Hi everyone,
So, some bad news here at Basically Food – we just ran out of BUILD chocolate, again. :/ I’m sorry. And we’re still waiting on BURN chocolate, and now BUILD vanilla, coming within the next few weeks. Fortunately, we still have plenty of BOOST chocolate and vanilla in stock.
Beyond that, crowdfunding?
Here’s an update:
Our third manufacturer is behind schedule, but they should be ready to mix and package BURN chocolate and BUILD vanilla as soon as the last ingredients have arrived, sometime in the next few weeks. That includes a new batch of our custom vitamin mix, as well as the last of our preferred cocoa powder before it’s out of stock till 2026, due to a global cocoa powder shortage. For future chocolate runs, we’re looking into alternative cocoa powder suppliers – still working on that. :d
Given the many delays and poor communication with this third manufacturer, we’ve spent the last few months searching for and talking with other manufacturers, focusing on those that will let us handle the ingredient sourcing and just charge us a fee to mix and package our product. We’ve talked with quite a few promising candidates, and narrowed it down to our top choice with a few good backup options if that one doesn’t work out. Feeling optimistic about that. :]
Unfortunately, a few obstacles have popped up. One is that right as we’ve started reaching out to our old suppliers to get started on ordering ingredients for the next few runs, the tariff situation unfolding in the US has resulted in many suppliers being out of stock due to panic buying, and facing price changes that are still up in the air but could result in some key ingredients (like rice protein) doubling in price by the time we can get our hands on any. :o
Secondly, once we make the final payment on BURN chocolate and BUILD vanilla with our third manufacturer, we won’t have any more money to pay for the next few runs. Yep, we’ve (almost) finally done it – we’ve run out of money. :p That’s what happens when you have a few years of slow sales and then run out of inventory for over a year, turns out.
If you’re reading this, you probably know that the product is good – better than most alternatives, some might say – and the business model is solid. Hard to go wrong with a shelf-stable food product that people buy month after month, year after year. The market certainly supports many similar companies, orders of magnitude larger than ours. And with a stable supply, and a sales volume high enough, the business could be comfortably profitable – enough to expand in the ways we’ve been meaning to for years, like “just add water” powder or ready-to-eat bars.
I’ve been incredibly lucky to be able to bootstrap this business from day one without outside funding. As you may have noticed, over the last few years, that luck has run out. But that doesn’t mean the show is over – it just means that we’ll have to make our own luck, in the way that most people expect to do when they start a business. And if there’s any business worth starting right now, it’s this one.
To start with, I will contribute as much as I can afford from my personal savings (back from the few years I worked in tech, long ago) to fund the next three runs with our fourth (and hopefully) final manufacturer: BURN vanilla, and BALANCE vanilla and chocolate. And that should buy us a few more months of inventory, at least.
But beyond that, we’re going to need another influx of cash – and hopefully a much bigger one, so we can order enough inventory to last a year or more and get some nice volume discounts while we’re at it. Because I’m allergic to venture capitalists, in addition to my many food allergies, that means crowdfunding – taking preorders from you all, along with anyone else who will take a chance on us. If Ample could raise over $350k and Vite Ramen could raise almost $250k, we could probably do the same, right? :3
Or, if you have another idea, let us know. c:
The other thing to note is that with these new tariffs in place, our ingredient costs are likely to be quite a bit higher, especially for the formulas with rice protein (everything except BOOST). I’m currently estimating about $10 more per unit, give or take, just in raw ingredient costs. Yes, it’s ridiculous. And very artificial. But it looks like it’s here to stay. And if it does, we’ll have to charge an extra $10 per tub, or bag, accordingly, just to break even: $60 instead of $50, a 20% increase.
And if we do, it will be the first time we’ve raised our base price from $50 since I started this business 10 years ago, as Super Body Fuel in 2015. We did not raise prices during COVID. We did not raise prices during the last few years of growing inflation, even as our costs crept up – we just slowly ran out of money. But if our ingredient costs go up by $10, we will have to raise our prices by $10. We have no money left. All we have is our recipes and our values. And you.
Remember, we still have DIY recipes available for all product lines and flavors, so reach out if you want to make your own in the meantime! ;)
Thanks for believing in us! <3
Alex Cho Snyder (axcho)
