Banza: Brian Rudolph. The Chickpea Pasta That Nearly Turned to Mush

Brian Rudolph started making chickpea pasta in his Detroit apartment because wheat made him feel sick. A decade later, Banza was in more than 25,000 stores, and today, it’s one of the most popular pasta brands in the country. Success was not automatic: The business barely got off the ground because the cooked pasta was turning to mush—and as Banza became known for its health benefits, a food-safety scare sent sales plunging by 30%. In this episode, Brian explains why he was inspired to create a whole new category, how he turned chickpea skeptics into fans, and how the company rebuilt trust after a public relations disaster. What you’ll learn How Brian and his brother Scott launched Banza with only $100,000. How they learned to stop chasing perfection and to ship something that was “good enough.” How crowdfunding and reality TV helped Banza land its first retail accounts. How packaging can become an important growth engine for a new brand. How transparency can rebuild trust after a PR debacle–but can’t restore it overnight. Timestamps: 08:15 - Brian uncovers the unexpected culprit behind his health issues: Wheat 09:52 - From Chewy bars and Chipotle to pasta made of… beans? 18:49 - Banza gets a big break on national TV 23:16 - The 192-store order that Banza wasn’t ready for, and why retreating to a smaller manufacturer helped them meet it 30:52 - Banza’s first production run turns to mush when cooked. The solution? “Steep it like tea” 38:44 - The origin of the distinctive orange box 43:53 - Pizza anyone? Banza expands into thousands of stores and launches new products 47:10 - The food safety scare that Brian never saw coming 58:23 - Even in the midst of a crisis, Brian says to “assume positive intent” This episode was produced by Katherine Sypher, with music by Ramtin Arablouei. Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Kerry Thompson. Our audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez. Follow How I Built This: Instagram → @howibuiltthis https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis/ X → @HowIBuiltThis https://x.com/howibuiltthis Facebook → How I Built This https://www.facebook.com/howibuiltthis Follow Guy Raz: Instagram → @guy.raz https://www.instagram.com/guy.raz/ Youtube →guy_raz https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNSfrxNEmCruNtjIzxCBHjg X → @guyraz https://x.com/guyraz Substack →https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/guyraz.substack.com__;!! Iwwt! RZoD751oWzUzoqqdJiqaoL6HdJfRHDUO1TKvYJ424d3Udn7-Pw9Nj6nEsauh9zcgEvLjUEc$guyraz.substack.com http://guyraz.substack.com/ Website → guyraz.com http://guyraz.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2:00 AM kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people? So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is.

• 0:41Guy Raz?

  If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan, build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea, what separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/HIBT. We get support from US Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company.

• 1:21Guy Raz?

  It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't. Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems. But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands on the table in rewards you never earned,

• 2:04Guy Raz?

  money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card. Now you're earning 3% cash back on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cell phone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association,

• 2:49Guy Raz?

  pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer. For the first time ever, new Delta Sky Miles Reserve American Express card members can earn two Delta Comfort round trip flights for travel within the 48 contiguous US states, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands. Plus, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles towards your next getaway. And who doesn't appreciate an elevated airport experience? Delta Sky Miles Reserve card members get access to the Delta Sky Club, your pre-flight oasis to recharge with 15 visits

• 3:31Guy Raz?

  and four one-time guest passes each medallion year when flying Delta together. That's up to $950 in annual value. Value estimate based on $50 per visit rate to purchase additional visits or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the card that upgrades your travel. Apply today at delta.com/cardsocial. Offer ends November 4, 2026. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Flights are fulfilled as flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Main to select domestic destinations. Book 21-plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person and taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply.

• 4:14Guy Raz?

  When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talked to on this show because the best ones obsess over things their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration. And not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the mobile brand does. It engineers fuel the same way great founders engineer their products. Mobile Supreme Plus Premium Gas helps keep engines three times cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood,

• 4:59Guy Raz?

  even if they never see it. Three times cleaner compared to mobile regular gas in port fuel-injected engines. Actual results may vary. Visit mobilefuels.com for details.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  So our sales went down 30% week over week.

• 5:22Guy Raz?

  Wow, wow, wow.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Honestly, I was more concerned with people's fear and trying to figure out how to address that. I had someone call me crying because they were so scared. And they love Banza and they give it to their kids all the time.

• 5:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  And you know, it's like, maybe more than I wanted to admit, my identity had been wrapped up in this idea of I create healthy food. And to then be told and get messages from people on the internet who don't even know you that are accusing you of

• 5:51Guy Raz?

  That you're trying to kill them.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 6:02Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:14Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz and on the show today, how Brian Rudolph built Banza into one of the biggest pasta brands in the country, all based on one ingredient. Chickpeas.

• 6:31Guy Raz?

  If you've spent any time in a grocery store lately, you've probably noticed that protein is everywhere. It's in chips and snacks, in bread, breakfast cereal, candy, ice cream, soda, even water. And all that's becoming pretty normal now. But not that long ago, if you wandered down the pasta aisle and saw a box of high-protein pasta, you might have been confused, right? Because pasta is supposed to be carbs. The protein is the stuff you put on the pasta, like meat sauce, or clams, or cheese. But of course, the pasta aisle, just like almost every other aisle, is now filled with products promising more protein, including the brand we're going to talk about today, Banza.

• 7:16Guy Raz?

  Banza was the first pasta on the market made from chickpeas, which, as you probably know, are packed with protein. But when Banza's co-founder, Brian Rudolph, started tinkering with the recipe back in 2013, protein wasn't really the point. Brian was sensitive to wheat, and he was trying to find foods that made him feel better. And along the way, he started experimenting with an ingredient he already loved, chickpeas. And chickpeas, it turned out, had almost everything going for them. Yes, they were high in protein, but they were also high in fiber, low in fat, and naturally gluten-free. What they were not was easy to turn into pasta. And as you'll hear, it took Brian a long time

• 8:01Guy Raz?

  and a lot of really terrible batches to figure out how to turn chickpea flour into pasta that people would actually want to eat. But eventually, he did. And just five years after Banza launched, it had become the fastest-growing pasta brand in the United States. But then 10 years after launch, Banza faced a public relations crisis that threatened everything Brian and his team had built. And we'll get to that a little later. Today, Banza is sold in more than 25,000 stores across the US. As for Brian, he and his older brother and co-founder Scott Rudolph grew up in Westchester County, New York. Their mom was an audiologist and their dad was an orthodontist.

• 8:45Guy Raz?

  And after Brian graduated from college in 2012, he moved to Detroit to join Venture for America. It was a fellowship started by Andrew Yang to bring young entrepreneurs to cities that were trying to rebuild their economies.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  A lot of people now know it as the thing that Andrew Yang did before running for president. He started this nonprofit with the idea of creating jobs in cities that had lost jobs and doing it through entrepreneurship. And I think for someone just graduating from college, I get to have this opportunity to be a part of a small company and join a really great community of people who are also part of the program. And yeah, that's what brought me to Detroit, getting to be the first employee at a tech startup.

• 9:28Guy Raz?

  And what was the name of the company?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  The company's name is Quickly.

• 9:31Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  And they're actually still around. The idea was to basically create a feeling of Black Friday, but on other days of the year where you could create excitement and urgency around offers for big brands. And I was doing everything, right? Customer service, reaching out to, at one point, 60 people a day cold just to get our product on their radar. And it was an incredible way to learn.

• 9:58Guy Raz?

  So you were there, you would be there for two years, but during your time there, I guess, from what I've read, you started to think about, I mean, understandably, like, hey, what could I do? What could be interesting to me? Because the fellowship was really designed to expose you to startup culture and with the idea, I imagine, of encouraging people to start their own thing. And clearly, tech was not the thing you were going to do, because you didn't. But you kind of started to think about food. Before we talk about what you were doing, let's talk about food for a minute. I mean, was there a deeper interest in food? Like, were you a good cook? Were you somebody who people were like, oh, Brian, you gotta go to his house for dinner?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Definitely not.

• 10:41Guy Raz?

  Okay. So tell me about how you started to think about food as something you might be interested in pursuing.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. In college, I had a drawer of chewy bars. I had Chipotle, one time 20 days in a row, and hummus in the fridge.

• 10:56Guy Raz?

  Totally solid pick, Chipotle?

• 10:58Speaker 01

  No doubt.

• 10:59Guy Raz?

  You know, healthy, solid pick, okay.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  But when I reflect on my feelings around food, it was, you know, honestly, just fuel, right? And at some point, I was also dealing with some sinus infections and was constantly going through this cycle of antibiotics, steroids. And I was a candidate for getting surgery, like, very clearly, based on how things were trending. And my dad, of all people, recommended I try an elimination diet. My dad was just like, I read this book, you should try it, see what happens. And cut out certain foods, reintroduce certain foods, and recognize, for whatever reason,

• 11:44Speaker 01

  wheat-based foods were causing a reaction that led to sinus inflammation.

• 11:50Guy Raz?

  How did you figure that out? You just, how long did it take before eliminating all wheat from your diet, before you started to see changes?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  I mean, it was like a month, maybe, of removing it. And then I remember reintroducing it in the form of beer. And the next day, I was like, I can't breathe. My nose is fully stuffed. So I think there's actually been a little bit more research in that connection now than there was then. I remember speaking with the ENT, and he was like, listen, I don't know what you're talking about, but if it works for you, stick with it.

• 12:25Guy Raz?

  Right. But how quickly did it, did the kind of food thing turn to, you know, maybe there's something here, like, maybe this is the thing that I could start to think about for a business? Because you were, what, 22, 23 years old?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, 22. Not that quickly. It took me maybe a year to work through a bunch of other things that I didn't care about as much. You know, subscription box ideas were also huge at that time. And I remember working through a subscription, a subscription to subscription boxes, like, all these ideas that, I remember having a conversation with someone who was in that space, and she asked me, if you were to work on this for 10 years, do you think that you'd still be excited about it 10 years from now? And I think that's really when it flipped to food, where I do care a lot about food, after having gone through that experience.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  I was making all sorts of things in my kitchen. I was experimenting with high-protein breads and ice creams and really just anything I could get my hands on. And one of the things that I was already interested in, because I wasn't happy with gluten-free pastas, was what other ingredients could it be made from? So I was experimenting with that, too. And when she asked me that question, it was sort of like a shift on a dime. Like, it dawned on me that you can actually build a meaningful food business and have it be healthy. I looked to what Chobani did in yogurt, creating Greek yogurt, and it kind of clicked. I was like, I want to do in pasta what Chobani did in yogurt. That would be the dream.

• 14:06Guy Raz?

  Hmm. Okay. There were tons of gluten-free options at that time. This is 2012, 2013. I mean, you could get rice, brown rice pasta, and I'm sure you ate those things, right? Like, you ate rice-based pasta, and some of it's pretty good. How did you get to a place where you were like, well, beans, that could be an interesting way to make pasta?

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, first of all, brown rice pasta is a lot better now than it was then, so fully agree with you. It can be very good now. But at the time, I was having a hard time with the options that were available. And if someone is eating beans, they're getting protein, they're getting fiber, they're getting all these antioxidants. It's a vegetable, it's like, all this good on the nutrition side. The more I learned about the environmental side of beans, that they're the most efficient form of protein per greenhouse gas emissions, I just started to think, like, how cool is that? That's something you can work on as it grows, just does more and more good.

• 15:07Guy Raz?

  Okay. So wheat pasta, which I've made before, it's basically, it's flour, an egg yolk, salt, and water, right? It's not that hard to make. But because the properties inside of flour are such that they can make something elastic, they can, you know, it's fairly easy to work with. Tell me about experimenting in your apartment with chickpea pasta. Like, what were you doing?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  I wasn't totally sure you could make a good pasta with chickpeas, right? I had to really go through the wringer a bit. I bought chickpea flour on Amazon, it was Bob's Red Mill. And I looked up some blogs that had recipes using chickpea flour and found some common pairings that people had used.

• 15:57Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Gluten provides an amazing network. It's pretty incredible if you can eat it.

• 16:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  And if you can't, finding something that acts like it, whether it is egg, egg can actually go pretty far, or some other secondary ingredients. I remember the very first version I made was something like chickpeas, eggs, and chia.

• 16:21Guy Raz?

  Oh.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  And chia was not the best idea.

• 16:24Guy Raz?

  That's very sticky.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  It didn't look great.

• 16:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  But it managed to roll eventually. I was constantly recoating it, to your point, with other flours to keep it from being so sticky to the table. I didn't have a roller pin, I was using a wine bottle. I didn't really have a good way to cut it, so I was using a knife. And managed to keep it from sticking enough that I was able to cut these little slices of dough and just boil them. It was really bad.

• 16:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  And the next version, I remember, it was just chickpeas and eggs, so tried no chia. And that was definitely better. But in my head, I remember early on, I was just thinking about what is going to allow this to be accessible to as many people as possible. So even though egg actually worked okay, I wanted to see if we could keep it vegan. So I also used tapioca from Bob's Red Mill, I think xanthan gum from Bob's Red Mill, everything. I think Bob's Red Mill was definitely my early source.

• 17:34Guy Raz?

  And I guess at a certain point, you, I mean, you must have actually probably bought, like, what, like a hand-cranked pasta maker, or like a home pasta machine or something?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Exactly. There's a very popular hand crank called the Atlas Mercato. That was my first CapEx. Bought it, I think it was something like $30 on Amazon, and used that to sheet the dough and then ultimately turn it into spaghetti. Bought a little dryer rack and just kept going, trying different things, different temperatures, times, things like that. And, you know, I was waking up every morning before work, making chickpea pasta, 5:00 AM, blasting country music. My roommate thought I was crazy. And I showed up to work one day and I gave my boss some pasta, and I was like, what do you think of this? And he was like, it's okay. I was like, okay, maybe there's something that we can work with here.

• 18:29Guy Raz?

  I mean, you're experimenting in your kitchen while working at the startup, but clearly, you feel like you're on to something here, something interesting? Because at that point, I imagine, nobody was making pasta out of chickpeas.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  One thing that's very cool is we can claim to be the first ever chickpea pasta, which I am very proud of.

• 18:48Guy Raz?

  You decide that this is good enough by the fall of 2013. And from what I gather, you actually contacted your brother, who's eight years older than you, and who had experience with a startup, and you asked him if he might want to move to Detroit and help you?

• 19:07Speaker 01

  So I have always looked up to my brother. We are eight years apart. And even when I was a kid, everything he did, I wanted to do. And when I was thinking about starting my own thing, I was just asking him for advice. You know, what do you think might work? And he was reaching a point where he was thinking about what he might want to do next. And in that conversation, he brought up the idea of being an advisor to Banza. And I don't know what gave me the chutzpah to say, no, actually, I want you to be my co-founder. And he sat with it for like, five seconds, and he was like, yeah, let's do it.

• 19:50Guy Raz?

  Okay. So you are, this is the thing you're going to pursue, right? And first of all, the name, you had a name already? You called it Banza?

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Pretty quickly. One of my friends, we were just going back and forth, trying to, just riffing. And at some point, he said to me, Gar Banza, what about Banza? And-

• 20:15Speaker 01

  I was like, that's pretty good. That's actually like, there's something nice about that, but I think there's a clown named Banza. And I'm not sure, I'm not sure if it should be Banza, but maybe Banza. And it also sounded a little bit like the word pasta. You know, maybe tonight I'm not eating pasta, I'm eating Banza. I love the name still. It's, I've been so happy with it.

• 20:39Guy Raz?

  All right. So you have a name and you're gonna, your brother's on board and you need to raise money. And so for the money side of this, you went on a crowdfunding platform called Rocket Hub. And I think the way that this worked was if you did well there, then you could get some additional cash from Venture for America, right? Like who you were still working with at the time.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:59Guy Raz?

  And so what did you do for Rocket Hub? Is it like you make like a video and you tell a story of what you're trying to do?

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Exactly. And the video came out great.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  I actually, I was able to use a song that I had created as the background music and use some 3D graphics. It was just, it was just so fun to be that creative that early.

• 21:21Guy Raz?

  And you raised $17,000. So not, I mean, you know, not hundreds or millions of dollars, but still, I guess enough to win this to get another $10,000.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, which was huge. Just such an amazing head start.

• 21:34Guy Raz?

  I mean, things are really going your way because you get this money and you also, I guess it captures the attention of some producers on a, like a Shark Tank like show. It's called Restaurant Startup. I don't know if it's still on on CNBC.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 21:50Guy Raz?

  And they asked you to be on the show, which of course you're gonna say yes, right? To talk about your new pasta.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. Our attitude at the time was we'll do anything, you know? We'll try anything, we'll talk to anyone, anyone who will listen to us. Because if it wasn't going to work, I just wanted to know.

• 22:12Guy Raz?

  And you weren't selling anything yet.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  No, no, we weren't selling anything. But they reached out. I saw it as what a cool opportunity, first of all, right? And second, a really quick way to learn, a pretty scary way to learn, because if it goes terribly, like that also might be the end of it in flying colors. But we were gonna have chefs who were the investors try the product and consider whether or not this had good future potential. So we filmed for the show and it was all the drama, right? We had to open a restaurant and we ended up doing a Chipotle style, I guess there's

• 22:55Speaker 01

  a common theme there, a Chipotle style restaurant where it was built around pasta, chickpea pasta, and we would have toppings. And I mean, they, they brought some cool people through. I remember Nancy Silverton came through.

• 23:07Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Exactly. I was just like, whoa, what's going on here?

• 23:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Astoria Moza for people who, yeah, she's very famous, of course. So you get on the show and one of the celebrity judges, it happens to be Joe Bastianich, who's also the guy behind Italy, which is a kind of a perfect, like lucky fortune, because he, I guess, is like, hey, you can put this pasta in Italy.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. It ended up going well enough that Joe decided that this was a concept he was gonna invest in. And we had our classic dramatic negotiation where he took a box of pasta, ripped it open, threw the pasta everywhere on the table. It was like reality TV to a T.

• 23:51Guy Raz?

  And this is really, I mean, this is all just, it happens very quickly. I mean, you can get it, you're gonna get into Italy and, and you're in Detroit and I guess you also have an opportunity to get into Meyer's, which is a Upper Midwest grocery chain.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. And the series of events with Meyer was similar to doing the reality TV show.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  I was just doing any pitch competition anyone would hear me at. And I, I went to a pitch competition at the University of Michigan, lost in flying colors because it's a popularity contest and I didn't go to Michigan. So no one voted for me. Everyone was voting for their friends, but one of the judges happened to know the gluten free buyer at Meyer. And he, I think he's just like a friend. And he said, hey, I'm gonna introduce you to this person.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  You should chat with, with them. And long story short, I showed up to the meeting still with pasta in a, in a, in a bag, little baggie, no packaging and just said, you know, I was looking for advice. I truly did not think that they would be interested in carrying it. But because we were local and Meyer is amazing about supporting Michigan based companies, I think he felt compelled to try it. And I was like, okay, that's awesome. What if we do like five stores? What if we do 10 stores, see how it goes? And he was like, no, actually I want it for the full chain. So.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  I was very nervous to say yes, but ultimately we did. And so the first accounts we launched in at pretty much the exact same time ended up being those 190 Meyer stores and the two Italy stores.

• 25:38Guy Raz?

  How did you, you have to make the pasta at scale. You have to actually start making it and you had to package it and, and that requires money. First of all, you had $27,000 from which you had raised in that crowdfunding thing. And then what additional money did you have at that point?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  We also raised $75,000 on the show.

• 26:02Guy Raz?

  Okay. But you had to now really get this professionalized. You couldn't make it in your kitchen. It had to be packed, you had to have a box, you had to have a design. I imagine there, you know, there are not plenty, but there are several pasta manufacturing facilities in the US that do pasta for many different brands. So I'm imagining that's your first stop. You're gonna start to call up pasta makers to see if they could take your recipe and make this.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  We had found a very, very small manufacturer in Michigan that was gluten free, but they could only do 150, 200 pounds an hour, which is really inefficient. And amazing that they existed because we could learn with them, but we didn't think that it would be viable to start selling into grocery stores at that scale.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  And so we started seeking out larger manufacturing partners and we ended up finding what was at the time, the largest gluten free pasta manufacturer. And we were so excited and we were like, okay, this is.

• 27:02Guy Raz?

  And they were also in Michigan or somewhere in another state?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  They were in California, outside of LA. And so we, we went and had a visit and they expressed a lot of confidence that they would be able to make the product because we were having all this success at the smaller scale.

• 27:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Tell me, so, okay, so this is a, this is a gluten free pasta manufacturer. So I'm assuming most of what they're making is rice pasta.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Rice pasta, rice and corn pasta. They had no experience working with beans.

• 27:32Guy Raz?

  Okay. So you have this recipe, which is chickpea flour and xanthan gum and tapioca starch and some pea starch and salt. And you're, you give it to them. And, okay, seems straightforward. You make the dough and then you just, the machine pushes it through extruders and then it drops onto a tray and then it's dried and then packaged and you got your pasta.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  That's what it should be. Yeah.

• 27:54Guy Raz?

  That's what it should be. Okay.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  We, we, we had the same hope and unfortunately, it felt like just about everything that could go wrong, did go wrong when trying to do that scale up. We started doing these runs at, I don't know, I think they were something like 1,000 pounds an hour. So going from 150, 200 pounds an hour to 1,000 pounds an hour.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  It's just the scale of a mistake increases dramatically.

• 28:23Guy Raz?

  What's the mistake? What was the problem?

• 28:25Speaker 01

  By the time the pasta came out, it looked okay, but you'd boil it and it was just mush, like complete mush.

• 28:31Guy Raz?

  Okay. And by the way, were you at the facility? Did you go to California and oversee the process?

• 28:37Speaker 01

  I was there pretty much the whole time, seeing over and over again, these production runs where, and keep in mind, like with only just over $100,000, like you just don't have that much tolerance for these mistakes at that scale. So it'd be something like, I think each run would be something like 8,000, 10,000 pounds. And if it doesn't work, you've lost the tolling, you've lost the ingredient costs and that adds up. So we were just watching as, okay, the first one doesn't go great. You think to yourself, okay, it's the first try. Let's regroup, figure out what else we can do. Try another variable. Again, doesn't work.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  So we had something like three production runs of maybe, depending on the size of the run, eight to 15,000 pounds. And when you're buying chickpea flour for, I assume at the time, maybe could have been 80 cents a pound, that starts to become a problem. So I became extremely stressed, was not paying attention to like taking care of myself. I was not sleeping. And I became at some point, I guess, so dehydrated that it kicked off what was a latent kidney stone. And so in, in the most dramatic fashion, my brother joined me to oversee what was then

• 30:06Speaker 01

  our last shot at a production run where we had burned through the money that we had saved. And we're on our way there and I turned to my brother Scott and I'm like, I got some pain in my side. I think something's going on here. And he's like, no, you're fine. And we're sitting there waiting for the pasta to come out, to be able to try it. And I'm in so much pain that I can't stand. And I'm like billowing over and I was like, we need to go to the emergency room. So go to the emergency room. They asked me on a scale of one to 10, how much pain I'm in. And I'm like, well, I didn't get shot, but I know I'm in a lot of pain, so I wanna say 10. I said nine. And I'm thinking about this last production run.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  I felt like I had put everything into this business, even though it had been less than a year. I'm thinking to myself, this company is not gonna survive before it even launches. This is the end of the world if this doesn't work.

• 31:00Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, Brian comes up with a fix for the mushy pasta problem and chooses a bold breakout color for the box. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 31:23Guy Raz?

  AI isn't just opening new business opportunities, it's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on. NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new,

• 32:08Guy Raz?

  expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization, and how to position your business to prosper from it. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built. Does your team want a website that looks and feels

• 32:50Guy Raz?

  handcrafted but is still fast to ship? Well, Framer is built exactly for that. With Framer, you design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting, and a CMS built in, so the work is production-ready from day one. And you can get it done with help from Framer's AI agents. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. AI agents and humans work together. The agents bring speed and scale, and people bring taste, judgment, and control.

• 33:35Guy Raz?

  Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro Annual Plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. Stripe is built for whatever comes next because the pace of change has never been faster than it is right now. New business models, new currencies, and new expectations for speed, reliability, and scale. Stripe builds financial infrastructure that helps businesses start, grow, and operate globally. From payments and billing to fraud protection and cross-border payouts,

• 34:19Guy Raz?

  Stripe is built to support the new pace of commerce. They're trusted by the companies building at the frontier, from 86% of the Forbes AI 50 to global leaders like Salesforce and OpenAI. In fact, more than 1.6% of global GDP flows through Stripe, with Stripe's users processing a combined $1.9 trillion last year. So if you're already thinking about what's next for your business, see what's possible at stripe.com.

• 35:02Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2014, and when we left off, Brian was at a real low point. His chickpea pasta recipe was not working out. And in the middle of dealing with all that, he got an incredibly painful kidney stone. That problem eventually went away, but the pasta was still coming out mushy.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  So we went back to the plant, just keeping our fingers crossed that the production run has gone well. And I can clearly see that it has not gone amazingly well. Not a product that we were going to be proud of. And I think it was that day where I was like, something's got to change. They can't just keep making this product that's this bad over and over again. And going in, despite them asking me not to, going in and talking to the press operators and saying like, what's going on? And they're like, yeah, this corn smells funny. And I was like, that's because it's not corn. You're not making a corn pasta today. It's chickpeas. And I was like, oh, my God, the communication here is horrible. And that was when they kicked me out of the plant. And they're like, you got to get out of here.

• 36:09Guy Raz?

  And you got kicked out because you were there too much? Or you were too, you're like poking your nose and things too much?

• 36:14Speaker 01

  A little overzealous, yeah. I really wanted to see what was happening on the line because this was everything to me, right?

• 36:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Time was running out. I mean, we had a PO due because Meyer and Eataly were both going to have product available. And so we were running out of time, running out of money. And we also had the distributor at the time basically threatening us. They're like, if you don't fulfill this PO, you're never going to work with this retailer again.

• 36:41Guy Raz?

  But you had to, so you basically, even though this, what was coming out of this manufacturer wasn't great, you had no choice but to use it? Is that what you're saying?

• 36:51Speaker 01

  That's how it felt. I was hearing these threatening messages from the distributor that was basically like, if you don't fulfill this, you'll never, you'll never work with this company again. And I don't know any better.

• 37:00Guy Raz?

  And how much, I mean, how much money was this going to cost you? Like, how much, most of the $100,000 you had at that time?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were basically out, I mean, at that point.

• 37:10Guy Raz?

  Okay. And this was going to be for all the Meyer stores and some Eataly shops?

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Exactly. And it was something like 20,000 boxes for the initial PO. It wasn't a crazy amount, but at the time, it was a crazy amount. So it just felt like the most impossible to fulfill order. And so we sat there and we were like, okay, what if you boil it for one minute, two minutes, three minutes? And then it was like, okay, what if you don't boil it at all? What if it just sits in hot water the same way that you steep tea?

• 37:44Guy Raz?

  Huh. So you would basically just boil water, let it stop boiling, and you put the pot, turn the heat off, and let it sit there and see if that changed the mushiness? Like, if that made it more, more like a wheat pasta?

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Making it more like a wheat pasta is definitely a stretch, but at least making it not fall apart. And we found that that made it okay. It was okay.

• 38:10Guy Raz?

  It was good enough. If you didn't boil it, if you just put it in hot water and let it sit there?

• 38:15Speaker 01

  It cooked better. I was still, listen, I was not proud of it. I was, I felt really bad about having to sell this under our brand, but I also knew it was a matter of survival. So we then already had the packaging printed. So in order to get through it, we had to get stickers.

• 38:36Guy Raz?

  What did the stickers say on them?

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Oh, Banza is even easier to cook than regular pasta. Steep it like tea.

• 38:45Guy Raz?

  So you had to get, you had to physically put that sticker on 20,000 boxes?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  20,000 boxes. So we ended up finding some people who worked at that plant to help us. And it was brutal. And, you know, I'm very grateful to the folks who were willing to take on that job because it's pretty mind-numbing. And we shipped it.

• 39:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  And we then got the heck out of that facility, went back to the small manufacturer and said, you know, we're going to try to work with you for as long as we can. And it was immediately better working with them. They seemed to have more of an ability to adjust because it was a smaller run. So you could test, you could learn, you could try something else, all pretty continuously. So, yeah, we retreated.

• 39:37Guy Raz?

  All right. So now it's the summer of 2014, and the pasta is about to roll out in 192 stores, which I think are mostly Meyers in the Midwest. And at the same time, the reality TV show that you're part of on CNBC is also about to come out. So this is a pretty, like, big moment for you. What happens?

• 39:57Speaker 01

  The show aired on August 5th for the first time, and it crashes the website.

• 40:02Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  And there was real interest. We were getting tons of emails, and people were frustrated they couldn't buy it. And the show itself, it really highlighted a lot of the points that I would hope would be highlighted, that it was higher in protein, higher in fiber, gluten-free, vegan, all these great things. Like, it actually, it told the story to a lot of people really fast. So even though it was, it had a lot of fake drama that didn't really happen, it also, net-net, was a dream way to start, to have that kind of exposure.

• 40:35Guy Raz?

  And did you have any feedback on flavor, right? Because wheat pasta is fairly neutral. I mean, maybe it has like a slight salty flavor, but it's very, it really is like a canvas for sauce. But once you're using other non-wheat flours, you're introducing flavors that our palates aren't used to, right?

• 40:56Speaker 01

  I think what we found is, in a red sauce... It was a pretty similar experience. But when you started going to the lighter sauces, it has a different flavor. And some people like that flavor, but a lot of people do want the experience of wheat. And so it was a work in progress. I'll say that.

• 41:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  But people really did love it. Like, that was one of the cool things is even with recognizing the product needed to be better, it just solved such a problem for people to have pasta that could be so nutrient dense. And the nice thing about pasta is it's a vehicle for your sauce. So even though it had its flaws, that would often be hidden by the sauce itself.

• 41:43Guy Raz?

  And I imagine, I mean, in a sense, it's like, even though it's not yet perfect, you know, because a lot of times that can sink a brand, right? If people try it once and they're just not, didn't like it, they're not going to go back to it. But I think in this case, it was just so different. It was like chickpea flour pasta. And probably there were a number of people kind of excited about that because either they were gluten free or they were already looking for high protein foods. So imagine you had people like that, who even though it wasn't perfect yet, were still psyched just because it was different than anything else out there.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, when I think about even the earliest days, I would ask anyone in a room, if you could eat pasta, but have it have more protein, more fiber, almost anyone would say, absolutely. I would love that. And so I think just for a beloved food, people love pasta. To be able to eat it and have it be that healthy was really a novel thing.

• 42:43Guy Raz?

  Brian, tell me about the packaging. I mean, how did you design it? Because I've seen that early packaging. It looks quite different than what it looked like now. It had a window, so you could see the pasta. It says chickpeas and the logo is different. Did you hire somebody to design that for you?

• 42:56Speaker 01

  We did. And there were so many iterations of design. And we quickly, through farmers markets, learned what people liked, what they didn't like. And it really did shape the messaging that we felt like would most resonate. And saying chickpeas as a lead actually scared a lot of people. So, and as did gluten free. Gluten free was very much so not on the front of our packaging. We didn't have a gluten free certification on the front. It was on the side. We really wanted people to think of this not as a product that's not for them, but a product that could be because it's high in protein, high in fiber.

• 43:36Guy Raz?

  And yeah.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  We definitely started to notice that people appreciated that the pasta was high in protein. I also thought it was sort of like, you're putting together these two ideas that usually don't go together, which was somewhat shocking, right? To have a pasta that has protein, it's sort of like you don't expect those two things together. So there was, I think it also built intrigue.

• 43:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah. It's interesting because it really jumps off the shelves, right? And I think one of the, one of the reasons why this has been successful is because you see it. It's an orange box.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Orange is my favorite color. So I grew up on Nickelodeon, always loved it. And

• 44:14Guy Raz?

  Oh, yeah, that's, that's right. That's a great orange. Yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  It's, yeah. And when we were thinking about the color, we also thought about what would stand out and saw that at the time, almost all pasta was blue. It was crazy. You would think that they were all in cahoots because every single one would look the exact same. And nothing contrasts more sharply with a blue than an orange. It's distinctly Banza. I will say that at this point.

• 44:43Guy Raz?

  Mm hmm. All right. So you have packaging and you've got now some momentum, but you still need to, I mean, to scale now, and this is already, you know, 2015. You still have this issue with production, right? Like you, it's, it's being produced in a small facility in Michigan. And I'm imagining that you and your brother are talking about like, we got to figure this out because this is going to be a problem at some point.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Exactly. We started to recognize that the facility we were working with was not ready to invest in growing with us. And we were, we had the place bursting at the seams, producing as often as possible. And they were not willing to buy a new line. So funny enough, at that time, the person from that other facility who kicked me out of the plant, his name is Manoush. He sent me a message on LinkedIn, said, hi, Brian, I'm thinking of starting my own facility. Would you be interested in being a customer? And I hated him. I hated him so much because he kicked me out of the plant.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  So it took every ounce of swallowing my pride to answer that message and say, sure, let's chat. We talked with him and there were some mutual interest there. And we said, hey, you know, we, instead, would you want to team up with us and help start a facility together? And we worked through the details.

• 46:17Guy Raz?

  That you would own instead of, instead of him. So he was thinking about starting his own anyway, to make gluten free pasta. And you're saying, well, maybe we team up and own it together.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Exactly. And it was a nice opportunity for him as well, a little bit less risky than starting his own plant.

• 46:35Guy Raz?

  But how are you going to finance that in April of 2016?

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that is part of why we ended up raising a seed round for the very first time. And at that point, we had been in a few thousand stores. And we were starting to see some good momentum. I believe our orange packaging was starting to hit shelves, but a lot of our customers, in theory anyway, were not shopping the pasta aisle. But they'd see it when they were walking around the perimeter of the grocery store on the end cap. And they'd say, oh, I'll try that. That looks different.

• 47:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  And then they'd come back and buy it more. And it was this like really cool line graph where it would be like line up, new line, new baseline up every time it was on display. And we were able to raise money based on some of that early momentum. But we were very nervous about setting up our own facility. We really didn't want to. It was only after exhausting all the other options. We spoke with pretty much anyone we could and just continued to have bad luck or there just wasn't enough capacity. So after everything we went through with the first production run, we were very, very focused on de-risking. And, and that felt like the lowest investment way to, to get started.

• 47:52Guy Raz?

  Okay. So one of the things that I think really is going to be pivotal is getting into, I mean, being Italy and Meyer is great and even Whole Foods, but you were, you got into Target. And this is like about two and a half years in. And Target's critical, right? Because if you're in Target, then you can really become a big brand. Like you can become a, you know, a significant brand if you're just in Whole Foods. But to really scale, you've got to be in Krogers and the Targets and Walmarts. And so they agreed to pick it up in May of 2016. Not, not in all the stores, but I think in a few stores, a test run.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. A couple of hundred stores to see how it would go. And, you know, we watched it like a hawk. We did everything we could to try to support it and it got momentum.

• 48:39Guy Raz?

  How? I mean, they usually give you one chance, right? So how did, I mean, there has to be a reason why people noticed it there.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  I think it was a combination of the bright orange packaging, I hope, right? We had started to really learn what was resonant on social media, probably before a lot of brands were taking it seriously. And people loved pasta content. I remember it wasn't long before we were able to say we had more followers than any pasta brand. And that was, was meaningfully helpful in also sales conversations, but I think building resonance. And we would see these people who would create amazing recipes. And we would just reach out and say, hey, would you like to try our pasta? And we would ship them anything. So I have to imagine, if I look in retrospect,

• 49:31Speaker 01

  the things that worked, very different product, first of its kind, but also the relentless pursuit of just saying like, please pay attention to us, right?

• 49:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And I mean, the momentum of this product is amazing. I mean, you, I think by 2022, you're in 21,000 stores. And at this point, you've got pizza and you've got mac and cheese, you've got rice, and you'll eventually create more products. But I want to ask about, you know, a challenging period for, because this is, and I should mention, you were on the show very briefly a couple of years ago, just a short episode with a few other guests. And we talked about this. And it's a really important story because, you know, in a sense, at this point, anybody could hear this episode and go, oh, Banza, you know, they just like jumped from success to success. The guy was in this startup lab.

• 50:24Guy Raz?

  And, and people are like, where's the failure? Where's the, where's the setbacks? You know, that's how I learned from How I Built This. And there was a very significant setback.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:34Guy Raz?

  Let me, let me tell you the story that I know and then you can chime in. But the story is, there was a, a report. There's a, there's an organization, influencers, moms across America, and they, you know, talk about healthy food. And I think they were very much supporters of organic, et cetera. Right? They tested a bunch of foods and they found that in your pastas, including other products, there was a trace element of an herbicide called glyphosate, which is, is like one of the most widely used herbicides on the planet. It's in Roundup. And so, again, I don't know if this is, you know, whether their testing was fair or not, but did they come to you first?

• 51:19Guy Raz?

  Or did this just come out of the blue? One day you opened the internet and people are like, dude, what's going on with your pasta?

• 51:25Speaker 01

  I still remember when I saw that press release.

• 51:30Guy Raz?

  Okay. So they didn't come to you first? They didn't ask for anything?

• 51:33Speaker 01

  No. I was sitting in a one-on-one. I saw a Google alert and my heart sank. It was terrifying. And I remember my brain just jumped 20 steps ahead. I don't know if I could have predicted how bad it actually was, but I knew it was going to be bad.

• 51:55Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, Brian is absolutely right. It is bad, really bad. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Show Button here. Football is finally back and PrizePix is going crazy with the deals to start the season, giving out promos every day in September. On PrizePix, you can make all the picks you want, all in the same app. And now PrizePix is available nationwide. So what are you waiting for? Lock in for kickoff because everyone and everything is on PrizePix. What you want?

• 52:35Speaker 03

  Download the app today and use code WONDERY to get $150 instantly in lineups if you win your first $5 lineup. PrizePix, run your game.

• 52:55Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2024 and Brian is dealing with a nightmare scenario. A viral report from a food safety group claims that Bonza chickpea pasta has high levels of a harmful pesticide.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  I mean, honestly, we were shocked to see it. I think it was not something we ever would have expected to be the case. The majority of our supply chain at that time was already traceable and we had relationships with many of the farms that were growing our chickpeas and-

• 53:31Guy Raz?

  And most of them were coming from the US?

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Correct. And none of the farmers that we have a relationship with were spraying glyphosate. So I was so shocked and confused. And then it quickly turned into, oh my God, I'm getting a lot of threatening messages. People are really scared. They don't know what this means. They don't know how to contextualize it. And we didn't have a prepared response because we never would have expected it.

• 53:56Guy Raz?

  Who are you hearing from? Are you hearing from, I'm assuming, consumers, but also from like, the big companies, like the Whole Foods and Targets of the world?

• 54:05Speaker 01

  It started with the advocacy group. And then the advocacy group has a very strong network of influencers that they work with who promoted the message. And frankly, fear and food is a very compelling message on social media. And it was a game of telephone where by the time it made its way to some of the largest accounts who were sharing it, they were saying things that were even more extreme than the initial very extreme message. And I think we were paralyzed by this moment and wanting to verify whether or not it was true as a first step.

• 54:45Guy Raz?

  Right. So, so on the one hand, like, you want to release a statement, but you can't necessarily deny it until you've tested it. I guess you could recall all your products, but it's not, that would be maybe overkill. What did you decide to do right away to stop the bleeding? Because I imagine, am I wrong, did it instantly affect sales?

• 55:12Speaker 01

  For absolute clarity, our sales went down 30% week over week.

• 55:17Guy Raz?

  Wow, wow, wow.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  I mean, honestly, I was more concerned with people's fear and trying to figure out how to address that. I had people who I've known forever calling me and I had someone call me crying because they were so scared. And they didn't know what it meant. They didn't know how to contextualize it. And they love Banza and they give it to their kids all the time. I was also sitting with the fact that I've spent all this time only caring about trying to make healthy food. And now I'm in this position where people are of the belief that we are doing something extremely nefarious or intentional. And, you know, it's like, maybe more than I wanted to admit, my identity had been wrapped up

• 56:01Speaker 01

  in this idea of I create healthy food. And to then be told and get messages from people on the internet who don't even know you that are accusing you-

• 56:10Guy Raz?

  That you're trying to kill them.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I just, I started to feel so terrible every day. And it got to a point where a video would go online, my whole body would start shaking from the adrenaline and the fear. I legitimately lost like 10 pounds during that time period because I was just walking, nonstop, trying to work through the stress. And it was sort of like waiting for the shoe to drop that another influencer would post, another influencer would post.

• 56:39Guy Raz?

  So what were you doing in those first few days? Did you, anything? Like, what did you do?

• 56:45Speaker 01

  My hope was that we would get test results back quickly.

• 56:50Guy Raz?

  So you didn't release a statement? You didn't do anything like that?

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Well, we did that. We did that. But, but that's not enough to quell people's concerns. So we put something on our website very quickly. But it was along the lines of we are going to look into this, which is, which is, you know, for the people who are most concerned, maybe not what they want to hear. I just, I wanted to make sure we handled it the right way, not the rushed way. I was trying to do the right thing where we would not say something out of turn. And it was like, you couldn't have made it up that the lab would just take longer and longer and keep delaying and delaying and delaying. And next thing you know, it's been three weeks.

• 57:32Guy Raz?

  And what did the results tell you that you guys got back?

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Very different. And for many reasons. And what we published was ultimately 98% lower than what was claimed. And, but it wasn't zero, right? There was gray. So what I had to sit with was, that's not great either, right? Like, it was, it was a very low level that would still be considered low by most standards. It was below EWG's benchmark for risk, which is already very, very conservative. But I just sat with it and I said to myself, I know we can solve this because the majority of our supply chain is already this way. So we're just gonna, we're just gonna make sure that we get to 100% compliance. And we were able to do it within just a few weeks.

• 58:19Guy Raz?

  It's, I mean, this is in June, right, of 2020. It was a bad summer for you. And you're seeing sales just really collapse. But you now have data and you now have had some breathing room to kind of think about what to do. So what do you, what do you decide to do?

• 58:37Speaker 01

  In the span of a few weeks, we gained a better understanding of how to get our supply chain to a place where every farmer, we would know. And if we didn't know them, for example, in Art for Pasta Made in Italy, there would be a tremendous amount of testing to confirm that growing practices are as they should be. And a lot of people worked with us to make sure we could get that over the finish line, given the circumstances. So that was one component. And then the other is working with a certifying agency called The Detox Project, who created the glyphosate residue-free program. So if you

• 59:19Speaker 01

  ever see a product that says glyphosate residue-free, they are the ones who created that certification. And they have a new certification, then new, now many are using it, called CleanScan, which is intended to be not just focused on glyphosate, but also a standardized panel of pesticides, over 400 pesticides. And, you know, we don't choose them. It's just that these panels are designed by lab testing companies.

• 59:50Guy Raz?

  And, and they basically certify that a product is free of these ingredients?

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Correct. And you also commit to publishing test results. And what I loved about it is it's all focused on transparency. It's meant to be a form of accountability that is very public. And I just wanted to rebuild trust with people by just saying, you know what? We may have a test result that shows a positive on something. Like, there is drift from nearby fields. The reality of farming is messier than most people think. And if that does happen, we will publish it and we will make a public commitment to solving for it. We will, you know, do a root cause analysis. We'll figure out where it's coming

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  from.

• 1:00:42Guy Raz?

  And I think you've got a QR code on your box right now that you can scan and you can see those test results.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Yes. And that said, you know, good news does not travel as fast as bad news. And again, I think there are things we could have done differently. I wish the lab testing came back sooner, but in lieu of that, a more quick, obvious, easy to find statement that just acknowledged what was happening and that we were investigating and surprised. That may have helped a little bit, but honestly, it's hard to say.

• 1:01:13Guy Raz?

  So if you were, if you were a crisis communications expert now, which you are, and you were giving advice to somebody in the same situation, would you say, no, you want to over communicate? You want to just talk and talk and talk and talk until everybody hears your message? Is that what you would say?

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Basically, yes. At that moment, I'm not going to blame anyone but myself at this point, right? Like, again, I don't even know if this would have helped. But my, my hope for anyone else who's listening to this is to say, if you respond with an earnest assessment of the situation, show what you care about, what you intend to do about it. I think that that can be well received. It's hard to do.

• 1:01:57Guy Raz?

  How long do you think it took before, you know, how long did it take before the sales recovered?

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  It's been a mixed bag. In some accounts, sales are better than ever. And probably not surprisingly, the natural channel has been much slower to recover.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  And it's crazy because those were, in many circumstances, are originally our best accounts. And maybe not best by total dollar sales, but like-

• 1:02:29Guy Raz?

  Repeat customers and-

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:02:33Guy Raz?

  And per store sales.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Per store sales, exactly. And it actually does make sense that the people who shop in the natural channel are most likely to be affected by this type of messaging. My hope in all of this, as I sat with it, was to assume positive intent with anyone. So I truly believe that the Moms Across America team is extremely well-intended. I think that they are fighting for what they believe in, and everyone was doing it from a place of, I want to help people. And that honestly made it so much more tolerable to get through it, assuming positive intent.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  And, you know, it's going to take time, right? Like, the Whole Foods customer is going to take a while to, you know, believe in us again. And I will say, like, I have alerts turned on for any mention of Banza and glyphosate, and I personally respond. I jump in on Reddit, and my hope is 100% of the time that there is a mention of Banza and glyphosate, someone is responding and contextualizing until it's impossible to see a version of this story without context, which is exhausting.

• 1:03:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah, you got to vibe code a cloud agent to do that for you.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  Might be helpful.

• 1:03:58Guy Raz?

  Despite that challenge in 2024, you are, I think this year, you were, became the fifth biggest pasta brand in the US. You also, you also started to sell a wheat-based pasta protein, right? And so you've got, and I think it's made in a different facility, but you have that because of the high protein content. And as I say, you've got frozen pizzas and protein waffles and mac and cheese. Where are you seeing the most exciting growth right now? Because now, we're in a now in a world where there's lots, you've got competition that you didn't have before, right? You've got, you know, Lupini pasta and other brands that are making chickpea pasta, and

• 1:04:43Guy Raz?

  even Barilla, the huge Italian brand, is making, you know, chickpea pasta now. So, but where are you seeing real, like, velocity in all of the different things that you now make?

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  At the end of the day, our most important product is still our chickpea pasta, the very first. And we are, despite some challenges, still, by the way, in the natural channel, we are seeing great growth in some accounts outside of that. But it's, our core focus has to be and remain our chickpea pasta for every reason. So for all the, it's fun to make new stuff. It's really fun. But continuing to challenge myself to do less in the face of a lot of enthusiasm to want to do more.

• 1:05:36Guy Raz?

  When you think about, you know, where you got to now, how much of this do you attribute to the work that you and your brother put in? How much you think had to do with luck and circumstance? I mean, you did, you know, you arrived at the, you know, the beginning of the protein boom. There's going to be a fiber boom. There's still a lot of people who are gluten-free. You had early luck with that reality show. And so there are all those factors, but how much do you weigh those two things, luck and hard work?

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  I think when we're at our best, we are doing anything we can to increase the likelihood of luck. So if it's putting ourselves out there and doing a reality TV show and going through all the chaos that comes with that, but knowing that it increases the likelihood that something might go right, that's where we should be. There's just so much that I think has been a tailwind. If we're doing it right, we're just increasing the likelihood of a tailwind.

• 1:06:38Guy Raz?

  That's Brian Rudolph, co-founder, along with his brother Scott, of Banza. Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please do sign up for my newsletter at guyraz.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Catherine Seifer with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Kerry Thompson. Our audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Alex Chung, Sam Paulson, Carla Estevez, J.C. Howard, John Isabella, and Elaine Coats.

• 1:07:22Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.