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There’s a story behind every great business. We started the podcast, Stories with Soul, to dive into the wins, lessons, and secrets behind the success of heavy hitting leaders, entrepreneurs, and artists in our community. Join host Jamey Ice and co-host Jimmy Williams every other Tuesday to unpack another great story behind Fort Worth’s favorite brands. Brought to you by 6th Ave Storytelling.
00:00:07:04 - 00:00:27:20
Jamey
Hey, I'm Jamie Ice Fort Worth native musician turned entrepreneur and someone who loves diving into the stories behind great brands. In each episode, we sit down with the leaders, dreamers and builders who are shaping our community. Pulling back the curtain on their journey and the real lessons and tactics that got them to where they are today. No fluff, no highlight reels.
00:00:27:22 - 00:00:40:10
Jamey
Just real conversations with remarkable people about what it takes to build something that truly matters. I'm your host, and this is stories with soul.
00:00:40:12 - 00:01:02:17
Jamey
All right, guys, welcome to today's episode. Today we're joined by not one, but two incredible guests, who have made their mark not just in Fort Worth, but on kitchens and grocery aisles around the globe. Doug Renfro and Becky Renfro, Portola, the third generation leaders of Renfro Foods, the family business that has brought us the iconic Mrs. Renfro salsa.
00:01:02:17 - 00:01:20:06
Jamey
I wanted to, Y'all have been on my list to talk to you for a while, and we see each other at events all year, and then I, Anyways, I'm excited to dive into the whole story. So what started out in 1940 as packaged spices and pepper sauce business ran out of George and authoring books.
00:01:20:08 - 00:01:25:13
Doug
Three, right. Her dad, Arthur, wanted a son. Oh, got a girl. So he named her Arthur in.
00:01:25:13 - 00:01:26:11
Jamey
Oh, that's good. But he.
00:01:26:11 - 00:01:27:06
Becky
Had two sons.
00:01:27:07 - 00:01:27:16
Jamey
Have.
00:01:27:17 - 00:01:28:15
Becky
Ever named them.
00:01:28:15 - 00:01:33:12
Jamey
Arthur has that name. Has that name been resurfaced in the family legacy?
00:01:33:18 - 00:01:35:05
Becky
That hasn't she hated that.
00:01:35:06 - 00:01:38:02
Jamey
Maybe a great a grand a grandchild gets that.
00:01:38:04 - 00:02:00:15
Doug
However, my grandfather didn't actually have a middle name and he gave himself the initial W at some point and every every male since then there first child's middle name is the father's, and all the other boys have to start with a W, and we're into like five generations of it. So there's like a curse. Yeah, I think my son says he's going to M he's going to go ahead and risk the curse when they have a boy.
00:02:00:15 - 00:02:11:20
Doug
But yeah. So my dad was Wendell. I'm Wendell. My oldest son's middle name is Wendell. And the next one's Wesley. And my wife, by the way, didn't know about this w thing when we got married. She said it might have been a deal breaker.
00:02:11:22 - 00:02:26:00
Jamey
I like it. We're already getting some good some good, good nuggets here. So started in 1940 in in their kitchen. And now it's a household name and 50 states 3030 countries is that we don't know pretty well them now.
00:02:26:00 - 00:02:27:13
Becky
But we can tell you the big ones.
00:02:27:15 - 00:02:28:09
Jamey
That's pretty sweet.
00:02:28:11 - 00:02:38:16
Doug
We don't sell to the you know, Becky has a distributor in Spain and I found out accidentally one day they have us in Morocco. You know, we don't know everywhere they sell these other distributors. So we it could.
00:02:38:16 - 00:02:39:04
Jamey
Be 50.
00:02:39:04 - 00:02:42:22
Becky
In Australia. He's working on getting us into New Zealand right now.
00:02:43:00 - 00:02:43:14
Jamey
Really?
00:02:43:17 - 00:02:47:01
Becky
Yeah. And we're in South Korea. Yeah, we're in the Philippines.
00:02:47:01 - 00:02:52:17
Doug
Any given day we're not positive. But nobody will let all five. Renfro is when I go to the cool places so nobody gets to go.
00:02:52:17 - 00:02:56:12
Becky
Didn't you have one of your appeal friends? Fan is in Philippines, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:02:56:12 - 00:03:13:01
Jamey
It's, it's I have so many questions about. Let's just. I think I have some more stuff. Let's just dive in because we're already diving in. So. Okay, give me give me a sort of, like, take me on, like the origin background story, starting in the kitchen.
00:03:13:01 - 00:03:17:00
Doug
You know, the short, short one was, you know, there's no kitchen involved. There's no.
00:03:17:00 - 00:03:17:22
Jamey
Kitchen. It wasn't a.
00:03:17:22 - 00:03:42:20
Doug
Kitchen. The 30s my grandfather distributed for the vintage company, which that building still stands. And Becky owns a millionth of a percent of it. And you go up North Main and look to the right. It's nicely renovated, 2 or 3 story, two story brick building. And we have a photo outside of our offices of my granddad in the 30s in a coat and tie on a dirt road in front of his vintage company truck, and that's where he sold flavored vinegars and spices.
00:03:42:20 - 00:03:53:16
Doug
And so after grocery stores in 1940, he starts doing that out of the house with my grandmother's, the only employee. She actually had to drive the truck sometimes when he got really sick. They did that till 52, we think.
00:03:53:19 - 00:04:01:07
Jamey
And did he did you have like, a, another job? Was it like. No, that was that was it. Yeah. So he quit his job. Like.
00:04:01:09 - 00:04:03:00
Becky
My grandma thought he was crazy because when.
00:04:03:00 - 00:04:03:09
Jamey
Did he have.
00:04:03:14 - 00:04:04:09
Becky
A depression?
00:04:04:09 - 00:04:09:10
Jamey
And you have a secret recipe or something, like, people were like, well, this was vinegars are good now.
00:04:09:10 - 00:04:18:20
Doug
Just like I'm good at that. I always say, you know, Becky and I do. And her brother James runs production will be to show in New York. And people were like, I know all these. Your grandmother's recipes. And I always say even know, wouldn't that be cool?
00:04:18:22 - 00:04:19:17
Jamey
Yeah.
00:04:19:19 - 00:04:40:07
Doug
Because nobody ate layers also in 1940, 50. So in 52 ish, he moved. He started leasing the corner of the building where Becky Nice currently and part of our two city block complex, and he started making sirup. And we like to say no maple trees were harmed. And they, they had this business for all the cafes in Dallas Fort Worth back when that was a thing.
00:04:40:09 - 00:04:48:23
Doug
When we were kids, I started making Southern relish as like chow chow. And when Becky and James and I were kids, that was 99% of our sales. It is now one tenth of 1% of our sales.
00:04:48:23 - 00:04:53:03
Jamey
Interesting. And then not really a thing is. Yeah. Now we'd be in space.
00:04:53:03 - 00:04:54:13
Becky
I still like it.
00:04:54:13 - 00:04:55:17
Jamey
Why eat it? If you looked.
00:04:55:17 - 00:04:57:15
Becky
At the ingredients, you'd be going, oh.
00:04:57:19 - 00:04:58:15
Jamey
Oh.
00:04:58:17 - 00:05:19:16
Doug
That's a lot of sugar. And it's green because we put green color in it. Yeah. But, you know, it was a heritage southern item. But if that's all we made now, we would totally be asking you if you want fries with your ordered. And then my dad and her dad took over a taco sauce business in the 70s, which, thank God, that evolved into when I came back 32 years ago, we had hot, medium and mild picante sauce.
00:05:19:18 - 00:05:37:12
Doug
Okay, that was our Tex-Mex and green taco sauce. Yeah. And we've now taken that into craft beer. Salsa. And we create things for multi-billion dollar corporations that we can't say on the air. You know, and so we're considered subject matter experts in that one teeny area. We're morons with like, sausage and pancakes, but we know that's condiments.
00:05:37:16 - 00:05:51:05
Jamey
Yeah. Condiments. Is your world acidified? Yes, but so what? What was what was it like the like? When did it when did the salsa itself? Because like, I feel like that's you'll do a lot of stuff. You white you white label for a lot of stuff.
00:05:51:05 - 00:06:11:14
Becky
So in the 70s, one of the top, but I can say the name it's pace was not in the West Coast yet, so my dad got a distributor in, on the west Coast in California. And so we ended up being in a lot of the grocery stores. So we were shipping two truckloads a week to California.
00:06:11:16 - 00:06:21:20
Becky
And when I came to work, I guess it was 84, 85. Yeah. We had two truckloads going to the West Coast. But we weren't in any grocery store in the Dallas-Fort worth area.
00:06:21:20 - 00:06:22:23
Doug
And there was no salsa.
00:06:23:02 - 00:06:23:15
Becky
Yeah.
00:06:23:17 - 00:06:25:14
Jamey
Pace. It was all. It was all the taco sauce.
00:06:25:14 - 00:06:30:11
Doug
Pace was Burgundy sauce. So we made up a sauce which was remarkably similar to the taco sauce.
00:06:30:12 - 00:06:31:21
Jamey
That they had done.
00:06:31:23 - 00:06:51:02
Doug
And then one day I looked up and I'm like, you know, the, the the US population is getting more savvy with Spanish. It's pretty idiotic to say mild picante, medium hot, because when picante is Spanish for spicy, and nobody else is saying sauce, or by saying salsa, which again is just a Spanish word for sauce. But so we it's like, please stop calling it green taco sauce.
00:06:51:02 - 00:06:56:03
Doug
Let's call it green salsa. And it became like our number two item, because some days you don't want a taco.
00:06:56:05 - 00:07:14:16
Becky
And and it was wow. Because when duck came back in 92, 93 and my dad had always done the sales. So dad comes in back to the business and we hire our first outside sales person. And in that and one day he had us in Albertsons and all over the DFW.
00:07:14:22 - 00:07:15:20
Jamey
So it was a good day.
00:07:15:22 - 00:07:16:12
Becky
It was a it was.
00:07:16:12 - 00:07:31:10
Doug
Strange because our our dads had 50 years experience, but in many things that would come up, they didn't have any experience in whatever we're talking about. So like I created all the bean dip recipes for somebody because they had never made bean dip. They didn't know if it's possible. I didn't either. But I like to take risk and usually fail.
00:07:31:10 - 00:07:36:19
Doug
But everyone you know, it does. It's like in baseball you don't need a lot of Grand Slams. Yeah, but you got to get the swing, but you get you got a.
00:07:36:19 - 00:07:44:09
Jamey
Swing, you got a swing. So okay, step back really quick okay. So y'all are cousins. Yes. Correct.
00:07:44:09 - 00:07:45:11
Doug
People don't know that. But yes.
00:07:45:11 - 00:07:47:14
Jamey
So he.
00:07:47:16 - 00:07:50:03
Doug
Brothers sisters they guess everything.
00:07:50:03 - 00:07:50:17
Jamey
But well.
00:07:50:18 - 00:08:10:00
Becky
Okay I have to tell you a funny story. So we were we were both doing all the trade shows and, they would see me. I'm single. So they'd see me on the dance floor with a guy or whatever, and they thought, wow, Dex. Really? You know, he's relaxed with his wife dating our dancing with another guy. Well, then when I got married, it threw everybody.
00:08:10:04 - 00:08:17:13
Becky
So then they're like, wait a minute, did they get divorced? But they're still nice and like each other and stayed in the business together. It's really funny.
00:08:17:13 - 00:08:29:04
Doug
So my wife was home raising three wonderful children. Yeah. When the kids all left the house, she started coming to shows, and I introduced my wife to somebody I'd known for 20 years, and she looked at me and said, well, who the hell is Becky? Then?
00:08:29:06 - 00:08:34:03
Jamey
Just like that. So, so, so confusing. So your dads were brothers still?
00:08:34:04 - 00:08:41:11
Doug
Yeah. Her dad's been gone three years. My dad's 87.5, and yeah, they worked together for over half century and then.
00:08:41:15 - 00:08:42:18
Jamey
And their dad.
00:08:42:18 - 00:08:43:12
Doug
Started the company.
00:08:43:12 - 00:08:44:08
Jamey
Started the company.
00:08:44:08 - 00:08:47:21
Doug
With his wife, Arthur Reen, who preferred to be called Mrs. Renfroe.
00:08:47:22 - 00:08:48:19
Jamey
Okay, but but your.
00:08:48:19 - 00:08:50:02
Becky
Mama or Mrs. Renfroe.
00:08:50:06 - 00:08:55:15
Jamey
Okay. She was Mrs. Renfroe. Yes, but was it when the. When was it called Mrs. Renfroe? Like when did it.
00:08:55:17 - 00:08:57:20
Becky
So they started. It was when if.
00:08:57:20 - 00:09:03:16
Jamey
To make the 48 to 62 was kind of when they were like she became the face.
00:09:03:18 - 00:09:15:11
Becky
Starting to slip. And so my dad actually said I think we need to come out with a few more relishes other than chow and we need to have Mrs. Renfroe was on the label.
00:09:15:11 - 00:09:37:16
Doug
You wanted a countercyclical brand. We had a grocery brand, and he wanted a brand for, like, fruit stands. And so he smartly did different size jar, same exact products, different size jar, different label. And they didn't I, I had her her face. You know, a few years after I came back, we just had her name, but what he had was her name and home like phone number.
00:09:37:18 - 00:09:49:11
Doug
People would call, they would call for a directory, get my grandmother at her house, and she would answer and say, well, my boys run the company now, but and we said, you know, you can get an unlisted phone number. She enjoyed it.
00:09:49:13 - 00:09:51:10
Jamey
She liked it. She loved it.
00:09:51:10 - 00:10:04:12
Doug
Said Mrs. George Renfro. I didn't even say Renfro. Is that Mrs. George Renfro? P.O. box 321, which is still our address at the historic, iconic Fort Worth, you know, depression era Fort Worth. The post office. Yeah. Yeah. We have yeah, we have more stories. And you have top.
00:10:04:16 - 00:10:32:21
Jamey
Stories with soul is brought to you by my company, six App Storytelling, where we help entrepreneurs and small businesses grow through the power of storytelling. If you're stuck watching competitors get all the attention, or you're tired of wasting money on random marketing tactics that don't work, you're not alone. As an entrepreneur who's built multiple businesses, I know firsthand how frustrating it can be to have a great product or have a great service, but struggle to get the attention you deserve.
00:10:33:02 - 00:10:59:17
Jamey
Because here's the truth being good at what you do isn't enough anymore. You need a way to stand out and connect with your ideal customers. That's why we created the Storytelling Pathway, a proven framework for story driven marketing that turns solid businesses into brands. People can't stop talking about it. So whether you're just starting out or if you're ready to scale, we can help you craft and share your unique story in a way that attracts the right customers and drives real growth.
00:10:59:18 - 00:11:10:11
Jamey
So if you're ready to stand out, visit sixth Ave storytelling.com today. I would love to chat with you. So. And what was it like? Was it successful like in the in the 50s?
00:11:10:15 - 00:11:12:08
Becky
Actually sales did increase.
00:11:12:12 - 00:11:14:00
Doug
I mean everything's relative.
00:11:14:00 - 00:11:25:01
Becky
You know, my dad and Doug. So Dexter had run production. My dad ran the office, but they also drove the track. So my dad was making all the deliveries to him.
00:11:25:03 - 00:11:27:00
Jamey
So you remember your dad, like getting in?
00:11:27:00 - 00:11:39:21
Becky
Oh, yeah. When we were little kids. He wasn't. How much? Because he was on the truck making deliveries to other states. And at the time, they may have sold, like 5 or 6 states surrounding Texas with the product, but it was through a lot of fruit and produce stands.
00:11:39:23 - 00:11:40:09
Jamey
Okay.
00:11:40:14 - 00:11:54:03
Doug
So when Becky was saying I when I came back and now I went corporate for seven years after college and wearing a coat and tie, smelling good, but, you know, suck the soul out of your body and corporate America. And I came back and I would take our product to a party and people would be like, that's great, where can I buy it?
00:11:54:03 - 00:12:00:23
Doug
It's like, you can't, you know, well, it was a it was a farmer's market and all of city which is still customer me this much later.
00:12:00:23 - 00:12:04:00
Jamey
So, so when you came on like we're talking 90s.
00:12:04:05 - 00:12:05:21
Doug
92 because my grandmother passed when.
00:12:05:21 - 00:12:07:05
Jamey
It wasn't in grocery stores.
00:12:07:05 - 00:12:09:23
Doug
Well, it was, but not in Texas. We were in Milwaukee.
00:12:09:23 - 00:12:10:04
Jamey
Really?
00:12:10:04 - 00:12:23:04
Becky
Well, Napa, Texas. Oh, no. I mean, you could find is I'd go to California and somebody said, what do you do? And I would say, you know, I work for our family business. Mrs. Renfroe says, oh, that was awesome. But you can nobody said that in Texas.
00:12:23:06 - 00:12:24:07
Jamey
That's mind blowing to me.
00:12:24:07 - 00:12:40:12
Doug
Yeah, and we still did. You know, people ask why we make things for other people. And I was telling me, if you have a factory, you need to keep it running. If you don't have a factory, you probably can't afford a factory. But we've always done that. My granddad did private label sirup in the 50s, you know, and then when we were kids, I don't know if you remember the Knott's Berry Farm.
00:12:40:14 - 00:12:43:01
Doug
That brand just died recently.
00:12:43:02 - 00:12:44:02
Jamey
It's not. It's no more.
00:12:44:03 - 00:12:46:20
Doug
Well, you know, they the the jelly people kill it, but.
00:12:47:00 - 00:12:47:18
Jamey
Rest in peace.
00:12:47:18 - 00:13:06:16
Doug
But in the 70s, if you bought Knott's Berry Farm, Jojo, it looked remarkably like Mrs. Renfro. Chow chow. And if you went to stuckey's the roadside stands, which the granddaughters revived it. The old buildings are mainly truck or pawn shops right now, but you can see the iconic shape Stuckey's Chow chow, Knott's Berry. We've always done private label, so it's nothing.
00:13:06:16 - 00:13:11:17
Doug
We've just extrapolated it. Now what are we? We're like 60% private label and food service.
00:13:11:21 - 00:13:12:02
Jamey
Okay.
00:13:12:03 - 00:13:13:05
Doug
We make things for restaurants.
00:13:13:05 - 00:13:15:04
Jamey
So 60% of your revenue is.
00:13:15:07 - 00:13:16:11
Doug
Non Renfro okay.
00:13:16:11 - 00:13:19:21
Jamey
It's not Renfro. Which is not because it's diversified.
00:13:19:21 - 00:13:23:16
Doug
And we don't have to pay the marketing on the right. Your own brand is wildly expensive.
00:13:23:16 - 00:13:25:15
Jamey
Yeah. As in way more work, way more.
00:13:25:17 - 00:13:36:04
Doug
Yeah. And so yeah with private label or, you know, I sell you product, you know, Jamie salsa. You give me money, we're done with. Right with Renfro. We don't know when we're done for like a year because there's, you know, there's a.
00:13:36:08 - 00:13:37:10
Jamey
You got a marketing.
00:13:37:10 - 00:13:43:12
Doug
You there's a promotion, there's a food show, there's a coupon, there's a golf tournament, there's all this stuff, and there's things you didn't know you agreed to.
00:13:43:17 - 00:13:53:02
Jamey
Was it? Okay, so take me. Take me back. So, y'all, I'm assuming you're you're close as kids. She's right there. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
00:13:53:02 - 00:13:56:03
Becky
We didn't live far from each other, you know, our parents.
00:13:56:08 - 00:13:59:00
Jamey
So y'all would get together. Everyone, like, gets along. It's not like.
00:13:59:00 - 00:14:00:20
Doug
I mean, we got along, but we didn't socialize.
00:14:00:21 - 00:14:02:00
Jamey
Because that comes up a lot.
00:14:02:00 - 00:14:04:11
Becky
Yeah, because,
00:14:04:13 - 00:14:07:18
Doug
My dad and Bill saw each other every day. They're like, I don't want to go home and see you again.
00:14:07:18 - 00:14:09:06
Jamey
Yeah.
00:14:09:07 - 00:14:23:03
Becky
So we didn't. We'd see each other on holidays. Okay. But it's not like we maybe James, my brother James and Dagger a gear apart. So, yeah, they were maybe closer, but still. I mean, like, I was out of high school when he even hit high school.
00:14:23:03 - 00:14:26:07
Doug
So people always us. Do. You and Becky? I do Thanksgiving together, Mike. No.
00:14:26:08 - 00:14:27:23
Jamey
Oh, I see her every day.
00:14:28:01 - 00:14:29:02
Becky
Well, yeah, because.
00:14:29:06 - 00:14:31:02
Doug
We have our own friends and circles and.
00:14:31:02 - 00:14:39:18
Becky
Well, in our family alone, just my siblings, grandchildren, great grandchildren. It's 30, 35 people. So we can't add Doug and his family.
00:14:39:18 - 00:14:42:16
Jamey
It's 30, 35 people. Yeah, a lot of.
00:14:42:16 - 00:14:42:23
Doug
Moving.
00:14:42:23 - 00:14:53:14
Jamey
Parts. Yeah. So but can you tell that. Like what? Like did you like what were some of your memories as a kid. Like would you go to the factory like yeah.
00:14:53:19 - 00:15:13:20
Becky
Did you hide and seek around. All because we had pallets with cases stacked on them. So all those kids would climb up on the pallets and we'd play hide and seek. And then the other one was my dad, would take the two Wheeler and we'd get on the two Wheeler, and then he, you know, he put it in an angle and drive us around.
00:15:13:20 - 00:15:22:17
Becky
That was really, really fun. And then the forklift, he'd put a pallet on the forklift and we'd sit on the pallet, and he raised that many pull it down like this. And we're just.
00:15:22:22 - 00:15:23:16
Doug
Things that OSHA.
00:15:23:16 - 00:15:27:03
Jamey
Loves. Yeah, yeah. Proud about that now.
00:15:27:05 - 00:15:46:14
Doug
And starting in sixth grade every summer I worked there doing the nastiest jobs they had, you know, initially for like $5 a day because I was illegal, you know, I was like 12. So you pay me anything, but, you know, so I had the smells. We were mainly relish in, my Lord, pickling spice and vinegar. That reeks my poor dad, because he ran production.
00:15:46:14 - 00:16:04:23
Doug
Every piece of clothing he had in his vehicle just smelled like, you know, pickling spice. But we, you know, we didn't have much money growing up. And one of my favorite toys as a kid was we. We buy mustard seed and, like, a 300 pound drum for the relish. And when it's empty, you can roll around the backyard in it.
00:16:05:01 - 00:16:05:10
Jamey
That's one of.
00:16:05:10 - 00:16:07:19
Doug
My favorite toys, is roll around the mustard seed.
00:16:07:21 - 00:16:21:13
Jamey
And did you I mean, this industry making food, you know, relishes and chow chow and sirup is is probably very different than your friends whose dads are like, I don't know, lawyers or bankers.
00:16:21:15 - 00:16:25:13
Doug
We had a lot of friends that were like their dads worked at General Dynamics, you know, back in the day.
00:16:25:14 - 00:16:31:00
Jamey
Like, were you like, this is a different thing. We have a family business that seem unusual or.
00:16:31:02 - 00:16:32:03
Doug
I mean, that's how we knew.
00:16:32:05 - 00:16:33:18
Becky
That's all we knew. Yeah.
00:16:33:18 - 00:16:35:15
Jamey
And did you know you wanted to be in the.
00:16:35:15 - 00:16:36:15
Becky
Business, not was.
00:16:36:15 - 00:16:37:14
Jamey
There the expectation.
00:16:37:15 - 00:16:49:05
Becky
That was in the oil industry? My last job with was the Moncrief family. Oh, in their land department. And so I didn't think about going into the business until my dad said, would you consider going into business? And I actually.
00:16:49:05 - 00:16:51:03
Jamey
So like high school and college, that wasn't even on your radar.
00:16:51:03 - 00:17:01:02
Becky
At all. Oh, it was not on the radar because I thought they're interested me in production. And I said, I am not working in production. He goes, no, no, no, come in. And I learn that, oh, it's okay, I do that.
00:17:01:08 - 00:17:04:19
Jamey
Did you were you like running from it? Were you like like.
00:17:04:19 - 00:17:05:17
Becky
No I didn't run from it.
00:17:05:17 - 00:17:07:15
Jamey
I just it just wasn't. You weren't even thinking about it.
00:17:07:15 - 00:17:27:11
Becky
I didn't think there was a position for me in the company. And, you know, if you look at the seven grandchildren, it's perfect. The three of us that actually went into the company just because we all three love what we're doing. And I don't want to do what Doug's doing, and I don't want to do what James is doing, and they don't want to do what I'm doing.
00:17:27:12 - 00:17:29:02
Becky
So that's it's really nice.
00:17:29:04 - 00:17:47:08
Doug
People ask about in our process. And I always tell them, you know, we do something that our dads did, which is they had equal votes, but they never did anything significant or strategic. If they weren't unanimous, they never got. They have a little sister who's who has a some vote, and they could have gotten with her and tried to outvote the other one.
00:17:47:08 - 00:18:03:00
Doug
And I think if you ever do that, you permanently damage the culture of the corporation. And so we don't all have the same amount of votes. But if Becky and James and I don't agree on anything, I'm talking something major. New machine, an ad campaign. Yeah. If it's not unanimous, we just figure, well, we must be missing something.
00:18:03:00 - 00:18:03:15
Doug
We don't do it.
00:18:03:19 - 00:18:05:17
Jamey
And there's a better solution.
00:18:05:17 - 00:18:17:12
Doug
And I don't care who runs the label machine. James doesn't care about my spreadsheet for a retailer profits. You know, Becky, the three of us stay out of each other's area. But anything major, we all agree or we don't do it, I love that.
00:18:17:15 - 00:18:22:16
Jamey
Yeah, that takes away some of, like, the political drama of.
00:18:22:18 - 00:18:36:21
Doug
Yeah, we don't always agree. But the thing that we're able to do is we always separate business from personal. So we and even Becky's late dad, I could tell him, I think what you just said was a stupid as business thing I've ever heard. Where do you want to go? To lunch? Because he knew I wasn't criticizing him or something else.
00:18:36:22 - 00:18:40:10
Doug
Yeah. And also, I was. And I was like. And sometimes I'm wrong.
00:18:40:12 - 00:18:53:05
Jamey
And you have to have that candid conflict. I always, I always say like, meetings are your arena for conflict. Like, if you're in this like you got you, you have to voice your opinion. Because if you don't voice your opinion, then you get bitter or frustrated or pent.
00:18:53:05 - 00:18:55:17
Doug
Up frustration, which can lead to fratricide.
00:18:55:17 - 00:19:03:07
Jamey
Yeah, yeah. And and great decisions are made when they're run through the gamut of being pushed on and pulled apart.
00:19:03:07 - 00:19:08:18
Doug
And yeah, we're always and what about this? And Becky's like, what about that? It's like, oh yeah, you're right.
00:19:08:20 - 00:19:19:14
Becky
Sometimes though, we'll revisit it. Maybe if one person is not on board at that time and maybe 3 to 6 months, we revisit and at that time now, oh yes, this makes sense for us to do this.
00:19:19:16 - 00:19:24:10
Jamey
So Doug did you like was it on your radar. You did, you didn't like, you didn't mention.
00:19:24:10 - 00:19:42:04
Doug
What day it was in college. It was. And then I got fascinated with the financial world and then I was like I looked around kind of like Beckett. It's like, oh, the only thing literally for me to do would be chopping cabbage. No, thank you. With my finance degree. So I went to work for Ross Perot's company at the time.
00:19:42:04 - 00:19:54:12
Doug
And, you know, Dallas. Very exciting. 100 finance and accounting people in a room with MBAs from all over the world. I was the only person out of 100 who was raised in Dallas Fort Worth. Wow. Weird. So they were like, you from Sacramento, Singapore.
00:19:54:16 - 00:19:55:09
Jamey
You studied.
00:19:55:11 - 00:20:14:06
Doug
Finance? Finance? Yeah. Okay. And then while I was there, they said, you know, get a certified management accounting designation, I did that. They're like, cool, go get an MBA. So I got an MBA from SMU, and, and General Motors bought us. So now I found myself working for the biggest corporation in the country at the time, wearing a coat and tie, not smelling like pickled vinegar in my car.
00:20:14:06 - 00:20:34:00
Doug
And so I mixed all the spices and lived at home at college because we had no money. Yeah, it's my car reeked of, like, oregano and, cumin. But I was really good at the politics. And I don't like that. It's. I want to contribute to society. And I felt like, you know, it's kind of meaningless being a financial manager over five levels of helping vice presidents argue with each other.
00:20:34:02 - 00:20:54:16
Doug
And our dads needed to take it to the next level or sell it. It wasn't big enough. Thank God for them to sell it and have enough money. And they were kind of tired because they'd worked hard their entire lives. So I came back with no job description. Becky and James and I and my to my dad, Michael, we we made stuff up there like, hey, apparently we have to do a nutrition panel now, figure that out.
00:20:54:18 - 00:21:09:12
Doug
And I wasn't making enough money for my little kids. So when nobody was looking one day I threw black beans in the medium salsa and habanero, and we would go to buyers and we would say, I know you have enough. Maybe not because it wasn't going well trying to sell our existing stuff because they had enough already. Mild, medium and hot.
00:21:09:12 - 00:21:10:10
Doug
Right. So you.
00:21:10:10 - 00:21:11:10
Jamey
Came on and it wasn't going.
00:21:11:10 - 00:21:26:06
Doug
Well. It getting new expansion was not going well because they would say, we don't need any more salsa, please go away. And we would say, hey, I know that, but you don't have variety salsa like black bean and habanero at an everyday value price, not a Williams-Sonoma house warming, you know?
00:21:26:09 - 00:21:28:02
Jamey
And that problem wasn't a thing back then.
00:21:28:02 - 00:21:30:07
Doug
Like it wasn't. And it.
00:21:30:09 - 00:21:30:19
Jamey
Unless.
00:21:30:19 - 00:21:40:18
Doug
You and we got we were told no 99% of the time for a while then then no 70% of the time and then 52% of the time. And we just wore them down there like these nice Texas people.
00:21:40:20 - 00:22:07:00
Becky
Well, and we had a very plain Jane generic label, and the East Coast buyers just said, until you change your label, you're not getting in the East Coast. And so we went through a rebranding and, that label we had for how many years? 28. Okay. But as soon as we created this new sign, kind of exciting label, the East Coast grocers put us in.
00:22:07:00 - 00:22:28:03
Doug
And our Chicago distributor said he called us. And he's like, love your family, love your pricing, love your products, love your promotions. Can't sell that ugly label to save my life. And that label was perfect when they created it in the 50s. The problem was it was now the 90s. Yeah. And you know, and the one of the things I like to say in talks is, you know, it's hard in a family business when you say we need to change something.
00:22:28:03 - 00:22:37:20
Doug
They take it is a sign of you're saying, well, you were stupid. It's like, no, you were brilliant back in the day. But life changes like we have to solve all the time. And we did evolve.
00:22:37:22 - 00:22:42:05
Becky
What five years ago was when we got, we worked with Malcolm to rebrand six.
00:22:42:05 - 00:22:43:09
Jamey
Now the new six years.
00:22:43:09 - 00:22:44:11
Doug
Yes. Malcolm, which.
00:22:44:11 - 00:22:46:15
Jamey
We have right here. Yes, yes, yes. Oh my.
00:22:46:17 - 00:22:49:19
Becky
So we rebranded and we kept grandma's face.
00:22:49:19 - 00:22:51:06
Jamey
It's on the side. She's on the.
00:22:51:06 - 00:22:53:03
Becky
Label. Yeah, she's on the label on the back.
00:22:53:03 - 00:22:53:23
Jamey
She was on the lid.
00:22:53:23 - 00:22:54:09
Doug
For many.
00:22:54:11 - 00:22:55:11
Becky
Years. She was on there. Look how.
00:22:55:11 - 00:22:55:21
Doug
Happy she.
00:22:55:21 - 00:22:59:00
Jamey
Looks. I do love the look at our website.
00:22:59:00 - 00:23:12:14
Becky
We have a lot of recipes using our products, that either families created or we had a recipe contest for our 70th anniversary and business and got some fabulous recipes use in our products.
00:23:12:16 - 00:23:30:04
Doug
That was fun because we had a we went to the food bank and we had the food banks chef training program cook up some of the recipes, and our judges were like the fire department chief and the head of the Fort Worth Opera. And then we had a it became an event. And then we also did something for the food bank as part of it.
00:23:30:07 - 00:23:31:01
Jamey
That's cool.
00:23:31:01 - 00:23:33:08
Doug
Oh, we got a bunch of recipes.
00:23:33:10 - 00:23:43:14
Jamey
So, so, so just to kind of recap a little bit, you guys go off to college, go do your thing. You're doing oil and gas stuff. Yes. You're doing finance.
00:23:43:14 - 00:23:45:00
Doug
Finance weenie is what I call it.
00:23:45:00 - 00:23:50:20
Jamey
Finance with the wearing a suit. And then at some point, like, did y'all both come back at the same time? No, I.
00:23:50:20 - 00:23:52:09
Becky
Was 84, 85.
00:23:52:09 - 00:23:53:06
Jamey
And you came back first.
00:23:53:06 - 00:23:53:19
Becky
93.
00:23:53:19 - 00:23:56:12
Jamey
Yes. And your dad, it was because your dad.
00:23:56:13 - 00:23:57:14
Becky
Yeah. He just.
00:23:57:16 - 00:23:58:04
Jamey
Said.
00:23:58:06 - 00:23:59:00
Becky
Would you like to come into the.
00:23:59:00 - 00:24:01:17
Jamey
Business? And what was your initial reaction to that?
00:24:01:19 - 00:24:04:21
Becky
Well, my first I said, I'm not working production. He goes, no.
00:24:04:21 - 00:24:05:22
Jamey
No, no, no. You okay?
00:24:05:23 - 00:24:06:18
Doug
Yeah. I remember the.
00:24:06:18 - 00:24:09:15
Jamey
Office was the office about this size.
00:24:09:15 - 00:24:10:17
Doug
And there were, there were.
00:24:10:17 - 00:24:11:18
Jamey
Two.
00:24:11:19 - 00:24:12:06
Becky
Three.
00:24:12:08 - 00:24:23:18
Doug
Two ladies, my uncle and then as like a cubbyhole, I mean, it was very glamorous. There was a window unit for the summer and a gas heater for the winter. And the floor, so. And paneling, wood paneling.
00:24:23:19 - 00:24:29:13
Becky
We didn't have a computer software for the accounting. Really. We literally. I had ledger books.
00:24:29:17 - 00:24:30:06
Doug
And we had that.
00:24:30:08 - 00:24:41:13
Becky
We had our lady in the office, Judy, but she'd worked there for quite a few years. And so she taught me everything the books, the writing up, everything about the office.
00:24:41:13 - 00:24:47:16
Doug
Judy worked there over 40 years. We still see her. Her son now is the GM of the Meridian here. We're really.
00:24:47:16 - 00:24:54:13
Jamey
Yeah. That's neat. And so you so you went, worked and then came because you were tired of the suit and tie.
00:24:54:14 - 00:25:10:10
Doug
Or I wanted to do something meaningful with my life and being able to be part of something with your name on it. And it's too late, and we're just so spoiled. Everybody in the world is a potential consumer for us, and most of the world can afford it. You know, our friend who sells Cadillacs never gives out, for example.
00:25:10:11 - 00:25:34:05
Jamey
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00:25:34:07 - 00:25:55:21
Jamey
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00:25:55:22 - 00:26:19:07
Jamey
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Jamey
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00:26:40:09 - 00:27:00:13
Jamey
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00:27:00:15 - 00:27:02:23
Jamey
All right back to our conversation.
00:27:03:01 - 00:27:15:17
Doug
You know, and I have friends that sell, you know, $400,000 hard drive for giant companies. Nobody wants to hear about that at a party. When Becky and I go at a party, we better bring salsa. And they want to talk about it, and they want to tour it, and it's cool.
00:27:15:22 - 00:27:19:04
Jamey
So there's a there's a fun component that you that you have and.
00:27:19:04 - 00:27:24:12
Doug
We're helping, you know, it's delicious and makes your meals go further and make some, you know, it's fun to.
00:27:24:12 - 00:27:33:13
Jamey
Cook with. And so you so you can't. So tell me the rules because again, I love what you were saying earlier. Not really sure. We all do different things. Yeah. We were laughing.
00:27:33:13 - 00:27:39:08
Becky
At let's say between finance h sales.
00:27:39:10 - 00:27:39:16
Doug
And we.
00:27:39:16 - 00:27:59:06
Becky
Crossover candles, we have a gentleman in the hands. Those are Mrs. Renfroe sales, but Doug handles all the others are kopech sales. I work on an international sales with an exporter, because I love to travel internationally. So I've had a plane permit at a show in Paris or Cologne, Germany or wherever. And I'm happy.
00:27:59:08 - 00:28:09:00
Doug
And then it crosses over. If we're going to buy a new half million dollar machine, I'll be super involved. And Becky will make sure she is comfortable with it, because that's a lot of money.
00:28:09:02 - 00:28:10:09
Jamey
Yeah, it's a lot of money.
00:28:10:11 - 00:28:28:13
Becky
And then my brother James, he, oversees all of production and, he has quite a few people helping him with scheduling and things like that now, but he used to do all the scheduling. He ordered some products. I know Doug ordered some raw materials. Now we have two other.
00:28:28:13 - 00:28:45:00
Doug
I personally cut every peo for ingredients for many years and when I came back to the company, her dad was still typing them on a manual typewriter. Yeah. And we, you know, we always tell them if, you know, if they hadn't been doing some of that stuff, we wouldn't have had the opportunity to improve and do some exciting things.
00:28:45:00 - 00:28:52:09
Doug
But they had done things like keep it alive, create new channels, create new brands. You know, every generation has a set of challenges.
00:28:52:10 - 00:29:13:22
Becky
Yeah, I think it was oh five when we, bought an accounting software. We started, working with them in oh four, told them everything we needed to do, and literally December 31st of oh four, I was literally at home putting because I had to put in all the invoice totals. We didn't have to do everything but the grand total of what our customer owed, we had to put in.
00:29:14:01 - 00:29:28:12
Becky
And I'm doing that. And Henry's ringing the doorbell to pick me up for new Year's Eve because we weren't married yet. We just actually, we just started dating in oh three, and so he's there to pick me up for a date, and I'm literally putting the totals in because they had to be in before January 1st, because then we went live.
00:29:28:13 - 00:29:29:00
Becky
Wow.
00:29:29:03 - 00:29:34:16
Jamey
Yeah. And so it sounds like you came on and started experimenting.
00:29:34:18 - 00:29:36:18
Doug
But yeah, I like to tell people that.
00:29:36:18 - 00:29:38:08
Jamey
Are you the kind of the experiment.
00:29:38:08 - 00:29:41:08
Doug
Or my dad's job was to keep her dad from firing me.
00:29:41:10 - 00:29:42:08
Jamey
Because I like.
00:29:42:10 - 00:29:59:10
Doug
I like to poke and push the envelope. I don't believe in static. I don't believe, I don't ever want to hear. But that's the way we do it. Yeah, yeah, I want to find out. Is there a reason? And many times there is a reason. That's why we do it. But I need the data and yeah, I just well I, we needed the company to be bigger and it wasn't going to happen doing what we were doing.
00:29:59:10 - 00:30:05:17
Jamey
So and so do you. Was your approach the way to grow the company was to innovate products?
00:30:05:18 - 00:30:10:05
Doug
Yeah. We needed new, better, sexier, more exciting products that were still profitable.
00:30:10:05 - 00:30:13:16
Jamey
And you came into that and into it with that.
00:30:13:18 - 00:30:28:19
Doug
Well, I say I had absolutely no training whatsoever. So we everything was a school of hard knocks. I mean, the first the first build up I made, did not it spoil because I know nobody in our company knew the pH of bean dip and relish and salsa are not the same. So we.
00:30:28:19 - 00:30:30:10
Jamey
Eat. I tell people.
00:30:30:12 - 00:30:45:10
Doug
They're like, how do you make a great product? I say, by making a whole bunch of bad product first and you make no. You're like, ooh, that's too much onion, that's too much salt. And for Renfro, we all still Becky James and I and the sales director, we all still I mean I have to cook it in Excel first because it doesn't matter.
00:30:45:10 - 00:30:50:08
Doug
How good is it? It is if it's unprofitable. But once I know it's within the financial constraints, we have to.
00:30:50:13 - 00:30:53:11
Jamey
For you make any new product you like. Yeah. I of like cooking.
00:30:53:11 - 00:30:55:07
Doug
With Microsoft Excel. Yeah.
00:30:55:09 - 00:30:59:05
Jamey
Because well people you have like each ingredient like an ounce of this cost.
00:30:59:07 - 00:31:13:17
Doug
Oh yeah. When we do sample cooks because we do a three gallon sample batch, whereas in production we 500 gallons with a sample cook, the recipe might be 12g of this, 1.27 pounds of that. It's very easy because then you're going to multiply it times 200 to do the big kettle.
00:31:13:18 - 00:31:15:01
Jamey
Yeah, fascinating.
00:31:15:01 - 00:31:18:13
Doug
And 99.9% of the R&D stuff goes nowhere. Like I said, it's.
00:31:18:13 - 00:31:21:18
Jamey
Like, and are you are you the one leading the R&D?
00:31:21:18 - 00:31:42:05
Doug
I used to be for decades. And then now I've got a guy that's been with us almost 20 years and he just had no training either. And by working with me and the customers, we now have multibillion dollar corporations that'll be like, hey, make, you know, Carolina Reaper, watermelon seed roasted salsa. And he's like, hold my beer.
00:31:42:07 - 00:32:03:10
Doug
And they'll get with he knows now he's from learning they can't afford this much fresh cilantro. You're going to need dehydrated to hit your price point, things like that. But yeah Becky and James and I now have a phenomenal team. And James personally did the schedule for decades. And he doesn't have you know there's people ordering things and scheduling people very committed to the organization.
00:32:03:10 - 00:32:11:06
Doug
And we take care of them. We have great health insurance for one k matching good pay. It makes we're excited that they help us all succeed.
00:32:11:11 - 00:32:13:12
Jamey
How many people do employees do you have now?
00:32:13:13 - 00:32:16:17
Doug
I say 70 when we're running and 35 when we're not.
00:32:16:19 - 00:32:17:08
Jamey
Well, we'll.
00:32:17:08 - 00:32:17:22
Doug
Just run.
00:32:17:23 - 00:32:18:18
Jamey
Them by running.
00:32:18:18 - 00:32:37:09
Doug
James is running the line at almost 200 jars a minute on the glass jars, and then at the same time, we're filling 1 in 5 gallon food service because we make sauces for restaurants. And we get so fast during Covid when demand skyrocket. And then when the inflation hit in 2022, demand went back down. But he had learned how to go so fast.
00:32:37:09 - 00:32:41:03
Doug
We often run the plant three days a week. So I mean, I think this now when you.
00:32:41:03 - 00:32:43:04
Jamey
Say running, you mean the plant? The plant, when the plant.
00:32:43:08 - 00:33:00:02
Doug
The production line. Yeah. There were two city blocks with the street in between. There's a little building that's production. And that thing is hopping when they're running. But we, we use attempt to hire model. You have to be a temp for 6 to 18 months. And if you love us after that time and we love you, you can become a permanent employee.
00:33:00:03 - 00:33:08:01
Doug
Well, 99% of the people never become an employee because it's a salsa factory in Fort Worth, Texas. And we're cooking at 198 degrees in the summer. That's not fun.
00:33:08:03 - 00:33:10:02
Jamey
You know, it's it's hot and.
00:33:10:02 - 00:33:22:10
Doug
And but everyone. Yeah. Our chief, our head cooks. Been there 20 years. He started as a temp. My assistant who does Walmart data synchronization a million things. And he started as a temp, you know, putting bottles and boxes.
00:33:22:12 - 00:33:27:15
Becky
We have so many employees. They start with us when they're in their 20s and their retiring with us.
00:33:27:17 - 00:33:28:07
Jamey
I love that.
00:33:28:08 - 00:33:31:14
Becky
Because we want them to stay, so we make it worth our while to.
00:33:31:14 - 00:33:44:12
Jamey
Stay. It's a great investing in the people. Yeah, sure. Can you? So it sounds like there was a lot of growth that has happened since sort of the, the 90s. Like, I mean, we're 15.
00:33:44:12 - 00:33:46:22
Doug
To 20 times larger than we were. But I tell.
00:33:46:23 - 00:33:48:04
Jamey
People a lot of growth.
00:33:48:07 - 00:33:53:19
Doug
We've grown from itty bitty to really small. You know, we it's all relative. You know, like General Motors could still write us off.
00:33:54:01 - 00:33:59:21
Becky
I'm sure we're the number one. It's seven selling salsa in the United.
00:33:59:23 - 00:34:01:19
Doug
We're the number one independent brand. Yeah.
00:34:01:20 - 00:34:03:18
Jamey
And you're the number one independent independent brand.
00:34:03:18 - 00:34:05:23
Doug
But I think we're we're number seven out of 600.
00:34:05:23 - 00:34:06:14
Jamey
Nationally with.
00:34:06:15 - 00:34:08:01
Becky
Tostitos and Pace.
00:34:08:01 - 00:34:10:02
Doug
Being. But if we doubled guess what we'd be.
00:34:10:02 - 00:34:12:05
Jamey
Yeah. Number seven seven.
00:34:12:07 - 00:34:20:21
Doug
Big boys are big. And so we g we make things for also you know we also make like number 12 and number 15 and this store brand and then they're making it.
00:34:20:23 - 00:34:31:18
Jamey
Well. So so what I would love to have you I would just love some thoughts on scaling to 15 times what you were to being number set. Like that doesn't happen on accident. It does.
00:34:31:18 - 00:34:36:05
Doug
It has 32 years of working and occasionally thinking we were all going to die.
00:34:36:07 - 00:34:50:20
Jamey
But, but but there's there's a there's a grind. A lot of people grind. A lot of people work. But there's you did something right. Can you like, can you can you unpack what you think? Like scaling meant to like, take like what? What caused.
00:34:50:22 - 00:34:52:20
Becky
Well, it didn't skyrocket overnight.
00:34:52:21 - 00:34:54:00
Doug
It's 32 years.
00:34:54:00 - 00:34:55:12
Jamey
32 years, 32.
00:34:55:12 - 00:35:10:10
Doug
Year over. And there were a lot of what we did is by helping other people successful be successful, we became. And what I mean great question is like, we had an existing customer and I got back and we made like 3 or 4 things for them. And the is like, hey, I would like to do this kind of product.
00:35:10:10 - 00:35:29:05
Doug
And I was told internally like, oh, that's not going to work. And again, I'm data driven. Like, don't, don't just tell me it's not going to work. Got the data. I worked with them. It worked. And then we started and they're like, okay, what about this? What about this? We helped that customer go from 300,000 to 7 million with us over a period of time, which made them happy, which made us happy.
00:35:29:05 - 00:35:37:02
Doug
And we did that with many. We continue begging on James. We do that with Am. I did do that with many, many customers and they will literally come to us this.
00:35:37:02 - 00:35:44:06
Jamey
Point, a core value, so to speak, of. Like we want to help our customers. If I help you succeed, where to go? That's going to help me. Okay.
00:35:44:06 - 00:36:00:22
Doug
Yeah. Literally. Customer. When I say customer, it'll be like a grocery chain with 200 stores will come to us and say, hey, we want to do private labels. Also, what do you think we ought to do? And I tell them what I think, given on the marketer now, my assistant guru. And sometimes they take our advice and sometimes they do the opposite of what we say.
00:36:01:00 - 00:36:02:03
Doug
But you know, as long as.
00:36:02:05 - 00:36:09:10
Jamey
You're open, hand in with even though they're kind of a competitor but kind of not. Yeah. You're very open handed with your thoughts, suggestions.
00:36:09:12 - 00:36:27:10
Doug
It's that's what we get at cocktail parties. Like why do you make your competitors products. It's like, well, because, you know, fill in the name big giant retailer. However much Renfroe they have right now, they're probably not going to have a lot more because we're not a big company. We're not doing TV commercials. So the way for us to get more is by making other brands as well as ours.
00:36:27:10 - 00:36:31:09
Jamey
And that's kind of an abundance mentality in that there's like that. There's enough.
00:36:31:12 - 00:36:35:12
Doug
There is enough for everybody. Yeah. It's not yeah. It's not going to cut into our.
00:36:35:16 - 00:36:46:10
Jamey
So, so one so scaling question one principle or thing that you did well was, was this sort of generosity with your customers and helping them succeed.
00:36:46:12 - 00:37:06:18
Doug
Innovate, innovate by creating all these new products. And we weren't like we wouldn't be the first in the country with something, but we would be the first. What I call everyday grocery brand with that concept. Like, I watched ghost Pepper for five years and I saw it in a chocolate bar one day and I'm like, okay, I think we can put salsa and not like there was ghost pepper salsa at the boutique level.
00:37:06:18 - 00:37:20:13
Doug
That's $9. And these little like and we were talking, we're going to pitch it to all the majors. And we went to New York. And her dad was afraid we were going to get sued because it was too hot. So we put a skull and crossbones and we put scary. Hi. We did everything we could to be like, it's crazy hot.
00:37:20:13 - 00:37:37:02
Doug
Don't be complaining that it was hot. Yeah, and we took four levels of heat. Anyway, that product at that show. Good morning America picked it to be on television. They spent one minute out in New York showing the little crowd that shows up three in the morning, how our ghost pepper salsa. It was that exciting and that was really cool.
00:37:37:02 - 00:37:44:05
Doug
And it shot off the charts. And don't get me wrong, we've created a lot of stuff that did nothing and we had to kill it. Yeah, again, you don't need a whole lot of those homeruns.
00:37:44:07 - 00:37:55:18
Jamey
Yeah. So generous with your customers. Innovate. Becky. What what do you have any other principles or values or things that you think you did that allowed our growth?
00:37:55:18 - 00:38:11:08
Becky
Well, I don't know if this allowed. This didn't help our growth, but our grandfather was, we have customers that are vendors that were there shocked when we and say, you know, we bought this from you a month ago and we've never received an invoice. My grandfather would do that.
00:38:11:08 - 00:38:11:15
Jamey
I was gonna.
00:38:11:15 - 00:38:12:14
Doug
Say, integrity, money.
00:38:12:17 - 00:38:17:12
Becky
We're going to pay you. And if you don't send us an invoice, we're going to call you and ask for that invoice.
00:38:17:12 - 00:38:18:00
Jamey
No way.
00:38:18:04 - 00:38:26:14
Doug
We pay. We pay on time, and we're very transparent. If you charge us a dollar instead of ten by accident, or her dad would call in a heartbeat.
00:38:26:14 - 00:38:27:18
Becky
Call. Hey.
00:38:27:18 - 00:38:34:22
Doug
Yeah. So that integrity. We're known that we're honest, reputable people to do business with. And that sounds like, duh. But you'd be surprised.
00:38:35:03 - 00:38:53:14
Becky
And if we and, you know, we have, some of the, the customers we come back for, it is their recipe and we, you know, son, confidentiality agreements. But we never share that recipe with anyone. And we never change the recipe. Yeah. And some co packers are known to have done that.
00:38:53:16 - 00:38:54:02
Jamey
Really.
00:38:54:07 - 00:39:09:21
Doug
So we'll do whatever. Many times they'll come to us with their core recipe or two. We'll make that for them. And then they want to expand. But they don't know what to do. And they'll and we will say, hey, why don't you do. We're seeing you know, habanero doing well. We're seeing raspberry and we'll co-create with them or just create one for their label.
00:39:09:21 - 00:39:24:21
Doug
We don't we're not proud. We're proud of Mrs. Renfro and we're very proud there. But we're not too proud to take money and make stuff under the radar that nobody else knows we make. But we're, you know, we know. And it helps us be able to go to Europe once in a while.
00:39:24:23 - 00:39:30:02
Jamey
It. When when did the international thing start happening?
00:39:30:02 - 00:39:48:13
Becky
Canada was probably the first, and that took 15 years to grow. But, we had the president of, well, he was the finance guy at the time, but they would come to a show that we did every year in Dallas, and they would walk the show and they'd look at us and they go, we really, really want you in Canada.
00:39:48:13 - 00:40:00:20
Becky
So Doug and our sales director went and walked their show for a few years, and then they started, working their show. And it was a slow process. And now Canada's rocking it.
00:40:00:20 - 00:40:20:21
Doug
It was $10,000 a year when I came back. Yeah, pretty much like clockwork. 10,000 jars. And now we're about half a million jars. And I tell people they have a 10th of our population. So that's like 5 million jars in the U.S and Becky's right. Our salesman, Dan and I had many trips to Canada. Been told nope nope nope nope nope nope.
00:40:20:21 - 00:40:21:15
Doug
We're in Quebec.
00:40:21:16 - 00:40:23:09
Jamey
No.
00:40:23:11 - 00:40:28:00
Doug
And then we get one. Yes. You know, like on the East coast, we had one. And this lady was at the show in New York.
00:40:28:00 - 00:40:30:13
Jamey
So this is it's all trade show oriented trade shows, a.
00:40:30:13 - 00:40:38:06
Doug
Lot of it, because you're able to stand there. Becky and I will stand there and James and Dan for three days. Ever used to be four days like this?
00:40:38:08 - 00:40:38:12
Jamey
Yeah.
00:40:38:17 - 00:40:46:15
Doug
And and you're just smiling and waiting, and you can't even hardly go to the bathroom because the the shows are so big, like 2000 booths, they're not going to come back.
00:40:46:15 - 00:40:48:01
Jamey
And it's a grocery. Like what?
00:40:48:02 - 00:40:56:06
Doug
What are the everybody it's, it's Walmart, Kroger, farmers markets, Williams-Sonoma, Viking cruise ships. Anybody who might buy.
00:40:56:07 - 00:40:56:22
Jamey
In an area.
00:40:57:00 - 00:40:57:04
Becky
Yeah.
00:40:57:08 - 00:41:14:13
Doug
Airline, airlines. And then remember this will be cheese, paté, sausage, salsa, whatever. And many times it's we make product and some of the other booze for them, which is funny. So we're competing with ourselves on the show for. But you're standing there for that 30s when somebody comes up and this is your big moment to pitch that person.
00:41:14:13 - 00:41:16:17
Jamey
Do you have samples or do you have, like.
00:41:16:19 - 00:41:17:20
Doug
Back in the day hours.
00:41:17:21 - 00:41:20:07
Jamey
Like this? Or you're like, we have Sam, check it out, take a look.
00:41:20:07 - 00:41:21:10
Becky
Because we have chips.
00:41:21:14 - 00:41:23:11
Doug
Fortunately they can't take them, usually because they.
00:41:23:11 - 00:41:23:21
Jamey
Can't take it.
00:41:23:21 - 00:41:24:23
Doug
Back because they would.
00:41:25:01 - 00:41:26:04
Jamey
Just kill everything.
00:41:26:06 - 00:41:27:07
Doug
Yeah, it's heavy and breakable.
00:41:27:07 - 00:41:46:06
Becky
But we did. We had. So back to Canada, we had, one of the. It's a small retail store, I think in the East Coast they have maybe 4 or 5 family owned German family owned, business. She was walking the New York show, and so she put us in their store, and they're still they have the best display.
00:41:46:06 - 00:42:05:14
Becky
And I was just there in November doing a store demo. It was their 70th anniversary, and they had an open house for, you know, anybody that shops their store and they had several vendors and several of us vendors, we went in and in four hours. I have never served so much salsa in my life. It was a.
00:42:05:16 - 00:42:06:06
Jamey
Really.
00:42:06:08 - 00:42:26:04
Becky
Yeah. They just there was lines and lines of their customers coming in for their open house to celebrate their anniversary. So it's really fun that they really grew our business and then now we're in, Walmart and then we're in, Sobeys and some of the and we just got into another major chain in the.
00:42:26:08 - 00:42:34:01
Jamey
So who's pitching. So if I'm in a, if you're at a trade show and the other day is in a Walmart exact walks by or like.
00:42:34:01 - 00:42:38:11
Doug
Our sales director who's been with us to over 30 years. He's the primary on Renfroe.
00:42:38:11 - 00:42:39:04
Becky
Yes.
00:42:39:06 - 00:42:51:00
Doug
And but it's a busy inevitably life does this for two hours. We stare at each other and then three important buyers come up at the exact same time. So he'll take one. I'll take one back. And what pitch?
00:42:51:01 - 00:42:56:20
Jamey
Walk me through your pitch on why you should have this. And again, you're probably not pitching as much because you're now the seventh and it's.
00:42:56:20 - 00:42:57:18
Doug
Yeah, now we're like.
00:42:57:18 - 00:42:59:13
Jamey
You got the name recognition. What would you we.
00:42:59:13 - 00:43:10:10
Doug
Actually we we go with your earlier time out of what could we do to help you. We're not there are the people there that are like they've got their pitch and they're, you know, fire hydrant of knowledge. We're just like.
00:43:10:12 - 00:43:11:18
Jamey
How's you know, we're not doing that.
00:43:11:22 - 00:43:13:14
Doug
We're laid back enjoying the city.
00:43:13:14 - 00:43:35:20
Becky
They're like, what's new? You know, what do you have new, and because before Covid, we were coming out with a new product almost every maybe 1 to 2 years. But then Covid happened and, you know, trying to get ingredients, glass lids, everything was just. And we're still having some issues. It's not as bad, but it's you know, we still have issues with a certain ingredient here and there.
00:43:35:20 - 00:43:41:22
Becky
And so we just haven't come out with a new product since Covid happened. But we're about to next year and I can't tell you what it is.
00:43:41:22 - 00:43:42:10
Jamey
Oh, you can't tell.
00:43:42:10 - 00:43:43:09
Doug
Us it's going to be really.
00:43:43:09 - 00:43:46:01
Jamey
Really. And when you say new product, you don't mean new flavor.
00:43:46:01 - 00:43:46:19
Doug
You can't talk about.
00:43:46:19 - 00:43:49:09
Jamey
It a totally, totally different thing.
00:43:49:11 - 00:43:54:05
Doug
I mean, it's not you know, it's not watermelon rhubarb based, but it's still based on tomatoes.
00:43:54:05 - 00:43:54:20
Jamey
But okay. But it.
00:43:54:20 - 00:43:57:23
Becky
Will do since January at our first feature for the.
00:43:57:23 - 00:43:58:14
Jamey
Year. Yeah.
00:43:58:14 - 00:44:00:12
Doug
In Vegas, third week of Vegas. Pay attention.
00:44:00:12 - 00:44:02:11
Becky
Yeah. Pay attention. Well it'll be on Facebook.
00:44:02:14 - 00:44:12:02
Jamey
Was there was can you can you walk me through maybe like a moment again it sounds like a lot of the 32 year success story is it's a there's a lot of.
00:44:12:02 - 00:44:15:07
Doug
Chatter 84 years, 60, 80, 84. You say our granddad but was.
00:44:15:07 - 00:44:23:08
Jamey
There can you walk me through like a moment where you landed a really big account or something and you're like, this sat like a Walmart? I'm assuming it's.
00:44:23:08 - 00:44:41:20
Doug
Funny because many times, many, many times you get excited initially and then something goes horribly wrong. And then then, you know, by the time it's like there's a, there's a meme that people put up. People think success looks like this, and it looks like the, know I go, yeah, I can remember times when we thought, this is fantastic.
00:44:41:20 - 00:44:52:03
Doug
And then it went horribly wrong. And then it then it went well again. So, I try not to look back very often. You know, I'm always terrified about tomorrow. What do you think of anything in particular?
00:44:52:06 - 00:45:10:10
Becky
You know, that's, Yeah. I mean, I know I was trying to think if there's any. I mean, we were really excited when Canada started growing, and some of the retailers, I mean, we're, you know, we're in Kroger, Albertsons, Tom them, which is Safeway and it's different names in different cities.
00:45:10:12 - 00:45:12:11
Doug
Walmart, H-e-b, Central Market.
00:45:12:12 - 00:45:13:23
Becky
Yeah. Central market I hate to.
00:45:13:23 - 00:45:17:22
Doug
Say anything because at WinCo you see anybody than the one that you leave out. There's no hate mail.
00:45:17:22 - 00:45:26:00
Becky
Yeah. So you know and I'm in Central Market every week shopping. So I'm in there straightening in the jar. There's little things.
00:45:26:02 - 00:45:37:01
Jamey
Was there a moment that when you got in one of those stores and you're like, like I remember when our like our seed first was in Best Buy and I went and bought it and I'm like, this is bad. You did you have any of those like in the early days.
00:45:37:01 - 00:45:40:13
Becky
The market was. Yeah, it was really it was exciting. They first I when we got into.
00:45:40:14 - 00:46:01:05
Doug
When Fort Worth's Central Market opened, Becky and I, our sales director, stood by a little table. We actually had a George Foreman grill and we did raspberry Chipotle, a pork chops or something for like four hours. And you couldn't move because it was. So you don't know if you you might have been in grade school, but it was so crowded and we stood.
00:46:01:06 - 00:46:05:04
Doug
We don't do that anymore. She does a demo occasionally when it's fun and glamorous like Canada.
00:46:05:04 - 00:46:05:21
Jamey
But yeah.
00:46:05:22 - 00:46:11:16
Doug
But my lord, you know that was the biggest thing happening in Fort Worth that day. Yeah, I don't know what the question was, but that.
00:46:11:16 - 00:46:14:17
Jamey
Was I was seeing the product on the shelf. I'm like, oh.
00:46:14:17 - 00:46:15:20
Doug
I call it in the wild.
00:46:15:23 - 00:46:16:10
Jamey
In the wild.
00:46:16:11 - 00:46:28:14
Doug
I will tell you my entire life, as far as your happened to be at the store in the salsa set and somebody takes her in from puts in their basket. I think I've seen it twice. Oh, that's it's so rare. Yeah. I mean, without you saying like, hey, have you tried it?
00:46:28:14 - 00:46:30:04
Jamey
Did you say anything when you saw that?
00:46:30:04 - 00:46:32:10
Doug
No, I just had a moment of silence and.
00:46:32:12 - 00:46:32:18
Jamey
You know.
00:46:32:22 - 00:46:39:03
Doug
Had a little ceremony. Know? I think people think you're, you know, freaking weirdo. Psycho if you say something.
00:46:39:03 - 00:46:54:01
Jamey
Yeah, I've had a I've had a few. Those were like a song is playing like a central market, like one time I was, I was walking around the store and this song started playing, and I was like, buying hamburger meat from the butcher. And I was like, hey, do you hear this song? And. And he was like, yeah.
00:46:54:01 - 00:46:58:10
Jamey
And I was like, this, this is must be. And he was like, I go.
00:46:58:12 - 00:46:59:06
Doug
I, I told you.
00:46:59:06 - 00:47:03:03
Jamey
Psycho, this is my song. And he just like,
00:47:03:05 - 00:47:05:13
Doug
He's like, anyway, did you want a Quarter Pounder a half?
00:47:05:15 - 00:47:08:10
Jamey
Hit it. I was so excited. I know, aren't you?
00:47:08:11 - 00:47:09:00
Becky
That's funny.
00:47:09:00 - 00:47:24:18
Doug
Yeah, we we do. And that's why I, Becky and I and James, we have a, our phone covers our a label of a jar of our sauce. So people are what do you do. We just show them the phone cover. Yeah. And our business cards have Facebook, Instagram, all this stuff because we give stuff to everybody we meet.
00:47:24:18 - 00:47:29:06
Doug
But it's not uncommon that you offer to send somebody something and you can tell they're kind of thinking you make it in the kitchen.
00:47:29:11 - 00:47:31:16
Jamey
You know, they're like, no, thank you.
00:47:31:18 - 00:47:37:10
Becky
So when any Renfro travels, everybody does store checks. And so.
00:47:37:12 - 00:47:37:20
Jamey
What does that.
00:47:37:20 - 00:47:46:11
Becky
Mean? So we will just go into a random grocery store to see if we're in the store. Okay. And if we are, we take instead of a selfie. You take a selfie.
00:47:46:13 - 00:47:47:20
Jamey
Oh that's fun. Yeah.
00:47:47:22 - 00:47:55:17
Becky
And now we've got friends and people that have seen it on Facebook. So now they're going into stores and when they see us, they take a shelf.
00:47:55:17 - 00:47:56:14
Jamey
Fancy selfie.
00:47:56:14 - 00:48:14:01
Doug
And that that's about another balcomb creation. Was the word selfie, right. That's brilliant. Yeah. I have a friend whose daughter was in college and London for study abroad, and we've been in Whole Foods Piccadilly for 20 years or so, and she's so excited to find it nice ten pictures, but Crested Butte, Colorado, all kinds of places.
00:48:14:03 - 00:48:35:12
Becky
Oh, I will tell you, what's exciting is when we find out certain, you know, a celebrity buys our product. So the most recent was the young ladies of the season four of Bridgerton is about her character. And she said in the LA times, she said, my three favorite things are Ryan Reynolds, Mrs. Renfroe, salsa. We miss the list.
00:48:35:16 - 00:48:37:06
Becky
Somebody sent it to me and.
00:48:37:09 - 00:48:38:08
Jamey
That was Shirley.
00:48:38:10 - 00:48:48:11
Becky
Balcombe. And this organic. It got into Star-Telegram actually ran the story because they talked about Mrs. Renfrow. Debra Ferguson talked about it on channel five news in the morning. Yeah.
00:48:48:11 - 00:48:59:23
Jamey
So we're and she's British. So she's British. She's been about it in London where some of you're like where is it the most popular other than I'm assuming DFW is for its.
00:49:00:01 - 00:49:09:05
Doug
Always been a fallacy there because we grew so weirdly unorganized, so to speak. You know, we we sell more in Boston than Austin.
00:49:09:07 - 00:49:10:12
Jamey
Do you really. Yeah.
00:49:10:14 - 00:49:20:22
Doug
On on Renfroe. But you know, I say New York cities are in our top three. There's a lot of people there. They eat a lot. You know, it's some of those things. It's really simple. If you think about it. But it doesn't sound logical.
00:49:20:22 - 00:49:22:14
Becky
Well, in Texas you have a lot of.
00:49:22:14 - 00:49:23:17
Jamey
A lot of.
00:49:23:18 - 00:49:26:15
Becky
And you get out of sight of Texas and you don't have as many sources. Yeah.
00:49:26:15 - 00:49:39:07
Doug
We really I mean, we did better as Becky was saying. We did way better in other states for a long time because Texas buyers wouldn't give us the time of day because they had 800 choices. Yeah. And so we just started making some of those choices internationally.
00:49:39:08 - 00:49:43:17
Jamey
Where where would you be surprised, like people that you love salsa.
00:49:43:22 - 00:50:01:13
Becky
Well, so we know about Australia. We know about the UK, Spain, Germany, South Korea, Philippines. We're in a lot of the Caribbean islands. So a lot of people go to certain Cocos and they'll come back to us. In is a picture. Hey. You're here.
00:50:01:15 - 00:50:20:01
Doug
Yeah. We're I mean, when South Korea bought it, we're like, But you know, the the whole global palette has started to diffuse because of the internet. And everybody, anywhere in the world can watch anything, anywhere in the world. So all the tastes are starting to meld. And young people don't just, you know, they don't distinguish between categories.
00:50:20:01 - 00:50:28:07
Doug
Now they'll have, you know, Asian, Latin fusion and things. So the world, the palate, thankfully, is more susceptible to like our sorts of things. Yeah.
00:50:28:09 - 00:50:48:14
Becky
South Korea, their thing was I was at a show in Paris and they came up, you know, three days in a row. And the lady, the first lady that came up, you know, her? It was five people than it was seven people. And then the final day, it had the CEO of the company and there were like 15 people, and they all stood behind him.
00:50:48:16 - 00:50:53:10
Becky
But they call it Western. We want Western foods and South Korea's thing. Yeah. And that interesting. Yeah.
00:50:53:10 - 00:50:54:01
Jamey
That's cool.
00:50:54:07 - 00:51:09:02
Doug
Speaking of celebrities, I literally at my house last night did a call with the sax player for the Rolling Stones and his manager. We were in three different time zones. They found our stuff on their own and they have it in their rider now for he he don't do no, no, he he's their sax player when they travel.
00:51:09:02 - 00:51:17:18
Doug
But he's got his own band and he tours and he was doing he was in Austin in Colorado somewhere recently. And for his band he has it in The Rider now. Mrs. Renfroe so really.
00:51:17:19 - 00:51:20:04
Jamey
How cool is that. And they called you.
00:51:20:06 - 00:51:35:10
Doug
Yeah. Well they reached out to the website and then the web. Then Balcomb found Becky and me and I, I been for two months. I've been trying to schedule this call because between his concerts and his manager and time zones and in our lives, that's just, you know, we have a lot of those little data points. A lot of times we can't talk about them.
00:51:35:10 - 00:51:48:23
Doug
But, it certainly is more fun than when Becky mentioned you have there's more than one ingredient. We have a year's worth stuck somewhere because it has a lot of cash and room, but we just can't risk running out of an ingredient for a customer, so.
00:51:48:23 - 00:51:49:14
Jamey
Oh, interesting.
00:51:49:14 - 00:51:54:03
Doug
We'll just buy up a year's worth. And, you know, we didn't have to do that pre-COVID very often. But.
00:51:54:05 - 00:52:05:00
Jamey
Let's talk about covet because you'll you'll have mentioned that a handful. And I think I probably saw y'all, I don't know, maybe like a year after Covid and you, you were talking about how crazy it was.
00:52:05:00 - 00:52:06:00
Becky
So crazy how.
00:52:06:00 - 00:52:07:21
Jamey
Like how business went way.
00:52:07:21 - 00:52:17:21
Doug
Out. Right? Initially we found out people were hoarding toilet paper, and also because our sales went up 35% overnight. And historically we went up like 3%. We weren't built for.
00:52:17:21 - 00:52:19:12
Jamey
That 35% or.
00:52:19:12 - 00:52:25:19
Doug
Better, better lucky than smart. We had borrowed $1 million, from vertex Bank and.
00:52:25:21 - 00:52:26:11
Jamey
Shout out to.
00:52:26:11 - 00:52:45:20
Doug
Get machinery to go faster. But James and I had decided if we could gradually, over time with this machinery, get up to a 135 bottles a minute, we'd probably be ready to retire about then. Overnight we needed to go 200 and the machine was. So we literally from day one, the machinery was already out of date and we hadn't dial it in yet.
00:52:45:20 - 00:52:58:18
Doug
And because of Covid, we couldn't fly the techs in from around the country like we usually do to Ty. So I watch her four brother doing a FaceTime from a business dinner going, show me. Not now. Hold it up to that. Screw there. Now that should be lower. He's like.
00:52:58:18 - 00:52:59:09
Jamey
Yeah.
00:52:59:11 - 00:53:02:00
Doug
Things that you're doing that are so stressful.
00:53:02:00 - 00:53:03:20
Jamey
200 a minute is crazy.
00:53:03:22 - 00:53:21:18
Doug
Yeah, it's a 14 head rotary filler and it's just spinning around. Don't put your fingers in there. It was a safety guard. Yeah, but yeah, compared. And we know that when our dads were little, they helped fill jars with a spoon at one point. So. And when we were kids, I think it was going 25 a minute and then, you know, 80 and yeah, now it's just.
00:53:21:20 - 00:53:41:18
Becky
An hour glass manufacture. Crazy. They need four months lead time and well, four months was great. But when sales increased, we were using that for months and two months. And so we had to get real creative and go, we didn't use the logo glass for a while. We use plain glass. And that was fun trying to play on plain glass.
00:53:41:18 - 00:53:44:17
Becky
And we had to use plain black LEDs because we ran out of the.
00:53:44:21 - 00:53:46:18
Jamey
Three different kinds of lids. Yeah, and.
00:53:46:18 - 00:53:57:20
Doug
It wasn't just us. I can take you to this day, I can occasionally show you to store some of these brands. Like, I know what's happening here. They couldn't get lids, so they're like eight lids better than no lid. Happens to be purple.
00:53:57:22 - 00:54:15:22
Becky
You know, it was interesting because we had about 70 employees and we had five in the two years, you know, colored was really or a year and a half with five cases in the entire business. Which was great. And they weren't even in the same department, but everybody's wearing their mask. And you know, because we could not make it virtually.
00:54:16:00 - 00:54:24:12
Jamey
Yeah. Yeah. You can't. Yeah. But there's a lot of vitamin C in peppers. Yeah. The baby the spice is killing.
00:54:24:15 - 00:54:27:15
Doug
I can't make any any health claims but.
00:54:27:17 - 00:54:30:05
Jamey
Prevents Covid gets your froze.
00:54:30:09 - 00:54:38:13
Doug
And then 2022, we may get through Covid in 2022. The worldwide rampant inflation. I had to make PowerPoints for me and for our customer.
00:54:38:13 - 00:54:39:21
Jamey
So your stuff gets way more expensive.
00:54:39:21 - 00:54:51:19
Doug
As I had PowerPoints of tomatoes went up 32%, orange juice went up 51, glass went up 38. Our it started with our metal lids went up 45% with 30 days notice. And we were having 5%.
00:54:51:19 - 00:54:54:09
Jamey
Yeah. So that crushes your margins I'm assuming.
00:54:54:11 - 00:55:00:00
Doug
Yeah. So I went home and told my wife so I can, you know, I think we could live in an apartment again if we needed to. And so sell the children.
00:55:00:00 - 00:55:03:09
Jamey
So 45% for lids, 30 something for to make like,
00:55:03:11 - 00:55:06:10
Doug
And it just didn't stop. And so there were multiple waves of it.
00:55:06:10 - 00:55:10:21
Jamey
So this let's say we sell how much like how much do you retail sell I mean.
00:55:10:23 - 00:55:28:14
Doug
I well that's a good example is now our national average is probably 549 crudely. And it was like 349 before this. And everything in the world went up. And, you know, people would say, you know what? What's going on with the costs? Like, well, I can tell you, we don't make jars, we don't make lids, we don't grow tomatoes.
00:55:28:14 - 00:55:37:01
Jamey
And were you like, like when you're, when you're making that for somebody else, like, were you like were your contracts floating. Meaning you could adjust the price or were the yogurts?
00:55:37:01 - 00:55:53:09
Doug
We had some hard conversations. I only had one customer had 1 or 2 customers where we had a one year contract and they wouldn't give me relief. And I told one of them, I'm like, we're going to go up 32%. The day of the new contract, and here's all the data. I'll show you invoices if you want. We're not making this up.
00:55:53:09 - 00:56:08:01
Doug
And they thought we were bluffing and we didn't ship any for four months. They sent orders with the old price, and for four months we shredded their orders. And one day they started sending them with the new price 30% higher. And we all act like nothing ever happened. Well, but yeah, we're weren't kidding.
00:56:08:01 - 00:56:19:11
Becky
And in a lot of the retailers, you have to prove if you're going to have a price increase, you have to prove to them why you're having that price increase. And we had 3 in 1 year because prices were just.
00:56:19:13 - 00:56:37:07
Doug
And I had to help train our customers because they weren't we're not sophisticated. They're really not sophisticated. Some of the private label and what happens is they used to send giant retailer a letter saying, hey, we're going to go up 15%. Giant retailer now, replies you with a spreadsheet with 21 tabs saying, that's lovely. Fill out. There's one tab for product in each one.
00:56:37:07 - 00:56:51:13
Doug
You have to list every ingredient, every supply, labor, overhead, tell what percentage they went up, what percentage of the total cost increase that represents, and how are you going to mitigate it in the future. And when you've given us that, we'll look at it and think about it. And some of our customers are like, oh my God, I'm going to go out of business.
00:56:51:13 - 00:56:57:10
Doug
I'm like, no, no, no, you tell me. When you last went up, I snapshot our cost every six months. So I was able to go in and create a PowerPoint.
00:56:57:10 - 00:56:58:06
Jamey
To help people.
00:56:58:09 - 00:57:07:01
Doug
I created the PowerPoints for them. I'm like for you, since you last went up with this finding work. Yeah, I have spreadsheets have always been my forte.
00:57:07:01 - 00:57:08:16
Jamey
And in the spreadsheets.
00:57:08:16 - 00:57:13:09
Doug
And then when people ask about working out, I'm like, it doesn't take a whole lot of energy to move that mouse with my wrist.
00:57:13:09 - 00:57:14:12
Jamey
But, you know, that's.
00:57:14:13 - 00:57:29:18
Doug
My biggest exercise every day. But yeah, we had to we had to, not only for our brand, we had to do it for all our customers. But and it took a while. There was a while when everybody thought we were making stuff up. And after all, the the buyers were Punchdrunk because they were getting so many increases.
00:57:29:22 - 00:57:34:17
Doug
And finally one giant retailer, they're like, we need to go up 26%. They're like, yeah, whatever.
00:57:34:17 - 00:57:38:05
Jamey
Okay, okay. Everybody like, cause it was real.
00:57:38:05 - 00:57:38:20
Becky
Everybody.
00:57:38:20 - 00:57:48:10
Jamey
It's so it's honestly really sad. I mean, like it, it said it was such a jump over to like, my grocery bill went from $200 to $400. You know, I.
00:57:48:16 - 00:57:48:23
Doug
Should.
00:57:48:23 - 00:57:49:21
Jamey
Like, put something back.
00:57:49:21 - 00:57:57:23
Becky
And eggs are going up because of the bird flu. You can't buy eggs and freeze them. I mean, so you're everybody's going to be paying that price for eggs.
00:57:58:04 - 00:58:07:13
Jamey
That's a that. Can you talk me were there any other, any other like big lessons or mistakes? I mean, you told us some of the things that you did.
00:58:07:13 - 00:58:20:20
Doug
Well, the funniest one we like to talk about, it was not at all funny at the time, is I was told that it would be really, really hard and difficult to do a night shift. And we tried one and we found it was way worse than that.
00:58:20:22 - 00:58:21:08
Jamey
What is way.
00:58:21:09 - 00:58:21:20
Doug
Worse?
00:58:21:22 - 00:58:23:20
Jamey
So you don't run, you don't run it. We have.
00:58:23:21 - 00:58:40:08
Doug
One ship. We would rather pay a lot of overtime to the people who know what they're doing. The the night. And I have friends who run big plants, and they have three shifts. They're running a 20%, God bless them. But we're not that small. Well, unemployment level is very low around here, so there's not a bunch of people to hire.
00:58:40:08 - 00:58:43:07
Doug
They're going to work at midnight, three in the morning in a food factory.
00:58:43:07 - 00:58:52:21
Becky
And we don't think my brothers slept. The entire time we had a night shift because he was on his phone, because we had cameras. So he was. If he wasn't in the plant, he was on his family.
00:58:52:21 - 00:59:08:09
Doug
He got a hotel room several times. He got a hotel room. So he kept downtown, which is like three minutes from our factory. So he could go back and forth and he would show up. But I told him, one of my friends has an actually have to show up every few weeks at three inches the morning to make sure, see what's going on, because you can't just always trust me.
00:59:08:11 - 00:59:11:12
Jamey
So that did not go well. That was an experiment horribly badly.
00:59:11:12 - 00:59:30:01
Doug
But, but that's when he was like, okay, badly. Okay. We're going to figure out how to go faster. And they did they just he and then maintenance crew and they had production folks. They figured it out. And now we're benefiting from that because like today we walk back in, I walk in was like, oh, it's nice and calm because they're not running the line today.
00:59:30:03 - 00:59:35:03
Jamey
Was it was it was interesting. I don't know. I read the Elon Musk biographies.
00:59:35:03 - 00:59:37:06
Doug
Great. Well, a Walter Isaacson. Yeah, yeah.
00:59:37:12 - 00:59:55:16
Jamey
But one of the things it was fascinating for me because I'm, I've never had a business in that world, is him talking about how difficult manufacturing is. He's like, it's it's very easy. What's not easy? It's anybody can have a great product and we can have a great idea. Anybody can. But the manufacturing component is like the most difficult.
00:59:55:18 - 00:59:57:20
Doug
And the customer wants it to be the same every time.
00:59:57:20 - 00:59:58:03
Jamey
Yeah.
00:59:58:07 - 01:00:16:06
Doug
So he does tolerance I mean we have if we I don't know if you've done the factory tour, but there's a whole table outside the kettles. We're checking the pH, the viscosity, the net weight, the temperature like multiple times every minute or two as we're running. Because what you don't want to run is 200,000 jars of something that's wrong.
01:00:16:08 - 01:00:17:14
Jamey
Have you had that happen?
01:00:17:16 - 01:00:29:01
Doug
Not 200,000, but two, 4000. Yeah. Yeah, because that's a kettle. You know, I say that when we if you make a mistake for us, it's either a food bank donation or a new product or just destruction and usually destruction.
01:00:29:03 - 01:00:44:19
Becky
The employees, especially the ones that work in the cook area, you make a mistake, tell us immediately you will not be fired. Tell us. We'd rather you'd tell us and we throw out, you know, 500 gallon cook, then just ship 500 gallons.
01:00:44:19 - 01:00:47:10
Jamey
That's that's part of the culture is like, we need you to tell.
01:00:47:10 - 01:01:02:04
Doug
We always say you'll never be fired for making a mistake. You will be fired for making the same mistake eight times or for not telling us, you know. Yeah, yeah. And we have we have. Over time, we've gotten consultants and people that have helped us really raise the bar. Our forklifts. Now I can't drive it back. You can't drive it.
01:01:02:07 - 01:01:20:06
Doug
You have to have a magnetic card. And that card tells it a different maximum speed depending. Like if you're more experience than I am, you may have a eight mile an hour maximum speed, but my card would only like mine. Go three oh. If you hit something, we get an email with the GPS coordinates, the speed, the user ID, and we have over 75 high def cameras.
01:01:20:06 - 01:01:22:23
Doug
So people are like, yeah, I hit this. I know you're going to know. Here's what.
01:01:22:23 - 01:01:43:18
Jamey
Happens. So that was one of my questions. Like the precision is matters a lot. But manage managing people. Consistency is is is hard. You know just my background in this restaurant world to real estate, to construction, like it's it's difficult it's difficult to get consistency across.
01:01:43:19 - 01:01:56:18
Doug
That's why when you get good people, you give them raises frequently. You help, you take care of them. You're like, what do you need to do your job better? Let's make that happen. Because those people keep you alive and help you grow and keep everything under control.
01:01:56:18 - 01:02:02:15
Jamey
So you say that's the biggest piece is just finding the right people? Or is there like accountability, training, management?
01:02:02:19 - 01:02:04:01
Doug
I think the right people.
01:02:04:03 - 01:02:04:22
Becky
Right people.
01:02:04:22 - 01:02:11:08
Doug
Huge because you can train the fool out of a bad or an inappropriate for the role employee, and it's not going.
01:02:11:08 - 01:02:11:14
Jamey
To stick.
01:02:11:15 - 01:02:34:02
Becky
To our employee. See, we take care of them. So we had one and he actually just retired this year. But he had about with colon cancer, and I think he was off work nine months, maybe a year. We paid him 32 hours every week. Wow. That's so he would come back to us and keep his family. And he was just like, wow.
01:02:34:02 - 01:02:36:04
Becky
I mean, we kept food on his table. Wow.
01:02:36:07 - 01:02:37:02
Jamey
That's really cool.
01:02:37:04 - 01:02:59:22
Becky
So, you know, it's stuff like that that a lot of companies do not they don't take care of their employees. And I think that's why our turnover is so low is because we take care of employees. We have mom and son working for us. We have, mother in law and son in law. You know, we have a lot of different family members that come and work for us.
01:03:00:00 - 01:03:01:05
Doug
My cousin works there.
01:03:01:06 - 01:03:08:16
Jamey
Yeah, that's Becky, talking a little bit about just family dynamics.
01:03:08:16 - 01:03:13:17
Doug
Like how this was my eighth year in a row to speak to the TCU family business class.
01:03:13:19 - 01:03:14:08
Jamey
Oh, really?
01:03:14:08 - 01:03:16:14
Doug
I always go, how much time do I have to talk?
01:03:16:17 - 01:03:20:03
Jamey
Like, how do you manage that? How do you maintain the relationships? How do you tell him what?
01:03:20:03 - 01:03:24:04
Doug
Laura, our banker of 30 plus years, she said about us.
01:03:24:06 - 01:03:25:06
Becky
What'd she say about us?
01:03:25:06 - 01:03:26:22
Jamey
I told her, she said.
01:03:27:00 - 01:03:40:14
Doug
She said that we are the most functional family business she's ever worked with. So we will disagree all the time. But we we don't scream, we don't yell, we don't throw hissy fits. We don't not talk to each other for weeks at a time, which, trust me, I'm.
01:03:40:19 - 01:03:41:07
Becky
We've seen.
01:03:41:07 - 01:03:42:08
Doug
That I network with.
01:03:42:12 - 01:03:44:03
Jamey
Yeah, yeah, I've seen some family business, a few.
01:03:44:03 - 01:04:00:20
Doug
CEOs and family business. And we are very close with many multigenerational family food manufacturing and other kinds. And yeah, it's crazy what people do. But now we just like I said earlier, we don't out. We don't do sneak out voting types of things. We talk about everything. We talk.
01:04:00:20 - 01:04:01:10
Becky
About everything.
01:04:01:16 - 01:04:03:10
Jamey
And that's a that's a huge piece of it. Yeah.
01:04:03:10 - 01:04:11:19
Becky
And if we like you said, if one of us doesn't agree in the two of us it do can't convince that one to agree.
01:04:11:19 - 01:04:12:20
Doug
Then they don't do it.
01:04:12:20 - 01:04:13:05
Becky
We don't do.
01:04:13:05 - 01:04:25:04
Doug
It. And the thing about growth that's always important to me is if you're growing, you're not fixated on any one thing. So we've got so many balls in the air, we're not like, oh my God, if this one doesn't come to play, I'm so depressed or angry.
01:04:25:07 - 01:04:33:15
Becky
If we don't have a lunch event or a lunch meeting, the three of us go to lunch as often as we can, because that's where we discuss business.
01:04:33:17 - 01:04:35:01
Jamey
Yeah. At lunch? Yeah.
01:04:35:03 - 01:04:39:10
Doug
Because we sit in different areas and we're doing different things. So, yeah, every lunch I.
01:04:39:12 - 01:04:40:08
Becky
Will make a list.
01:04:40:08 - 01:04:41:19
Jamey
Like every week you go to lunch or.
01:04:41:20 - 01:04:42:15
Doug
A multiple times.
01:04:42:16 - 01:04:45:11
Becky
Multiple times. Are you serious? And we talk business the entire.
01:04:45:12 - 01:04:46:07
Jamey
Lunch the.
01:04:46:07 - 01:04:47:11
Becky
Majority of the time.
01:04:47:13 - 01:04:47:21
Jamey
Yeah. Yeah.
01:04:47:21 - 01:04:56:13
Becky
You other than when we're asking. Okay, Doug, show us a video. Your cute granddaughter, you know, true. That kind of thing, but no, every day that we go to lunch together, we're talking business.
01:04:56:13 - 01:05:02:11
Jamey
And it also sounds like there's a there's a respect and admiration for different strengths. Yes. Yeah.
01:05:02:11 - 01:05:06:10
Doug
There's things that, you know, Becky's the hammer. If somebody is not paying their bill.
01:05:06:10 - 01:05:07:00
Jamey
You're the hammer.
01:05:07:00 - 01:05:08:16
Doug
Her. Oh yeah. Don't piss her off.
01:05:08:18 - 01:05:09:04
Jamey
Yeah.
01:05:09:04 - 01:05:15:00
Doug
I hope your brother runs production. I don't want anything to do with that. I've been there. It's not. Not my world.
01:05:15:02 - 01:05:37:13
Jamey
Well, so I had your take, culture index survey. It's just. Yeah. Personality profile assessment, tool. We use a six. I love it, but, Doug, you're a trailblazer. And so trailblazers are very, like, forward thinking. They don't like to look back. You said that earlier. You did. They. They knock down walls. They're like, yeah, get out of their way.
01:05:37:15 - 01:05:50:04
Jamey
They like to innovate, but they also kind of have a little bit of like they're very driven for thinking the social. So they're not only good salespeople but also have a little bit of detail. They can get kind of in the weeds if they need to. But they like to go, go, go, go go. I don't know if that resonates.
01:05:50:04 - 01:05:50:11
Jamey
I.
01:05:50:13 - 01:05:52:12
Doug
I get bored very easily. Yeah.
01:05:52:14 - 01:06:04:06
Jamey
Just get bored. And also if you like, if you kind of if you cross a trailblazer or you like, slow them down again, then we're like, you're, they're like that to you. You're like, get, get out of my way. I don't that was that resonate.
01:06:04:06 - 01:06:04:15
Doug
So far so.
01:06:04:15 - 01:06:23:16
Jamey
Good. It's pretty good. Yeah. And so you are a debater and debaters are they have high social. So they like to talk and they're on people are extroverts. And they also have a higher patience. Where he has like a lower patience. He moves juggling all the things you have a little a little more chill, a little more methodical.
01:06:23:18 - 01:06:46:06
Jamey
And so generally, debaters are big culture builders. They're, they're they're great with community and culture and people like debaters because they have the social and the more patience. And they also can be creative. They're called debaters because your your detail conformity is back. Meaning you. If you don't like a rule, you're going to probably break a rule a little.
01:06:46:06 - 01:06:48:10
Jamey
I don't know if that's true resonates or not.
01:06:48:13 - 01:06:52:13
Becky
Yeah, I kind of there's to me there's always a gray area. Let me find the gray.
01:06:52:14 - 01:06:54:08
Jamey
Yeah. So yeah that's a very.
01:06:54:10 - 01:06:56:23
Becky
So it's not black and white. It's not a gray in their.
01:06:57:00 - 01:07:10:17
Jamey
Black and white. So it's a different kind of like personality and profiles. And they don't like good communicators. They're very you know and they're in tune with how other people are feeling. You can kind of read a room and read.
01:07:10:22 - 01:07:11:12
Becky
Interesting.
01:07:11:12 - 01:07:13:00
Jamey
Yeah. Does that sound.
01:07:13:01 - 01:07:21:01
Becky
True? If I can read the room. But yeah, I can, I don't know, read. I am definitely an extrovert. I know I'm very sociable. I love, love, love being with people.
01:07:21:03 - 01:07:22:12
Jamey
Yeah. So yeah, I just thought it was funny.
01:07:22:18 - 01:07:23:23
Doug
We're just trying to sell more salsa.
01:07:24:00 - 01:07:32:08
Jamey
Yeah. Some more sports. Are there, are there any of like, is there a next generation of. There isn't any like the kids interested.
01:07:32:08 - 01:07:50:11
Doug
They don't work here. But there's an extra. There's 14 fortune and I've, I've seen enough stuff go south. I was like, we gotta have a filtration system. So if you want to be on a management track, you're going to have to go to college, graduate, work, a real job for a couple of years. Well, a lot of the more than half of them have done that and have no desire to come back.
01:07:50:11 - 01:08:07:00
Doug
But because they're smart and many times they make five times. Now, what we could pay them to start here and we're thrilled for them. Yeah, I told my kids, chase your passion, not the dollar. Otherwise you'll never be happy. And they they're in LA, New York, North Carolina not coming back. James's daughter has been an Amazon executive for many years.
01:08:07:00 - 01:08:07:20
Jamey
None of them come back.
01:08:08:00 - 01:08:25:14
Doug
And then we're like, if you want to come back and just work blue collar, you can, but you'll never be in the management role. And we had some of that for many years, often for whatever reason. Right now out of 14 we have zero working there. Becky and I have dogs. They're not allowed. We're still, you know, we're not old yet.
01:08:25:14 - 01:08:33:15
Doug
We're we're getting there. But yeah, we still have it. I mean, we look forward to being there every day. We were we this morning we're like, oh, we're going to be on this podcast. Yeah.
01:08:33:20 - 01:08:37:05
Jamey
Well, you said you were already went in the office and word. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
01:08:37:06 - 01:08:42:18
Doug
That's 740 I get there. Seven 3740 I'm getting older, so I like I'm not. Leave it.
01:08:42:18 - 01:08:45:10
Becky
For now. I got to be 30 now. Two hours of work. And before we came.
01:08:45:10 - 01:08:46:11
Jamey
Here you did.
01:08:46:13 - 01:09:01:17
Doug
And we'll do stuff from the house, from backing new payroll, from her home. If she's got a meeting ahead of time and payroll, we use Paycom, which was life changing when we started doing that a few years ago. It takes she and I cover when Becky's not there. It takes us, what, 12 minutes? 6 or 5? Me, 12.
01:09:01:17 - 01:09:04:16
Doug
Because I got to read the instructions more carefully. Yeah.
01:09:04:18 - 01:09:07:05
Jamey
Wants to walk me through a day in the life.
01:09:07:07 - 01:09:21:17
Becky
They're also different in their life. And so that's what I love about coming to work, because you think it's going to be this way, and then things happen and they may be good or bad, but they happen and it totally changes your day, which makes it fun coming to work.
01:09:21:20 - 01:09:23:11
Doug
That's why I said I get bored easily. Are they going.
01:09:23:11 - 01:09:23:23
Becky
To do the all?
01:09:24:04 - 01:09:45:01
Doug
Yeah, like yesterday I got the day yesterday. The day before. I get a text randomly from a CEO buddy who owns a brand and he's like, hey, this went dormant. I'm looking for somebody to partner with on it. And I'm like, actually, we just done three of these kind of. And within an hour I had a zoom with him, a pitch, and Becky, now we got a contract and that wasn't on the menu that morning.
01:09:45:01 - 01:09:45:18
Doug
Wow.
01:09:45:20 - 01:09:46:02
Jamey
Yeah.
01:09:46:04 - 01:09:51:02
Doug
And of course, you're not a in a bad way. They're maybe like, hey, the laborer broke. He's like, well, let's get creative.
01:09:51:02 - 01:09:51:20
Jamey
Because it's.
01:09:51:20 - 01:09:53:07
Doug
Illegal to sell a product with no label.
01:09:53:07 - 01:09:58:04
Jamey
But you said you were like tasting stuff. This morning. You were like, oh yeah, I did did a little.
01:09:58:06 - 01:10:14:21
Doug
Where we've been asked by a giant company to match something. They're not happy with the producer, but they don't know the recipe. So it's called reverse engineering when we do that. And like I said, we're really smart in our tiny sliver of life or morons and everything else. But give us an acidified condiment and we can probably back into it.
01:10:14:21 - 01:10:26:08
Doug
It's not our first rodeo. Yeah. And, and so my, my assistant who had done the work said, I want you to taste these before I ship them off and have a lovely breakfast sensation of something with habanero in it. So I'm just.
01:10:26:13 - 01:10:28:20
Jamey
Starting up your 8 a.m., right, with some and yeah.
01:10:28:20 - 01:10:49:14
Doug
That's what we love is, I could be working on peaches from Greece this minute and talking to a retailer's PR department tomorrow and doing a podcast here, interview there, and then trying to figure out the best machine that exists, put lids on and, we do a lot of nonprofit. You know, Becky's late father was one of the founding charter members of the Charter area food bank.
01:10:49:14 - 01:10:52:23
Doug
I ran the latter with, Becky was been on the women's Center.
01:10:53:03 - 01:10:54:10
Becky
For Sister City.
01:10:54:10 - 01:11:11:03
Doug
I was for 12 years. And, you know, we we love giving back. We've as a family, we've been helped so much by so many people that we always feel strongly, you know, we give we do hot, hot pink lids on half a million jars once a year, and we give some of the money to MD Anderson, some to cook children's.
01:11:11:05 - 01:11:15:03
Doug
Yeah, we do like giving you. And so we're I've been on the board of Costume Indiana for 20 something years.
01:11:15:03 - 01:11:16:13
Jamey
Y'all are very involved.
01:11:16:13 - 01:11:20:06
Doug
In the we like to me. Yeah. And we have low boredom thresholds.
01:11:20:08 - 01:11:36:05
Jamey
And low boredom thresholds. And so I'm going to get into some more just kind of like sillier kind of questions. But how has your appetite taste for salt? Like you have pretty high tolerance for spicy I don't I don't you don't I.
01:11:36:05 - 01:11:44:03
Doug
Can create things that I can't eat all the time. Really. Like this is a great idea. People are going to love it. I'm never tasting it again after the cutting when we get it right.
01:11:44:03 - 01:11:55:12
Becky
So yeah, Doug James and myself, our sales director, QA people, they we do. If we're coming out with a new product, we all taste it. But I can't if it's going to be ghost Pepper. Caroline, you.
01:11:55:12 - 01:11:57:15
Jamey
Can't. You're not doing that stuff. Okay? Yeah.
01:11:57:16 - 01:11:59:17
Becky
Count me out. I cannot taste it.
01:11:59:18 - 01:12:02:00
Doug
I stop my tongue stops at Mango Habanero.
01:12:02:00 - 01:12:02:21
Jamey
Which is.
01:12:02:23 - 01:12:07:04
Doug
One fifth as hot as our regular habanero, which was our number one item for a zillion years.
01:12:07:04 - 01:12:08:06
Jamey
Oh, that was your number one item.
01:12:08:10 - 01:12:10:12
Doug
Yeah. And now mango habanero is.
01:12:10:12 - 01:12:11:19
Jamey
Mango habanero is the number one.
01:12:12:01 - 01:12:14:00
Doug
That just they're neck and neck.
01:12:14:02 - 01:12:15:13
Jamey
And what's what's your favorite.
01:12:15:15 - 01:12:20:09
Doug
Make at home. And it's funny people will say you have chips and salsa every day. And I'm like, no.
01:12:20:11 - 01:12:20:17
Jamey
I think.
01:12:20:17 - 01:12:40:16
Doug
The donut guy has donuts every day. No. But we cook when I say we, I mean, my wife will cook, amazing dishes, and incorporate mango habanero. We'll put on eggs, soft chicken tacos. She's got, you know, a barbecue recipe where she'll incorporate maybe the blackberry serrano or something. But on a given day, no.
01:12:40:16 - 01:12:47:09
Doug
We. And it's funny, when you come into our factory, you'll be like, oh, my God, it smells so good. And we're all like, what's my well smell like, yeah, you get our noses.
01:12:47:09 - 01:12:48:13
Becky
You just. I definitely smell.
01:12:48:13 - 01:12:48:15
Jamey
It.
01:12:48:20 - 01:12:54:23
Doug
Well, we run a lot of Indian sauces for somebody. And when. Yeah, when the curry's in the air, you're like, oh, I know what they're making today.
01:12:54:23 - 01:12:55:22
Jamey
01:12:56:00 - 01:13:10:20
Becky
Ours is green jalapeno sauce at our house. We. Oh, yeah. Everything. And, there's a recipe on our website called Mixing Fudge. And it's the it's the first appetizer at every party to go. I mean, everybody loves it. And it's just egg, cheese. And our, jalapeno salsa.
01:13:10:22 - 01:13:13:16
Jamey
Oh, that sounds good. I'm gonna look into like that up.
01:13:13:18 - 01:13:33:19
Becky
Yeah. And then I made, one night I was making lasagna, and I didn't have enough cans of tomato, so I took a jar of our craft beer, salsa, poured it in, and didn't tell Henry. But we had some friends over that evening, and Henry goes, wow, this is the best lasagna you've made. And I, Prince goes, yeah, it's really, really good.
01:13:33:23 - 01:13:36:15
Becky
So now craft beer goes in my lasagna recipe.
01:13:36:15 - 01:13:37:14
Jamey
Great.
01:13:37:16 - 01:13:39:21
Becky
But every time I make it, yeah, it's very versatile.
01:13:39:22 - 01:13:47:11
Jamey
Yeah. And what's like that one of next question was like what's the best meal you've ever had? Where it is, was incorporated like, well that.
01:13:47:13 - 01:13:48:16
Becky
Probably that hasn't.
01:13:48:16 - 01:14:09:21
Doug
Yet. For me, it is. Lange twins is a Lodi, California winery. But they come to Fort Worth a lot. And, his wife and I were at a charity event here, and we decided it'd be fun for them to have a wine dinner where every single dish incorporated. Mrs. Renfroe was at them by their chef, and I had assumed that she would sober up later, and we would never do that.
01:14:09:21 - 01:14:28:07
Doug
They did it. I flew out there, their corporate chef had even the dessert. He used our raspberry chipotle in a demo glaze on a chocolate dessert. Every course had a Renfroe item, and I got to be there and talk. And I just had that, retina terrace. I had, like, a patch still, and, it was, you know, and they hung our inflatable jars.
01:14:28:07 - 01:14:34:09
Doug
They had like 40 of our inflatable jars hanging from the ceiling in the wine cellar. So that was just really, really cool.
01:14:34:13 - 01:14:36:05
Jamey
What a fun. What a fun night, Becky.
01:14:36:05 - 01:14:52:10
Doug
And I've had some good meal. I always tell people part of my job is I'm cursed to have to eat at the nicest restaurants in the world to see what's going on in the condiment trends, because what we'll see out of white tablecloth restaurant five years from now, it might be appropriate to introduce that under Mrs. Renfroe, but we need to be in the everyday price point.
01:14:52:12 - 01:14:53:03
Doug
And people be.
01:14:53:03 - 01:14:55:13
Jamey
Familiar with your intentionally researched going out.
01:14:55:13 - 01:15:12:00
Doug
And yeah, our mango habanero is because I saw mango habanero chutney on a halibut at a nice restaurant. And five years later I thought we could do it as a salsa. And some people in the company still said it was stupid and too early. And now it's a number one item. But that again, that didn't happen overnight.
01:15:12:00 - 01:15:22:09
Doug
You know, that's like a 20 year journey. Yeah. But yeah, by seeing what's going on out there, you know what? What is going to be popular that we can put in every retailer in the country a few years later?
01:15:22:11 - 01:15:41:07
Jamey
Yeah. How fun. Are there any just from a business standpoint, are there any books or resources or that were pivotal in sort of shaping how you think about things or approaching things or like you love?
01:15:41:09 - 01:15:59:14
Doug
I read about 4 or 5 books at a time. If you have the Good Reads app, you can for yourself and and follow me. But I intentionally don't tend to read what I call trendy business books. I know a lot of people do that works for them. That's great. I read history, science, everything except trendy business stuff. I love the most part.
01:15:59:16 - 01:16:06:20
Jamey
But is there any of those in the history like that shaped you a lot that you would recommend? Like we love referring or recommending people to.
01:16:06:23 - 01:16:19:22
Doug
I've put over 500 books on my list and I write documentaries constantly. Every. I think everything you learn about can help your journey, and many times in a way that wouldn't have been anticipated or just not necessarily linear or logical.
01:16:20:03 - 01:16:25:01
Jamey
But any of those come to mind? No. Go ahead. Becky. Yes.
01:16:25:03 - 01:16:50:17
Becky
So I love collecting cookbooks. Okay. And especially so. And especially if they tell a story with the cookbook. And so and now that I had over 100 cookbooks and when we moved the last time, I was like, I need to get rid of. So I kept the ones at the actual, whether it was the chef or. But Anna Gardner, I have her, cookbook.
01:16:50:17 - 01:16:52:19
Becky
I know how to craft Anna garden. Yeah.
01:16:52:19 - 01:16:54:09
Jamey
You're some of your favorite recipes?
01:16:54:11 - 01:17:19:10
Becky
Yeah. Like her, chef Paul Prudhomme. The latest one I got was, there's a restaurant in New York called Delmonico Joe's, and it closed for a while, but then, the grandson, Max, he reopened Delmonico's. He and his mom and I went to his sister restaurant, and he was there eight with he and his mom. He autographed the, cookbook.
01:17:19:10 - 01:17:38:11
Becky
But it tells the story of the family through the cookbook. And I love stuff. Oh, that because they're talking about what went wrong, what went wrong, you know, this and that. And then you're seeing their recipes, how they use. Of course, it's a restaurant. It's a little different than having a salsa, but I love cookbooks like that. That's will tell a story and then share their recipes.
01:17:38:11 - 01:17:39:18
Jamey
And it's a physical cookbook.
01:17:39:18 - 01:17:40:18
Becky
It's a physical.
01:17:40:19 - 01:17:45:20
Jamey
But is is a physical cookbook in the cards for you? Yes, it is. You're going to write a book.
01:17:45:21 - 01:17:48:03
Becky
My vision.
01:17:48:05 - 01:17:51:00
Jamey
Yeah, I guess you aren't. You already have all these recipes and stuff.
01:17:51:02 - 01:17:53:22
Becky
But no, I keep saying, but you should do like a story.
01:17:53:22 - 01:17:54:18
Jamey
Oriented.
01:17:54:18 - 01:18:00:07
Becky
Kind of story oriented cookbook. Yeah, that's been in the that's a menu in my mind after.
01:18:00:12 - 01:18:01:21
Jamey
This 2025 goal maybe.
01:18:01:21 - 01:18:02:17
Becky
Happened.
01:18:02:19 - 01:18:03:12
Doug
Not 2020.
01:18:03:12 - 01:18:05:01
Jamey
Five. But these.
01:18:05:03 - 01:18:05:13
Doug
Kind of things.
01:18:05:13 - 01:18:06:13
Jamey
Are yeah long.
01:18:06:15 - 01:18:07:10
Doug
Long.
01:18:07:12 - 01:18:10:17
Becky
I keep telling if I yeah maybe when I retire I can do one of.
01:18:10:17 - 01:18:34:05
Doug
Those. I do like to read about dysfunctional family businesses because it reminds me what not to do and makes me feel so much better. So bitter. Brew the entire history of Anheuser-Busch from when the first guy came from Germany in the 1800s until their when they had to sell to Brazilian firm and House of Mondavi. Fantastic. I mean, Robert Mondavi was like 52 when he got fired by his mother and his brother and started over, essentially.
01:18:34:05 - 01:18:53:11
Doug
But nobody realizes that because it was, you know, he lived to be like 103. Wow. They actually pronounce their name and Dave and he went back to the Italian pronunciation is sort of an up yours to the family. And there's all these things, intricacies and outs, and we'll see things in the paper locally. I'll show Becky and James, you know, there's like a father and son suing each other and in the court.
01:18:53:11 - 01:19:09:03
Doug
And like, what we want to do is stay off the front page for bad reasons, not sue anybody if we can help it. Because the only people that went are the attorneys. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we've her dad let me figure out that it was true that it's not a good idea to sue people with no assets.
01:19:09:05 - 01:19:10:12
Jamey
And so we.
01:19:10:12 - 01:19:17:01
Doug
You know, do it by studying what people do wrong. It helps you. And then by studying what people do. Right. I do like to read brand stories.
01:19:17:02 - 01:19:17:12
Jamey
Yeah, yeah.
01:19:17:13 - 01:19:32:19
Doug
And what, you know, how did this brand have the kind bar guy wrote a book and people like that, that created something. Clif bar, people who created something out of thin air. And when you read their histories, you know, it was, again, the journey was way scarier and more crooked than not crooked. But, you know, it wasn't linear.
01:19:32:19 - 01:19:37:08
Jamey
So I listen to both of their, how I built this. Yeah, those folds and yeah.
01:19:37:10 - 01:19:49:07
Doug
Our local buddy, Brett Bouton got me. He got a guy to sign a copy of his book to me for the Sundance Festival. Doug, keep it spicy or something. Oh, Guy. Right. I was like, oh, my God, that's one of my prized possessions.
01:19:49:07 - 01:20:15:15
Jamey
But but I think there's something. I think there's something to that. Doug just. Your dynamic doesn't happen on accident. You know, it doesn't insulating yourself against kind of the drama. And like that doesn't happen on accident. It happens with like, intentionality and purpose and and being clear. And also it's like studying and researching that because you're our default is to drift into that.
01:20:15:15 - 01:20:33:12
Jamey
Our default is to drift into selfishness and ego and all of those things. And so I do think that that that speaks about your, you know, you guys, it's a company, the intentionality and also you as a person like, you know, I, I want to see what people are doing. Well, I don't see what people are doing, you know, not what I want to learn from that.
01:20:33:12 - 01:20:50:00
Doug
So I always learn I one of my comments is always I hang out with people richer and smarter than me so that the rising tide will lift me up. And it's pretty much everybody I know. And it works out well, you know, we we know what we don't know. Yeah, to some degree. And we're constantly trying to learn.
01:20:50:00 - 01:21:04:06
Jamey
Yeah, I love that. If you could go back and give yourself your younger self advice, you know, 1020, 30. Like what? What would that be?
01:21:04:08 - 01:21:07:18
Doug
I thought you asked Becky first.
01:21:07:20 - 01:21:33:09
Becky
How? Probably. Take more risks. Just do it. You know, as you get older you, you're, you find out that. Oh wow. Just if I try it. Yeah. May work. It may not. But just do it I think when you're younger you're a little frayed to get out there and do some things. So just do it.
01:21:33:11 - 01:21:36:05
Jamey
Yeah. Take some risk. Yeah. Take knowing what you know now.
01:21:36:07 - 01:21:38:06
Becky
Knowing what I know now. Take the risk.
01:21:38:08 - 01:21:39:02
Doug
I'm a worrier.
01:21:39:03 - 01:21:42:06
Becky
Like I could I had already had that cookbook. If I.
01:21:42:07 - 01:21:43:09
Jamey
If.
01:21:43:11 - 01:22:06:16
Doug
I'm paranoid and I'm always thinking about worst case, that's kind of my job too. But one of my friends, I call him Yoda, and he's like my dad always told me, 99% of what you worry about will never happen. And over the last five years or so, it's been very exciting at work sometimes and and routinely at the end, after some scary incident, you look up four months later and like literally nothing else ever happened.
01:22:06:16 - 01:22:29:07
Doug
And I'll text him. Your dad was right again. I was really worried about this. Lost some sleep and nothing happened. But, you know, to your point, we are very proactive. We're, you know, we have all the types of insurance. We do things proactively, not reactively. You know, we're always open for our employee advice. Somebody like, hey, did you realize this part of this machine's not protected?
01:22:29:07 - 01:22:48:21
Doug
No, I didn't thank you for showing me. Let's get it done. Not just doing it when it gets broken by a forklift ran over it. For me, I think I would have told myself to save 25% of my income. And from the time I was 21 and I, you know, as Dana Carvey you see in this comedy tour, he called the if I had saved more, I wouldn't be here tour.
01:22:48:23 - 01:22:51:12
Doug
The compound interest really is fascinating.
01:22:51:13 - 01:23:10:06
Jamey
That's really good advice. That's awesome. So final question is, is, is legacy. You know, this what's interesting about we all live is there is a rich past history. What what do you what do you sort of envision or want or hope sort of the future legacy of the company in the brand.
01:23:10:08 - 01:23:21:02
Doug
The fact that we innovated with high integrity and made delicious products that were good for you. And we made our grandparents proud, our parents proud.
01:23:21:04 - 01:23:26:12
Jamey
What about you? Do have does that mean anything different to, you know?
01:23:26:13 - 01:23:46:01
Becky
Yeah, yeah. No, just I mean, you know, I think about my grandparents would be blown away, how the sales are and where we're selling. They would never dream that we were outside of the US. Like us all are in all states of the US.
01:23:46:01 - 01:23:48:15
Doug
I think our grandfather never got to California.
01:23:48:18 - 01:23:49:10
Becky
No.
01:23:49:15 - 01:24:00:12
Doug
And, Mike, we have a picture of my grandmother in Hawaii with a store manager and our stuff on the shelf. You know, she at least she got to see some of it. But yeah, the extent of it that she.
01:24:00:12 - 01:24:13:06
Becky
Passed in 75 and they had just really started the sauces and taco sauces at the time. So he really didn't get to see the growth of that. Grandma passed in 91. So she did get to see the growth.
01:24:13:08 - 01:24:33:21
Jamey
How cool. Well, guys, thanks for coming on here. I love, you know, y'all are doing some amazing stuff and it's just Fort Worth is proud of you. Like, I think Fort Worth is proud to to claim Mrs. Room froze as one of their own. And you guys do so much in the community, so it's fun getting to hear a little more about the story today, so I appreciate it.
01:24:33:22 - 01:24:34:06
Jamey
Thanks.
01:24:34:06 - 01:24:35:07
Doug
Thanks for letting us play.
01:24:35:08 - 01:25:04:09
Jamey
Yeah, these guys. Congratulations. You made it to the end. You listening? If you enjoy what you heard, if you enjoy these episodes, please subscribe and like and share wherever you listen to podcasts. When you do that, it goes a long way and helps us continue to produce great new content. This episode is brought to you by six App Storytelling, where we help businesses grow their brands.
01:25:04:11 - 01:25:12:05
Jamey
The power of storytelling. If you're an entrepreneur who is interested in learning more about that, please visit sixth App storytelling.com. Today.