The R1bn American adventure – Springs’ Chief Biltong Officer Warren Pala

There is an American company called Stryve that is selling biltong in the United States and it is determined to grab the market share of jerky, the American equivalent. Stryve is marketing biltong as a healthier meat snack and they have raised nearly R1bn for expansion. The Chief Manufacturing Officer of Stryve is South African-born entrepreneur, Warren Pala. He started making biltong for his company Braaitime in his garage joined forces with Stryve's founders who have also bought another biltong company, Biltong USA. Warren Pala told BizNews from Oklahoma how he leapt from Springs to the US and how Stryve wants to take control of the market in the US. – Linda van Tilburg

Springs entrepreneur finds a partner to expand and think big

"It's something that Joe Oblas, one of the founders of Straub and myself agreed on in our first meeting, we would like every American to try biltong, because we both know as soon as they do, jerky's done. It is just about as simple as that. I basically started the company in 2005 my little Braaitime company in my garage just because I missed biltong. I couldn't find it here and what we could get was jerky, which was not comparable. And then, you know, spent a lot of money and a lot of time figuring out how to navigate the US system, the snack market, the RTE, the CPG (consumer packaged goods) side, the food safety is the piece that really consumed me. And after I got my USDA (US Department of Agriculture) approval and grant, I still couldn't get traction in CPG. So, it just takes a lot of money and a lot of contacts and a lot of experience. In 2017, I met Joe Oblas, who's one of my partners and founder of Stryve, as well as the other two that helped found the company, was Ted Casey and Gabe Carimi. Our goals were in alignment, we wanted the same thing. They loved us and they loved the nutritionals; they thought it was a revolution and they had the experience in CPG and manufacturing to take it to the next level. I saw that they had raised money to do so. And so, I moved my family, my wife and our five kids from New Jersey, where I had a facility at 10 000-foot square foot facility to Texas. When we got here, it took a while to find our feet. We ended up actually purchasing a facility in just over the border in Oklahoma, a 50,000 square foot biltong factory. It was actually a peanut factory when we bought it and we converted and rebuilt from the ground up…"

Right now, we've been essentially doubling every year since we since I got here. The sales side, that is thanks to my partners, that capacity was already baked into the cake here. So that confidence up front to build a facility that can take us from 12 million to 28 million to 38 million to 50 million to our revenues growing at the moment and it grows every day. I think we have 30 000 doors that sell our biltong products.

Hitting the spot with selling biltong as a healthy product in the US

Biltong, believe it or not, is actually a lot healthier than jerky for a myriad of reasons. And other than just tasting better, it doesn't have the MSG, the nitrates, the sugar. The sugar is a big factor, and especially at the moment, people have realized sugar is not good for you. It hits all the right hallmarks. It's a higher quality protein. As we all know, it's not cooked to the degree that jerky is. Jerky is kind of cooked to death, for want of a better word. The meat and the quality of the protein is just better, the structures better. So, your body absorbs; it's a very bioavailable form of protein. I'm preaching to the choir, I'm sure. There is definitely a gap in the market. As you know, biltong has taken Australia by storm; It's taken the UK by storm and taken Europe by storm. It's the snack of choice in all those other parts of the world. It just needed the nut cracked, in the US, and that was the USDA piece that. And then, of course, someone to do it, which is me and my partners.

Target market is not the manly, hunting, trucker type

Our target market is families in motion. There's a large market segment at the moment of people who want to eat better. They want to have better snacking for their kids. They want to grab and go. It's a massive segment and it's under-served at the moment with healthy snacks. And so rather than compete directly with the truckers and the SAS squad guys; currently jerky markets to the manly men who like hunting. We're not doing that, we're using our healthier, nutritional panel to expand into other markets, large markets.

A recent round of R540m counting to a total of R1bn raised

We've been through a number of raises. This one was our first public raise. We are public now [on the Nasdaq] under the ticker SNAX. So ,we got the best possible ticker. We couldn't believe it was available when it came available… We are getting a lot of business this year and for that reason, we need to expand.

That is a lot of runs, but to put that in perspective. We have a Costco deal; I'm currently working on now, which would need working capital right there of $10m or so. And it sounds like a lot of money, but you're going to buy meat and we've got to put it through the system and we've got to send it to Costco and for all of that cash flow has to be there. We'll end up getting paid at the end, but for right now, we need some runway. I mean, we've kept our belts tight; we've been frugal, but we have definitely at the right times and the ability to raise money when we need it. It's a key thing to be able to move quickly and sort of capitalise on what we know is a disruptor, a category disruptor. If we sit back and take 10 years to do this or 20 years to do this; it would end up with Jack Links (US jerky co) or somebody taking the cake from us.

Droëwors is sticks and sticks are slabs, but marketed as air dried beef without an SA reference

Interestingly, I learnt early that  it is not the best way to approach it just because the word is difficult to sell, you better educate them, the Americans, and the public.; same with droëwors. Even the name of the company, Braaitime was horrendous… So, you learn pretty quickly, but Stryve has biltong snacks, we still sell it as biltong. But we've also figured out that the better way to do it is to take the category of air-dried beef, which is what the USDA designated it as, and you can expand into various sort of Hispanic markets, the Spanish, there's a bunch of other places where they do air- dried beef. We have the USDA approval to do it. So, we we're expanding the category.

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