Chesapeake Bay Candle: Mei Xu (2017)

Hey everyone, it's Guy here. So A few years ago I sat down with an incredible entrepreneur. Her name is May Shi. And May arrived in the US. Basically not knowing a soul.

And about 20 years later, she wound up sitting next to President Barack Obama at the White House, advising him on how to create jobs in America. Because creating jobs Was exactly what May Shin was doing. With the candle company. She built.

From the ground up. This episode first aired in March of 2017. It's a super amazing story, and I hope you enjoy it. We registered for the New York Gift Show, which is the The holy grail of trade shows. And we thought that this is gonna be the ticket to our success. But

We were wrong. It was a complete disaster. From MPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. Guy Raz, and on today's show, the story of how Mei Shi left China for America.

Used Campbell soup cans to make candles. turn that into a multi-million dollar company. So almost Everything about the way Mei Shi's life turned out? is improbable.

The fact that she started a business that She makes candles that She even lives in America? None of this was supposed to happen. And

As she describes it. Growing up in China in the nineteen seventies was Kinda like living in a movie without much color. When we grow up there was absolutely nothing. Everyone w wear the same thing, everyone would be eating the same food. Everyone had the same small apartment. Life was very um Happy in the sense that you don't have to be jealous of each other, you don't have to be wanting things you could not have. In the Ninetin Seventys, China was still a black box.

closed off too much of the world. But eventually the government realized It needed better diplomats. People who spoke foreign languages well. So around the time May turned twelve, this is nineteen seventy nine,

The government decided to open up some boarding schools to train that next generation of diplomats. And May she? was one of the lucky few who got in. So We learned

Western culture, American studies. Uh Renaissance art all in English. And I knew more about Smithsonian and the locations of each art than many Americans, but And this was the thing about learning a language. A language is really living it. Um. I remember it was very funny that I was watching Godfather at fourteen, which has a lot of violence, a lot of sex and a lot of murders. But we were enjoying it. We we thought it was f you know, something that

um everyone in the United States do on it every given day. It was a pretty charmed life, especially compared to other Chinese kids. May was on the fast track to becoming a diplomat. But there was one problem. In the spring of nineteen eighty nine, the Chinese students started to organize demonstrations calling for more reforms, what we now know as the Tiananmen Square protests.

And after six weeks, the Chinese government cracked down. Now Machi wasn't an activist at the time, but that didn't matter. The government decided that educated young people like her We're a threat. So they were sent

out of Beijing. They assign me. Uh to a northern city. Yeah. Not even a city, a suburb. My job for the whole year is going to be

Watching a warehouse for minerals that are going to be for export. So I have a clipboard. I have two highlights of a day. When the truck comes to pick up one load I put a check.

And then it came again in the afternoon, I check. That will be the day. For me. For a whole year. You must have been miserable.

I was beyond miserable. At that time I was already dating my um First husband, his name is David. So we were very close and being far away was obviously not a good um arrangement. On top of that. What I worry the most is that for ten years

I was practicing and speaking English and And language is very easily forgotten. And I barely speak. Chinese, let alone English, because my boss does not like to talk to me. He's a man w with few words. He smoke most of the time. And that's my life for a year.

So maybe She decided to quit. She and David thought about what to do. He was a trained geophysicist and she spoke great English, so They decided to apply for temporary visas to come to the US.

And after two years of waiting. They got him. So I flew to Washington D C When we arrive at Dallas Airport, I was very sleepy because of the jet lag and I saw two signs. One is American citizen and the other is aliens. Yes. And the word aliens What

kind of confusing to me because I remember aliens from Star Wars or from, you know, those science movies. And I was so excited, I said, wow, they actually have a section for aliens. And um So I got very excited. I said, Let me see I'm certainly not American citizen, so I guess I'm going to have to go to the alien part and that's great because I can see them. I never knew that the word alien means the non American non green card holders. I guess they realize that too. They changed the name now.

Yeah. Wha what was it like to adjust to the US? I mean you had sort of immersed yourself in American culture your entire childhood, but then then you finally arrive here Did it surprise you? Did it disappoint you? Was it lonely? Well, I don't find it particularly difficult to adapt. What I find interesting is that in Washington, DC People kind of avoid eye contact. That's something I do

um think was my first impression of the city. I was riding the subway And I found it very interesting that as quickly as I look at someone, they immediately change their eyes and they try to focus on reading. And I said to myself, I said, Wow, this is a really deep city because everybody's always reading very big volumes. So were you able to to find a job? Yes. So I found a job in New York. It was a job for American

Medical device companies to export equipment to Chinese hospitals. And was it interesting work? Did you enjoy it? I have to be honest with you. It was a lot of paperwork pushing, a lot of import export documentations working with You know, different factories about uh SKU numbers and um pushing line of credit through the banks But what's interesting out of all these not so interesting things is that They put me in a hotel.

Um next Bloomingdales. Why was that interesting? Well, imagine a bird out of cage. Um I have always been interested in fashion. Many people wonder, you know, if you grow up in a country without any fashion, how can you really have an eye for it? Right. And When I was a

growing up in the foreign language middle school, uh, China at that time already started exporting fashion and they would have those um rejected fashion and they put them on sale near the you know, bus stations. So we would be jumping from one place to another looking for cheap fashion, you know. So that was always something um very interesting. And when you're put next to a Bloomingdale. That was the best thing that can possibly happen.

So w he would just go and Hang out at Bloomingdales? Every day I would go f starting from the first floor, which you know all these sales ladies that they spray fragrances and everybody hate them. Not me. I love them. Say spray on me. I like being sort of in the middle of

something they're launching and be able to tell what's in in the fragrance that I like and dislike. And then look at the packaging. Packaging is always fascinating to me because I grew up in a country with no packaging at all. But what interests me the most is the fashion floor, and it's usually the second floor. And just being amazed. And I love the women in New York, the way they are so confident and they dress in those colours, in those uh shapes, and they look great. And then I would always end in a home department. And it would always

It would look like it's in the nineteen twenties. W so what what would it look like? Um furniture were very ornate. It has a lot of um very you know, gilded finish. And then the plays are like Laura Ashley Prince, you know, very small, Grandma's

um wallpaper Floral. And I'm just wondering, the person who was so confident walking on the street will go home to see this Um it's so disconnected. So I keep saying that to David.

Yeah. Um when we talk on the phone. He was living in in D C in D C I was in New York and I would get up at five on Monday and took the first train and I'll get home at nine o'clock on Friday. So it's not really a very good quality of life. And I was calling him about what I discovered was very exciting and then I continually bring up how disconnected the fashion and the home Departments are. Finally he he said, May you seem to be really upset about this commute. So he said.

Maybe we should start something. So you You quit and you and and then what was the plan? What what was the business you guys were gonna do? So we knew it it's gonna be home because we homeware home goods because the fashion business is dominated by brands. And we feel the home business is left without brands and that's where we see the opportunities. So it closed the gap between home and fashion. Um so that's our idea. We don't know what product. We just quit both of us at the same time. And w you just like started brainstorming in your in your apartment or your house at the time, like trying to figure out what what

to do? Not only with our uh each other, but we really reach out to our friends. So we brainstormed with our friends and as a result of that, when we started a business in the middle of nineteen ninety four, uh we quickly feedback. People send me samples, send me. pictures and we Zone in on

About four categories. The first you would be surprised is soak flowers. I don't know if you know them. They're fake flowers that never die. Um the second category is uh accessories for your car, so seat Cushions something to make you feel comfortable when you drive for a long distance. And a third category, because I know this American doll was so popular, is a kind of doll uh that can rotate with music. And the last Something that I didn't even think is interesting, but I

Think it might have an opportunity is a candle. Every category I mentioned is a huge business in this country. There are billions of dollars that are in each of those country. But you didn't have access to massive amounts of data and research then because the internet wasn't available. No. It wasn't and I don't really know uh what difference we will make other than um

you know, making it design better. But I didn't even know how hard it was. It's actually good that you don't know everything. That you don't know how hard it is, that you just have a gut that something can be done to make it better? There's no amount of research. That can proof an idea. But there's one thing you can always do, which is to take your product to the market. So that's what we did.

They they sample dust. They send by um FedEx or from China. From China. We haven't imported them, we just sample them. So they they send by D H L, FedEx, whatever it is at that time it's available. Soak flowers, he cookies. I think David brought some of those back by uh breaking his back also. Yes. And by that time it was September nineteen ninety four. All the major wholesale trade shows take place twice a year, in January when people replenish their goods after holiday, and in summer when they are buying more for Christmas. But it was September, so the only show we can possibly go to is in Charlotte, North Carolina. And wha what happened? Ninety percent of the business

Came from the candles. And and what do the candles look like? Were they just Candles? They're the you don't see them anymore. They're call candles, they're round and they look like stained glass. And when you burn them, they are glowing.

So people came up to your booth and they were not interested in anything else. The silk flowers or the car sees. It was that that stained glass looking candle? Because it's holiday and it was gift giving season and it's a great gift. Okay, so then after the show y you know you've got all these orders How did you how did you deliver them? How did you get them to to customers? Um we rent a very inexpensive warehouse with a office in the front and we couldn't afford many people for time, so we just have one part time to help us.

And We were able to use our savings and our family and friends helped us. So the first container was a twenty foot container, not even a forty foot container. And then we ship them very fast and we got reorders. From the from the clients at the trade show. Yes. So what was the candle? Retailing for

Fifteen dollars the most. We probably will take fifty percent margin on them. So it was Almost half a million dollars of business we did. In four months. That's

Insane. I mean, were you and David just like We were we were taken surprise by that. We were not expect it to do so well for the first four months of our business and we were shipping every day. I'm uh I was a sales manager, I was assistant, I was accounting, I was Taking products out of the

Containers, I was everything. Okay, so you ship this container from China and then you deliver all the stuff to to your clients. And then what did you guys do after? Like what was what was the next move for the company? Um, the second year I decided since the trade show it's so important. We registered for the New York Gift Show, which is the

the holy grail of trade shows. So we went to the New York Gift Show. And we thought that this is gonna be the ticket to our success. But the show, which is ten times bigger with an international audience, told us that we were wrong. It was a complete disaster.

You Are trying to sell k these same candles that you're importing. From China and They're not selling. They're not selling.

And I was devastated. Because it's a very expensive trade show. I'm assuming at this point, I mean You you must have

sort of thoughts in your mind that maybe this candle business maybe was a fluke. Maybe the fact that we did so well that first Four months. Just had to do with Christmas. Exactly. That was the thought. But I wasn't giving up. I was always more international minded.

I was already scheduled to go to visit Frankfurt, um, Germany. Because every year in February there is a big Hm. product show called Ambiente.

And in the moment I needed to go there to see what could potentially be the next thing. Because what I envisioned for home. Is already there. The design is very streamlined.

Of the candles. Everything from home furniture to lighting and table top. Hm. Um the colors are very bold. They have oranges, lavender, and they have those beautiful contrasts with white. And

I was so happy that I went there because it confirmed That's right. home and fashion could be in sync. So so how did it change your trajectory? I mean you still have a candle business where you're bringing these like stained glass window candles in from China. You're in Frankfurt, you see these beautiful streamlined designs, and you think

What? So I could use that design elements in candle design. That you would design your own candles. That was always my thought, uh even though you were trained as a diplomat. I think not many people end up doing what they're trained to do, but that training is very helpful because I was exposed to a lot of art education when I was a very young kid. So it started from the very high level of art and then it trickles down to fashion and finally it goes to home. Okay, so so after you got back from the Frankfurt Trade Show, how did it change your approach to to what you were doing? So I came back very refreshed from and invigorated from what I see and really I I I was determined that I'm going to really start to do something and

Another thing I discovered by starting to pay more attention now to candles is that my competitor in the US, they sell candles. In the millions. And probably the billions. And I asked myself Why do they buy it?

All year round? It's not because they have a patent. It's because of the fragrance. The power of fragrance has been written. Men and women over the years have been wearing fragrances for many reasons, but

But for home it takes on a very new meaning. So so that was it. At that point to start making scented candles. Yes. At that time we were for the first time joined By a permanent

Employee which is a friend of David's. His name is Richard, And he and I went to visit uh one of the fragrance vendors in New Jersey to learn how to make candles with fragrance. So he and I went in his beat up hunchback and um

For four hours we learn everything That one need to learn. Mm. So many people think about candles and they say, How hot can it be? I can make it with my eyes closed. But you just pour some wax and some perfume and you get a fragrant. But if you want to make it a business and you want to make sure it doesn't burn someone's house down, you actually have to study how to make it because A candle is both

A piece of art? And a lot of science. It's Five things that are interacting with each other. It's the fragrance. It's the base, which is the wax.

It's the color, the pigment. It's the wick. And finally It's the vessel, which is the glass or a container. And if you don't do all those five things perfectly, what like what what could go wrong? Well, have you ever seen candles that has a lot of black soot? Yeah. That's because the wick is too big.

Or you could have A candle that simply tunnel burn into the middle and you don't smell anything. That's because the formula And the work is not optimized. So half a day you visit there and what, you drive back to Maryland and you start to experiment? We were bursting out of excitement. We said, wow, we're gonna start making frequent candles for the first time and

We decided to s experiment what we learned. But We didn't have the modes when we went home, so instead we We were always eating a lot of Cambo Soup. Um You were a startup, you were eating a lot of Campbell soup. Exactly, a lot of Cambod Soup, noodles soup. So we say these are great sizes, so let's use them.

For molds. For molds. So we started mixing in our kitchen with our regular pots oils with wax with colours Uh, one thing we forgot in our excitement is a chemical that blend the oil really well with the wax. So that when you take it out of the modes, it looks very smooth. We forgot that chemical. But what happened is a random harvest because

When we took the candle out of the mood, The candle look fossilized. Fossilized. Because of the oil not blending very well. So it kinda had this aged look around it? It has a snowflake on it. And no candles are like. So the snowflake would be on different part of a candle. Everything looks

Handmade. And on top of that I blended fragrancely. I put vanilla with lavender. I put Watermelon with mint. Where many people just have a straight vanilla or a straight watermelon. And and is that the secret sauce, the the the fragrance?

Yes, and many people say The reason why they burn fragrance is the finishing touch. Two cleaning their home.

When they want Two Finish. And sense that the home is ready for their f you know, friends and family to come for entertaining or when their husband and children come back to home, they want to put something

To mark that. It's a clean house. So they put a candle It smells like a cookie, it smells like a fresh cotton. And that's why people continually buy the candles because they need the fragrance. So I mean so as you are sort of

really kinda honing in on what what this product is is gonna be. Is that when you came up with the the name? Yes. So think about those colors. Beautiful cobalt blue with a lavender with a honeydew green, not hunter green, which everybody use, sunflower yellow. White, think about what it means. It means energy. It means fresh. And this is where we give the name. Because we were living in Annapolis at that time. Annapolis, Maryland. Annapolis, Maryland. And many times I would take my dog for a walk.

I like how Annapolis really still today is still very quiet. It's not the Hamptons or Any other, you know, Fu Fu shit very down to earth. It's very Pristine in the sense that to me Coming from China,

It is very untouched. And um it stand for natural beauty. And I want Two. communicate that because our candles are not touched by a lot of chemicals. It's has that natural finish on our Texture.

So we just called it Chesapeake Bay Candle. When we come back. How may she wound up making an enemy out of the one person she needed? to get her candles into target. And how eventually she recovered.

Stay with us, it's how I built this from NPR. It's how I built this from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So Thanks to an experiment in her basement with Campbell's soup cans, Maishi has stumbled across a new kind of candle with bold colours and mixed fragrant

And now She just needs to convince someone So I call it Bloomingdale's. And I was um working with the secretaries, begging and pleading that uh I have a great product. So finally she gave me the name of the buyer. The buyer is really important. They are the eyes and ears for any company and particularly for Bloomingdales. You can imagine the

the the the standards really high. But when I described the candles, the texture, the fragrances and the colours, she was very intrigued. So I got an appointment um right away And You know when I went there? They didn't even sit down. They started taking the candles and show

Everybody around in the office. And you knew you got them. So I I take it Bloomingdale's made in uh made in order? They loved it. They just showed it to their um

bosses and we got the first order to ship to The stores that I have been Going so many times. Wow, how did you produce enough candles to f fill that order? So here comes the best part. I was frustrated because

At that time China did not have a home fragrance industry. To produce that kind of oil, you need a chemical compounding facility, and they were not used to that. They used to sell their cinnamons and their jasmins overseas, the French and the US will then turn them into oils for fine fragrance or for food flavors. But they don't have industry themselves. So if the if the Chinese weren't making fragrances like this, how did like How were you able to even start that?

So I talked to a few factories in China. They look at me like I have You know. some problem because they certainly wouldn't take on the project like that. I was frustrated I told my sister about this and she too.

was very determined to help me. So she said. I'm gonna quit. And she said, I'm gonna start a factory for you. Wow. In nineteen ninety five.

So that was the year when we started to have our own factory, we changed everything for me. Put up a fact. Like is it you can do that? You could just build a factory. So you can, particularly in that part of China, which is very entrepreneurial. There are villages that make nothing but buttons or village that make nothing but candlestick. So

Having a factory is possible. But we have borrowed very heavily from friends and family to build that. From scratch. So your sister builds this factory and starts manufacturing the candles and Were you working like crazy? Were you always working? I'm always thinking because I'm

I was always thinking about the next color, the next fragrance I can mix, or the next um packaging that we can put together. So I was always doing a lot of things at the same time. But I was always wondering who's our next customer. So we stole to Nordstrom, right after Bloomingdale. They're very similar companies. But in nineteen ninety five and ninety six my ey started to search for who's the Sort of

company that's trending. Dave. represents some demographic changes or style of shopping that's different. Yeah. And my eyes started to focus on target. Why target?

Um, they stand for style and design versus Walmart, which stands for value. And it really inspired me. Because I really subscribe to design for all. That philosophy because I came from a country with a lot of people that are very poor. Yeah. And I know a lot of teachers of mine.

Who have Great taste. Who would never be able to buy things that are so expensive at Bloomingdale's. So How can we make it more affordable? How can we make it so we can sell it for twenty dollars versus

Eighty dollars. Mm. I knew it's gonna be the Pick. growth for us if we can get in, because it's already seven hundred and fifty stores nationally, and they have two dedicated aisles with forty eight feet of candle space. So who do you who do you call there?

So it was pretty straightforward. You can find the name of the buyer, there's a telephone extension. And And you So this is the time when I always say you You cannot give up even if you call for a whole year, which I did. A whole year. Every month at the same time

I call and I left messages. And you said what? I said hi the same thing I did with Nostrom and the same thing I did with Bloomingdale. My pitch was that I have a great candle and now I can even say it's sold at Bloomingdale, which usually Target buyers would listen in and they would say, Wow, they're already at those stores. We wanna be those doors. So they would usually return your your form, but not The buyer. And and nothing silence. So how did you

How did you finally break through what happened? probably one of my biggest failure is that I started to get frustrated and I said to the receptionist, She's not returning my call. So she said, I think you could Call her boss. And make a complaint. Which I did. I basically say well you're one of your buyers have not made

any return phone calls two minutes later to buy a called. And she said, This is so and so and just so you know, it is not the way to start a relationship. And she hung up. And she hung up on you. Wow, so you were Finish it.

So every time I call again, if it's her voice, I didn't even leave my voice message. But you kept calling even though I kept calling. I kept calling it. But you were shut out at that point. I basically was yes. So I waited until the next year in April. And it was a very different voice. It was a very cheerful voice. It was a new buyer. It was a new buyer. And I left my message and I got it back in two days. Wow, two days.

Finally, come. Because as you can imagine, every new buyer wants to make a difference. They want to make their Their mark. So she said, Why don't you come? And I did. But I where's their headquarters? They're based in Minneapolis. Right, oh I flew there and she was very young, she was probably in her late twenties and she came in and she was sitting down listening to my pitch but half way through she has to get up and smell the candles from the bottom. Candle buyers You should want to smell the candles from the button.

That's when the oils settle into the button and you smell the most. From the bottom. Hm. And so what'd she say? Did she Did she put an order in?

She Basically in a big store. It's a lot process involved. Right. They ask you capability questions, pricing questions cherry pick what they want, so I didn't expect anything to happen.

But She asked me if I put it in my store, how soon can you ship? That was the moment when I froze. Because I said, What do you mean? Are you gonna test? Because I heard they test a lot. So do you testing fifty stores or a hundred stores?

She said no me, I wanted to. put it in seven hundred fifty stores. Wow. And I said. Oh, in that case then I started to calculate in my head how fast my sister's company can produce with seven hundred fifty stores.

And I said Six months. And she said, Perfect, that will land us in October and you can ship it so it arrives in December and that's when we set for spring. And and how big was that order? That order end up being

Um Over a million dollars. And the forecast for the year. end up being over three million dollars. How did you I mean so so basically I mean when you called your sister and you said We have this order from Target. We have to make how many c do you even remember how many candles you had to make? It's probably half a million candles.

And h how many candles w w was the factory able to produce a day at that time? That was gonna stretch them. They were gonna have three shifts a day. Uh every day of the week. Just like twenty four seven. Yes. They will have to hire people. to work seven days a week. And the thing about the the target shipment is that it's really daunting. When you think about people scaling their business, one of the things people over s think about is finance, how to finance a big order, a million dollar order. The second thing they ask is logistics. Physically, how do you turn over twenty containers?

of candles in two days. And we don't even have the physical space to turn twenty containers in two days, right? So we rented in a very big empty warehouse in Laurel. In Lower Maryland.

But there's no electricity, so we parked our two cars, used a headlight. To light up the warehouse in the evening, And we literally Packed and unpacked using of course footballs. David, your husband. Richard

And two or three of our warehouse workers, five of us all together, we turn over twenty containers. So your company was five people in the US at that time? Five to six. Four time people. And we went into holiday season some somewhat absent minded, waiting to see when the product will show up on the shelves. And sure enough, right after Christmas, our products were there. But it was radio silence. There was nothing coming from the fire. From Target. From Target. Until when? Until two weeks after it was set.

and I get a panic order call from the buyer. She said me, we're in big trouble. I said, Oh no, they didn't get all the products or they're not moving at all. She said, No. We are under forecast. We could have sold eight million dollars of your candles this year.

And you need to go back to China and build a bigger factory and we need to catch up because I don't want to be empty shelves in April or March. So is that what you did? That's what we did. And we found a much bigger facility. And we outfit it. So that By March.

We started shipping out of the new facility. Today. as the first factory, then we have one in Hai Fan in Vietnam, and now in Glen Bernie, Maryland. Wow. So it's presumably I mean it's it's a lot more expensive to uh to manufacture candles in the US. So w why are you doing it here?

Um I came to this country. And I'm a citizen for many, many years. I always want to find product that said made in USA when I go back to China. And I couldn't find them. Everything is always made in China, made in Indonesia, made in India.

I think mating USA stand for something. We may have not realized that. People believe that There's integrity And there is a Cool factor. with products that made in USA.

And we haven't explored that. As a country. D do you think you had a competitive advantage? In part because you were an immigrant and in part because everything in America was new to you and you were kind of Naive.

I think that's Precisely. I think immigrants are self selected group. They are self selected group that is very big on taking risks. In some ways they have the same traits as entrepreneurs already. Instead of taking what's easy, What's already

Familiar. They choose the unfamiliar, the uncharted. Because they have more confidence and they have more curiosity. So in selecting themselves as immigrants, they're already Facing big risks.

So From a company that you started, you know, like As a as an afterthought with silk flowers and carse covers to a company that I I've seen does Reportedly like sixty to seventy million dollars a year in revenue.

It's a Pretty amazing. I mean, could you have imagined that when you came to the US On a temporary visa that That you would be running a company that

That's so big. So remember the alien story? Yeah. Remember I thought I was you know, gonna meet an alien and discover that I was actually the alien Um

How cool is it that an alien can sit Next to President of the United States and talk about how to create jobs. In America. That was me in two thousand twelve. Um I was creating jobs in the United States because of our factory and um

The present school took note and he invited thirteen of the biggest manufacturers such as Ford, Intel, and the U Um and I was invited because I was a small business. And I was giving advice as to why it makes sense to revitalize manufacturing in this country.

But why that we have not done enough? for those companies to bring jobs back. So I feel very fortunate not only Was I accepted not? Um just as a foreigner, you know, I was able to giving a path

Uh to realize what I want to do and more. That's May Shi, founder of Chesapeake Bay Candle. But a year after we spoke, in the fall of twenty seventeen, May actually decided to sell the company.

She wound up making a pretty good deal with Newell Brands. It's a New Jersey based business that also owns Yankee Candle. Purchase price? Seventy five million dollars. As for me This year she started a new venture

A website may she.com tells the stories of women entrepreneurs all across the country. Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that. And today we're updating a story that we ran about a year ago, and it has to do with beer, which if you've ever brewed it yourself, you know it takes just four ingredients. You've got your water, you've got your hops, which everyone knows about, and you've got your yeast, which is kinda where the magic happens, but when This is Dan Kurzrock, and Dan used to brew his own beer in college. The most important ingredient is actually grain, like malted barley.

You take water and you mix it in with the grain, kind of like making a batch of oatmeal. And oatmeal is the key word here, because when Dan and his friends were making their own beer, they noticed that all the leftover piles of wet barley well smelled kind of like breakfast. It smelled like bread, it was very fragrant. But none of the brewing books told us. What to do? With this grain. So we would put it in the dumpster.

All this is happening around 2009, 2010. And a few years later, Dan was in the Bay Area, where craft breweries were booming. And he started to notice that a lot of those breweries, just like him, were churning out huge amounts of leftover spent grain. It smelled like food. It looked like food, and so it was really uh pretty low hanging fruit to think okay, well maybe we can make food products out of this. Now luckily for Dan He had a friend named Jordan who had worked in the food business.

And so they teamed up and called a bunch of small breweries in the Bay Area. And they started to drive around with these big plastic tubs to pick up all of this used grain. Yeah, well I threw out my back a few times doing this, and then we got dollies and Yeah, it was heavy. So anyway, they take those heavy tubs barley to Jordan's parents' house and Just experiment. So I took my uh now mother in law's recipe for loose granola. It had oats in it. It had flax, honey, cinnamon. So they went back and forth with the recipe and eventually they decided to turn the granola

into snack bars. High fiber with a great eating experience. It's not a mush bar. It kinda eats like a rice crispy tree. Kann and Jordan, of course, tested the snack bars on friends and at farmers markets, and some of the feedback was not so great. People found the bars to be a bit dry and to be a bit pokey. Wait. Hokie? Pokey. Yeah. So the green is quite sharp.

And so it would get p stuck in people's teeth. And one of the mouthfeel descriptors that we got pretty consistently was pokey. So to eliminate the pokiness? Dan and Jordan decided to grind the beer grain into more of a flour. And then from there, that really solved the texture issue. So we did launch, you know, now we have a great product that's selling really well, we've got another one on the way. And the snack bars are now on sale in regional chains in many parts of the US and on Amazon. Since spoke with Dan, he and Jordan have managed to get their bars into Whole Foods in eight different states.

And when we first ran the story, both Dan and Jordan had just quit their day jobs to run the company. Now, more than a year later, they're finally able to pay themselves a salary. You know, I'm not buying a house any time soon, uh unless I take a down payment and then you know nutrition bars. Let me know if you know any. Any realtors will do that. Dan and Jordan's company is called Regrained, and by the way, re-grained snack bars do not taste like beer, but they do have beery names like chocolate coffee stout and honey cinnamon IPA.

If you want to find out more about Regrained or hear previous episodes of our show, head to our new podcast page, how I built this dot npr dot org, and of course if you want to tell us your story, go to build dot npr dot org. We love hearing what you're up to. And thanks so much for listening to the show. This week you can subscribe to our program at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, and while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write us at hibtnbr.org and if you want to send a tweet, it's at how I built this. Our show is produced this week by Rand Abdelfata with original music composed by Ramteen Arablui. The two of them have left the show to start their own podcast called Thru Line, you should check it out. Thanks also to Julia Carney, San Azmechkin Poor, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is David Ja.

I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to how I built this.

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