In this week’s interview we break down operations with Samy from Snacklins – a snack so good, at 90 calories you can eat the whole damn bag. 

Samy was also featured on 🦈Shark Tank and made a deal with Mark Cuban.

When manufacturing food, you have two options: make it yourself, or hire a co-man🏭. 

Many brands at scale choose to hire a co-man, but Samy knew from the beginning he wanted to build his own. 

It didn’t come without its fair share of challenges. 

Check out our interview with Samy to find out how he setup manufacturing, hired a team, and purchased equipment from oversees on his way to scale. 

Samy Inteview

Jordan: Samy, this week we’re talking about operations. You’ve done a great job at expanding your own operations and building out a great team. I’d love for you just to give a quick introduction of yourself and how you got into Snacklins.

Samy: Yes, I can tell you straight up that Snacklins is a joke that has gotten very out of hand. It started as a bet between me and friends to make a vegan porkrind. Once we made that vegan porkrind we realized that we had more on our hand than just a plant based chicharron. So, now we make junk food without the junk. You know, fresh simple ingredients yuca, mushrooms, and onions. It makes a delicious, crunchy, salty chip that tastes like junk food but has no junk, and has just 80 calories for the whole bag. The key for us was our unique way of making our snack.

No one else was making something like us. We decided to focus on the manufacturing, as much of a pain in the ass it was. It was very important because that’s what kept us separate, that’s what kept us unique. Everyone else, if you’re working with a co-manufacturer that’s awesome, but if they’re making 30 different products you’re probably going to be similar to one of those other products in there.

By manufacturing Snacklins ourselves we can keep them unique and have the best tasting product that’s hard to replicate. Most manufacturers wouldn’t dare use fresh mashrooms and onions in their process.

Jordan: That’s amazing. So when making a decision to manufacture yourself did you look at working with contract manufactures?

Samy: Yes we looked at a bunch and unfortunately they all said “we can’t do your exact recipe. You’re only making a small amount now, but if you make it on an industrial level the recipes have to change. That’s how it is with every product.” I refused to believe that we had to change our recipe. I knew that it would affect the flavor and the taste.

First and foremost people choose to eat one food over another because it tastes good. That’s what separates us in the healthy snack category. We try to make something delicious first and then make it healthy.

Jordan: One thing that I found in working with contract manufacturers is that they start with your recipe and then force it into the equipment and the process that they have.

Samy: You need to keep your process intact, because you may not fully understand what your customers like most about your product, so you don’t want to tweak your process to the point where you turn away customers.

Jordan: Walk me through what it was like when you first started, how were you making Snacklins and how has your equipment, process, or facility evolved since the beginning?

Samy: Like any other company we started off making it by hand at someone’s apartment. We moved on to renting out a juice bar and still making a lot of it by hand. Hand frying, hand bagging, hand seasoning. We slowly grew by realizing if we just make these little adjustments we could make more. We didn’t have a lot of investment at the beginning. If we could save $1500 we would choose to buy a machine to help. I realized that no one was making anything like our product on a larger level. I ended up looking through a bunch of machines and started purchasing some. Over time we started buying bigger and more, bigger and more. We slowly built it up and now we have our own facility and can manufacture a lot more chips efficiently and in an automated process. We’ve never lost employees. We have the same number that we had before-hand, but now we can just make more.

Jordan: It sounds like you really grew by just piecing together existing machinery. Have you done any custom machinery or are they all just pre-built machines you have been using?

Samy: A lot of it was just piecemealing a bunch of random shit together. Oh this machine is used to actually make something else, but we can modify it to do what we need. Then there were certain machines that we would buy and customize. We pretty much modify all the machinery that we do get in. We give it that good old American touch once it gets over here.

Jordan: Where are you sourcing most of the machines?

Samy: Most of the specialized machines that brokers sell are coming from China. They were just assembling or modifying it in their home country. We now get everything directly sourced from China. But like I said, we do use a lot of customizing, so our machines are a mix from China, Eastern Europe, and we probably have an Indian machine in there somewhere, too.

Jordan: It’s interesting. I recently quoted a couple of pieces of machinery for our molding process. And the prices range from a $200,000 dollar machine from Germany machine to a $10,000 machine from China. Both were decent quality, slightly different builds. But it’s crazy how similar pieces of equipment cost so much more depending on where it’s built.

Samy: I think that is when you got to do your job, you have to do the research yourself. Find out why it costs less, it’s not just labor. There’s something else involved there. A lot of the companies that I was going to buy from were sourcing the machines from China anyway.

Jordan: What worries companies about foreign equipment is not being able to see it. When you buy, do you actually travel to like China, to Europe to see the equipment and check it out?

Samy: Yeah, 100 percent like that’s part of your job. If you just get scared because you don’t get to see the machinery, that’s on you.

Samy: In your example, you have one machine that cost’s $200,000 and another that costs $10,000. That’s $190,000 that you have to travel to China, checkout the equipment, make modifications, and still save a bunch of money. I fly to inspect all the machines in person when possible. You may have to be more hands on with the machine, make modifications, hire an engineer to make repairs, but it’s totally worth it knowing your machines inside and out.

That’s why people go to a co-packer because they’d rather pay someone a premium to not have to deal with the headache. But working with a co-packer you’re going to have a headache in other aspects.

At least when you own the manufacturing, if there’s an issue like a recall it’s not some crazy delay that you have to deal with because, oh my god, I don’t have another inventory run for a month. If you make it yourself you can correct the product, pull it, and start running immediately.

Shit man, I’d rather own it. We can make changes on the fly. If we want to make a new flavor we can get those out in the market quickly. It takes more time waiting on the new packaging to arrive than it does to produce a new recipe.

Jordan: It allows you to innovate so much faster and actually can get product made and get it out.

Samy: What people don’t realize is that co-packers don’t care at all about you. If you don’t own at least some major aspect of your processing then they’re not going to care about you.

Jordan: Very insightful stuff Samy, thanks so much for joining us today.

Samy: Thanks man it’s been fun.