Chomps: Pete Maldonado and Rashid Ali

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By Guy Raz | Wondery. Discovered by Player FM and our community — copyright is owned by the publisher, not Player FM, and audio is streamed directly from their servers. Hit the Subscribe button to track updates in Player FM, or paste the feed URL into other podcast apps.

When steaks don’t sell you shift to sticks; that’s how Chomps was born. After several failed ventures—one of which left him bankrupt—Pete Maldonado decided to take another chance on launching a business. He partnered with Rashid Ali to start a mail-order service similar to Omaha Steaks, but with grass-fed meat that was more suited to the Paleo diet. When the partners couldn’t get that off the ground, they shifted to individually-wrapped meat sticks; one of the first in a long line of ‘healthier for you’ protein snacks. For several years, each co-founder tried to manage the business as a side-hustle, but the sausage hit the fan in 2016 when a surprise order from Trader Joe’s left them scrambling to produce a million sticks. Today, Chomps is available in major chains across the country and pulls in more than $100 million a year.

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