Christopher Jane: Shark Tank to National Retail

Before Proper Good existed, what was the first moment you realized there was something fundamentally broken about how people were feeding themselves especially busy, on-the-go people who still cared about ingredients?

So the general insight was, I think America actually has some really good food in restaurants and just generally some parts of the grocery store, right — fresh and organic vegetables and grass-fed beef and things like that. There’s a lot of generally good food.

But the middle of the store which is the cereal, the pastas, the canned soups they just haven’t changed in like 100 years, right? It’s the same brands in the same format, just honestly with worse ingredients. The ingredients are very long.

And that’s just different to the UK, which is where I grew up, spent the first 20 years of my life there. It’s just very different. A lot of the ready-to-eat food in the UK does have clean ingredients and pronounceable ingredient lists.

So I just felt there was a big disconnect. And I felt like if you could afford it, you could get great food go to Sweetgreen every day and do things like that but it’s a $20 salad. So what is the normal everyday person supposed to do for lunch when they don’t want to spend all their money on app delivery or eat pizza in the canteen or can’t afford to go to Sweetgreen?

What do they do?

And we just felt that was something we could solve. So it was mostly about that everyday usage occasion, as opposed to something specialist or high price.

You grew up on the south coast of England, studied finance in London, and then jumped to Montana to build Montana Mex. What did that move teach you about risk and how did it quietly prepare you for what came later?

Yes, you’re right. I did my undergraduate in finance and banking, and most of my friends went to Goldman Sachs and places like that.

My sister was living in the US at the time, and I came to visit her in Montana. She was dating a chef, and for fun in the summer, we just started selling products in a farmers market fresh salsa, things like that.

It just kind of snowballed from there. Suddenly you’re in a few local stores, then you’re talking to bigger chains like Sprouts or Whole Foods, and before you know it, you’ve sort of accidentally stumbled into something that’s doing some sales.

The challenge was that we didn’t really have a great thesis on the category. We didn’t do much research before. It was more of which is very common in food you just make something you want to make and sell it. Some catch on, some don’t.

But that doesn’t always translate to working within the national food system. There are just some realities and frictions of distribution and retail and margins that make it difficult.

So honestly, we built what I would describe as a very difficult system.

I left as one of the four co-founders and went to do my MBA. And then while doing my MBA, we decided to jump back into the food industry, honestly because I’d already done it for five years. We’d worked with every distributor, every retailer, been to every trade show. I knew how the system worked.

And I felt the opportunities we saw hadn’t been fixed yet. So we started Proper Good right out of my MBA.

Share

When you stepped away to pursue your MBA at Stanford, what did you unlearn about business and what did you double down on?

I think the best part about the MBA by a mile was being in a room with 400 people roughly the same age, all similar academic ability, but doing wildly different things.

Some people were going to Amazon or McKinsey. Others were building crazy fintech startups. Others were just trying to figure out what they wanted to do.

I’d always run a business and never really had a traditional job. I knew I liked starting businesses. We knew how to go from zero to one. I love the fun and adrenaline that comes with starting with a blank piece of paper and creating something.

So the question was less about “What should I do after the MBA?” and more about “I’m probably going to start something what should I start?”

Being surrounded by people doing so many different things made you realize there isn’t one set path. There are so many circuitous ways to success.

If you’ve got an idea and an insight, and you’re young enough to take on risk, it’s a great time to go for it.

It wasn’t something specific academically. Most of that you can learn online these days. It was more about the people and learning what you should do with your life.

Many people think “making great food” is the hard part. You’ve said distribution and supply chain are the real battle. What nearly broke when you tried to take Proper Good national?

Food is very easy to get into. You could make something this week, get a permit, and sell it at a farmers market. Very low barrier to entry.

But that middle ground going from small company through growth and into national retail is very expensive and fraught with risk.

Production, shipping, marketing across thousands of stores — everything is difficult.

One of the biggest mistakes we made was moving from DTC to retail using our e-commerce packaging. Online we can show ads, videos, send drip campaigns. In a store, it’s just sitting there in aisle 10 with 40,000 other items.

That packaging has to do all the heavy lifting.

We should have been more intentional about redesigning for retail before making that jump.

Thanks for reading Making Builders! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

How did launching DTC in April 2020 at a moment of global uncertainty shape the company’s DNA?

We launched essentially as COVID was shutting everything down.

Usually, food brands rely on trade shows, farmers markets, live demos. All of that went away.

So for two years, all we did was e-commerce.

And e-commerce is a math game average order value, contribution margin it’s data driven.

That honed the business. It forced us to understand why people were buying. We got to tens of thousands of reviews, figured out subscriptions. It made us very focused.

But it also meant we weren’t immediately ready for other channels, because we’d only done one thing.

Shark Tank brought massive visibility, but visibility doesn’t guarantee longevity. What changed operationally after the cameras turned off?

Shark Tank gives you millions of eyeballs. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people to your website.

You try to capture emails and SMS. It’s a fun inflection point.

But a few weeks later, it’s about recapturing those consumers. Making sure they tell others.

Operationally, it builds credibility. When you pitch retailers, having strong website stats plus Shark Tank credibility helps.

And it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Re-airings bring bumps.

For a shippable consumer brand, what could be the downside of an 8-10 minute national TV spot? It’s fantastic.

Getting into 2,000+ Walmart locations is a milestone many founders dream about. What did you have to prove internally before you felt the brand was ready for that scale?

Food works at scale. There are profitable, very old companies printing money every month.But that growth phase is expensive and risky. You need to understand production, shipping, margins, packaging. Retail packaging has to do the heavy lifting.We learned that the hard way.

Outside of building Proper Good, you snowboard, practice yoga sculpt, and foster kittens. How do those parts of your life shape the way you lead and make decisions as a founder?

All of those are still very true and very relevant. I love the business because you have full control over it. Like, we want to launch in this retailer, we can do it. We want to design this product, we can spend some time or money on it.

And I like those activities because you’re deciding how to spend your time. And that’s exactly the same with health and fitness things like snowboarding or weight surfing and all my favorite activities. They’re very much like, you get out what you put in, right?

The kitten thing is probably our favorite thing we do. We’ve had over 100 bottle baby kittens, just because it’s totally differentThe kitten knows literally nothing. It’s four days old. It’s being fed every two hours, including nighttime.

But it’s just nurturing. It’s fun. It’s a totally different thing. So when you spend all of your day in spreadsheets and cash flow and investor raising and whatever, having this funny little thing that just wants to drink from a bottle and purr it’s just a totally different side of your life.

And I think that just keeps life very, very fun. Honestly, you just can’t work 24/7. So I want to make sure the rest of the time I do something impactful, and honestly, it’s just super fun.

You’ve chosen to build Proper Good from Austin. What does Austin give you as a founder that other cities don’t?

Very intentionally here.Austin, for consumer products especially food and beverage is one of the top ecosystems, if not the top. There are multiple billion-dollar brands and hundred-million-dollar brands within a five-mile radius. That’s not the same as Bozeman, Montana. There are events every couple weeks. Big events, small events, coffee meets. We’ve met investors and service providers here.

It’s a very good place to be based specifically for food and beverage.

For founders building physical products today especially food what’s one piece of advice you wish someone had given you before your first retail yes?

Food is easy to start, hard to scale.

Validate early whether it’s a big enough idea.

The worst place to be is a gray middle ground not failing, but not really working.

Is your innovation big enough? Or are you innovating on the margin?

If your whole innovation is “jerky with global flavors,” that’s not enough.

Also: is it something consumers want, or something you want them to want?

If there’s a tailwind high protein, lower sugar, convenience that’s easier.

And keep it simple.

We made the mistake of having too many SKUs early on. If you’re starting out, pick one or two clear things you do very well.

Make it easy to communicate. Easy to understand.

Treat it like a mini MBA. All the information is free online.

Just go deep.

Making Builders is about builders who start quietly and compound over time. When people tell the story of Proper Good years from now, what do you hope they get right about the early days?

Honestly, that it started with a real problem.

That it wasn’t flashy.

It was a whiteboard, an idea, and figuring it out.

And that the early days were about learning e-commerce, retail, supply chain peeling back risk layer by layer.

That it wasn’t overnight. It was iterative.

And that we just kept going.