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Interviews with Female entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners, and industry Gurus. These podcasts speak with women (women-identified) across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game! Histories, current companies, and lessons learned are explored. The series is designed to investigate a female (female identified) perspective in what has largely been a male-dominated industry in the world to date.
Episodes
Friday Dec 06, 2019
Interview with Michelle May: Founder & President of Seva Foods
Friday Dec 06, 2019
Friday Dec 06, 2019
Interview with Michelle May: Founder & President of Seva Foods (Sevafoods.com) Seva Foods produces Space Ice Kream, the world’s first non-dairy, freeze-dried ice cream and Coconut Jerky, a plant-based jerky that appeals to vegans and meat-eaters alike. Seva Foods hopes to help improve the lives of individuals and the health of the planet through the way we eat.
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. The series interviews women (& women-identified & non-binary) entrepreneurs, founders, and gurus across all industries to investigate those voices in business today. Both the platform and discussion are designed to further the global conversation in regards to the changing climate in entrepreneurial and founding roles.
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with female and female identified entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners and industry gurus. These podcasts speak with women and women, identified individuals across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game, as well as those deeply embedded within it. Histories, current companies and lessons learned are explored in the conversations I have with these insightful and talented powerhouses. The series is designed to investigate a female and female identified perspective in what has largely been a male dominated industry in the USA to date. I look forward to contributing to the national dialog about the long overdue change of women in American business arenas and in particular, entrepreneurial roles. You can contact me via my media company Web site. Wild Ducks agency. That's w i. L. D e. Dot Agency or my personal Web site. Patricia Kathleen, dot com. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.
[00:01:30] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. This is your host, Patricia. And today I am sitting down with Michelle May. Michelle is the founder and president of Sabra Foods and Benjy's canine cuisine. Welcome, Michelle. Hi. Hi.
[00:01:44] I'm so glad to have you on the show for everyone listening. I'm going to read a brief bio on Michelle.
[00:01:50] But before I do that, a roadmap for today's podcast will follow the same trajectory that all from these series do. We'll first look at Michelle's academic background and early professional life. Then we will unpack SABR foods and we'll get into some of the logistics. The who, what, when, where, how, why funding all that stuff and then will come into the kind of the ethics and the philosophy behind it. And then some of the other particulars that accompany it. And then we'll look at goals that Michelle may have for the next three years. We're begging SABR and Benjy's Koening cuisine, namely scaling expansion, branding and goal making. And then we'll wrap everything up with advice that Michelle may have with those who are looking to either get involved in one of four industries or kind of mirror what she's done with her professional life. So a quick file on Michelle with a lifelong love for food. Michelle is passionate about helping improve the lives of individuals and the health of the planet through the way we eat. She's a graduate of culinary nutrition programs at Matthew Kenney Culinary and is also certified in plant based nutrition through Cornell University. Having worked for over a decade in tech as a web developer and graphic designer, Michelle is transitioned to the wellness industry in 2015. Prior to founding Sabr Foods in 2017, she was a recipe developer and provided community cooking classes, nutrition workshops and private chef services. In addition to being a nutrition geek and plant based chefs, Michelle is also a longtime yoga animal rights activist Dog Mom Vegan, community organizer and founder of Benjy's Canine Cuisine.
[00:03:30] And I can't wait to kind of I'm going to crawl through all of that with you, Michelle, because it says, I love. We have so much in common as people who listen to my podcast. Now, I'm an avid animal activist, animal rights activist and proud Vegan. And so I really I'm really excited to unpack everything.
[00:03:48] But before we get into your current endeavors, will you drop us into your academic background and professional life following that?
[00:03:54] For sure. So I've never really followed a straight trajectory. I actually went to school for art history and Russian ice, OK?
[00:04:06] And those were things that I was interested in.
[00:04:09] But I had also happened in Web design while I was in school. I never took any courses on it, but I kind of just taught myself through Google and YouTube and started. And so I transitioned into a career. I started doing websites for small businesses primarily and became kind of a one stop shop. Most small businesses need some someone who can create something from start to finish. So it helped you some logo design and marketing and, you know, all of their tech stuff set up. And I did that for about 15 years.
[00:04:50] Wow. OK. So did you get your degree in art history in Russian or did you get. I ended up it's you know, I got really into the web design and development.
[00:05:00] And actually, I didn't finish. I was just. I did I wasn't going to be used that degree and was so busy immediately. This was gosh, this was like 2004, 2005.
[00:05:14] And so the heyday for Web site development for a lot of people that were doing it.
[00:05:19] And so I just I started I hit the ground running doing that. And then there's the art history. And I said, I think I'm only about a credit away from my B.A.. I've never really had time or really wanted to look back. So I was doing the web design and the development and I really enjoyed it. I loved the freedom it gave me in terms of where and when I could work. I love, love, love my dogs and being with them. And so I'd say, well, you know, they're one of the driving forces of that. Her choice was just to be able to work from home and be good like dogs and be outside during the day and and do all those sorts of things. But I never was really passionate enough to grow that company to where it needed to be. You know, I started to realize as I got a decade in, you know, that I needed to really scale it. This was going to be my my long term career, you know, hiring other people and getting bigger accounts. And for whatever reason, I could never really motivate myself to do that. Looking back, I'm super grateful that I developed those skills and that I'm able to do graphic design and web development. And obviously, it's been really helpful in my current path. But. It's interesting that I was never able to really get myself to grow that business because it just wasn't something I was inherently passionate about. For the sake of itself, you know what I mean? Absolutely. So I was working in and really had a good career at that. But in 2015, a series of events had led me to decide that I needed to actually move out of that out of that career path.
[00:06:54] And then so did launching. Well, did.
[00:06:58] Which one came first savors or Benjy's canine cuisine?
[00:07:03] Well, so in 2014, I was in a horrible car accident and it hit me that my car was stopped and one of my dogs was killed. His name is Benji. It's really frightening to talk about five years later.
[00:07:21] But when he died and I think everyone experiences the loss of some either really close to it just made me realize me, evaluate everything.
[00:07:31] You know, I just I realized how short life was. And I wasn't really happy and thriving in my job. And I decided I wanted to do something that I was passionate about. And so I love food. I love dogs.
[00:07:46] And so the intersection of that is certainly my happy place. And then he was a rescue. He was such a pig. I mean, he really just so much I can't imagine it. A better testament to have a dog food company and after him.
[00:08:01] And also the realization that what I was providing for my own dogs was really a necessity because I couldn't do, you know, I literally could not get that anywhere else if I didn't feel like cooking for myself. And I wanted to go down to a restaurant or a grocery store, I can relatively easily find something that met all my standards to eat for myself. That's not the case for dogs. And so I decided at that time that I want to start working on dog food that was close to what I was providing for my own animals.
[00:08:30] Absolutely. So the development of I mean, as a startup, it's daunting. Anytime you get into food related startups, I my head kind of starts to swim because a startup and, you know, from the get go with a piece of paper is difficult enough.
[00:08:44] But you add in things like just all of the production aspects and the different materials and things of that nature.
[00:08:53] I just feels like it would be very difficult to get off the ground without having, like, a really serious seed capital. Did you have any funding? Did you bootstrap? Well, let's start with Ben. So since we're talking about Benjy's canine cuisine, did you have any seed capital when you started doing that?
[00:09:11] Very, very little. My mother in law provided a couple of thousand dollars for me to get my first freeze dryer and get my business license and all those sort of beginning things. And really just did it on a very minimal budget.
[00:09:31] I'd say the most challenging thing about that whole project was I forgive the pun, but I really kind of did, you know, bite off more than I could chew. I mean, I handled it. But I think I made things much harder for myself.
[00:09:43] I needed to be developing a complete dog food that doesn't that doesn't have any artificial synthetic nutrients is probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, especially because I don't have a dog nutrition background. And so, you know, that was what took up the bulk of the time in development was and I don't think that's ever been done. I don't think anyone is ever commercially produced any companion animal food that doesn't rely heavily on the synthetic nutrients. And so that in conjunction with, you know, as you said, trying to do anything in the food startup world is always gonna be really challenging. The most challenging aspect of Benjy's is an aspect that still is challenging for me with SABR. And that's the Freeze-Dried component. It was much more challenging with with Benjy's with the first the first product, because I was trying to create enough food to feed a dog, all of their nutrients, these tiny little freeze dryers that I have. So ultimately, I put Benjy's on hold in 2017 for that reason because it was going to be really challenging to scale without a co packing partner. And I wasn't able to find that partner at that time. And I'm a little bit of funding to launch SABR, which definitely came out of Benjy's. You know, I had these freeze dryers. I had finished culinary school. I had learned how to do really amazing things in culinary school, including making plant based ice cream. And I had grown up in Texas going to the Johnson Space Center. Always love food. So I was the most excited about the end of the day to get the gift shop and I'd get the astronaut ice cream. And so I have these freezers that I was getting pretty prototypes for Benjy's and but also kind of playing around with other things to see what would happen. And the feedback I got from my close circle of family friends on the ice cream was what really gave me the encouragement and motivation to launch SABR, which I did in August 2017.
[00:11:47] So can you walk us through the nuts and bolts? Did you found it alone? You took a small amount of investment and tell us how it's based. Is it e commerce? Is it strictly online?
[00:11:58] Are you also in places? How does the whole thing look?
[00:12:02] Well, I would say it's about 50 50, maybe, maybe 60 40 with 60 percent being online and 40 percent being in brick and mortars. You know, one of the great things about today for anyone that's interested in in selling products, especially niche products, is that you have the whole world as your potential customer base. And so Amazon has been a big channel for us from almost the very beginning. For that reason, just because they have so many eye balls on there, that even if you have sort of a niche, newer product like mine, I was all I was very surprised by how many sales we got from the very beginning, even before I started really utilizing the advertising. So we do quite a bit on Amazon. I also launched with a a WordPress site, e-commerce site, which I liked because anyone that knows Web design knows that with commerce and WordPress has a lot of functionality that you can build into it, but ultimately decided to move the site over your Shopify best business decisions that I've made. It definitely going a big boost in terms of organic traffic. I believe that's because the connection with Google and Google servers, it just seemed like my site visits went up three fold as soon as I moved to Shopify. So I didn't realize that I had enabled international international shipping when I started that shop by site. I just didn't realize it was any bold. And so I immediately started getting purchases from Australia. A lot of purchases from Australia, actually. They follow all these places. So that's been really cool, too, just to see. I don't do any advertising currently. And so to see these people from all over the world finding my products and paying a lot to ship them has been really cool as well.
[00:13:54] So it's funny you mention that because any new Hillstrand from physical training, you know, any type of new like band that you're going to constrict a muscle with for growth or anything like that across that, two diets and new trends.
[00:14:07] I mean, I first heard about the RA movement and when fasting started getting picked up from all of my Aussie friends, they all contact me first. They do have this like avant garde health fitness trend. So it's not shocking, but it's funny that you had that experience by accidentally not employing the international.
[00:14:24] Sounds like a happy problem because maybe you wouldn't have in the beginning and therefore not really known that there was this audience that would pay so much.
[00:14:32] So when you do brick and mortar you, how how did this how does it differ from when you sell online?
[00:14:39] Well, you know, it's definitely a to be honest, I really enjoy the direct to consumer better. I do feel like it. I mean, from a from a founders' point of view, from a creative point of view, it gives me a better sense of who my customers are. Obviously, the margins are better as well, because you're not selling it for you, selling it for a bit more than you want when you're selling it to wholesalers and selling it. But I also I think that both are good. I think they both will be valuable. I think a lot of people like to say, oh, distribution is dying. You know, traditional retail is dying. I would say that it's important not to put all of your focus on traditional retail, especially as a younger, leaner company. It's really expensive to get into places like Whole Foods. That's why we're not in there yet. Yeah. It's just not a priority of mine, because the direct to consumer approach is is a lot more manageable. I think for smaller producers like myself, once I start, once I scale, which I'm planning on doing, I'm working on right now and planning on really launching early next year with our with our co packer and really ramping up our volumes. I think we'll be working with a lot more wholesale customers. Right now, we're in about 60 stores nationwide. Mostly smaller independent stores, a lot of Vegan stores, obviously natural food stores. And then some of our our bigger customers here on the West Coast are air one. And then Jimbo's here in San Diego. But for it's been primarily smaller customers with our wholesale channel. And then I am available online through a couple of specialty Vegan retailers. Milk guys who are really great have just a bazillion different Vegan products, a really fun website to look at our partners that we've really enjoyed working with.
[00:16:29] Do you? So let's get into for our audience listening like.
[00:16:33] So can you describe the products that you have and the and the inception of how they came to be like the ethos of you have? It's a plant based site. Can you kind of give everyone listening an idea of what SABR Foods offers?
[00:16:47] Yes. So we are the world's first and only manufacturer of dairy free, freeze dried ice cream. As I spoke about a little bit a few moments ago, astronaut ice cream, which is just a dairy based, you know, freeze dried ice cream product that was developed in the 60s for the Apollo missions and never actually went up into space. But that's why it was created. And now it has kind of a cult following.
[00:17:16] The ingredients are really terrible. They're just way the worst is really, really unhealthy.
[00:17:23] Gradients, artificial colors, artificial flavors, whey corn stir up just things that you wouldn't want to eat on a regular basis. And so I created space ice cream to emulate the the texture and the the all the great things about astronaut ice cream and all freeze dried foods. But I wanted something that obviously had an ingredient panel that is in alignment with the way that I eat. The really great thing about restrike foods. And the reason I think that we're going to start seeing a lot more of it in our in our food just on a day to day basis is because it's one of the best ways to preserve food. Unlike conventional methods of preserving food, freeze drying retained up to ninety five percent of nutrients, which I think makes it a really valuable way of feeding people, especially, you know, when you're traveling or even, you know, going to space. I do hope to Cruz's position say that to be a pioneer in the space tourism industry, I think that our products are ideal for space. I think that the products that are going to be in space are going to be mostly based on all plant based. And so I think that we have a great opportunity there and also freeze dry and make things really lightweight. So when you remove all the water, you remove at least a third of the weight. And so it makes things more portable. So the space ice cream are these little cashew coconut milk based nuggets. It's probably want to explain to people. I say it's kind of like a meringue in terms of texture. But then once it starts to melt in your mouth, you're like, oh, ice cream. So it's a really interesting experience. And, you know, most people are a little bit confused at first. But once once it starts to break down and it has that very familiar ice cream flavor, right now we have strawberry and vanilla. And obviously we want to expand that range out as we scale with chocolate. And there's just sky's the limit. There's so many different flavors that we'd like to do our other. The bright side of the spectrum, it's coconut jerky. So we are the only manufacturers of organic coconut jerky in the United States. It is it's a really simple snack, but one that I think most people seem to really enjoy. I know that jerky in particular has really become a popular snack. This will get busier and they don't want to eat meat, chips or fried things. That's something that's really easy to take on the go. We use the same young coconuts that I think most people are familiar with the water. We take the meat out and then marinate it, dehydrate it. And then it's very similar to most conventional jerky use that people have had. I've even had long term bigos and vegetarians be a little off put by it because it's it's so similar. I mean, when I'm touching it, it's it's crazy how much it feels like skin, like flesh. So I think that coconut jerky. The other thing that I really like about it, I think both products have the potential to be mainstream products. I'm not really interested in creating products for vegans specifically. I know vegans because I'm one of them and we find our products. I really want to have a big effect on our food system. So I'm looking to create apps that appeal to, you know, not only begins with the other 300 million Americans and globally as well.
[00:20:47] Yeah. And I think that, you know, the advertising community and the economic and ecological world is behind you on that one.
[00:20:56] This shift. I mean, the obvious shift with a friend of mine, his Vegan the other day had something on saying Vegan or a plant based depending on who you vote for. And it's like this idea that, you know, the idea behind not saying things are Vegan is that it just got a really negative connotation for a great deal of people. And so everything I have so many people say, what's the difference between plant based and Vegan Signa? Huh? The same thing. Not neither one is more healthy or not, you know, then then you can still have preservatives. I always try to tell people like Vegan just they were talking about ingredients. It's not it's not necessarily healthy. Everyone can still get fat and horrible. You know, it's like we all still have those horrible elements at our disposal.
[00:21:39] So the freeze dried ice cream. My brain, like, I start to get imaginative with things that we haven't freeze dried yet. When you said that it's retaining over 90 percent of its nutritional value. Have you ever thought about expanding into other areas? Are you going to keep it tight with your main core items that you're offering right now?
[00:22:00] No, I definitely want to expand. I have lots and lots of snack ideas. I spent quite a bit of time in my kitchen just recreationally. I really love being in the kitchen and always have. And for me, it's a place that I feel relaxed in and that I love to get that. That's definitely where I express the bulk of my creativity is in the kitchen. And so there's so many other products I want to bring to market. And it's really important for me to bring VegFest to market as well. And I don't know what that's going to look like. I don't know if Benjy's will merge with Save at some point or become the world's first human and dog food company. Would you be pretty cool? I'm always going to have 100 percent human great ingredients with any any dog products that I create. That would be a possibility or if I will not launch Benjy's separately. But it's really important to me to create something in the dog food space as well, just because I feel like it's so needed.
[00:22:54] Absolutely. Well, that's what's shocking for me, is when you talk about dog food and you talk about, you know, freeze dried ice cream and even like the coconut jerky I always go to with my and I've you know, I've educated myself for the past decade and a half, but I always think of a synthetic ingredients for those those those three main categories.
[00:23:14] I'm always I I'm left with the assumption that you simply cannot make those items without that. So I steer clear of them. And I'm wondering how you. Was it just a creative endeavor? Was it research? How did you come up with being able to make these products without synthetic ingredients?
[00:23:31] Well, the reliance on synthetic ingredients is really just a reflection on on people trying to save money, lot out of necessity, because it's not possible. It's just way, way cheaper. And that's definitely been a huge challenge for me. With save my primary ingredients or our organic cashews, coconut, organic maples or up like, those are three of the most expensive food items on the planet. And until I really scale, I'm not going to see a huge drastic decrease in my Coggs, which is going to allow me to price my products in a way that is more in alignment with the way that I feel about food and accessibility. You know, I want to create products that everyone can enjoy and I want to get my price points down, which is why I do need to scale the feeling weighted. But I don't see the pattern that we've seen and most produced food and most processed foods. The reliance on synthetics is really just because people are trying to save money. It's and it's just a convenience. It's not because it's not possible with the ice cream, it's five or six ingredients depending on the flavor. And that's all that you need. You don't eat anything else. You know, I have a bunch of fillers in there, and I could save money by using cheaper sweeteners. But then it wouldn't be the product that I want it to be. It wouldn't be something that I would eat. Same thing with pet food. Pet food is a bit more complicated. Just because I'm not a dog. So I'm not as familiar with the nutritional needs as I am when I'm formulating for humans. But dogs as well, dogs have like all animals that we have ingredient we have I'm sorry, we have nutrient requirements on ingredient requirements. So as long as we're getting those nutrients, it doesn't really matter where they come from. But it's much easier, especially in the pet food industry where it's all about saving a buck. Unfortunately, even the most high end foods are just made. Yes, audience. And definitely not to throw shade at any of the Vegan cable companies because I love them and I'm so grateful for what they're doing. I'm just not comfortable feeding my talks kibble every day. And I don't think anyone should be. Yeah. That any people where they're at. Is everyone going to spend, you know, three or four hours a week home cooking for the dogs like I do? Probably not. And they shouldn't have to. I enjoy it. I love doing it. But if you don't like doing it, shouldn't have to do it or if you don't feel guilty about it. You know, and so the cool thing about a formula like that, like Benjy's, is that it's the best of both worlds because it's convenient. It's dry. You can store it in her pantry. You can travel with it. It's lightweight, but then it's real food, you know. And so and I also really than I've toyed with the idea of maybe even doing like a fresh dog food company, like you see so many of them at the meat based ones now, you know, basically meal delivery for dogs. Mm hmm. Oh, I struggle with the waste in terms of packaging around something like that. But I mean, it's something that I think I don't know. I mean, it's something that I think at some point we have to start eating dogs, real food, and and we have to figure out a way to do it in a way that's that's convenient. Easy for people saying eat those behind SABR. You know, it's like if you're starving. I know the way that I am in the past. If I'm starving, I'm going to eat whatever's around. I just want to eat. And so having foods like save that travel with you, if you're in the middle of a food desert or in the middle of an actual desert, there's just nothing around that you can eat. These are foods that will satiate you, that provide your nutrients, that will take away the hungriness so that you can focus on what you're doing in between meals, which I think is something that's also needed.
[00:27:23] Absolutely. I agree. I wonder with your company, I talked to you a bit before.
[00:27:28] Off the record, I feel like sometimes some of these companies, or particularly yours do.
[00:27:35] How did you approach the education aspect of it? You know, there's a lot of like explaining to people like we were talking about the synthetic ingredients, you know, how that's usually for cost savings and what it can do to you health wise. You know, people's auto immune. Are the first people that always bring up synthetic ingredients with me because they have an incredible turnaround when they removed diets filled with synthetic ingredients. And it's because auto means I'm on the rise. There's a lot of these, you know, these people in these communities really investigating.
[00:28:05] But how did you approach and how do you currently approach, like the educational aspect that would seem like it would accompany, you know, your representation and say that?
[00:28:15] Well, you know, it's a fine line because you only have people's attention for so long. And so that was something that was particularly relevant when I was designing the packaging. You know, it's like, OK, how much stuff.
[00:28:26] I get. Yeah. Right. How much information are.
[00:28:30] Because if you call outs, you know. And so I really did in our packaging, really try to make it clean while still obviously educating people about all the benefits. I think one thing that that people get without really needing to explain to them is that when they turn over the bag and there's just a few ingredients and they actually know what they all mean, that that doesn't take any explaining. People understand. That means that it's real food and that their body is going to recognize it as such. And I think people, regardless of where they are in their health journey, everybody knows that. Everybody knows that real food is always going to be beneficial. I'd say the biggest you know, the biggest education around our foods because they are plant based would be about plant based foods and about how great they can be for everybody. And I feel like so much of that work is being done for us recently with documentaries like what the hell? Well, now. Everybody starting to get so interested in a plant based diet. And, you know, what I'm seeing is not droves of people going vegan, which would be amazing, but still really great as I'm seeing so many people that are just maybe they're not ready to make that 100 percent commitment and call this self begins. But they're really interested in infusing as much plant based food into their diet as possible. And they're interested in not only doing it with plenty of salads and juices and smoothies and things like that, but pop looks like save a creates that are fun and tasty and and accessible so that they don't have to think too hard about it. I think most people want to do the right thing. It just has to be simple for them. And so, I mean, so much about, you know, obviously the information is there. People can get as deep into sabr as they want to. And we have so much information out of our products on the Web site. But I think the most important thing for most people to understand and take away that they can enjoy eating and still feel really good about it.
[00:30:30] Absolutely.
[00:30:31] And I think that and you're right in that there is a lot of educating happening documentaries like you're mentioning what the health conspiracy, those types of things, like really drawing the full circle about, you know, it's the health, it's the environment, it's the future of the planet.
[00:30:46] It's it's a bunch of other things. You know, it's. And I think that that's where the term veganism put a lot of people feel like it's a political platform and it's the diet of being plant based and things like that. It ties into, you know, this the trickle down of I truly believe that good systems are good, usually all the way through. And if something's healthy for you, it's going to be better for the environment. It's going to be better for your dog. You know, it's all of these things. And we're all systems, you know, in disjointing. Those are treating something stratified. Just doesn't work out.
[00:31:15] I agree with that. See, we talked a little. You talked about scaling and things like that as far as goals. Do you have like a three year plan as far as what you see with scaling or product expansion or anything else on the horizon?
[00:31:29] Yes, for sure. I mean I mean, even sooner than three years, like as I was saying earlier, early next year, we hope to move our production out of our own kitchen and begin working with our co packer, which we're getting ready to do. Now, the CO packer has just been allow us to create so much more volume than we do now. And I'm unfortunate because of the nature of my products. I don't have to produce all year. And actually it's beneficial for me to produce seasonally when my ingredients are the least expensive. And so we're going to be moving to that co pocker producing bigger volumes. And I'm really excited about not being in the production business anymore and just focusing on the marketing and selling, which is the part that I'm good at. But I want to be doing absolutely. And then I just I really within the next year, just want to expand to as many channels as possible, not only those bigger big box retailers and bigger grocers that we spoke about, but also there's so many more channels that we could be on. I mean, obviously, the schools and universities and hospitals are a great market for us because our products are so healthy and because they do have a lot of appeal with with young people as well. I do want to be working with NASA or Space X or so. Cool.
[00:32:47] Who can say that? Who can say they're developing something that's going to go into space? I want to do that as I fantastic my dream.
[00:32:53] That's my dream partner. And so starting to look more into that. I actually had the opportunity to demo some ice cream a few months ago, a launch party for the space, the ISIS, the International Space Station. And so that was really fun. And I look forward to having more opportunities to partner with with NASA and with companies like that, because I really do feel like that's the future and it's going to be here really soon.
[00:33:22] Yeah. Save it now. Space. Yeah.
[00:33:26] And then just to expand globally with SABR obviously is a. My mind, I think that there's we've seen just little hints of it, but I know that our products will do really well, particularly in Asia, Japan. So I'd love to be able to tap into those markets. And then I don't know if it's going to happen the next three years, but certainly sometime very soon to be able to to officially launch Benjy's as well and be able to. My dream with Benjy's is to not only have Benjy's Inc, which is going to be a corporate entity that's doing what I call for profit activism in creating these great products that are good for all animals on the planet. But then eventually my dream is to launch Benjy's foundation and to be able to facilitate international dog rescue.
[00:34:15] And then it's an interesting tie into the Asian markets, you know, who have, you know, some really big issues with animal protection and rights and things like that of being a good contrast, I think, and a good way to go about it, having that buddy relationship between the two companies.
[00:34:31] So you it's you. It sounds like you've gotten like a really tidy, like fast and hard history and degree and, you know, your startups and how to go and how to grow and do things like that. If you were advising someone tomorrow who was going to start up a like non synthetic ingredient, plant based foods start up one of the top three pieces of advice you think would be most useful for them to have out the gate.
[00:34:58] Well, immersing yourself in the community as much as possible, that's going to be different for everyone, right? It's going to have where you live, what your time looks like. So that can be as simple as joining groups on Facebook. You know, I love being a part of a different industry type groups on Facebook. So I there's a there's a couple of groups that are just focus on on Vegan professionals and and begins running big companies and things like that. So that kind of community, I'm just in terms of networking and seeing what other people are doing, getting inspired is really great. Obviously, if you had the opportunity to have direct involvement with people in similar industries as you locally. That's really great, too. Mentorship is something that we hope strive for and look for. And even if that's not accessible to you, just reaching out to people that that your you want to emulate, you know, and and just trying to make connections with people that have done or are doing things that you're interested in can be really helpful. And almost as good as that is, is listening to interviews on podcasts like yours. I can't tell you how much I've learned so much that I've learned listening to podcasts that focus on on Vegan industry, because there's a lot actually a lot on the Vegan food industry. But in all industries, I think there's just so much available on podcasts. So I think listening as much as you can and just taking in all that free information, I think is one of the one of the best resources we have out there. And let's see. And then the third would be make sure that whatever you're doing, you're extremely, extremely passionate about and that you would do it for free because you're most likely going to be chokey. No, I think it's important because it's there's so many reasons to quit and there's some good reasons to stop. And people are going to tell, you know, a thousand times. And so there has to be some really deep fire that is under all of that. Otherwise, it is really easy to burn out. I feel like when things get tough because the life of an entrepreneur isn't easy and it can often feel like you're on a rollercoaster from day to day even. And so there has to be a deep love and a deep commitment, I think, to really be successful, because it's not only about so much of it, it's just about being in the right place at the right time and having the right connections. But the tenacity is also just as equally important. And I think that the only way that you can that you can sustain the level of tenacity that's required to build a business from the ground up is to not be able to do anything else.
[00:37:38] And that's like passion. Yeah.
[00:37:40] So I've got immerse yourself in the community, find mentorship and reaching out to people and then listen to as much free information, interviews, podcasts that you can and make sure that you're passionate about it.
[00:37:54] Those are awesome. I like those three pieces. Sabr foods scum scv a f o o d. S dot com. Is that where everyone can find you?
[00:38:03] That's all social across all social channels as well. Yes.
[00:38:08] Awesome. We are out of time, Michel, but I just wanted to say thank you so much. We're coming up on a Thanksgiving holiday. And I really appreciate. I know you're busy, everyone.
[00:38:17] Our producer is and every entrepreneur around the holidays is busy. Times a million. And so I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today about saving foods and Benjy's Koening cuisine and your story with. Both of us. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much. Thanks. And for everyone listening, thank you for taking the time and hearing us today.
[00:38:38] And until we speak again, remember to always bet on yourself.
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