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In this episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, Caitlin Bricker interviews BJ Howard, founder of Wild West Chocolate, a chocolate brand revolutionizing the confectionery space with fruit-sweetened, no-added-sugar products. BJ shares the company’s journey from concept to launch, including the challenges of navigating a volatile cacao market, the science behind developing a proprietary fruit-based sweetener, and the brand’s commitment to clean ingredients and sustainable practices.
The conversation highlights the role of creative branding, the importance of strong partnerships, and the mission-driven approach that ties Wild West Chocolate to environmental stewardship and community impact.
Listen now to learn how Wild West Chocolate is carving out a unique place in a highly competitive category while staying true to its vision of creating indulgent, better-for-you chocolate.
Listen in as they share about:
- About Wild West Chocolate
- Product Development & Team
- Brand Mission & Inspiration
- Market Challenges
- Retail and Distribution
- Future Outlook
Don't forget to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode. For potential sponsorship opportunities or to join the Startup CPG community, visit http://www.startupcpg.com.
Show Links:
- Transcripts of each episode are available on the Transistor platform that hosts our podcast here (click on the episode and toggle to “Transcript” at the top)
- Join the Startup CPG Slack community (20K+ members and growing!)
- Follow @startupcpg
- Visit host Caitlin's Linkedin
- Questions or comments about the episode? Email Daniel at podcast@startupcpg.com
- Episode music by Super Fantastics
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Creators and Guests
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BJ Howard
We launched about a year and a half ago and, you know, purchased cacao for our launch and kind of had our big debut. And then last year, for people who are close to chocolate, probably know, the cacao market went up by almost 400%. So, you know, this same bar to produce, literally the. I mean, being that the cacao is 70% or I guess of the dark chocolate, 70% of this bar, you know, and the cacao itself is such a huge percentage of those cost of goods, and it went up by 400%. And so, you know, it's caused all sorts of reactionary things in the market.
00:54
Caitlin Bricker
Hey, everybody, this is Caitlin Bricker, editor at Startup cpg. We are back with another fun founder feature. Ever wonder what chocolate would taste like if it was sweetened only with fruit? Well, today we're talking with BJ Howard, founder of Wild West Chocolate with zero added sugar, zero stevia, and zero sugar alcohols. After formulating a proprietary blend of four dehydrated fruits as their sweetener, BJ launched into one of the most competitive CPG categories. Just as cacao prices spiked over 400%. From Montana river conservation routes to landing shelf space at Whole Foods and Sprouts, she's built a brand that's filling a gap no one else seems to be addressing in the confectionery space. And on that note, I need to go place a Wild west order. Enjoy. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast.
01:47
Caitlin Bricker
This is Kaitlyn, and today I'm here with BJ Howard, founder of Wild West Chocolate. Bj, welcome to the show.
01:53
BJ Howard
Thanks, Caitlin. Appreciate you having me.
01:55
Caitlin Bricker
I am so excited to have you on. People already know this about me, I think, but I am such a freak for dates. And when I got samples of your products, I became a freak for Wild West. So for anybody who has not heard of Wild west, could you tell us what Wild west is?
02:14
BJ Howard
Absolutely. First of all, thanks for being a fan and thanks for having us. And I was laughing with you about this before, but I just want to clear the air for the audience that this is not a growth on my face. I was playing baseball with my youngest and got hit by a fastball in the face. So sorry it had to be this week, but that is Murphy's Law, right?
02:31
Caitlin Bricker
Add some character.
02:33
BJ Howard
Yep, yep. But we're not selling postcards of me. We're selling amazing chocolate, so it doesn't really matter. So, yes, Wild west, we are a no added sugar, sweetened only with fruit product, and we use four different types of fruit to sweeten our products. So it's a nice, balanced flavor that really enhances the particular type of cacao we use, which is the satipo bean. We wanted fruits that were going to kind of bring out that nutty, citric flavor of the satipo bean and not mask it. And we didn't want our bars to taste like a fruit bar. Like a lot of date sweetened chocolates kind of just taste like date. So we wanted it to be really on balance and taste like a delectable, rich, chocolatey, indulgent experience and not even know that it is alternatively sweetened. So that was really the whole goal.
03:21
BJ Howard
And then also in that just using pure ingredients, we didn't want a lot of alternatively sweetened chocolates. Well, as you know, Caitlin will use erythritol, they'll use sugar alcohols. And even if they use stevia or monk fruit, usually the second ingredient as a binder is a sugar alcoholic erythritol. So we're super proud of our ingredient panel. All very simple, easily pronounced, recognizable ingredients. And it tastes great.
03:48
Caitlin Bricker
I would have to agree. And it is nice seeing a product that's no sugar added, but it really is no sugar added, meaning no sugar alcohols, no stevia, no monk fruit. It's just very nice knowing that you can trust what somebody is saying and selling to you.
04:05
BJ Howard
Yeah, we are not just. I like to say, we're not just talking the talk. We're walking the walk. And, you know, we really are first to market with this type of product. We. Our goal was really to revolutionize the category. And it's a super competitive category. So, you know, that doesn't happen overnight. It's all about being here with awesome people like you and connecting with audiences to really try to get the word out about how great our chocolate is, how amazing it tastes, and how good it is for you, and how, as we say here at Wild west, you can have your chocolate and eat it too.
04:38
Caitlin Bricker
Well, you're in the perfect place to reach a wider audience, I will say.
04:43
BJ Howard
Yeah, well, that's the goal. So our product took us 18 months to formulate. I can't take credit for that. We have an absolutely incredible chocolatier. He looks like the Albert Einstein of chocolate. His name is Guy Deboss, and he is just the coolest, sweetest man who's been in this industry for a long time. Took him 18 months to develop the product because we wanted it to be the right texture, the right smoothness, and we wanted people to pick it up and eat it and Say, wow, this is the best chocolate I've ever tasted. And then be totally floored when they find out that there's no added sugar. And so it took him that long to do that. And it was actually the brainchild of my business partner, Doug Brent. He owns the sister companies that we work with.
05:31
BJ Howard
And he had this idea coming from our sister company, Made in Nature, which is a dried fruit company and snack company, and the legacy in dried fruit, nuts, fruits and vegetables. And he thought, well, how can we use our, you know, fruit access and this partnership that we have with this new chocolate company to come up with a, you know, a fruit sweet and chocolate? And so that's where the genesis kind of started of this product. And, you know, I think that the really cool thing about Wild West Chocolate, the product itself is that. And the reason why we're able to say no added sugar is that we don't take the sugar out of the fruit like a lot of date sweetened chocolates do, or stevia or monk fruit. We don't extract it and then add it back in.
06:15
BJ Howard
We actually use the whole fruit. So we use the mulberry, the peach, the mango and the date, and we dehydrate them down and pulverize that into a proprietary gland. Can't tell you about that because on the edge of my seat, that's our little secret. Anyhow, so we take that, we pulverize that into a special mix on balance with all of those flavors. So it's the fiber and all from the fruit, and then we conch that in with the cacao. So the base formula of our chocolate is just all fruit, which is kind of mind blowing that it tastes the way that it does because you would never know that it is just all fruit. And then of course, our inclusions that we put in there too.
07:01
Caitlin Bricker
Yeah, I will say, when I tasted it, I was blown away. I was excited about the ingredients in the first place, but then when I actually bit into it, I was like, wow. I really would never know that it was just fruit sweetened. And I would prefer your bars over a traditional chocolate bar because it has the same feel as a chocolate bar. It has the same look as a traditional chocolate bar, but I think the flavor is much better.
07:25
BJ Howard
Oh, thanks, Caitlin. That's what we like to hear. That's what we're going for.
07:29
Caitlin Bricker
Nailed it.
07:30
BJ Howard
Gotta let everybody know it. Yeah. I mean, the more you eat, the healthier you are.
07:36
Caitlin Bricker
Okay, so that's my permission slip to go order more Wild West.
07:41
BJ Howard
It literally is guilt free. Indulgence really, it is. You know, my kids will open up a bar and I'm like, where'd it go? And my son will be like, well, I ate the whole thing. I'm like, well, you know what? That's okay. This is good for you. I love that.
07:54
Caitlin Bricker
I am so curious to hear more about your background and how you got into chocolate in the first place. Can you tell us a bit about that?
08:02
BJ Howard
Well, it is. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Right. So I come from a long background in the organic food space with that sister company I mentioned, Maid in Nature. I worked for Maiden Nature for. For over 20 years. And my business partner and Wild West, Doug Brent, is the owner of that company and the CEO of that company. And then when we. We joined forces with a small chocolatier who happened to be owned at the time by Guy Deboss, who was our chocolatier that I mentioned. And we, you know, had so many collaborations that we basically ended up merging the companies at that time. And then when Wild west was developed, really, as I said, the brainchild of Doug Brent, and then the chocolate formula and expertise coming from Ghee, you know, we.
08:51
BJ Howard
We came up with this incredible formula and, you know, when went to consumer testing, because we thought we had something really amazing and revolutionary for the chocolate brand, and were like, well, let's make sure we're not in an echo chamber here and let's make sure that other people agree with us. So went to consumer testing and it came back very positive. And so at the time, you know, Doug said, well, you seem to have a special interest in this product. And I had some hair brained branding ideas at the time, which when I was pitching, you know, I think everybody looked at me like I had a bird on my head.
09:25
BJ Howard
But I guess I will say how I really got into it was, you know, through the made in nature background, through my relationships with and long partnerships with Doug Brent and Guy Deboss. And the fact that, you know, Doug really did believe in my harebrained idea, I sold him on it. So I really hope it works out because I got to eat crow if it doesn't. But he believed in me and he believed in the brand. And so really he gave me a shot at it. And it's kind of just taken on a life of its own from there. I knew in my background, coming from Montana, I was very fortunate to grow up in all these beautiful wild spaces, you know, by Glacier park and Yellowstone and just the wide, vast landscape of what is Montana big sky country. And fishing a lot.
10:13
BJ Howard
Fishing and rafting. With my family growing up on the rivers, which my family still does today, we're very much river advocates and river adventurous. And my kids are absolutely obsessed with fishing. So, you know, rivers have really been kind of a big part of our lives. And I was reading an article during COVID actually, about what was happening on the flathead river up near whitefish, Montana, where I grew up. And it's just this beautiful, pristine, wild river that runs borders glacier park. And, you know, residents were just devastated because there were just people in droves coming to, you know, squat on the rivers and camp and, you know, Covid it was a little lawless, and which kind of got me thinking about wild west, too. It was like, people, we're just like, max exodus from the cities.
11:02
BJ Howard
And it was kind of like this big, like, push to nature and to wild spaces. And in a way, it was almost like going back to our roots, you know, and it kind of reminded me of, like, what it must have been like to settle the west and kind of, you know, be so connected with nature. But anyhow, the river was, you know, being polluted and fish habitat was being destroyed, Defecation in the river and all these things. And the residents were, you know, really trying to band together to figure out how they could protect that river stretch. They wanted to get it permitted and indoctrinated into the wild and scenic rivers act.
11:36
BJ Howard
And so it kind of got my little pea brain thinking about, you know, the wild west and the exploration of the west and our American heritage and what it must have been like then, and people reconnecting with nature and wanting to, you know, be more in tune with our surroundings and, you know, and what could I do to give back to, you know, this precious resource being wild and scenic rivers, like, what could I do to protect this little piece of home and all other, you know, waterways around north America? And so that was really how the mission of wild west came about in the branding. It was, you know, about, okay, let's reconnect with our roots. Let's go back to when water was clean and when, therefore, food was clean, ingredients were clean, you know, pre industrial era.
12:22
BJ Howard
And so it was like the name came naturally. Cause I was like, well, it was the wild west. And I feel like we are kind of exploring a whole new frontier in chocolate. And so I was like, we are the wild west of chocolate, you know, and it just all sort of kind of came together in my brain. And then the next step was in terms of branding, like, how do I take what is in my brain and get it, you know, into individuals and how do we build a brand around it? I had an amazing group of women that were partners that I started with. It was a small team out of LA called Creative Pack. Judo's Creative Pack. And so they really helped kind of put the blueprints and foundation of what is Wild west together with me today.
13:06
BJ Howard
They were the first people who could really translate clearly what I had in my head to visuals. And that was a really cool, fun, unique process. And I am super grateful to Doug for supporting me through that and getting it here because I think people started seeing it was like, oh, yeah, I get this, you know, so you'll see, like in Wild west branding, we really kind of bring this unique exploration of like the unbridled spirit of the west through highlighting, you know, the American west heritage of what you would see, you know, 150, 200 years ago in terms of landscape and wildlife and people. And so, you know, for example, you'll see we have our new snake bite package. It's, you know, animal. This one's got a little cayenne in it, so it's called Stink Bite. Here's another animal. It's a new one.
13:59
BJ Howard
It's our wise one. We love owls here at Wild West. But then you also see, you know, the people, like the classic cowboy coffee. That's the people. And then, you know, landscape, like snow capped. So it's really kind of like that. Oh, and this is a fun one. Most Wanted. So it's like a really kind of fun try visual trifecta of those. That's kind of our three legged stool of our branding and our creation. And then I have to also give big credit to, well, really my whole team. But Cara Crawo has been incredible. She's my creative marketing designer and we partner very closely together on all things Wild west. And she gets me. And yeah, so she's been absolutely amazing and I'm, I feel blessed to have her on the team.
14:42
BJ Howard
So, yeah, I mean, between Guy and Doug and Kara and my salesperson, Jeff, and our queen of all trades, Julie Drankhan, like, we are a small but mighty team.
14:54
Caitlin Bricker
It's amazing. And I, I do really love what you're saying about taking that idea that's in your brain and finding a team who can really see what you're thinking and deliver on it. Sometimes I just wish I was able to project what's in my brain onto a wall so other people could understand me better. But when you have a team around you, that is magical. And I do. I have to say, your branding, for me, it really stands out because when I see it, I haven't seen it on a shelf yet, but any retailers in Massachusetts listening to this, please get it on your shelves. I do feel like you're rewilding the chocolate space in a way, because I don't see.
15:35
BJ Howard
I love that. I'm writing that down. I'll give you credit, but I love rewilding.
15:39
Caitlin Bricker
Yes, we see a lot of flowers, we see a lot of pinks, we see a lot of purples, we see a lot of cutesy things that, yes, are nature related, but we don't see anything like Wild west on the shelves. You have this bright red, you have this beige, which I don't think I see that anywhere. But it does all tie back into that Wild west branding that I think you're totally achieving and we're looking to achieve.
16:05
BJ Howard
Yeah. Thanks, Caitlin. I mean, really, the. The idea that means a lot. It really does, is we've worked super hard to bring this brand to life. And, you know, you just hope people will love it as much as you do and get it. And so it's really rewarding to hear that. Thank you. Couldn't do without my team. But, you know, I think that the goal was really, originally I wanted to do something that looked almost antiquated, that looked pastoral, that you would expect to find on a general store shelf in an old west town, you know, in 1880. And so that was kind of the idea. Like, that's why it's kind of that, like, muted tones, the sepia tones and the beige. And, you know, that's really where I think the.
16:49
BJ Howard
Visually, the brand is rooted kind of between those two colors on that block of like kraft paper and. And the beige and the sepia. So very natural looking. But also, you know, it doesn't just look that way. You know, we are also. All of our packaging is 100% recyclable. Like it would have been, you know, on the store shelf of the general store. So, yeah, you know, it's. It's fun to be at this point. We launched with six items or six bar flavors, three vegan oat milk. It was important for us to be plant based and vegan, and then three dark. So the vegan oat milk is 50% cacao, the dark is 70% cacao. And then we just launched our two new flavors, two of which I just showed you.
17:37
BJ Howard
So now we have eight flavors so four vegan oat milk, four of the dark and we have all the other sort of like on our packaging. Speaking of our packaging, you know, we have, you probably already seen this, but you know, we're organic, we're vegan, we're gluten free, we're GMO free, we're fair trade, we're kosher. You know, we like to say we're all the things on top of being no added sugar and sweeten only with fruit. And the coolest thing too is we just got our regenerative organic certification which is kind of a big deal.
18:09
Caitlin Bricker
Congratulations.
18:10
BJ Howard
Thank you. It was. And again, kudos to our co packing team that helps us make all the small batch chocolate by hand. By the way, like everything is small batch artisanal and we conch the chocolate ourselves and want to give a shout out to our team there because they do an absolutely incredible job. Like, you know, James Macy, Max, thank you all. It just like every batch is, you know, love goes into it and yeah, it's just something I think we can all be super proud of.
18:38
Caitlin Bricker
Totally. And I would love to hear more about being in the confectionery space. Have you run into any snags being in this space or has there ever been a time where you've thought maybe it's not going to work out? My dream of having a fruit sweetened chocolate might not be it and maybe I have to pivot.
18:56
BJ Howard
Oh, you're good. That's a loaded question. I would love to say no. Everything's rainbows and butterflies. It's great. But no, absolutely not. I mean it's like typical scrappy startup, you know, like the amount of grit you have to make it in this industry, let alone in this space is unbelievable that every day I'm like, oh to the higher beings, oh please just let us live to fight another day and help this, like help us make this work out. Because we put so much work into it. Lots of investment and obviously, you know, not just money and time but emotional investment as well.
19:35
BJ Howard
So, you know, for not only me, but my team and Doug and Guy and the whole team and at our co packing facility, like I just really, I want more than anything for it to work out and some of it is hard work and strategy and some of it is just pure luck, you know, and timing and our timing has not been the best. Speaking of challenges, so we launched about a year and a half ago and you know, purchased cacao for our launch and kind of had our big debut. And then last year, for people who are close to chocolate, probably know, the cacao market went up by almost 400%.
20:15
BJ Howard
So, you know, this same bar to produce literally the, I mean, being that the cacao is 70% or I guess of the dark chocolate, 70% of this bar, you know, and the cacao itself is such a huge percentage of those cost of goods and it went up by 400%. And so, you know, it's caused all sorts of reactionary things in the market, different strategic moves by big players in the market like Mars and the Hershey's of the world, which us little guys kind of, you know, are severely impacted by because they decided to go out and buy, vertically integrate and buy, you know, mass amounts of farms and kind of buy up a lot of the supply. And of course that drives the global market up. The Ivory coast was supplying, I think over 30% of the world's cacao.
21:07
BJ Howard
And you know, I think due to changes in farming practices, due to global warming, due to some crop issues over the last couple of years, it really spiked the cacao prices. And so people started looking to buy cacao elsewhere. So we source our cacao from Peru, from South America, but a lot of these players that were purchasing from the Ivory coast, you know, are now looking to buy cacao elsewhere. And it drove up a global price of cacao. So that has been a very, very tricky challenge to navigate for us.
21:41
BJ Howard
And you know, a lot of these big players can just afford to, they have such big margins that they can afford to hold on price increases or simply, you know, or shrinkflation, what they call it, to shrink the size of their product or quickly pivot and you know, launch different products that have more inclusions and less chocolate and all these different ways that, you know, manufacturers, vendors, brands come up with to try to save money. But at the end of the day, you know, we're a little guy and we can't, we just don't have that same buying power. We don't have the same ability to pivot like that. And so it's been a real challenge.
22:20
BJ Howard
You know, we launched it 599 on our bars and we just had to, we held off as long as we could, but we just had to increase to 699 on our bars for a 2.3 ounce bars, which I think is still very competitive for who we are and how premium we are. But it's been a real challenge. And it's like the more business we get, it's great. But it also Means we have to buy more cacao. And at what price are we gonna have to buy that cacao and will that work with our costing and all these things? So it has been super challenging. Yeah.
22:52
BJ Howard
And, you know, buyers reactions to that, like, there's some retailers that we would love to be in that I think we would do really well in, but I think buyers are a little gun shy right now and a little hesitant to make changes in the category because they don't know what's going to happen with cacao prices. And if we get on shelf, if we're just going to say, oh, yeah, sorry, we're going to be $10 a bar next week, you know, they don't want to give up that spot space. So there's some hesitancy and it's. It's made it, I think, definitely more challenging for us to get on shelf in certain places.
23:23
Caitlin Bricker
Is there anything that you would like to say to retailers to maybe soothe them with their hesitancies if they're listening right now? Seriously, like, is there anything that you would want to say to retailers or advice that you would want to give them with introducing Wild west to their shelves?
23:42
BJ Howard
Yeah, well, first of all, we're really fun and we're great partners. We're all chocolate outlets here and we have a good time. But. No, that's a great question. I think that retailers, maybe some. Some of them are really getting it. I mean, ironically, it's very difficult to get on the shelf at Whole Foods and Sprouts. And we got on shelf at Whole Foods and Sprouts by the grace of some really amazing buyers. Thank you so much. Sprouts and Whole Foods buyers. And within the first year, so. Or really six months, so that was an incredible accomplishment. We were super proud of ourselves for that and super grateful to those partners. And since then, you know, so far, so good. We've been performing really well. And it's resonating with consumers.
24:27
BJ Howard
And I think those buyers, which I'm hoping other buyers will hear this and understand that we are not a Me too product. You know, we are not going in there and trying to compete with Lilies or trying to compete with Hue or, you know, we're not just another alternatively sweetened chocolate bar. Like, we are truly, uniquely different than any other chocolate product out there in the market. There's nobody that's competing with our products because there's nobody doing what we do. And I, I don't mean to sound, you know, cocky or arrogant in saying that, but it is actually revolutionizing the category and you know, to these buyers, if they, you know, hopefully they're reading our decks. But you know, we have a whole slide dedicated to this real need state and avoid in the consumer need state.
25:19
BJ Howard
Kind of what you were talking about Caitlin earlier, where you know, everybody loves chocolate, everybody wants to eat chocolate, everybody wants to indulge. Like we all have that craving and the, that needs to be satisfied, right? But to have a like truly guiltless, indulgent, satisfactory experience is just not out there. Because you know, a lot of these products that are trying to. You either have your. On one spectrum you have your Hershey's bar that's just like fully loaded sugar, fully conventional. And people want a healthier, better for you option than that. But they don't want to do that at the cost. They don't want to have that at the cost of taste. You know, they still want it to taste good and it's still gotta like satisfy you and be this great experience.
26:02
BJ Howard
And then on the other spectrum, you know, you have these stevia sweetened products that have a bad aftertaste. They have sugar alcohols in them that are now by the way linked to stroke and heart attack. So be very careful when you're buying a chocolate bar that is alternatively sweetened to make sure that there's no sugar alcohols in there like erythritol or sucralose or allulose because that stuff is now linked to stroke and heart attacks. So that's not guilt free. And you know, you've got those aftertastes. So it doesn't, it falls short of that really great chocolatey, indulgent experience. So we really feel like with Wild west we are collapsing those two ends of the spectrum into one like perfectly harmonious compromise. That's actually not a compromise at all because it tastes better than the conventional item.
26:54
BJ Howard
I don't want to brand slam, but it tastes better than the Hershey's bar, you know. And you know, and it also I think tastes way better than the lilies because you don't have the aftertaste. So you've got, you know, this incredibly decadent, indulgent, chocolatey, creamy, smooth, yummy experience that just like, okay, I got what I came for. But you can eat the whole bar because it's low glycemic. It's actually diabetic friendly. We just can't afford the seal cuz it costs like $50,000. But it's diabetic friendly, so it's like low glycemic index. You don't get the sugar spikes, all clean ingredient. I mean, the whole base is fruit, as we talked about. So what's not to feel good about that? So I think, you know, to those buyers out there, like this is a totally different, unique, revolutionary product.
27:41
BJ Howard
And I think that we've already proven on the shelves of some major retailers that it is what consumers are looking for and it is what the category was missing. And we are filling that void. And I think that it would be, you know, not in lieu of, but incremental to the categories. And so I would say that to the buyers. And then, you know, going back to the branding were talking about Caitlin, like, the other thing is, you know, people love it or hate our packaging. I mean, crazy if you don't love it because it's great. But love it or hate it stands out on the shelf. Like you said, you've got all this kind of like decorative, frilly, you know, classic chocolate design, which is beautiful for sure. But we wanted something that was gonna be so, you know, completely opposite of that.
28:25
BJ Howard
So it would make you stop and go, what is that? Because it would be like looking out a place, you know, and we did that on purpose. And it was because we had to get people to stop. And when you have 10 seconds to communicate with that person walking down the aisle to stop and pick it up and go, wait, what is this? You know, and then they would see. Only then would they see, oh my gosh, there's no added sugar. Wait, this is sweeten only with fruit. Wait, how are they doing that? And then like flip it over and read the ingredients and they go, no way, I don't believe it. It probably tastes like crap. And then, you know, eat it and be like, wait, what? This is unbelievable. Like, how are they doing this? This is so good.
29:02
BJ Howard
So that's the idea. And that would be my message to retailers to really give us a chance because we are proving ourselves where we've, you know, we strive to be great brand partners, we promote, we, you know, want the long term retailer relationships. And you know, strategically I think that, you know, it's not right for us to go immediately into a Walmart. Right. I think that there are certain brand retailers right now and the type of product we have that where it really makes a lot of sense for us to be on shelf and not for all of them, but, you know, definitely at the Whole Foods and the Sprouts and the Fresh Times and well, we're trying to get into fresh markets. So hopefully they're listening. The wegmans I don't know if you have a Wegmans near you.
29:45
Caitlin Bricker
I do. In Westwood, Massachusetts.
29:49
BJ Howard
And you know, we're also on Costco.com so they've been. Costco.com has been awesome. We're trying to also get into the Costco buildings because with this particular product we also have bear claws which are these cute.
30:02
Caitlin Bricker
So fun.
30:03
BJ Howard
Oh, they're so fun here. It was so yum that there's these cute little fair paw shaped individually wrapped claws. And they are chocolate with it's a chocolate nut cluster. So they're like, you know, bite size, great for outdoor adventure, school lunches, office treats, whatever. But we have three flavors now. Launching a fourth flavor. And of course, all of our product lineup you can see on our website, which we're also. We put a lot of love into that one as well. Onto wild westchocolate.com so check that out. And not that you asked, but we also have some really fun merch on that website, Caitlin, which I will send you some because you're awesome. Love that we have fun hats. We have like some really amazing canvas totes. I mean, who doesn't need a most.
30:52
Caitlin Bricker
We love a bandana.
30:54
BJ Howard
Right. And on our Instagram, Kara did a really great thing about all the different ways you can wear a bandana. Yeah. Our Instagram handle, we're on TikTok. We are on Facebook.
31:05
Caitlin Bricker
So yeah, you answered my last question for me, which was gonna be where can everybody find you online? So thank you. This has been so fun, bj. I'm really excited for other people to discover Wild West. I truly do feel like you are creating a way for customers like myself who aren't leaning towards stevia sweetened or alternatively sweetened chocolates, but aren't looking for sugar bombs in their chocolate. I think you're really creating a way for me to live my dream in the chocolate aisle.
31:38
BJ Howard
Thanks, Caitlin. Well, I can't even tell you how much we appreciate you taking this time to interview us and hopefully help bring out a few more consumers into the. A few more Wild west believers into the fold. And I guess I'll just let consumers know or end by saying that not only are you buying something that tastes absolutely delicious, that's good for you, it's fun and unique, but in every package you buy, we donate a certain percentage of profits back to Wild and Scenic Rubbers. So you're also doing something really good for the planet as well.
32:10
Caitlin Bricker
Amazing. That is a perfect place to end. All right, thank you again, bj.
32:16
BJ Howard
All right. A chocolate outlaw now. See you later.
32:20
Caitlin Bricker
See you. All right everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, do us a solid and leave us a five star review on Rate this Podcast.com startup cpg I'm Caitlin Bricker, the host of the Founder Feature Series and editor at Startup CPG. Feel free to find me on LinkedIn or reach out to me on Slack and get on my radar. I'm always keeping my eyes peeled for new and emerging brands to spotlight. If you're a potential sponsor who would like to appear on the podcast, Please email partnerships startupcpg.com and finally, as a reminder for anyone listening, if you haven't already, we would love for you to join our free CPG community on Slack. You can sign up via our website@startupcpg.com See you around.
33:08
BJ Howard
SA.