The Startup CPG Podcast

In this bonus episode of the Startup CPG podcast, Grace Kennedy sits down with Cam Mathias, the visionary founder of Huntaway, an innovative pet food brand. Discover how Huntaway emerged during the COVID-19 lockdown with a mission to deliver nutritious, convenient, and sustainable food for dogs. Cam reveals the story behind Huntaway’s unique use of wild venison as a protein source and shares the journey of developing their innovative products.

They explore the challenges and strategies of running a pet food company, from product development and logistics to customer acquisition. They also dive into the complexities of sustainable packaging and the manufacturing process, offering valuable insights into the pet food industry.

Don’t miss this deep dive into the world of pet nutrition and sustainability. Tune in now!

Listen in as they share about:

  • Huntaway's Origin Story
  • Key Features and Benefits of Huntaway's Products
  • Product Development and Sustainability
  • Growth and Market Presence
  • Unique Selling Points
  • Compostable Packaging and Sustainability
  • Product and Packaging Feedback
  • Consumer Perception and Packaging Evolution
  • Dog Food Storage and Convenience
  • Huntaway's Online Presence


Episode Links:
Huntaway Website
Cam Matthias LinkedIn

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)

Creators & Guests

Host
Grace Kennedy

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

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

Cam Mathias
She was a pretty happy, active dog, but were always very interested in feeding her the best we could. So we made some prototype products. She's enjoyed eating the product for the last four years. Chief marketer or product development officer, she's been involved in kind of trying and testing pretty much everything we've made. There was a lot of interesting opportunities in the pet space, and we had a willing product tester at hand, so it seemed like a logical thing to move into.

00:35
Grace Kennedy
Hi, everyone. Grace here. And I am back with another founder feature. This week, I talked to Cam, the founder of Huntaway. Huntaway is a dog food brand that uses sustainably harvested wild venison in New Zealand. Primary ingredient. Cam has spent decades in the meat industry, but decided to make a pandemic pivot into dog food back in 2020 to better feed his beloved dog, Darcy. Hyundai is doing some really exciting work around sustainability, and I think any founder seeking to create a more sustainable business will get a lot out of this episode. So I hope you listen, hope you enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the startup CPG podcast.

01:19
Grace Kennedy
This is Grace, and today I am joined by Cam Matthias, the founder of Huntaway, which is a dog food brand that is on a mission to offer the most nutritious, convenient, and sustainable food for dogs. But, Cam, I will let you introduce yourself and hunt away to our listeners.

01:37
Cam Mathias
Thank you, Grace. Yeah, great to be with you. Big fan of the startup CPG crowd and everything you guys do particularly enjoy these founder forums. So, yeah, great to meet you. And I'm Cam Mathias. I'm from New Zealand. I started Hunt away in 2020 at the beginning of COVID In the first lockdown, I was at home with my dog, had access to a lot of venison, made some prototype products for her to try. She wasn't one of these sad stories that you hear of a dog that wasn't well needed, you know, some kind of medicinal remedy or anything like that. She was a pretty happy, active dog, but were always very interested in feeding her the best we could. So we made some prototype products, and then I had a buddy in the East Bay area who was able to help with distributing those.

02:21
Cam Mathias
And, yeah, we started back end of 2020 with trial deliveries up to California, and he was literally delivering those like an Uber driver, I guess, around the East Bay area, which I think some people found kind of surprising at that time when everyone was at home and locked down, but it got us off the ground. And some of those customers are still with us today, which is fantastic. As is my dog as well. She's enjoyed eating the product for the last four years. Chief marketer or product development officer, whatever you want to call her. She's BEen involved in kind of trying and testing pretty much everything we've made.

02:52
Grace Kennedy
Oh, I love that. What's her name?

02:54
Cam Mathias
Darcy.

02:55
Grace Kennedy
Darcy. What a cute name. Well, I guess she's a girl. I'm thinking of mister Darcy. Like pride and prejudice.

03:01
Cam Mathias
That's a good guess. But actually she's named after Darcy Bustle, who was prima ballerina in the UK. My wife and I used to live over there and so, yeah, Darcy Bustle was her namesake. Yeah, she's eleven now, and she's still going strong. So.

03:14
Grace Kennedy
Wow, amazing. So one thing I wanted to ask about, cause I think I read this somewhere online about you, is that you were coming from the meat industry. So could you talk a little bit about your background and then how that sort of led you into this adjacent but different industry?

03:31
Cam Mathias
Yeah. So I had. I've worked in the meat industry for 30 years, and that included making value added product for the likes of Aldi, Trader Joe's, Costco, in a variety of markets, so specialized in kind of product development and recipe development and things of that nature, and had some familiarity with the CPG space through that experience. And I'd probably exported to maybe 55, 60 different countries worldwide. So that gave me some good experience in terms of market access and logistics, moving product around the world, especially perishable product, that type of thing. So I lived and worked in the US in the meat business for a time in the 1990s, and lived up in Seattle, in the Pacific Northwest, had a great time up there, and never quite got over plaid and grunge from the nineties.

04:18
Cam Mathias
As you can probably tell, I never moved on when Covid came. I don't think I'd be the only founder you've spoken to who had time on their hands, who time for reflection, and you think the next thing you do. Especially at my age, I was just the other side of 50, and I was trying to think I'd like the next thing I do to be meaningful and worthwhile and something I'm proud of and my kids and my wife can be proud of. We had access to this great raw material that I had traded and worked with before, which was wild venison from New Zealand. And there was a lot of interesting opportunities in the pet space, and we had a willing product tester at hand, so it seemed like a logical thing to move into.

04:56
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about that wild venison, because that's definitely something super unique to huntaway that I've personally never heard of another brand doing. So could you speak a little bit about that sourcing you guys do?

05:10
Cam Mathias
Yeah. So at a nutritional level, venison is a novel protein, which is really beneficial for dogs. And a lot of vets will recommend novel proteins in the event of your dog having an allergy. And venison also has the benefit of, I guess, several hundred years of being regarded as the king's food in Europe, for example. So it's got quite a high image, premium image, I guess, from people. And it's extremely lean and it's very abundant in New Zealand. So deer were introduced here in the 19th century. They've thrived. They cause a lot of issues in terms of deforestation and distorting, the growth of certain trees and things like that in New Zealand, so generally regarded as a pest. And as a result, our Department of Conservation is eager for hunters to control their numbers.

05:55
Cam Mathias
And I was familiar with the edible portion of a deer. But of course, there are a number of parts of a deer or any other animal that are more suited for a canine diet than a human diet. So at the beginning of COVID deer, or the resulting venison is derived from the deer that took a real hit because, of course, hospitality was on its knees and the deer industry was struggling to survive in New Zealand. So, yeah, were able to work directly with hunters and primary processors to prepare the product that were looking for in a human grade factory environment. I just want to stress that the raw materials themselves are not human grade, but the factory is, and we feel like that's a good compromise. I ethically have a few issues with the human grade pet claim.

06:37
Cam Mathias
I think, you know, there's enough hungry people out there that we should be feeding the appropriate food to dog and reserving the human grade element for humans wherever they need it. But the other thing that we liked about wild venison was it occupied an interesting space at a time when plant based products and lab grow and meat and other interesting concept coming to market. Alternative proteins like cricket proteins and these types of things. And there's some fascinating products there. And the product development person in me finds all of that really interesting. But obviously, people do have strong opinions about some of those alternative sources and how sustainable they are, how nutritious they are in some cases. And there's a spectrum of answers there.

07:16
Cam Mathias
But then you've got wild, and wild occupies this other space where you're also free from the criticism, rightly or wrongly, that's leveled at conventional agriculture and even to some degree at regenerative agriculture, that over the long run, it may not be good for the environment. Passionate regenerative advocates will convince you otherwise. But I think the most interesting claim, I think, is around wild, because those animals existed, so no one's calling them into being. They're not using resources or having additional resources like fertilizers and water and things like that kind of distorted turn towards their raising. They're already there. And actually, they exist outside a lot of the assessment of greenhouse gas emissions and things like that. So, yeah, we thought that there were some really interesting claims and at the core, a really healthy, unique product.

08:05
Cam Mathias
So at the marketer, part of me was really curious about what we could do with that.

08:09
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. There's so many interesting things in what you guys are doing at Huntaway. And one thing, just to say anecdotally, is my friend's dog. Recently, she discovered that he's allergic to chicken. And I was like, I didn't even know that a dog could be allergic to chicken. It just felt, like so normal to eat. But turns out, yeah, allergies can take.

08:31
Cam Mathias
All sorts of interesting forms. And of course, this kind of fascinating period that we've lived in the last five years has been characterized not just by a pandemic, but a lot of our original customers in California, of course, were affected by forest fires and environmental issues. And those environmental issues led to other allergens, and allergies and symptoms in their dogs caused their health to not be at its optimum. So, yeah, it's coincided with all these interesting trends. People taking more interest in the nutrition of their dogs and also taking with them their own experiences, the so called humanization of pets. And people thinking, I have allergies, my kids have allergies, perhaps my pet has allergies. And, yeah, look, I think sometimes those are really valid, and they can be in the form of a really extreme intolerance.

09:17
Cam Mathias
We get some pretty obscure ones, and each time we reformulate the recipe to try and make it more broadly appealing to people and their dogs, we get some surprising response. Someone had a dog that was allergic to spinach, which I didn't realize could be a thing, allergic to shiitake mushrooms. And at some point you realize it's unlikely you're going to be able to make this kind of universal diet that every dog can eat. But also, if you can kind of point to every ingredient and justify why it's there, then you're going to feel a lot better about marketing that product. People and this kind of privileged position that we have of when you're delivering to someone's home and they are hoping that this is going to maybe turn around the quality of life of their beloved dog.

10:01
Cam Mathias
So it's a really privileged position to be in. And you do want to really do your best. I also have to say, from a product development perspective, designing products for dogs is really fascinating as well because you have a whole lot of different criteria at play. In particular smells. So you want something that smells funky, but nothing so funky that it alienates the person who's paying the bill. You want the dog to be excited about it and you want it to be in a form that's really palatable and nutritious. And then, you know, the elephant in the room when you're talking about raw dog food in particular is, well, what does it look like the next day when you're out walking and you've got somebody to pick up?

10:34
Cam Mathias
And so I know my wife found it hilarious that in the first year or two, these messages coming in from social media of oh, my dog stool has never looked better and this kind of thing, and I would show them to her and say how proud I was, and she would be like, okay, you're really saving the world one dog turd at a time. But, yeah, so you get this really intimate relationship and.

10:55
Grace Kennedy
Totally.

10:56
Cam Mathias
And you get photos back, and here's the dog, and the dog's loving the food. And that's really rewarding. A lot of what we've done in iterating the product has come from feedback from customers. Hey, you know, can you do this with the bag? Consider putting this ingredient in and things like that. So we've got a really great bunch of customers, direct customers. And then we. Yeah, we also sell on some of the marketplace platforms, chewy and Amazon. And we're just about to launch with Traktor as well.

11:20
Grace Kennedy
Awesome. Yeah. It's funny that you mentioned not being able to meet every dog's allergens, though, because I was thinking exactly that when I was thinking of a question to ask you was, yeah, how do you balance every single dog's dietary needs? And the truth is, you do your best, but you can't do everything but thinking of these different iterations you've done and even the first iteration you've done. How did you approach developing this recipe for huntaways dog food? Because I know, you know, you have obviously, the wild venison but then you also include some other elements. So could you talk a little bit about what that development process looked like?

11:53
Cam Mathias
Sure. Yeah. I probably put a little too much emphasis on new product development. And I think when you're starting out, it's really, you're almost always doing the right thing. In hindsight, you might ask yourself, did I do them in the right sequence? And in our case, we put a lot of effort into broadening the range and introducing treats and chews and other things. And the kind of common theme when were developing all the products was to aim for three unique selling points, and we felt that the raw material gave us one. We wanted to look at the packaging and the product form to kind of deliver some of the others.

12:25
Cam Mathias
So we're looking for contract manufacturers that maybe have some unique process or a unique packing line where we can offer some differentiation there, and then constantly iterating the recipe, which at a financial level can be quite punishing, because you're never really getting to that promised land where you were ordering packaging. It was sufficient economies of scale to really get the benefit from it. But you do see, just by following your instincts, you do see the uptake. And with direct to consumer anyway, you get a very quick indication or vindication of where the decision was right. And we've gradually moved towards an all natural recipe. And there aren't many people in our space that can make that claim where they've got a complete diet for a dog that is not just using a kind of synthetic vitamin and mineral mix to even it out.

13:13
Cam Mathias
And those synthetic vitamin and mineral mixes are not likely to do the dog any harm. But I think most of us feel better about natural ingredients wherever we can use them. And yeah, in our case, that's proved to be very popular, and we're really glad that we did that. It cost a little more, but we've ended up with a nice short ingredient declaration. And other than the odd dog with shiitake mushroom and spinach allergies, we've managed to keep a growing number of dogs happy with that.

13:38
Grace Kennedy
Yeah. So speaking of growing number of dogs, how have you worked on growing your. I know you have a subscription service and then a largely DTC presence, it sounds like. So how have you grown that service over these last few years? You've been in business?

13:53
Cam Mathias
Yeah. So you talk to a wide number of founders, and I'm always a little suspicious if I hear a story that's kind of like, you know, relentless good news, upward trajectory the whole time. Of course, all of us have some trials and tribulations along the way. And in our case, the three PL that we found in 2021, who just schooled us and got us up to speed with perishable logistics and set up all of our sops and packouts and other things. They got bored in 22 by a big private equity own cold storage operation, and they cleaned out all the nice business development people that we'd worked with, and we moved to a call center in Nebraska that were dealing with and no one on the shop floor anymore, and prices went up.

14:34
Cam Mathias
And then it was, hey, we're getting rid of 25% of the smallest accounts and you're one of them. So in the back end of 22, kind of tail end of COVID when perishable logistics was still under a lot of pressure, you know, there was, everyone was still buying a lot at home and a lot of those operators were really at capacity. I think I spoke to 45 different three pls and that's where I started actually using some of the great resources with startup CPG. There's a terrific list of three pls there, if people haven't seen it. But yeah, worked my way through those, eventually found another good business, and also realized at that time that D two C on its own is a really hard road. You need the volume that you can get from some of these marketplaces.

15:14
Cam Mathias
And so we started to lean into Amazon. We had a short experience with Petco, which we found a little difficult to distinguish ourselves and just kind of get a our brand out in what I call a bit of a skew fest. You know, it's very hard to differentiate yourself against some of the biggest consumer brands in the world. But then after a time, you do start to see the benefit of being in other locations, the awareness that brings. And our post purchase surveys show that people have seen the brand maybe in another setting first, maybe even bought it in another setting, and then come looking for us, which is really helpful. The other big challenge, of course, along the way, how do you acquire new customers? And that has ebbed and flowed a lot.

15:52
Cam Mathias
Facebook is an ever changing kind of challenge of which way is the algorithm kind of trending at the moment and what do they want to see from you and what kind of creative should you be putting up? So we have found that works better for our dried products than for our raw frozen product. We still get a large number of new customers just from organic search, which we're really fortunate about. And then we can start to influence that through Google Ads as well. And we've also found a disproportionate number of customers coming from alternative search engines. And by that I mean people who maybe value their privacy. And I find that fascinating. Yeah, that we get it is a thoughtful purchase. You know, people do like to research it and, you know, answer their questions.

16:32
Cam Mathias
And it's not uncommon for us to see that someone has maybe visited the website 15 times before making a purchase. That also probably tells me I need to maybe optimize some of our copy on the website a little better. But you know, I think people do like to go and find out all they need and see some social proof and things like that before. In our case, quite a big investment. You know, our average order value is a little under $200. So yeah, that's quite an outlay for people. And we want to make sure that they have all the information they need before making that purchase.

17:01
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And speaking to the three PL journey, I know that many other founders have had similar experiences and so I think that people will resonate with that experience. And I know also just being in cold storage is just such another added hurdle to being a CPG brand. So one question that brings up for me is this idea. You're sourcing these products in New Zealand and then they're making. Or you're sourcing the venison is New Zealand, then it's coming to America. How have you navigated people who maybe are buying this product for sustainability reasons? How have you navigated making that use case proposition or saying, well yeah, it's still worth it to bring it from New Zealand because it's still more sustainable even though it's traveling this big way?

17:47
Cam Mathias
That's a great question. And so everything's sent by sea freight for a start, which from an emissions perspective is obviously better than air freight. There's some fascinating work being undertaken, taken by the main shipping lines at the moment around operating their vessel slower to reduce emissions too, which I find really interesting. Transit times have definitely got longer, but we're sending from an efficiency perspective, the optimum form and volume of raw material over to Texas for manufacture. So as opposed to sending product manufactured in New Zealand, which created several issues, it created a trade cycle issue, if you like, you've added all the value at the beginning and then you're 60 to 90 days before that product is in the market and you're able to turn it to cash instead.

18:31
Cam Mathias
We've sent the raw material often and it's twice as efficient in terms of container stowage into Texas and manufacture that with a really good contract manufacturer we found there, who has very high third party audit standards and this kind of fascinating equipment that the product development guy and me was really interested in. So it enabled us to form a cube on a burger forming line. So a line that's normally forming burger patties for human consumption can form a cube or something close to a cube, which then gives us this really efficient stowage. So we can get a flat pack of cubes and we can get to a point where we're 98% efficient on pallet coverage.

19:13
Cam Mathias
And you're getting the absolute maximum quantity of raw material in a container, and then you're getting the absolute maximum quantity of product on a pallet to make that as efficient as possible and reduce the associated emissions with it. It's looking at everything throughout the packaging to get that to the most sustainable level that we can. And the next big development we is shifting all of our bags over to a single resin. And that's been a really interesting journey. We started out with some compostable packaging, which we thought was a great idea. But compostability is different in every jurisdiction. Even each county might have a different approach to it. And so it's very hard to guarantee that you're going to be able to get the right outcome.

19:50
Cam Mathias
And if you deliver a compostable pack to a conventional landfill trash facility, then it's not going to decompose. So single resin plastics have the highest likelihood of being recycled. But that's having that as one of our kind of founding principles, is really helpful. I think ideas at our business, and I'm sure a number of the new businesses you talk to are not the problem. Being able to kind of funnel those ideas through a few kind of non negotiables is really helpful in a way, because it actually sort of limits the number of options that you have sometimes.

20:20
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. I love what you're bringing up about just even composting or compostable packaging, because I think that is sort of this huge trend. And I've even, you know, I receive a bunch of products and I've received some that come with, like, compostable insides or compostable x. And I use a composting service here in Philly, and I do like to think I do these things right. But then my composting facility didn't accept some of these compostable materials, so it's like, or is it backyard compostable if somebody's using their outdoor things? So I think it's really admirable, and I really respect when brands are making these choices and then also saying, oh wait, we thought that was going to be the most sustainable choice. But turns out there's all these other complications and so we're going to go another way.

21:03
Grace Kennedy
And I know it takes a lot of time and resources to do a pivot like that, without a doubt.

21:08
Cam Mathias
And constant kind of assessment of it. And using the product yourself, I think that's actually a big part of it. And just before you wonder if I have a shiny coat and a wet nose, I don't actually eat the product myself, but I'm obviously serving it to my dog regularly. And so you do get a chance to kind of live with the packaging and think, that zip lock doesn't really work as well as I'd like. And yeah, and you realize that there's some false economies in packaging for sure. It's a really interesting way to differentiate your product and we know we can do better with ours. And it's just frustrating. You can't quite iterate that as fast as you'd like to, you've got to finish using the last batch.

21:42
Cam Mathias
And I think that some of those claims that get made around sustainability and things like that, there's this concept of greenwashing. I think we all owe it to ourselves to kind of be really diligent about things like that. And if something, if we think a claim is not legit, then, you know, we need to call it out. And similarly making claims for the sake of it and putting badges and things all over your packaging to kind of call out half hearted claims, it's self defeating. I think we're definitely moving to kind of taking some of those claims off pack and just simplifying it and stripping it down, letting our packaging kind of speak for itself.

22:15
Grace Kennedy
That's so interesting. Yeah, I think packaging is this whole other realm of CPG that's so interesting. And there's so many elements that as a person who's never founded a brand, I'm always amazed that there's another element to think about when I hear something. It's like so many components at once. But then as a consumer, you start to notice like, oh yeah, I don't like it when it's this way, or I don't like it, or when you.

22:36
Cam Mathias
Turn around and your garage is full of Amazon prime boxes or whatever it might be. And that's a really common theme I hear from people. I can't help but think that in ten or 20 years we will look back on our kind of addiction to cardboard cases now and think really? We used to do it like that. There's a terrific system in Germany, which I don't think it's caught on anywhere else in the world, but they have this system called the green point, the grune point, where you can actually leave the packaging with the vendor, which I think that's a really interesting concept. You go to a big box retailer, you can unpack everything into your car and leave all of the cases and the craft paper and everything, leave it all on the dock for the vendor to deal with. With.

23:11
Cam Mathias
And that really kind of pushes the problem back up the supply chain, which I find that a really interesting concept. But it hasn't anywhere else.

23:18
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, I mean, that would be very cool. And I do like that idea of, we do so much consumer blaming, and I feel like there could be some blaming of the.

23:26
Cam Mathias
Yeah, someone else took a shortcut to get you something that's over packaged, you know, just out of habit.

23:31
Grace Kennedy
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. One question I was thinking about that I realized might be kind of stupid, but maybe I just don't know that much about dogs because I on caps, but I know you sell them in cubes. Do you freeze them and then take them out? Yeah, yeah.

23:45
Cam Mathias
So they do require for. And so in my case, I would get two or three days worth out for my dog and just hold them in a special container in the refrigerator so they're separate from everything else. But that does require a little planning. So you're always thinking, one meal, a hair. And then more recently, we brought out a freeze dried product, and that offers some really interesting utility for the dog owner because that you can take anywhere. It's really light, all of the liquid out of it through the freeze drying process. So you've got something that's a quarter of the weight of the frozen product that's very convenient and easy to serve, but that requires some rehydration. And I think it's finding the sweet spot.

24:22
Cam Mathias
We want to be involved in making meal for our pets, not to the point that it's a drag and it's like making a whole separate meal. Some people will go to that length, and they might once a month prepare a big batch of food for their dog and then freeze it in smaller portions. And that's great. We get people using our food in conjunction with other things, and we get these incredible photos that look like dutch old master paintings where it's some hunter way cubes with some baltic sprats with a duck's head. And they'll have all these elaborate things that they put together, and that's a whole Instagram kind of subculture of its own. But not all of us have that amount of time to spend on our dog. So it's.

25:00
Cam Mathias
We want to spend just enough to know that we've been involved and we understand what they're eating and how it benefits them, but without having to create a whole separate kind of corner of the kitchen. Kitchen for them.

25:10
Grace Kennedy
Right. Yes, that is important. But people love to spend time on their dogs, and I love dogs. I just don't have one at the moment. But another thing I wanted to return to that you mentioned earlier was moving your production to Texas, because I have spoken to a few other founders who have said they're considering moving their production or they're in the process of it. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about what the actual process looked like of having to find a facility here.

25:36
Cam Mathias
Yeah, that's a great question.

25:37
Grace Kennedy
Setting it up.

25:38
Cam Mathias
So we did most of our research online, and obviously, for the longest time, I couldn't actually visit our chosen market. Part of that checklist of why the USA was, well, it's the biggest pet food market in the world, and it's sort of like the Sinatra, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere kind of scenario. But also, I fundamentally really enjoy visiting and working in the US. And the scale of contract manufacturers is just another order of magnitude bigger than what they would be here in New Zealand, for example. So I, through my experience with meat product development, had worked with contract manufacturing partners frequently, and I had a kind of checklist of what I was looking for in the ideal partner.

26:23
Cam Mathias
And it was starting with that unique process and equipment and someone who were the people that, it sounds strange, but kind of love their equipment and want to coax interesting things out of it and take it beyond maybe what the manufacturers recommend sometimes or what convention recommends. So these guys in Texas were very much in that category. They looked at our cubes and they said, yeah, we think with our equipment we're going to go away and talk to the manufacturer. We think we could customize a forming plate like a die, that will make the cubes really efficiently. And they were up for the challenge. So that was kind of box one ticked. And then they had the scale that were looking for.

27:03
Cam Mathias
They had the third party audit standards that were looking for that would open up potentially grocery category customers as well for us. And even those type of human grade, third party accreditations aren't that common in the pet space. They give me a lot of reassurance that when I'm sitting on the other side of the world or I'm not in Texas, that I'm dealing with people who have a continuous improvement culture, who have a system for looking at the root cause of any kind of issue that you might have during production. So that was really reassuring. And also, I often think it's not the worst thing if you have a problem quite early on. If you have a problem early on, you get this opportunity to kind of see how one another reacts.

27:44
Cam Mathias
And in our case, we did strike some issues and were able to talk through them maturely and professionally. And these guys are professional meat people, and I like to think I am too. And we just logically worked our way through any issues that came up and no one had to kind of lose their cool or anything like that. So, yeah, those things just reassured us that were with the right partner. And then their investment that they've made in freeze drying gives us the ability to take one raw material and turn it into four or five different products. And that is, from a marketing perspective, a much better situation where we can make those decisions around product mix. We separate our d, two c, and our retail skus so that we can price them discreetly.

28:25
Cam Mathias
And the ability to pick how much we make of each is really helpful, if you like, the last minute before the product enters the final supply chain.

28:33
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. No, I think those are all incredibly important things to consider as you're looking for a partner, too, you know, in any realm. Making sure you can communicate if a problem arises is so essential. And then the many other things you mentioned as well, obviously.

28:46
Cam Mathias
Yeah, and let's face it, problems are going to come up. In our case, the forming plate that we developed together with our partner is one 100th of an inch too large. And the implication of that is that the result is that the cubes are, at the moment, about 8% larger than they ought to be, which then starts to put strain on the packaging. And, yeah, so these are some of the challenges for us with working remotely, but visiting the factory each time you're able to improve those things and work closely with them and having that kind of open relationship and that, hey, look, if we make this better at the front end, it's going to make everything easier for your staff when it comes to packing it, and everything's going to work more efficiently.

29:30
Cam Mathias
So it's got to be a win situation where they end up with a more manufacturable product. At the end of the day, coming up with something that's a little too willy Wonker in terms of how elaborate it is ultimately not going to do you any favors. It might sell well, make it reliably, then. What's the point?

29:48
Grace Kennedy
Absolutely. And just the one 100th, that's a real. It just goes to show how these tiny little things can have a huge impact.

29:56
Cam Mathias
And it turned out to be the density of venison was different to this product. This molding plate had been designed with beef. And then when we ran venison through it, we got a slightly different result. So, yeah, when you reflect on it was like, well, our logic was sound. We tested it. Okay, next time we know, test it with the actual world material.

30:17
Grace Kennedy
Yes, totally. Everything. Everything's a lesson. Speaking of lessons, though.

30:21
Cam Mathias
Yeah.

30:21
Grace Kennedy
If you were to be talking to another founder who is either considering entering the pet space or the meat space or the CPG space in general, and they were where you were, you know, back in 2020, just tinkering with recipes, what's a lesson you've learned or a piece of advice you've gained over these last four years of running huntaway that you would share with an early days founder?

30:45
Cam Mathias
Sure. I think for us, if we come back to that acquisition of new customers challenge, we probably dipped our toe in a bunch of different channels and efforts around customer acquisition rather than really testing one out, ruling it in or out, and then moving on. And the number of times we dialed up Facebook ads only to kind of get a wishy washy result. And then, yeah, let's pause it and come back to it again in six months, when in reality, we probably needed to really knuckle down and finish that, learn and that development and say, yes, this is a channel for us, or no, it's not. And I regret some of the time we lost through not making those hard decisions and not being distracted by another opportunity.

31:29
Cam Mathias
You can easily pick up a periodical or be looking at a website thinking, I should give that marketing effort a try and try LinkedIn ads or something like that. And it could be that there is a time where you do that, but not before you've finished doing what you started. And I think that magpie approach of kind of like, oh, there's another shiny object over here, I'm going to go over and try this. Resisting that temptation is something I wish I could have done better in the early stages of the business.

31:53
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And I know that pretty much every founder I talk to talks about how challenging it is to understand and get a grip on these paid ads because everything is changing. All of the time and it's hard to keep up. But I think that's great advice. So my final question is just where can people learn more about Huntaway? Where can people purchase, hunt away and follow along the journey as you guys continue to grow?

32:15
Cam Mathias
Sure. So our socials, we're mostly active on Instagram and to degree on TikTok as well at Huntawaywild. And the website is Huntaway pet. And yeah, we'd encourage people to check us out there and see what they think and send us any questions that they might have. We like to think that we post some interesting, informative stuff just around general kind of dog health and advice on our socials. And yeah, we've got a really kind of vibrant community there, really engaged community who, as I say, give us a lot of feedback about the product and how their dogs are doing.

32:48
Grace Kennedy
I love it. Owners check them out or if you know some passionate dog owners, send them huntaways way.

32:55
Cam Mathias
Yeah, we get a lot of people buying products for the dog in their life rather than their own dog. So in particular with the treats and chews that we make.

33:03
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, I love that. It was so much fun to learn more about Huntaway Cam and get to know you and what you guys are doing. And that's it for today.

33:11
Cam Mathias
Great talking to you, Grace. And yeah, we just really appreciate everything you guys do at startup CPG. We really enjoy being part of the community and yeah, encourage people to really make the most of it.

33:20
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, I'm so glad to hear that. All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode of the podcast, it would help us out so much if you left a five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I am Grace Kennedy, the editor for startup CPG, so feel free to add me on LinkedIn or reach out to on Slack. I'm always on the hunt for new and exciting brands to feature. And if you're a potential sponsor that would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnershipstartupcpg.com. And finally, as a reminder for anyone listening, if you haven't already, we would love for you to join our community on Slack and you can sign up via our website, startupcpg.com dot.