all those. Nate Rosen, like, all those food, like, shout out to all that, and they're like, incredible. They, like, I subscribe to their newsletter, and they post such great content. The funny thing is that, like, when Andrea posted it was not like, a whack, but it was more of like, hey, like, this protein thing is overdone. Like, I think everyone sees that. I think in general, the protein trend, like, anytime there is a trend, there's gonna be, like, too much of something. I'm not saying that. Like, I've just seen, like, some products where it's like, oh, like, does protein really need to be in that, like, a shot? Yeah. Anyway, so, like, Andrea posted it kind of as, like, oh, and now we have protein couscous kind of thing.

13:11
Bar Bruhis
And, like, a lot of the comments were kind of around that as well. But it was a good lesson of, like, any eyeball is a good eyeball, and any press is good press. And at the end of the day, we do like our product. The number one question people ask us when they find out that it's protein couscous is, like, how do you add protein in there? And it's all natural. Like, we just use three ingredients, chickpeas, lentils, and peas. And we're not infusing it with anything. There's no xanthan gum, there's no filler. So, like, the product speaks for itself. And so it felt great to, like, get that recognition, regardless of, like, how it was featured.

13:42
Caitlin Bricker
It's like, oh, they're putting protein and couscous. But now it's like, oh, they're putting protein and couscous and now I want that.

13:50
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was great. And shout out to Andrea. She's amazing.

13:54
Caitlin Bricker
Yeah, it's cool to see creators like Andrea. Nate from Express Checkout, Kelly Bennett. We have Tyler from bipoc cpg. I mean, the list is endless. And the really fun thing about being in this community is that these people are scouting products and this is, like, a fun thing for them to do. I am one of those people. I love discovering new products and be like, damn, have you seen this? Like, look at the branding. And then when you get to see how it actually tastes and experience the product, it's like, oh, my God, 100%. But I feel like part of the charm behind Boostcous is, like, you have this very confident personality about you. You and I have only met, I think, twice in person now, and we're talking as if we've known each other for years.

14:40
Caitlin Bricker
And I think that carries on into your products too. Like, it's a single skew and it is a confident product. You're like, hey, look at me. I'm good at what I do, and I need to know more. Like, let's peel back the layers. You mentioned that you have this background in D to C. I think it's going to be really enlightening for the audience to know more about you and why you have become so good at what you're doing and why Boostcous has taken off. Like, it has.

15:08
Bar Bruhis
Yeah. Yeah. And I think all growth is relative. I think we're happy with our growth, but it's like, there's companies are growing even faster than us, and there's companies that grow, like, slower than us. We're happy where we are. I think, for me, yeah, like, background is definitely, like, a piece of the equation. So I've always been entrepreneurial, actually. I was born in Israel, moved to Buffalo, came from, like, nothing. My dad actually, like, when we moved, like, didn't have enough money to buy a house and couldn't get a mortgage because we're like immigrants without, like, a checking account. And, like, was Lucky enough to like his first job that he got in Buffalo, like the person that hired him essentially loaned him the money and took it out of his paycheck. So like, I come from this like immigrant mentality and immigrant mindset.

15:51
Bar Bruhis
I think that like work hard, have good ethics, create a good product and like, don't try to cheat your way around and just like be a good human, good soul and like treat everyone with kindness no matter who they are or like what their beliefs are. And so I think that's like a core part of it. And yeah, in college I started a company that like failed and then like I ended up being like one of the first hires at the first email capture tool for Shopify in 2015. And back then Shopify was super small, like no one was really using and just kind of kept building in that space. And like, I think really early on in my career I always knew that like your network is your net worth.

16:29
Bar Bruhis
And like one of my first mentors was the guy that hired me in Austin. His name's Noah Kagan and he's like popular, like creator and all that. And like I just always saw like how he had such an incredible network and I just wanted to keep building that. And so yeah, like throughout my entire career I always wanted to connect with the people that were doing it and like crushing it. And yeah, most recently I left no in March, but I kind of helped get off the ground this company called no Commerce, which is the premier post purchase survey tool for E commerce brands. And essentially what that means is just like a survey tool where you can ask like, how'd you hear about us? Things like that. And we use it very heavily. I can share some like use cases.

17:11
Bar Bruhis
But yeah, through that I was able to connect with like the entire Grooms team which they just exited for 1.2 billion. The IQ Bar Team Oats overnight everyday dose like all of these incredible brands. And then I actually like started an event out of that full circle moment. I was like, okay, I have these connections. I really much value human connection, especially in like this age of AI. Like I obviously use it but like I think you can't supplement human connection. And I live just outside of Aspen in this town called Carbonyl. And I love skiing. And so I actually ended up starting this event business called d2ski.com and we got these sponsors and flew out like the biggest brands in the world to Aspen. I was able to connect with them.

17:59
Bar Bruhis
And this past year, like in that world of like SaaS, there's just so much Money and one of the sponsors, like let use their private jet to fly out people from New York to Aspen. And so through that I was like able to just connect with literally the brightest minds in cpg. And yeah, all those people are now advisors to me. Like when I have a question, I can just like text them. And like I have a co founder too who's amazing, he's one of my best friends. But like, yeah, all this leads into the success that we have today is like, again, I think your network is your net worth.

18:30
Caitlin Bricker
I think that's really good advice because you just never know where you're going to end up in life and being able to fall back on that network that you've built. And then even just like you're saying if you need to shoot somebody a text and say, hey, I'm stuck on this, or I could really use some help with this, then you have these people who are ready to catch you when you're gonna fall.

18:50
Bar Bruhis
I guess you could say a hundred percent. Yeah, it's so helpful. Like even this past week I shot a cold email to Costco and they responded and like I can share like what that email is because other people should steal this strategy too.

19:03
Caitlin Bricker
But like, yes, please tell us.

19:05
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, so I genuinely believe that every brand should start on direct to consumer because if you can, if you're perishable, obviously you can't do that. But if you can start on direct to consumer, you can learn so much about your customers and you should run a post purchase survey. And the one question you should ask is, what retail stores would you like to see like your brand Boostcous in? And I now have 45% of our customers answer that post purchase survey which is like always surprising to people. And now I have a list of our top 10 retailers and I literally just Costco's number one. Like, I don't need to make that up.

19:38
Bar Bruhis
Our consumer wants to see us in Costco and I just screenshot of that and said, hey, our customer, we had 2,000 people say that they want to see us in Costco, like what can we do about that? And I got on a call with a buyer like three days later and now it sounds like we might like it's obviously still very early stages but we're trying to do some sort of like roadshow with them. So yeah, we'll see.

20:00
Caitlin Bricker
It's just that easy.

20:01
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, just take a screenshot, send an email.

20:04
Caitlin Bricker
Amazing. Can you just repeat the question that you would hope that all these brands are asking in their post? Consumer survey.

20:10
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, I think you can word it like different ways. I think the way I have it worded is what retail stores would you like to see Your brand like ours is Boostcous in and I think what I have is I have a list of like 15 stores and then like an option for other as well. So like we get like some super small like co op or mom and pop like one store retailer that like someone in Oklahoma wants us to be in and it's great now I reach out to that person too. But like it is incredible deal flow for the retail side of things.

20:40
Caitlin Bricker
It's such a smart question to ask and it immediately gives your brand legs and then you can go back to those customers and say hey we're making it happen. You can find us in real life. Here you go.

20:50
Bar Bruhis
Exactly. Yeah. Close the loop. That's the most important part.

20:53
Caitlin Bricker
So as a brand that's been mostly D2C you now have been making some IRL appearances. I've seen you twice now. First time was at Leaver's Locavore at our Denver grocery run. It's the first time we ever did an event like that. It was a public event versus a private event so. And I think 20 other brands were sampling on the floor and you just like many of the other brands there. Majority of the brands we're not yet in retail doors. You are not yet in levers. So this is a first instance for levers to try your product and also a first instance for all of these customers who are already levers customers to try your products. And you have some pretty cool news to share about that experience too.

21:36
Caitlin Bricker
So tell us what your experience was like at that event and then the outcome of it too.

21:41
Bar Bruhis
So yeah, shout out startup cpg. Like all the events you guys do are incredible and like either free or super cheap for brands and like if you're listening you should get involved asap especially as an early brand. But yeah, the experience was incredible. That was the first time we ever sampled Boostcous to like the open public. Just because we've always been direct to consumer we'd never like actually made product and like given it out. So it was on the Boostcous side. A really good learning to like how do we sample this thing? And since levers made some adjustments and then yeah it was incredible to get the feedback from customers. I think the best part was that we actually had a lot of people that already knew us and had seen ads for us.

22:27
Caitlin Bricker
It's working.

22:28
Bar Bruhis
And wanted to like try the product and so we like converted customers right there and then, which was great. And then yeah, obviously like connecting with the Levers team was great and now we're actually in levers, we're on shelf there. So if you're in network, go buy some. In that experience it's actually kind of funny because we like I'd emailed Ray who's like the buyer and he like send us all these forms and then I didn't even fill out the forms and they bought it through fair and it turns out they just onboarded onto fair and are like buying through there which is incredible. So also shout out fair if you're a small brand or any brand should be on there. They're incredible.

23:02
Caitlin Bricker
Very cool. And congratulations. That was huge. That was like a very competitive event for a lot of the brands that were participating because I think they only took in five or six brands from the start. They may have been onboarding more brands and maybe onboarding more brands as we speak, but to see your name in the first round was pretty cool.

23:23
Bar Bruhis
Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I went to Denver a couple months ago and like dropped off a box and got Ray's contact and then emailed him. So he like had already kind of known about us which was also helpful. So.

23:34
Caitlin Bricker
Perfect.

23:35
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, but we're stoked to be there.

23:36
Caitlin Bricker
And then of course I just saw you at Summer Fancy Food which is I would assume Boostcous's first major trade show. Am I right in saying that?

23:45
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, you're right.

23:46
Caitlin Bricker
And how did it go for you?

23:47
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, that was also great. We were not in the Startup CPG section this year, maybe next year. But we got into the Startup Pavilion through Fancy Food and they were incredible. Like they put us in the fourth floor kind of like right in the entrance and a really like high foot trafficked area. And yeah, out of that now we're talking to Whole Foods and Walmart and Fresh Market and yeah, like honestly I need to look through my email because I have all these follow ups but yeah, it's incredible. The biggest lesson is that like especially these big retailers there's literally like one, maybe two humans that sit inside those retailers that can change trajectory of your entire business. Right.

24:31
Bar Bruhis
Like this one person that gets pitched thousands of brands like makes a decision on whether or not you'll be on shelf and so it's really hard to make that connection with that human unless you're in the room with that person. I think that's the value of trade shows obviously like if you can make connections with that person other ways you can do that. But, like, for us, that was kind of the biggest takeaway was. Yeah. And the other piece of that is like, other CPG brands are just like, so awesome and so nice. And it's like we made so many friends in the industry and it's like we're all going through this together. It's like, not easy. So good to like, kind of make those friends that way.

25:07
Caitlin Bricker
And there's your network expanding right before your eyes.

25:10
Bar Bruhis
There you go. Yeah. Full circle.

25:12
Caitlin Bricker
All right, so we're coming up on time, but I am super curious to hear from you. As a brand that's finally dipping your toes into the retail pond, what retailers are you looking to target? What type of retailers? And if there are any dream retailers on your radar that you want to say hello to right now that might be listening. Tell us what you are looking for in a retailer and why a retailer should consider boost coos for their shelves.

25:37
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, I'm like looking at my whiteboard over there because I have like my end of year goals and it's Costco or whole Foods by end of year is one of my goals. Yeah. And I think Target, I wrote that like a while ago, but I think Target would be added into that list as well. Yeah, I think there's a couple of reasons, like, especially the whole foods buyer. What we've seen is like, we've got two or three major demographics. One is gonna be that gluten free market. We're the only gluten free and world's first gluten free couscous. And we see so many gluten free individuals that like, haven't been able to eat couscous in so long that are finally able to eat it again. If you look through our reviews, that's like one of our top demographics.

26:18
Bar Bruhis
The other one is like moms with kids, like feeding it to their kids and feeding it for themselves. It's like, yeah, there you go. Yeah, it's like no choking hazard. It's like, this might be a tmi, but like, I was at a bar the other day with one of my friends that has like a toddler and she's like, your Boostcous is literally what's keeping my toddler regular. Like, I feed it to them and they like it and it's like they right away. I don't know if you have to beat that up.

26:43
Caitlin Bricker
Nothing is TMI with moms or me. Just in general.

26:47
Bar Bruhis
Yeah, there we go. Perfect. So anyway, yeah, I think that whole foods demographic is kind of like Right up our alley. We've seen again with our post purchase surveys, we drive incremental sales into that couscous aisle because people are switching from other protein alternatives into couscous and like, coming into the couscous aisle and we're the only, like, first innovation in that aisle. So, like, when we sit next to whatever couscous is in there, people just end up buying from us. So, yeah, so I think that's kind of the reasoning for like, Whole Foods and Target. I think Target is very much trying to be the new Whole Foods and then, yeah, the Costco buyer. It's like, I mean, this is like you said, it's an incredible, like, rice replacement and the kind of like, meal prep, it heats up really well the next day.

27:32
Bar Bruhis
So that'd kind of be like our pitch for all three of them. And I think, like, at the end of the day it comes back to, like, we can show numbers that like, all these people are buying from us and they shouldn't be online. And so we're really excited to flip that model and have more of our customers buying in retail.

27:49
Caitlin Bricker
This is definitely going to be an exciting discovery for retailers who haven't learned about you yet. So hopefully if they haven't yet, by the time they have ears and eyes on this episode, they will be so excited to carry you. That's my hope coming out of this.

28:03
Bar Bruhis
And we can do another episode when that happens.

28:06
Caitlin Bricker
All right, Brain check for that. Yeah, Keep me updated.

28:10
Bar Bruhis
I love it.

28:10
Caitlin Bricker
Bar, it's been so fun talking to you. We are fans. In our household, you have quickly become a staple. I'm pretty sure we have eaten Boost Cruise three nights already this week and it's only Tuesday, so if that says anything. There you go.

28:26
Bar Bruhis
I love it. Well, thanks so much for the support. We really appreciate it. And yeah, this is such a fun conversation. Thanks, Caitlin.

28:32
Caitlin Bricker
Thank you. I'll catch you soon. CPG BFFs. We've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG podcast. As you may know, we're not just the top Glow globally ranked CPG podcast. We're a community of tens of thousands of CPG founders and experts. And you should join us. If you haven't already. Head to startupcpg.com to sign up. You'll get an invite to our Slack community, hear about events near you, and get access to opportunities that connect you with buyers, investors and other brands. It's free. So what are you waiting for? I'll see you in Slack and in real life. Thanks for listening.