Today marks the United States 33rd observance of Armed Forces Day, a tradition begun by President Truman to honor the men and women who serve our country in uniform. I want to take this occasion to reflect on the job they're doing and what it means to us. One of the oldest truths in the world is that nothing worth having is cheap, and many times the greater the good, the higher its costs. Having America free has cost us dearly over the centuries. Since 1776, we as a nation have lost thousands of lives and suffered thousands of injuries to guarantee our freedom. Preserving the peace also requires the daily toil of millions of men and women who, without fanfare and glory, serve to protect our freedom and security. The men and women in our armed services are our final protection against those who wish us ill. The soldier, the sailor, the airman and the marine in the United States and around the world are the ultimate guardians of our freedom. To say what we think, go where we will, choose who we want for our leaders, and pray as we wish. It is sad that these rights, which should belong to all people, are not fully enjoyed by most of the human family. It is sadder still that some in the world view such freedom as a threat to their right to rule over their fellow citizens. And so long as that's true, we can't afford to take our freedom for granted. It cannot survive without protection. And for their role in protecting our freedoms, we honor the members of our volunteer armed forces today. Their jobs are difficult, requiring judgment, technical know-how, endurance, and in many cases exposure to danger. We ask them to put in long hours, under trying conditions. Many serve far from their homes and families. Prepared if need be to make the ultimate sacrifice for our nation. In short, they give us their all. So I would like to thank them today. The Army Tank Crew member in Germany, or Korea, responsible for maintaining a 55-ton machine so that it's ready at a moment's notice. The sailor in the Indian Ocean, who's been away from home for four months and is working 18 hours a day in a hot engine room or carrying chocks for returning aircraft. The Air Force Security Policeman guarding our nuclear-alert aircraft in the Texas heat or the North Dakota winter. The Marine Squad Leader on Okinawa working with his men to provide the most efficient combat team in the world. All these people, and the rest of their comrades-in-arms, we thank today. There is another group which deserves special thanks. The wives of our servicemen, wives who take care of the families and raise the children while their husbands are at sea or stationed far away, and wives who have left our shores to be in a faraway land with their husbands. I had a letter the other day from one young wife describing what life was like where they were stationed. I could read homesickness between the lines, but not one word of complaint, only great pride in what her husband is doing. Their contribution is critical. The separation, the long hours, the hard work, and up until recently the low pay, all these have been burdens to them as well. The understanding and encouragement they give our servicemen is something we must all be grateful for. So on behalf of all you listening, I want to take these few minutes today to thank our men and women in uniform and their families, and to ensure them their government and their fellow citizens are determined to provide them with the equipment, training, and just as importantly the respect they have so richly earned. With their help, the United States remains at peace. Our allies enjoy the same benefit. Our national determination to defend freedom at the borders where it's threatened is fully matched by the quality and spirit of the more than two million soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who proudly wear the American uniform. I received another letter from one of our ambassadors in Europe. He wrote that a 19-year-old trooper in our armored cavalry had asked that he send me a message. It was, tell the president we're proud to be here and we ain't scared of nothing. In James Michener's book, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, he writes of an officer waiting through the night for the return of planes to a carrier as dawn is coming on. And he asks, where do we find such men? Well, we find them where we've always found them. They are the product of the freest society man has ever known. They make a commitment to the military, make it freely because the birthright we share as Americans is worth defending. God bless America. Thanks for tuning in. I'll be with you again next Saturday. Until then, God bless you.


Hi, this presentation actually depends on a couple others, so if you haven't watched them, you can click here to see advertising is war, that troubling word consumer, our role as consumers and what consumerization is. If you'd like to see the whole thing strung together, follow the narrative, click on that bottom link, it should be live in the YouTube video. If companies that advertise are busy stretching the truth all the time, not quite telling us what's going on or being disconnected from what's actually going on, if they keep calling us consumers in other terms of disrespect, if they go to war on us all the time using the language of a military campaign to try to sell us stuff, and when they're not doing that they treat us like cattle, busy driving eyeballs to websites and branding us. They're also filling our world with noise where there are ads on everything and everyone, there's even sort of aroma ads and sound ads and every kind and variety of senses used, including now neural advertising where they're trying to figure out how to fill our minds with those ideas, but when they're not doing that they're busy scraping up all the data around us, buying and selling it and stalking us, using that data with deep analytics to figure out what things they might do to us so that we might actually loosen our wallets a little more and buy some stuff. In the process they often deny mistakes and wrongdoing, happens all the time, and really often don't listen or engage. There's a whole category of software called listening platforms that are often outsourced to third parties. Let's hire some people in some other country where labor is cheaper and have them listen to people who are angry at our company and then interrupt and post and try to fix or erase those things from online. There's a whole other category about engagement, customer engagement, there's also customer relationship management, none of these things really are about deep listening and understanding people. If advertising companies are busy doing all these things and all of them at once, why should we trust them? Why should anybody trust them? I'm operating from the assumption here that trust is really important for commerce. That's really my starting place. I'm looking at all of these things, I'm just doing a close read of the language of advertising for example. I'm looking around the world at how it's been filled with advertisements over everything. I'm looking at how all this new data is causing companies to just go stalk us and they're not really thinking two or three times about it. So why should we trust them? What's happened is that we are now peers in the marketplace that there used to be the relationship of producers to consumers where the producers were above and the consumers were below and the producers had unique and only access, monopolized access to the means of communication to mostly the broadcast media. That's when we sort of perfected the advertising model and ordinary humans couldn't talk back. It would be better to the editor and it would show up three weeks later on not on the front page of the paper. Right? How does that work? Well, that's all changed right now and now companies that are smart need to figure out again how to be in relationship with those people who buy their things, whether it's products or services. I think this marks a rehumanization of capitalism, which ought to be really exciting but might be really panic striking. Who knows? So instead of doing all the things that I mentioned a moment ago, what if companies were transparent and trustworthy, if they acted trustworthy, didn't just say trust me, if they were vulnerable, which is actually the path to authentic connection and to fixing things that are broken, if they listened with care and then served with whole heart as opposed to just trying to make more money show up out of your pockets, if they admitted their errors and corrected them quickly and then maybe much more importantly found and communicated their deeper purpose. What is that? One of the ways they can communicate their deeper purpose is to take care of the commons that they touch, whether it's aquifers and fresh water or soil health or the information commons, whatever it might be to mind the commons with us as opposed to just mining the commons, which is what they're doing today. I think all of this means being human and in fact if this list sounds suspiciously like how to be a good trusted friend, you are right because when that arrow goes from being up down in one way, producers to consumers and going almost level but not quite to being peers in the arena, then organizations need to figure out how to act as trusted peers. And that's at least the ante for the next wave of existing in the world, the next wave of marketing, the next wave of strategy, the next wave of product design, all these sorts of things. I'm Jerry Mikulski. I run something called the Relationship Economy Expedition. Thank you for watching this Rexcast. There are more bits of information and parts of this at the links on this page.


All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Lauren from Snoods. For people who don't know, what is Snoods? What's your company do? Snoods is Chef created globally inspired noodle chips. Noodle chips. Yeah, noodle chips. Very much chip forward, noodle inspired. Each flavor is a different bowl of noodles, different noodle shape and sauce via the seasoning. And just inspired by the bowls of comfort that a lot of people would eat growing up, because there's really like a bowl of noodles in every culture if you think about it. That's true. Yeah, that's facts. Okay, how did you arrive at this product, right? So give me the background of like, what are you doing? How's life going? And then you're like, I think this could be a thing and the market doesn't see it yet.  I've worked almost every facet of the hospitality industry. I did PR, marketing, worked in restaurants, savory, pastry. I worked for a celebrity chef. Which one, which one? Gail Simmons. Oh, cool, cool. Yeah, it's lovely. So I got to see a lot of, you know, in the kitchen and then also the media side. I worked for a meal kit. Saw the procurement side of that. Worked as a food editor. And then I found myself on a Netflix cooking competition called Snack versus Chef. Yes, for you who haven't seen it, Snacks versus Chefs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On Netflix. On Netflix. Very bingeable. Yeah, I mean, I was tasked to make an original snack and kind of was just distraught because what snack is not already out there? And honestly for me, when I'm stressed out, I just want to eat a bowl of pasta, bowl of noodles all the time. And so it kind of just clicked. Well, why can't I just make that? That's a healthy stress, yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I know myself very well, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's also, a lot of my background is also an Italian cuisine, but then I also bring in a lot of these Asian flavors a lot of the time. I love ramen too. So I wanted to create this snack that kind of highlighted both a lot of sustainable pieces, like upcycled ingredients, but a lot of these different cultures that I've come to know both cooking but then also as a food editor writing about. So I felt like noodles is like one of the most approachable things. It's very exciting and it's a really accessible way to bring those things into the world. Sure. Did you have the product prior to the show? No. Okay. Give us a window into being on the show and the innovation that you had to go through the rounds of innovation. Give us a window to that. Yeah, so I mean, we were tasked to make shelf-stabled snacks and I'm not a food scientist. At the time, I wouldn't have even categorized myself as a private chef or anything like that. Now I am, but it was very much learning through each episode. We learned to make seasonings from scratch, not just, you know, dehydrating fruit and vegetables, but really like cooking all the flavors down, taking the fats and creating this really developed seasoning. And that's also, I mean, some of the inspiration in this is because flavors have gotten so big and bold since the pandemic. People are traveling through their taste buds. And I mean, I love it because I think that it's expanding people's palates and opening people's minds to, again, different cultures and flavors. So that was also like a big aspect of it. I would say in the finale, the snack that I created is not the snack today, but taking a lot of those components as I learned throughout the show and also, you know, sticking to myself, I think that's one thing that I learned working for Gail.  And in the finale, the other contestant actually made two snacks and the producers asked me if I wanted to make two snacks. And I was like, I've seen this play out. I know. I'm gonna stick to my guys.  Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah. And so I made Amatriciana sauce for my snack and it went over really well with the judges. It was something that I didn't know that I, this sounds according, I didn't know that I had in me. Between the ideas, but then also the capability to make this. And then after the show came out, so many people connected with it that, that's kind of like, well, we have to do this. Yeah, it's like they believed in you and it made you believe in you. Yeah. So the show, is it popular? Has it changed your life? You will have a lot of people watch. Obviously Netflix is massive. Yeah. What has changed since you won? Yeah, I mean, everything. I make snacks now. That's not something I ever would have thought that I would be doing. Totally. I very much knew CBG was a monster from working in editorial. I know what founders go through. So taking that leap was something that I never thought I would be able to do. So I mean, the show gave me the confidence that I never had. Honestly, even the producers were like, girl, you have imposter syndrome. Yeah. You know what you're doing. You need to, you know, believe in yourself. I'm sort of picking up on that now. I'm like, she's still, you're almost there, I think, but I can, it's almost like. It's a humility too, though, and a modesty, which is really nice, I think. Thank you. And it probably stems from being in hospitality for so long, where you sort of, you know how hard it is. And so you know the ins and outs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, if I'm being honest, a lot of my career, and I, again, I realized this after the show, is I was told no a lot. Every time I was told no, I was always so surprised because I was just like, why can't I do this? Like when I left restaurants to work for Gail, I had a chef that was like, oh, like what are you gonna do? Become a Food Network star? And was just hating on me for no reason. And the same thing, I'm through like fundraising and even making the snack. So many people were like, ah, no, that's too, that's too out there, that's too different, how are you going to do this? And I think it was all of that, that just kept lighting the fire in me. And if anything, it's just to prove the people wrong, that no, I'm gonna do it despite. Yeah, I'll give you a short story for me. I got into real estate development maybe like five, six years ago. And for a while, I was like, what am I doing here? Like I didn't come from a real estate background, right? I don't know anything about commercial real estate in Los Angeles. I don't know anybody. I don't know the politics involved. And I was like working on, I think my second deal at the time. And every night I go to bed, this like I was in a room with this guy that would just tell me how terrible I was and like basically it was imposter syndrome in real time.  And that probably went on for like three months.  Like I would just use the ego to kind of go, all right, I'm gonna beat this thing up basically. And then I realized that wasn't working. And then I was like, I'm just gonna talk to it. And so I ended up talking to it. And it was almost like in the conversation, all via in the dream, it was a function of me realizing there's no value to feeling like that and the world doesn't improve and the lives of those around me doesn't improve either. And so it's sort of like selfish to be in that space. And once I realized that, it was amazing. It was like, I made peace with it. But it took me a while, it was kinda a while. I think it's almost, I came to the point where I was like, am I just like feeling sorry for myself or like what is the like the root of this feeling? And I think, yeah, a lot of it was just owning who I am. And I hear this from a lot of people, the brand voice and the brand in general is loud and exciting and fun and nostalgic. And a lot of people are like, it's a lot of your personality, which is, I mean, that's a great compliment. But it also made me be like, well, maybe I am great, like let's just lean into this. Yeah, I think I've just come to own who I am more so through this. That's a founder story in a nutshell, to be honest.  Why the name snooze? What does it mean? This is also a really funny story. I had no idea what to call this. And to be honest, it was truly a placeholder initially. I think I was thinking about Sandlot and I love that scene about s'mores and wanting s'more of this, s'more of that. And so I wanted something that was just really playful, again, nostalgic. And it can mean so many different things. Like snooze doesn't just stand for snack noodles. It can stand for send nudes. It can stand for salad nudes.  So I mean, I think the brand is kind of like, choose your own adventure and it's the same with... Send nudes, that's hilarious snooze, okay. But yeah, it's the same with the name. And it just really stuck. A lot of people really resonated and loved it. How do people consume it? And so give people a window, they buy it. What do they do with it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's very much chip-forward, like I said. Noodle-inspired, they are potato and rice flour-based. I really wanted to lean into potato chips. It's over a quarter of the industry. And I think in the end, it's the flavor profile that a lot of people want when they're snacking. And then the rice flour really helps with that kind of airy texture as well. Like I said, each flavor is a different sauce via the seasoning.  However you snack. When it came to the retailers, what were like their biggest questions? Or did they know exactly what it was? Or like where did we put you in the store? What was that process like? I mean, we've had a huge learning curve for both buyers and consumers. A lot of people will think either it's ready to eat noodles or it is freeze-dried noodles or dried noodles that we season. And so I think that has been a huge- So they think it's like dry pasta. Right, right, right. Which actually a lot of people, and the reason is too, and this is great for us, but also difficult because a lot of people grew up eating the dried pasta. And I mean, I've heard people eating the instant ramen on the corner store with the seasoning and just eating it dry.  So I think that was part of it. And so trying to hone in on how do we, not only the packaging itself, but the messaging, how do we better convey what this snack is. And again, the snacking occasions for buyers, they're wondering where do we put it in the store. We kind of an idea of who our competitors are. But again, it's kind of this first to market snack where there's no clear competitor that we can kind of put ourself up against. So I think for doing the research on our end, what is kind of, I mean, the closest in this category and where we're at kind of this more, I think we're prices more of like a luxury good at the moment. And so some of our competitors might not be obvious either. Yeah, how much is it? How much is the bag of this? The MSRP is $6.99. And I will say, so we made some updates, which I'm very excited about. We are moving our chips into a roll stock, which is the chip bag that you'll see lays in or any of your classic chips in. And I think that will really help too with the mindset of just relaying it to the snacks. Originally we put it in this standup pouch because I kind of looked at other brands like you see those pretzel flats. And for them, a huge strategy to separate from the kind of chaos of the chip aisle was putting it in this different bag and also putting it in more so the deli section. Because for me, I think this is really a good high-brow, low-brow snack. So you can eat it watching Netflix or you can kind of class up your truck. Watching your show, maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Binge, binge my show, binge any Netflix show. So wait, where is it in the grocery store? Where do they land? Where do they end up? It's a mix. And so we are really early on retail. So just as much as the buyers are kind of figuring out per like, it's very different in each store too. Obviously your consumers are different with each store. So we're learning and I think also with that, we're learning with the buyers as well. We're very early on in our retail footprint. It's quickly growing, which I'm really excited about. But yeah, just trying to look at the data but then also connect with our consumers. I think this next year is a lot about brand recognition but also being boots on the ground with the consumers and getting more of that feedback. Yeah, when it comes to funding, how did you first go about starting this company funding-wise? Yeah, I mean, so I will say the Netflix show definitely helped because I announced that I was going to do this idea right when the show came out and I did a Kickstarter. That's smart. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you do that on purpose? Yes, very much so. So you had enough heads up on the show coming out. It wasn't like tomorrow. Yeah, got it, okay. Yeah, I mean, it would have been ideal if we had the packaged product ready to go when the show came out for sure but nothing is ever easy in this industry. So that's okay. It's very hard as a startup, especially CPG founder. I'm sure you know this, finding funding. I mean, economy is in a rough place but also CPG can be very dicey and so I think a lot of investors want you to be later on the game. They want to see some numbers but they also want to see what is the traction? What is also your plan? And so I'm partially self-funded but also I did a Kickstarter which really helped I think get the awareness out there kind of show these sales numbers, show the sales traction in a different way and still build on that hype as I figured out how to make this which it's, I mean, it's still a growing process for sure. Yeah, how much have you raised on the Kickstarter? I raised a little over 30,000. Will you continue to raise this year? Absolutely. Yeah, always.  Yeah, it was funny. I was talking to some founders yesterday actually at this event and they were explaining to me how there's this bit of a CPG investor fatigue at the current time and I was asking them like, oh, why is that? Like I'm an investor, so I'm like, why? I didn't feel that way. And I was like, they're like, well, they just realized they can make more money in like a bond based on interest rates at the moment. I was like, that's interesting, you know, it's interesting. I was like, if you're an investor though, I don't, generally I don't think investors are interested in bonds. Like usually when you invest in a company, you have a belief that that product should exist in the world. It's like a vote. It's like you're voting on what you think the future should look like. A bond doesn't do any of that. Yeah. And you like the founder, I think it's a good story. And I was like, but maybe it's because of like all the emergency board meetings that happened to like a year and a half ago in the CPG world. Like I was a part of those. I was like, maybe that. And I was like, I don't, I don't know. I was like, maybe it's just, anyway, my advice to the founder I was speaking to was more of just have more conviction. Right. Yeah. I'm like just- I think that's what it is. Yeah, yeah. At least that's what I was picking up on. Yeah. I was like, this sounds like you believe, you as founder believe the world doesn't want you when you're saying it's- I'm sure I still have that in my mind too as well. I think maybe it's the two humble, but I have a close friend that's also helping me with, she works for VC and is helping me with this fundraising side because I do not come from the finance side. So it's also this other world that I have quickly had to learn. What are you learning? Like what are things that you didn't know or things that maybe you knew, but you know, they're being enhanced at the current. Like what are you learning? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of jargon around fundraising that I've never had to encounter before. I've never had a company that I've had to grow solo. So I think learning what is the best fundraising structure for me at this point. Like a convertible note or like- Yeah, exactly, exactly. Even knowing am I pre-seed? Am I series A? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then figuring out that the budget, especially now it's kind of early on, you create this, I would say loose kind of budget that you have an idea of, but especially early on, as you're going into manufacturing, there's going to be all of these things that happen. And two things that I would say, a lot of them I expected and we prepared for, but there's in trying to figure out how best to make this product things that we've had to navigate that you wouldn't foresee, I guess. And I think, yeah, just knowing how to talk to investors. And feeling the confidence in terms of, I'm saying I'm raising $500,000 for the end of this year. What does that mean? And being able to talk confidently to an investor of, this is how I'm going to spend it, this is the relationship I'm looking for, especially building out an advisory board, which I'm doing at the moment as well. What does that look like? How big, knowing how to give out equity is so much. Yeah, I mean, I like that you're touching on it. It's not easy. When I first got into real estate development, there's enough books out there to teach you the language. I think every world has their esoteric language, and then once you learn it, then it makes it simple. But I think in startup land, for some reason, it really isn't an easy one-stop shop. I'm sure there's a website or something, but even that is like, do I believe it? Is that right? Has it changed? I mean, I think it's always changing. It's always changing, that's the other part. It's changing based on the person too. I think that every talk that you go into is going to be different from the next one, and you have to know that, understand that, be flexible, especially you don't want all of them to be the same either, because you're choosing the individual for certain reasons. Totally, yeah. So yeah, I mean, I listen to a lot of podcasts. That helps a lot too. Yeah, are you at the seed stage then right now? Yes, yeah. Okay, that's the stage we like to invest in personally. When it comes to like, how many skews do you have? How many different flavors do you guys have for the product? There's three in front of us here. Spicy, Miso, Ramen. So our three launching flavors, and this is one of the things that I kind of learned early on is I think three is the magic number in launching a brand. I've always known as a food stylist too that three is the kind of the golden number. You want an odd number for things you put on a plate and things that you put out into the world. So our three launching flavors are Rigatoni, Basil, Pomodoro. Which I'm gonna try right now. Amazing. I would say that is the new fan favorite. It was actually the Spicy Miso Ramen up until this week. And then we have our Kava Topi Carbonara. Some ASMR, well that's good.  The crunch category is something that I think is lacking. We have... That's delicious. Thank you. You know, that's what we go for. I wanted to make a delicious snack, so I'm glad that we hit that note. Yeah, I wanted to get the crunchy...  That's really good.  I can't wait to take that sound bite. Whoa. Yeah, I... I'm just having a moment here. You can keep talking. It tastes like a meal, but it's not. But you feel like it's a meal. So it feels like, I'm gonna try to describe it, a bit of a loss, but it tastes like the most amazing tomato sauce, right? A jammed pack, like, concentrated with... Oh, like, just the most delicate touch of basil somehow. Right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, like, a puff, but a noodle, but a puff. And there's, like, a delicate dance happening. That's legendary. Nice work.  I mean, I would say this is... And I'm not a snack guy, by the way.  Fair enough, okay. But these I'm gonna buy. These I'm gonna... I'm gonna... That's amazing. I mean, this is, like, the 1,000 iteration. It's been a journey. So my mind just went nuts. So I was thinking, okay, cool, like, red wine. All of a sudden I want red wine. I want, like, a nice Barolo with this. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I'm at dinner. I'm at dinner, too, do we want to, yeah. That's good. Thank you, yay, yay. Wow. Okay. It's in terms of, I think... I can see why you want it in a bag. I can see why you want it in a bag, though. Yeah, yeah. Cause you don't know what you're opening. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And maybe today the buyer behavior, or I guess maybe the buyer today is educated on seeing this bag and it's like, you mentioned pretzels or, like, chocolate-covered pretzels or more of a snack chocolate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know, I mean, you would know better than me. I think the stand-up pouch, honestly, makes it this more, like I said, luxury good, like, more FruFru snack than I want it to be. I want it to be approachable. And so, yeah, getting into that snacky, like, casual, fun vibe, we gotta go in the chip bag. Is it healthy? I hate to ask this question. No, no, no, you're good. So I would say it's right in the middle. Making this snack, I never wanted to make a healthy snack, honestly, because I think that I kind of experienced this growing up, but there's a lot of this health jargon out there that can not only skew people's actual, the, your actual understanding of what does that mean? Cause there's a lot of wow words out there, but it's also, I don't want to, yeah, I just didn't want to make a healthy snack. I just wanted to make a good snack. And, but at the same time, sustainability is a huge thing for me. I really wanted to make an upcycled snack, and these are partially upcycled, but as a startup, upcycling is very, very hard. And so upcycling, for everyone that doesn't know, is using food that would otherwise be thrown out and repurposing it, reusing it. So we would take potatoes and make a flour from that and then use that to make our chips. So we are partially upcycled now, and then as we grow, hoping to like really increase that. I don't know how you did this. This is like amazing. You nailed it. Here you go, Nick, try this again. They taste like a meal. Like you made the meal a little chip.  Well, I mean. You're obviously talented. That's start, let's start with that. Let's acknowledge that. That's incredible. Thank you. I think the bread and butter is the seasoning for sure. It's that flavor. This, maybe this is the future of food.  It's like space food. It's like space food. Here's your bite.  I mean, I think. You got like 30 dishes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let me tell you, I'm so excited for the flavors that we could do after this. I mean, like I said, there's a world of noodles out there. So very much. Yeah, I mean, I think. That's so good. Andrea from Snack Shop, she always says that it's like the snackification of everything. Yeah, okay. Not saying that I ever want to replace like, sustenance, like an actual meal with a snack, but it is very much that, you know, you just, you crave a bowl of pasta or you crave a bowl of ramen on the go. And I do want it to be satiating. I don't mean to be eating all of these. No, no, please do, no, no, please do. That's what they're here for. All right, so this one's the kava top. How do you pronounce that? Kava topi. Carbonara. Yeah, yeah. It's funny because I heard too early on you don't want to make a flavor that people can't pronounce. And I know that kava topi is a hard word for people. But I want to, you know, I want to open people's minds to more things than just like macaroni and spaghetti. I don't know how you did this. It's like, it's incredible. This is incredible. Thank you.  So like I said, it's really exciting to just see people's reaction now. No wonder you won the competition. That's so good. Here you go, Nick. All right, my favorite is the, for sure. The Tony? Tony, Basil, Pomodoro. That just felt like heaven. And I would say the other two are tied. They're just different, but really amazing. Yeah, I mean, the spicy miso is definitely, you gotta love some spiciness. It pats a punch, for sure. They're both so different. I feel like you can like open a restaurant and serve the, like it just feels like that. I don't know how to describe that. Maybe that's the hard part for the consumer. I think that the bread and butter for us is the seasoning. It's the flavor. And I wanted to make, I didn't want just a tomato powder with dehydrated basil in it. I wanted to taste like it was cooking on the stove for hours and really concentrate those flavors. Cause again, it's, I want to, I think you nailed it. Yeah, I want to extend that kind of pallet opening, if you will. Yeah, it's not a rice puff that someone threw seasoning on. That's not what this is. This is far more sophisticated, okay? I've never had this reaction, by the way, on the podcast. This is like unbelievable. I don't believe it. I'm like in shock right now. Nick will tell you. Usually if someone has three skews, I'll try one. And I'm like, that's great. And I want to do all three. What's next for the company this year? Where do you want to take it? Yeah, so we have some really exciting retail locations opening up. We have a lot of some national partners at Fairway, Shoprite, Gourmet Garage are a couple of those in the Northeast area. And so we're setting up a lot of our distribution right now. And so once that happens, I really want to just focus on our partners right now, focus on our consumers. We have a lot of brand awareness, obviously, as I mentioned, brand recognition to do, getting our margins right, getting our velocity right, looking at the data. It's a lot of the things that we've been trying to make the product right for so long. And so now we need to do everything else to make sure that we get the numbers where we need them to be. I see that. I mean, look, I think you've nailed it on the product. I think that's the hardest part of any CPG company. And now it's a function of like doing the demos, getting it out there. I don't know why my brain, probably because of my age or whatever, I just go like, this is perfect with wine. Like that's how I view it. Like I see myself serving it up. There's wine out. Oh, let's snack it. Do they want to snack? I told you, hype around low-brow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For all occasions, yeah. Put it in a bowl. The ramen, it's just like you want an ice-cold beer with your bowl of ramen. It goes really well with beer. Yeah, it's almost like a beer and chips, wine and food. Yeah, exactly.  Okay, so more skews, different bags. Yeah, I mean, I'm excited for some Pad Thai action. We did actually...  Let's unpack this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in my head, I'm like, all right, Pad Thai, I'm out. Cool, I like it. And then you go, let me make a chip of this. Yeah. Okay, so that nailed it. And then what's the next step? How do you do that? What do you... Part of it is, so what do I want it to look like? I think... Okay, yeah, it's got to look a certain way. It's I growing up, I loved bugles because it was just like this fun shape that you could play with. And I think that adults are wanting to eat. They're very nostalgic these days. And so I wanted to lean in to kind of, I mean, you want to also appeal to kids. And so figuring out what is the shape of this flavor? How are we going to do it? And not saying that all of them will be this potato chip. Our ramen will come out as a lentil chip moving forward. I wanted to lean more into this kind of wonton chip. A lot of people really resonated with that. So I think figuring out what is the base of it. And then with each shape and also each kind of formulation, you're getting a different texture. So then honing in on that and then honing in on, what are the flavor points of that? What do we want people to go away with? I didn't mention this, but all of our flavors are now... Well, they're all gluten-free, but all of our flavors are now vegan. So also then figuring out, how do we make it vegan? Because I think that is also... So they're all gluten-free? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just wanted to appeal to, I mean, this is not what any investor really wants to hear, but I wanted to appeal to every demographic. I wanted to appeal to every palette. We're honed in on who our target market is. But I mean... Who is your target market today? Yeah, I would say it's probably your Gen Z millennials. We're really targeting kind of your metro areas because like you said, it's a very satiating snack. So a lot of people that are on the go, it's a snack that's hard to place. So I want someone at least currently that is more adventurous in how they snack and more adventurous in their flavors, more willing to pick up something that's new, different. So looking in the food service channel, college campuses, airports, metro people on the go. We're opening up a sports bar and I'm like, this is perfect. Yes, exactly. So finding partners like that as well, breweries. We have breweries. We have those too. I'm very much looking to place it in people's lives and take the thinking out of it. So I think an airline partner. Obviously you need to get the margins right for that as well. But it's something that it gives people a chance to try it without having to overcommit in a way. It's clear.  It's, I mean, again, it's been a journey. Yeah, no, clearly, but you landed it. Landed the plane. When it comes to marketing, what are your initiatives you got? Obviously you can tell your own story from the Netflix stuff and so that's a huge or it can be like a big boost. What kind of partnerships are you looking to do? What's the social media? What is the digital presence? Yeah, so I mean, I'm a solo founder so I'm really doing everything at the moment and so investors, yeah, that would be great to have more money to obviously do more of the things but what I've come to find is a lot of brands now that are successful are very transparent. So I mean, a lot of our social is me on the camera talking, which is very funny. I was on a show but I wouldn't say that I'm someone that just jumps right in front of the camera so putting myself out there. I mean, as the product's changing as well, letting consumers in on that journey, I think that is a huge part of our brand. Something that's fun as well is we have our noodle characters. Each flavor has its own kind of noodle mascot and a really exciting part of this actually is a chef that I used to work with. His wife illustrated all of our drawings so it's also this personal bit that comes into it. So exploring again this kind of like nostalgic playfulness of it, finding the right brands that lean into that as well. But yeah, I mean, I think for us we wanna do a lot of events because I think it's another way for us this year to get in front of eyes of people that maybe we don't have stores in their location yet or they wouldn't pick up the snack otherwise so it's an easy chance for them to try it. And again, doing demos, the key areas for us are kind of promos, activations, placement. How was Expo West for you? So I walked this year as a brand. I mean, again, I'm early on so maybe don't have the means for a booth but I think there's so many opportunities for brands that don't have those means to just walk. There's a lot of brands that need help as well so you can very much help for one day, help for a couple hours and get a badge and be able to still experience everything that everyone else is being a part of. Also meeting other founders and I think it's kind of this moment where you can realize you're not the only one. Everyone else is going through the same thing and it's a bit of therapy and there's also a lot of sampling events outside of Expo as well. So there's so many opportunities and again, we made all of these changes to our formulation recently and so it was really exciting to put it out there and see everyone's reaction and it was very much this reaction of just you've got it, you've got it. And so yeah, I'm so excited to leave this week and be like, let's go. It's funny you mentioned therapy. This podcast is a bit of therapy for me, which is fun because it's like, oh, nice. We get to vent about the things we're dealing with and obviously give some promo. Well, look, thanks for coming on the podcast.  Yeah, so right now it's available D2C online at our site. Foxtrot is a big part. snoots.com, what's the website? Yeah, yeah, yeah, eatsnoots.com. Eatsnoots on Instagram, come and find us. Send snoots, eatsnoots, yeah.  We're in Foxtrot, like I said, Fairway, Shopbrite, Gormick, Raj. We're launching the end of April and we have a really big retail partner coming up that I don't think I'm allowed to announce yet. We'll be in June. So we're slowly expanding, but I think by the end of this year you'll see us kind of everywhere. Lauren, congratulations. Thank you so much. This was such a treat chatting with you. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with your friends, your family, or anyone you might think might benefit from the conversation we've had today. And if you haven't already, please take a moment to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We'd greatly appreciate it. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more people who can benefit from our discussions. The best way to stay connected with us and get the latest updates on future episodes is through our social media channels. You can find us at Startup and Storefront. We'll be back next Tuesday with another great episode. See you then.


Hey welcome back everyone, I'm here with a video on the newest release of Dragon Quest XI. Today we're talking about the new version of Dragon Quest XI-S out on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. And whether or not I think it's worth buying based on my impressions with the game. I'd like to thank Square Enix, the publisher of this title for providing me with a copy of the PC version for a review. This is my review of Dragon Quest XI-S, Echoes of an Elusive Age Definitive Edition. Now if you're watching this video, you likely fall into one of three categories. You either have never played Dragon Quest XI before, you played the original Dragon Quest XI on PS4 or PC, or you played the updated version last year on Switch, Dragon Quest XI-S. In any case, this video is for you. I think this will be a good opportunity to tell every person what they're getting out of this new release of the game. We'll be going over things like the graphics, the gameplay, and the story, so stay tuned. Now let's begin. What is this game? Well, it's Dragon Quest XI. A game I think is the best RPG of the entire generation. It's a game that embraces its roots as a turn-based RPG with modern quality of life features. Like in classic games, it doesn't waste your time with long tutorials or holds your hand. You're literally fighting monsters minutes into the game. It's a game about exploration and adventure that lets players go off on their own to figure things out by themselves. The journey is started and you really feel like the game is running at an excellent pace. The biggest problems with RPGs that bog down the experience to me these days is that you'll find yourself playing for a long time and feeling like you don't accomplish much. While in Dragon Quest XI, you can play for a short period of time and accomplish a whole lot while also propelling the story forward a significant amount. I rarely play Dragon Quest XI and feel like I waste it any time. It's the kind of game that is perfect for long-play sessions and for picking up for just a few minutes at a time. It's essentially the culmination of what RPGs have been working towards for years, a near perfection of the genre.  You probably know all of this by now.  The NPCs populating the world often add to the atmosphere of the game world with their witty dialogue that more often than not contains hints or foreshadowing throughout the story. Nothing feels randomly placed in this game. It's like everything has a purpose throughout. This world is essentially your playground for exploring and grinding. The party characters you meet are also extremely likable. They all have unique aspects to them that help them stand apart from each other. In the demo you meet Erika Veronica in Serena. Erika is a thief who's been around the block and acts as the Luminary's guiding force. Since the Luminary is a silent protagonist who acts as sort of a shell for the player, Erika talks for him in a way and is a major character for the first few hours of the game. She knows where everything is and explains things about the world to the player in a very non-condescending manner. You know, games often have a problem with annoying sidekick characters that insult the player's intelligence and repeat stuff you know over and over again, but Erika is not one of these characters. He feels like a wise traveling companion. There's quite a bit of brotherhood between him and the silent protagonist as they journey on their travels, find new places and interact with each other. In fact, all of the heroes in this game who you meet play a similar role. Serena and Veronica are also in the demo. However, for most of the game, Veronica is the only one with an interesting personality. Serena is just there.  Veronica is this sassy character who speaks her mind very often and is one of the more memorable characters in the game. While Serena is very soft-spoken, but kind and she serves as the healer to Veronica's battle mage. The full game unlock features Silvanda who is a real interesting character. She's something like a traveling gesture, but with the abilities of a warrior mixed in. The other two characters making up the band of heroes are Arab and Jade, these two mysterious figures who are on a journey of their own. Jade is badass and one of the most powerful fighters on the team with some killer moves. And Arab is a wise and very funny character. He reminds me a lot of Master Roshi from Dragon Ball in many ways. The story of the game is character driven. It's like I said earlier. It's not your typical JRPG with a long confusing intro and loads of cutscenes. The story is super simple and easy for anyone to understand, but it leaves questions and little gaps in the lore for dedicated fans to speculate over when the game is done. Honestly, this is the best way for games to tell stories non-intrusively. For a huge chunk of the game's intro, you don't even know why you're traveling with these people. I mean seriously, at first you're just going from town to town looking for answers as to why the King of Heliodors after you. There's not a whole lot of exposition in the game or reasoning for what you're doing. Although the main villain of the game is for probably the first 20 hours of the game I'd say, the experience is oddly self-aware as a video game. You're just here for the adventure and for solving problems for characters in the different towns you find yourself in. The cutscenes that are here are always interesting and never bloated, getting right to the point and still delivering a very emotional story. The game never feels like it's telling the whole story through its cutscenes. Instead, it's a guided experience by the characters and what's going on in the moment to guide you across the land of Andrea, through deserts, jungles, large fields, snowy mountains, and across the seas. You stop by at campsites to let everyone rest and you can talk to all of your companions to see how they're doing and get clues about your journey. This is exactly how an adventure game should feel. You know, an adventure where you don't feel like you're on rails but you kind of are to keep the story going. All while stopping in as many towns to help people pick up a few sidequests on the way and maybe even progress your characters by collecting items and crafting new materials. It's a surprisingly deep, organic experience and Dragon Quest certainly has more to it than your average reviewer lets on about this title. As you venture on your journey, the gameplay presents itself with fast, strategic, and fun turn-based combat and a character building system that is simple on the surface but requires a lot of planning and thinking for certain situations. The combat allows for characters to fight using different weapons, abilities, skills, and spells, and there's even a Chrono Trigger-esque power system that lets multiple characters perform special skills under the right circumstances and these can prove to turn around a losing fight by doing things such as healing the entire party, increasing everyone's defense, or hitting the enemy with a strong attack. Battles are won and characters level up at a moderate speed, gaining them skill points and you utilize these skill points on skill trees that unlock some very useful moves, abilities, and situations. For example, you can unlock the dual wielding ability for Eric if you put enough skill points into his knives tree and then you can use that ability to dual wield other weapons like long swords. It's this kind of planning and mixing and matching of different skill trees that is where Dragon Quest XI shines in its simple complexity as you may find that many players won't play the same way and if you don't like the way your characters are built no worries, you can always retract your skill points at a church and reallocate them for a fee, no need to start the game all over again like other RPGs. It's this kind of accessibility and flexibility of the systems where Dragon Quest XI excels beyond its competition. There's not a whole lot of game breaking consequences. Any player of any skill level can probably beat this game, some faster than others for sure, but it's a game that prides itself on being for everyone essentially, with all its options for traversal, write-downs of the game options letting the game flow at the pace of the player. You can run past every enemy on the overworld if you want to avoid as many fights as you want only to face bosses underleveled, requiring an emphasis on strategy rather than powering through a boss and players are rewarded for this bravery with getting to the next point faster. Get knocked out by a boss and you have the option of starting the dungeon over with your levels kept and half of your gold gone, no harm, no foul, or you can use the autosave feature and it's like you were never there. It's these choices that make the game as hard as you want it to be based on how much work you put into Dragon Quest XI that highlights its extremely well-balanced gameplay, world, and progression system. That's a lot to say that I like this game and I highly recommend it to any person who likes video games and even some people who don't. It was a perfect game back in 2018 and somehow even more perfect now with the release of Dragon Quest XI S. Now I have a lot of experience with Dragon Quest XI. I played it two years ago on PC and I played it quite a bit last year on the Switch with a definitive edition. I've done mostly everything you can do in both games and have a total of about 200 or so hours clocked in across all versions of the game with my characters nearly maxed out on their levels. The game itself is nothing short of an incredible experience every time and DQ11S is just more of a perfect thing. Almost every major issue I had with the original release was ironed out in the definitive edition showing that the developers really do listen to their fans. However I've seen a common concern about this game and I figured I should address this because I know people will ask. I've seen it going around as some people seem to be confused or think that this is the same exact game as the Switch version that released last year except for modern consoles and this is partly true and partly false. The game utilizes assets from the Switch version and includes every little bit of extra content the Switch version added. It has orchestral music which was a big fan request especially when the original PS4 version came out and had a midi soundtrack. The definitive soundtrack truly does this game the justice it deserves honestly and is on its own enough of a reason to justify getting this game if you ask me. There's some really great tracks here although a lot are used from previous games this could be either a plus or a minus depending on what you're expecting in your nostalgia levels with the series. Among the orchestral soundtrack there's a 2D mode that looks like an SNES game and it runs in a very smooth 60 FPS. It's styled like Dragon Quest 3 on the Super Famicom and it is just a huge retro throwback. The combat even changes to be a little more difficult as you have to choose everyone's moves all at once while in the 3D mode you have your parties move one at a time. Additionally there's no more enemies out on the field that you can see it's all random encounters from here. It's a very authentic retro experience that very well could have released 25 years ago and you could play the entire game from beginning to end in this mode.  I mean a retro style demake of the entire game loaded in who does that?  With these past words you can travel the 16 bit versions of prior Dragon Quest worlds. There's so many inside jokes that poke fun at the different events long time Dragon Quest fans might recognize like the Prince of Kanak from Dragon Quest 2 leading you on a wild goose chase and the Masayuki map being in Dragon Quest 9's world. I think this is just so great for Dragon Quest fans being able to talk to all these different characters from previous games and exploring worlds we still venture in. No matter where you started in Dragon Quest there's something nostalgic for you here and it is just a great tribute to the series long history. Honestly just a great feature and it features challenging bosses with unique rewards. Among these other big changes in the definitive version there's tons of new outfits and armors to wear. There's like a Ninja outfit for Eric and a Boracashian Veronica among others. New story chapters which admittedly feel a little bit tacked on and my favorite feature of all being able to switch to battle speed to be super fast so you can rip through the battles twice as fast. After getting this feature I just cannot go back to the original Dragon Quest 11. I'm sorry but that version runs in a snail space compared to this one. Honestly one of the best new changes in this version and I can't live without some of these outfits either. Now these additions are all great but I've heard people concerned about the graphics since this is a port of the Switch version of the game which is rebuilt from the ground up to be able to work on Switch. Here's the thing when DQ11S came out on the Switch I considered it to be the definitive version of the game because of all the additions. Sure the graphics weren't nearly on the level of the PC version but the content made it superior if you ask me. Now this new release of DQ11S for PS4, Xbox One and PC it's a high definition master of the same Switch version though there's a ton of misinformation regarding the graphics and I'd like to clear things up. So the game is nearly identical to the Switch version in terms of content. It has all the goodies that DQ11S added and not much more. What makes it different is that the graphics and framerate are much higher than the Switch version. See DQ11S on Switch cut a lot of corners to get such a good looking game to work on a tiny handheld and it did it remarkably. The game performed well on Switch and was one of the best looking games on the handheld. It actually had to be rebuilt from the ground up on the Switch so the developers conserved space by grouping together textures which made the game have a slightly different look not quite as detailed but not terrible either. Just different. And the new version is using the same type of assets so it will look similar to the Switch version in terms of color balance and lighting. Now this game is not bad looking and it is not a straight up port of the Switch version like people are saying. First of all it runs at a very solid and consistent 60 frames per second. This video is demonstrating the framerate. The original 11 had options for 60 FPS but it was rarely consistent and does not look nearly as smooth as this. Additionally the framerate can be unlocked to higher levels on PC. You can even have an unlimited framerate if your monitor can handle it. The original 11 on PC can't do that. While the original 11 on PC supports up to 4k unfortunately this release only goes up to 1080p but it still looks fantastic and you never know if an update might be able to bump it up. The textures aren't just ripped from the Switch port either they are clearly more detailed. They're actually nearly the same size and level of detail as the original version aside from character models which are nearly the same. So this game actually deserves more credit. What's also interesting to note is that even though the outside environments take a bit of a hit graphically 11s's interiors actually look much better than the original. The lighting has far more contrast and looks better overall aesthetically. Look here at Heliodor Castle. The floor is so shiny you can see the reflections of everything in it. 11s actually looks like an improvement over the original graphically especially in interior dungeons and buildings. Now if you haven't been following along so far the game looks very good and the framerate blows the original out of the water and makes this one look far better if you ask me. People who are worried about this game being a switch port not looking good I don't think you should be. Now I think I gave a good rundown on why I think this game is extremely good. Now the question is Dragon Quest 11s worth it? Well if this is your first time playing Dragon Quest 11 yes it absolutely is this this is the version you want. I've heard people say they want to start with the vanilla version because of the graphics or the price being cheaper but you're not getting the best experience unless you get this one. This game has a super speedy battle system that I honestly can't live without. It has so many cool costumes with characters that aren't in the original. Among tons of accessibility features that streamline the experience like being able to summon a horse from anywhere. Being able to craft on the road without having to go to a campsite and being able to buy all the crafting ingredients you want at once it's like the thought of everything they could do to improve the original experience. For newcomers definitely get this version. Now if you played through the original 11 without all the 11 as bonus stuff I'd still say it's worth playing. There's enough extra content that makes it a different type of experience. You'll find this to be your favorite version of the game I guarantee it. The toggle quest alone make it worth it to me and there's even extra bosses for an added challenge so definitely go for it. Now if you play this on Switch you're not really getting anything new. It's the same game except it looks better. If that's really important to you then absolutely get the game but if it isn't I'm not so sure this is a definitive sale. Also keep in mind this is the third version of DQ11 the West has gotten technically. We got 11 in 2018, 11s for Switch in 2019 and now we're getting 11s for HD consoles this year making this a third release of DQ11 in a row. I'm not sure if Nintendo had a timed exclusive deal or something for the game but playing it a third time I can see it being tiring especially among hardcore Dragon Quest fans. I'm just glad the game doesn't cost 60 dollars instead it's 40. Still a lot but not nearly as much as I expected. Now if you're on the fence I'd like to mention that the game has a free demo on all available consoles that is about 10 hours long maybe even more. It's one of the longest and most extensive game demos I've ever seen. You can even save in it and transfer your progress to the final game. It covers a chunk of the final game and it's worth trying. As far as I'm concerned everyone with the hard drive space should download this at least. There's no reason not to. If the game interests you you can literally play the first 10 hours for free and see if you like it. Why not download it and see it for yourself? It could be your favorite game one day. As for me I'm happy with the game and I will be playing it on PC to take advantage of the best visual quality possible. So I hope you all enjoy this review of Dragon Quest 11s. It's been a long time request so I hope I delivered. I also want to thank everyone so much for helping me get to 11,000 subscribers. It really means a lot to me that so many people enjoyed the channel and I hope to keep bringing you all more content. We'll be covering more on Dragon Quest 11 as soon so stay tuned. So once again thank you all for watching and I'll see you all next time.