The Meat Mafia Podcast

Mills Part 1
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[00:00:00] Mills. Welcome to the Meet Mafia podcast. Thank you, gentlemen. I feel like this has been a long time coming. We're, uh, we're excited for this episode for a few reasons.

Number one, you know, obviously you're an amazing, close, personal friend of ours too. Um, I think you blend this amazing ability to create films, be a founder, and also you're extremely passionate about the health and wellness space. I think you have a super unique talent stack. And secondly, the work that you've put in with Dose Chips is incredible.

The first time we tried a bag, I'm not just saying this, it was by far the best potato chip that we've both ever had to the point where I wanted to invest immediately after I tried one of the potato chips and you did and you're proving that you can make foods that are delicious but don't compromise at all from an ingredient perspective, which I think is amazing.

There's like this new health and wellness economy where Consumers for years have wanted a potato chip, which really should just be good quality potatoes, salt, regenerative beef tallow and combine those things and make it taste [00:01:00] delicious and you've actually done the hard work to actually create that product.

So, I think to start man, I think we would just love to learn a little bit more about when did this vision of Dose come into your mind? Why did you feel like you were right to be able to create something like this? That would be a great starting point. Yeah, right on. Um, thank you for having me. You guys are both exceptional friends and, uh, your pod is amazing.

So, what an honor. Um, Dose is the name of a dog that, uh, I had that passed away suddenly, too early. Um, so it was, the name became a way to honor her, but also to keep me, uh, disciplined and working on the thing. I have, I think my attention span is really good for two years, which is about the time it takes to make a feature film, or sometimes longer.

Uh, and then I, I, I typically try to find somebody to take it from me there. Uh, I use that name, that association for it to be something that I never was willing to give up on. Um, and then from a product perspective, [00:02:00] uh, I think that You know, as you guys know, I have a company that builds brands, uh, an agency, um, from a media perspective and a brand identity perspective.

So there's a lot of opportunity to create exercises of, of just creating things that maybe somebody would, uh, maybe a large sum of people would be interested in. And as you said, there was a way, there is a wave of beef tallow and somewhat, somewhat of a, of a renaissance towards, uh, healthier foods or healthy alternatives to the healthier space.

Um, which is not something new, you know, of course food didn't always used to be bad. Um, and As somebody who cooked with tallow and who had fried chicken in tallow And who had fried potatoes in tallow because you can make your own potato chips at home I think I was at a position where I could just kind of pick which one I was going to attempt next, perhaps as a distraction from my other businesses or just an opportunity to like re, uh, [00:03:00] reignite my desire to create something and, and start something and found something.

Um, I had, it had been years, maybe 10 plus years since I had a potato chip, you know, maybe. grazing a, a, a party, had one or two by accident because I had gotten to, uh, uh, uh, an insatiable place and just started eating things off of a table as we can, as we can do. Um, but I, there was a time in my life and in y'all's life as well, um, where you came home and, you know, potato chips or something like it were the first thing that you grabbed, uh, from your pantry at your house.

Um, and there was, so there was a nostalgia there and. Giorgio Armani says, you know, you can have a new fabric with a familiar design, or you can have a new design with a familiar fabric. And so I saw that I saw potato chips as an opportunity to create something familiar, but new by instead of frying them in deoxidized seed oils [00:04:00] to fry them in tallow.

Um, So there's a blend of wanting to be successful in something in a new category for me And a desire to exercise my ability to brand things and create content around them and like also To connect with community and I think the third thing is a selfish desire to eat potato chips What challenges has dose presented because you've started other brands before but dose is really your first Brand that is a snack.

Yeah, like it's in a totally different category So what challenges have have been presented from you starting an actual potato chip company? That's clever considering, you know them all We'll tell the audience

An unbelievable amount of challenges, you know, I think it it's it's Interesting that you know, you're like, oh you see somebody like masa, which is a great product a great company And you're like, why are there not more of those? [00:05:00] You know, in your head, and you're like, I'm gonna go do that, because that company, Masa, or whoever else, or Rosie's, uh, they deserve a competitor that, you know, can, can, can go up them with them, and at this scale, and, and they can be the two, you know, head honchos of the space, the jefes, and then you realize very soon, that's why, because one, no one will work with Talo, because all their friars have seed oils in them, and they can keep them in there for forever, It's very difficult to get manufacturers to come down to the, uh, MOQs, minimum order quantities that a new company that's not trying to capitalize itself needs to needs the amount of small orders.

It needs to scale into where it's eventually going. And then we ran into so many issues from a brand perspective of printer brag bag printers, bag makers, not honoring our product. Our color codes are. desire for quality, that it would be [00:06:00] very easy and perhaps, uh, reduce the amount of stress one goes through on a daily basis to say, okay, this is just too difficult, too challenging.

Um, for Dose, uh, in particular for Dose, well, for Dose, um, I have other brands that are at scale. So I leveraged my ability, I leveraged my relationships there. To find opportunities for people to be a co man which is I have no business making potato chips You know, my my business is creating a brand creating content and putting it out to market Nope I I found out very early that no one was gonna fry my chips so in June of 2023, I was making the chips to sell at the farmer's market, just to understand what the, what the market was like, what the appetite was like.

And then, uh, two chips go in chip bags. [00:07:00] And there is a, uh, there's a, uh, a throng of chips, not in chips bags. And then these other, these other things, which I understand because these companies are like, Oh, we don't want to pay the price to get the hundred thousand. chip bags when we don't know if we're going to sell a hundred thousand bags.

So when we first sought out a chip bag person, we have no experience in chip bags, none experience. So we go through this process of Hey, uh, you know, let's make a, uh, a prototype. And this prototype comes. Okay, this prototype's good, but it's not gonna fit five and a half ounce bags of chips. Okay, so another prototype comes in six weeks.

This prototype is good, but the color's wrong. Well, when we go to, when we go to print, we'll get the color right. Okay, so let's approve this prototype. And then the roll of material comes that we spent, you know, 6, 500 on, and it's arbitrarily reduced to the previous size of bags from the prototype that we did not approve.

And then we work [00:08:00] with the same person, although having a backup option to fix that because we're promised that they won't charge us. And then that bag comes and it's the previous color, the, the, the, you know, you, you've seen the bag. It's, it's a gradient to represent, you know, what it looks like on Sam's farm, uh, in the spring.

And. The gradient from the bag comes in and it's not as poppy. It's not as, it's not as saturated. It's not as full as life like Sam's farm. And so then having to say, okay, we're no longer going to work with this chip bag printer. We're going to go to a new chip bag printer coincidentally is in Austin, Texas.

That process ends up being perfect and smooth. And then you go into filling the chips into the bags and then the seal seal marks are wrong. So the seal, the chips don't seal properly there. It looks like, you know. It , it, it, it looks like one side of your pants are, are up higher on your hip. So that's not gonna work.

We're not gonna go to market with that. Fortunately, you know, why we're having this podcast is we're very [00:09:00] close to the place where chip bags are perfect and the chips are perfect. And then the other challenge being that when, because no money will make our chips, we're not at a, we're not a, we're not at a place where we're making the amount of chips per hour needed to reach.

scale or for the, our cost of labor and materials to make like a lot of sense right now. I think it's imperative to eventually say, create and release. And we're at the point now where we've created a whole bunch and gone through these challenges that you asked about, what you knew about, and that every entrepreneur goes through.

These are just the ones, you know, uh, unique to We're going to get to this place in two weeks where it's, it's okay to release something not necessarily imperfect, but not as perfect as we seek out, we, that we strive for. I find that, um, you know, Harry and I basically had [00:10:00] almost every single Talo product seemingly on the market.

And I know I mentioned this earlier, but the taste of dose is the thing that immediately sticks out to us where it's, it's the perfect crisp. The salt factor is amazing. And then the big thing too is with some of these other tallow chips, I find that it seems like it's a very finicky product where a lot of these products, other chips that I've had, they almost dry your mouth out.

But I feel like you guys nailed all those different factors. I think you were working with, were you working with Miles Snyder on like the initial formulation? How did you guys, how did you guys nail that? Cause he's a, he's a genius. He's been on the podcast twice. We have such admiration for him. So as soon as we saw that you guys were working together, we're like, Oh, this product's going to be amazing.

Miles and I fried chicken together and we fried chips, uh, for the first time together in March, 2023, it's June 2024. Now almost June, 2024. Um, Miles has a very. Uh, defined palette, and, uh, he strives for perfection just like everybody else that was involved in the business does, including Sam. [00:11:00] Um, so when things came out less than what we s what we sought to create from, you know, a potato chip that Wow.

Thanks. I've never heard that before. I've never heard that. Uh, uh, including Sam. So when we, uh, when we first started frying chips and they came out less than what we sought to create and, you know, striving for, uh, perfection, uh, he was able to, you know, break those things down on a piece of paper to say it needed to change the frying time, frying, frying temperature.

I need to change the salt ratio. Maybe you even need to change the, the, the, the slice of the size. Of the slice of the potato chip, um, very fortunate to not attempt things, not, to, to not try to, excuse me, to not try to be the individual responsible for the things that I'm hiring or collaborating with or partnering with the person who I'm collaborating with that [00:12:00] thing for.

So in my, in that instance of my relationship with Miles is I'm collaborating with him because he's a phenomenal chef. With a very definable palette and strives for perfection as well. So when we say, this chip isn't right, it's too tallowy, or it's not crispy enough, Miles is able to, uh, you know, reverse engineer something as close to that first bite taking you back to fifth grade, after school, you know, that feeling.

Yeah, I think, uh, That feeling is that we weren't aware as we are now of like seed oils I mean certainly seed oils were always bad, but like as children we weren't like this seed oil is gonna kill me Yeah, we were like it just tastes really good So I think removing the fear of death from a snack and which is very dramatic removing removing that fear and also like connecting with taste buds that are Been around that have been around for us from a very long time and like we associate salty foods with certain memories or certain times or certain [00:13:00] activities I Think if the chip weren't perfect in that way, it wouldn't do what we wanted to do, which is to connect with people's fond memories of consuming salty foods.

Mm hmm. Do you feel like when you have a Y'all are doing great, by the way. Minus the truck horn outside. No, I mean, y'all are just very, asking great questions. Well, one of the things I was curious about, so like, when you get a bag of Lay's potato chips, Yeah. What do you think is lacking in that chip compared to what your chip offers from a flavor standpoint?

I think it's a Lay's, uh, getting a bag of Lay's chips is consistent, which is something I'm missing. It's always a Lay's potato chip, which is why it's, you know, the It has to be the most largely circulated potato chip in the world. Right. Um, I think tallow offers something that Lay's doesn't because it's not using tallow, and it offers that like satiating meaty You guys like meat.

[00:14:00] We like meat. Offers that It's really just that satiating ness, you know? Like, if you eat two pounds of ground beef, you don't need to eat anything else in your day. Yeah. Um, if you eat these chips fried in seed oil, like, you're gonna consume the whole bag because you have to. You've started consuming salt, you want more and more and more.

It's connecting with something in the brain. It's like, give me more and more of that. I think you can eat a handful of those, Texas salt and be like, well, okay I don't know that I need like to consume this whole five and a half ounce bag Which I think is extremely advantageous from a snack perspective because you can put a dose bag clip on it Put it back in the pantry and return to it or share it with people Sharing it with people would be nice since it's uh It's a food meant to be, you know, shared and ate in community.

Yeah. I think it's, it's a little silly to like, I don't know if I told you about some of the campaigns, but like, one of the [00:15:00] campaigns is Sam's children on their iPads and eating chips. And Sam is like, man, I really need, Sam is a farmer in Brigham, Texas, an exceptional, uh, farmer, uh, Shirttail Creek Farms, best eggs in the state of Texas.

Incredible. I can't agree with that. Um, Where Sam is, you know, he comes in on his children, he's got two children, a girl and a boy, and they're on their iPads and they're eating potato chips. And Sam's like, I really need to change something here, you know, my kids can't, it's summer, my kids can't be on their iPads eating potato chips.

So, we remove the potato chips and put in those, and they're still on their iPads, you know? And like, that's, the campaign is small steps. And like, We want to make something fun and and I don't know what led me there, but I hope it connects with the audience I think it will and I think that's what gets us excited.

I think Harry and I just have this belief You know if you can solve These big blocks with children in regards to nutrition and teaching them how to eat the right way. I think a lot of these [00:16:00] macro level issues in society could potentially be solved. And I think there's someone that might be listening to this that could be like, Well, I just eat steak and raw milk.

I don't really need a potato chip. And it's like, well, number one, the product's not necessarily for you. It could be for your kids. And secondly, I don't want to be this, um, overly methodical person where I can't enjoy my life as well. Like, when you're at a ball game or you're at a picnic or with your friends, I would love to have some potato chips.

And if I'm eating steak and dosed chips, literally potato, beef, tallow, salt, that's a health food. Yeah. It's not a junk food at all. Totally. And it tastes incredible. Yeah. I, I agree with you in that, um, I don't think potato chips is something I would see. It's not something I've sought out for years, like we discussed at the beginning.

The community aspect of it, not everyone is us, and where they only, you know, eat beef and drink milk, you know, like We're going to, no matter what, the world is so different that we're going to be surrounded by people that are different from us occasionally. Especially if, as we start to have children, and like our children are [00:17:00] growing up with somebody who's from a different world than us.

And they don't eat, you know, two pounds of ground beef a day and drink, you know, raw goat milk. They have potato chips, so it's nice to be able to offer Be offered something that isn't horrible for you and also offer something for you, for, you know, friends, new friends, whoever else, a bag of potato chips, that's those three ingredients.

And I think that motivator is a big driver of, of solving the challenges and getting to the point where we can be on your podcast, talking about it and releasing it in two weeks, you know, definitely. You mentioned Sam, was it important for you to source locally for the tallow? Yeah, I think, um, Eat, I eat local and I know you guys too like we see each other at the markets like I don't I don't buy anything Unless it's from somebody.

I look in the you know in the eyes and say where's your farm? that's a Incredible part of being a human that like you can know the people that make your food because [00:18:00] years ago You didn't but you didn't eat anything unless you made it or unless you hunted it and gathered it and you know Getting away from that is certainly a conundrum for, for the people and certainly, um, cause of some of our, of our larger systemic societal issues.

And it's not my place to get into them and I won't, I just want to solve things for myself and for my friends. And like, I, Sam's tallow is also really great. You know, it's great tallow. I've used it to grease my cast iron for three years and it was a super big challenge for him being like, I know you smell these small, I know you sell these small two ounce jars of tallow.

We need you to go like where we're 150 pounds of, of tallow just for us at a time. And I think we won't, that, that, that relationship will change because as we sell thousands, you know, 30, 000 chip bags a month, we'll probably need multiple sources of [00:19:00] tallow because there's a cycle on tallow. It's not just, you know, something that you create from mixing.

a bunch of engine oils. Like it is, it is something that comes from a living thing, a living organism. And that living organism has a lifespan and we're not grass fed. Grass finished cows are happy cows. So they're not ones put to slaughter, you know? I mean, eventually they're put down to become a food source, but they eat grass and they have a happy life of son and Sam has only so many cows.

Yeah, well, we'll definitely make sure to link your contact info in the show notes. 'cause there are a bunch of regenerative farmers that listen to the pod. So if anyone has great tallow that's regenerative that can do it at scale, I'm sure you'd be very interested to talk to 'em. You guys. And you guys have introduced me to some great ones who have been on the pod and who, who have great businesses.

San Diego guys. Kevin. Mm-Hmm. . Um, you know, we talked to somebody in Pennsylvania. You and I, uh, we, we've talked to people in [00:20:00] Illinois. Um, yeah. There is no one source of tallow because of, you know, what we just talked about. It is a, it comes from a living organism. So, we never want to get to a point where we sacrifice quality because of scale and demand, you know.

Yes. Yeah, what you described earlier about the relationship from consumer to rancher, the eye contact, the handshake, that's basically, that's essentially a sacred transaction that we've really lost. And if you want to, you know, I think if you want to reclaim your autonomy, just getting super close to the food supply like you've done is a great and cook those meals from those ranchers that you trust.

That is a very easy way to get yourself into incredible health. And I feel like brands like Dose and hopefully what we're doing at Noble are almost an extension of that too where you're being very transparent, extremely authentic, you're kind of opening up the hood for the customer so they really feel like they know you as the founder and they can trust that you're putting like your blood, sweat and tears and not compromising on any single part of the [00:21:00] ingredient.

I love that aspect of what you're doing. And the other thing that I love that you're doing is you said in the early stages when you were first making these chips, You were just putting them in brown bags and going to the farmer's market to meet customers. Because sampling has been a huge part of what Harry and I have done at Noble.

And there are a lot of these new modern founders that are like, why are you going to sample? You could just sell your product online and run paid ads and make thousands of dollars. Yeah. But we'll view the biggest learnings that we've gotten are shaking hands with customers and them being open and transparent with their questions.

So I'm just curious, what were some of the things that you kind of learned early on during that sampling process last summer? Not to have a tallow y tasting potato chip, one that has tallow residue on the mouth. Uh, which is solved by some of the things that Miles came up with, some of the things that we do in production.

Um, and I, before I answer that question in its entirety, I think what you're talking about is that, you know, people don't necessarily want to buy more products. They [00:22:00] want to, you know, They want to be part of, of stories like you're talking about opening the hood. Um, or people don't want, you know, they just want solutions to their problems or distractions from their problems and they're not going to find solutions.

So the story could be a distraction from their problem that eventually leads to them, you know, finding more within themselves or being inspired to make a change. And then your product offers something that could make a change. Um, So as found as three of us as founders, I think it's imperative that we, that we just.

distill that down to your audience is that people don't buy more pro people don't want to buy more products. They want to buy stories, which are solutions to their problems or distractions for their problems, and hopefully those distractions lead to aspiration and inspiration. Um, from a dose from a dose perspective, uh, like I said, don't have a Like, from a dose perspective, don't have a, a tallow y residue potato chip, like, [00:23:00] it should be clean, it should be crisp, it should be satiating and salty, um, and then I don't know what percentage, it's, your audience isn't fair because you're called the meat mafia, I don't know what percentage of middle America Or the fringes of our country know what tallow is.

I mean, maybe the fringes, definitely the fringes because they were, they're farmers. Um, but those that have a, in the suburbs who have a nine to five, who go to, who wake up, have a coffee, go to work, take their children to school, come home, go to the grocery store, feed microwave meals or pre prepped, whatever.

Like what percentage of them. Very little know what TALO is. So, it just says, Noble offers an opportunity to explain what Nose to Tail is, and it's a challenge. Like, how do I get somebody to buy something in a 20 second digital ad, or a 20 minute video, long form, which offers more value. We are learning [00:24:00] daily, how many people don't know what TALO is.

So, how do you distill, how do you create something for me? Educationally, education driven, that's entertaining, that offers value to the, to the audience member that may become a consumer of your product, you know. I, we, we've heard the adage, thousands of times, McDonald's used to, you know, fry pizza. They're potatoes and tallow to make the world's greatest french fry.

Um, so you can start there with like, Hey, you know, the place that we all eat or all have eaten at in this world, The thing that we all share is that we all had McDonald's. Like, they used to fry in tallow, which is a good starting point. But I don't know that that's where we want to start. Where we want to start is that Tallow has a temperature that allows you to fry things in it without it completely Degrading the product and becoming something unhealthy Potatoes are a food that come from the earth when sliced and fried in tallow and salted they taste amazing.

Mm hmm It's so exciting for [00:25:00] us Just seeing all these tallow products including dose just come to the market because I remember not too long ago like two years ago We were writing about Talo and how McDonald's used to use talo. Yeah in their french fries Or in their fryers to make their french fries and how they used to taste better and actually, you know They used to be like somewhat healthy.

Yeah, and it's so cool I think like there's just a handful of brands that are just getting started who are kind of pioneering in the space Just seeing them come to market and people being curious enough to either try the product or try to go a layer further and understand what the actual benefits are of tallow.

Do you remember the first time you had a tallow? Uh, it had to be some time ago. I'm a Texan and both of my parents, my father's a Texan. Um, my mother came here when she was very young, uh, so it had to have been some time ago. My food journey, um, it's so funny to call it a food journey. [00:26:00] Uh, but my food journey has always been, uh, on the side of like seeking out what's local.

You know, I lived in different parts of the world and still ate locally. Um, so. I can remember the first time I bought tallow in Texas, which was from Sam at his market, where he had just come out with these little jars. And this is back when Sam used to run his own, you know, stand at downtown farmer's market.

And he'd be like, Mills, we had a relationship. I bought eggs there. I bought ground beef there. I bought marrow bones there. I have packaged my tallow. Would you like to try it? And he gave me, sampled one, uh, complimentary and I took it home and probably changed the mundane things I was eating by using tallow.

It wasn't enough tallow to fry chicken, but I was like, I could fry some chicken in this, you know, like we love fried chicken. Really? Yeah. So I, I, I, I hope we can make that. [00:27:00] Connection with an audience and give them that feeling of like, Oh, this is my first time to try tallow. It's amazing I want to do so many things with tallow.

Mm hmm. And another another piece of our campaign for launch is like at local pastures We we fry potatoes in tallow and we fry potatoes in you know, the other thing and we're like, hey Just passerby like Local pastures probably isn't fair because everybody's going to choose tallow, but a little unfair advantage is okay sometimes.

And which one tastes better? And people are like, oh, the tallow chip. I'm like, here, have a bag of those, you know. And then maybe they go inside and buy more tallow and go home and make some fried chicken for some people. I think we keep, I keep at least mentioning fried chicken. Fried chicken and tallow is a great thing.

Dido's fried chicken is unbelievable. Separately changed it Sunday to quail. It's incredible. So it's fried. It's tiny. It's good, but it's so tiny. I had to order two of them. I went like two weeks ago I had to order two quails because like this is tiny. Yeah, but it's delicious But you bring up a good point [00:28:00] where it's it's interesting how we just equate certain foods as being unhealthy.

So fried chicken, ice cream, potato chips, the list goes on and on, but it's like the preparation either makes the poison or the antidote of the food. And it's, it's just such a, it's such an interesting concept to think about. Um, I had something I was going to say and it literally just slipped my mind right now.

That's okay. I think what bringing up, uh, what you mentioned around like the prep, um, of food, uh, tallow, specifically Is not just something to make potatoes in, you know, like we're saying there's there's plenty of use cases for it. I'm not the expert So not the expert whatsoever on all the different use cases for all the different use cases for tallow, but we know from Masa that it can make delicious corn chips.

That becomes a scalable, profitable business. We know from, uh, the tallow twins that it becomes beautiful skincare that can, uh, reduce eczema or acne, and then we, we [00:29:00] will know from dose very soon that it can make an exceptional potato chip. So I think that. What you mentioned, both of you have mentioned is like, Oh, we're, we've been, we've been on the scene for two years and now we're starting to see things in tallow.

Well, imagine all the other things that we're going to see in tallow from a, you know, restaurant perspective, product perspective, skincare perspective, gut microbiome perspective, you know, uh, a competitor to seed from, uh, uh, uh, what's it called? Uh, the daily things for your gut, uh, probiotic, probiotic, all the different things we're going to see because people were brave enough to, to Go, try to make it to the top of the mountain, of the Talo Mountain, and maybe not make it all the way, but set the, set the pace, walk so others could run, so that the world can become a place that consumes healthy amounts of Talo.

Yeah, you guys made a good point earlier about McDonald's too, because if you talk to a baby boomer that grew up on McDonald's they might not know anything about the nutritional benefits of beef tallow versus seed oil, but they can recall, oh [00:30:00] my gosh, McDonald's french fries in 1987 were so good, but then they change in 1990, what happened?

They don't know anything about the nutrition, but they remember the taste. So it's like, if you're solving for taste, I think you could kind of win over those people in middle America that don't know about the nutritional benefits, too. Totally. And boomers are the hardest, right? Yes. One of my favorite subreddits is like Is it, is it boomers are the hardest?

No, it's, it's like, it's, it's a bit degrading. So it's something about boomers. But yeah, I mean, that represents a lot. An opportunity to connect with them in that McDonald's used to be something that a lot more people I mean a lot of people still consume it I don't know the numbers and I don't care but a Lot more people used to consume McDonald's regularly and they do have an association with a better tasting french fry because I don't know How long it's been you guys I don't know how long it's been since you guys had McDonald's But definitely since I was a child, I've not had McDonald's I just I don't I don't remember how the french fries taste but like I The people [00:31:00] that are the age of the boomers certainly do and they have an association with that So if you could capture that essence and deliver it in something new like we talked about familiar and new Then I think you have an opportunity like you said to connect with hopefully a bigger um media a bigger market size than Those currently interested in tallow or nose to tail supplements, you know protein powder Mm hmm.