Tamara Coleman
The customer really is the one. They're not just the buyer. They really are the co-creator. We want to sense a community. We want them to be involved. And that's what helps grow the brand more than ever. So the customers play a huge role in our day-to-day operation and the decisions that we make.
Chase Clymer
The reason I'm asking you that is because I'm going to now get on a pedestal and preach to everyone that they need to do more customer surveys. They need to do more customer interviews. It's wild to me the amount of businesses that we consult with that haven't asked their customers any questions recently. And I'm like, why not? If they buy from you, they like you, they're gonna answer some questions.
Honest Ecommerce is a weekly podcast where we interview direct-to-consumer brand founders and leaders to find out what it takes to start, grow, and scale an online business today.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I'm welcoming the show Tamara Coleman. She is the founder of Bark Bistro, and she has built one of the fastest-growing natural pet brands in the country. Tamara, welcome to the show.
Tamara Coleman
Thanks, Chase. Thanks for having me today. I'm looking forward to chatting with you.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. So what are the products you're bringing to market over there at Bark Bistro? What was the flagship product?
Tamara Coleman
So we make peanut butter for dogs. It's called Buddy Budder. And it's all natural. There's no hydrogenated oils, palm oils, artificial sugars or salts. And that's what we launched with. We launched with gentle cooked meals and that changed, which I'll get into with you. But now we have peanut butter.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Well, that's a perfect segue to take me back to the beginning. I guess peanut butter wasn't the first product. So where did the idea for the company come from? And then I guess the first product and how that pivot all works out.
Tamara Coleman
Bark Bistro launched in 2018. It launched with Food for Dogs. I was doing general cooked meals, had a local regional distributor in South Florida, and teamed up with a meal prep company. And then COVID happened. We got hit with the pandemic. So we were priced out of the market. Proteins and produce skyrocketed.
And I was already working on peanut butters in the background. I wanted to expand on our assortment and start adding treats to the food. But at that point, I pivoted. I shelved the food. I moved into peanut butter. Out of no choice. And it was scary because I already dedicated two years of my life to the General Cooked Meals. But launching the peanut butters, it ended up being the best decision of my life.
And from there, like, everything has come in layers. When we launched the peanut butters, the first six months, there were no sales because it was in the height of COVID. At that time, I decided to drive to the coast. We drove from Florida to Georgia, to South Carolina, door knocking, introducing the peanut butter to retailers.
And two weeks later, I was doing follow-up calls. And I'm like, “What are your thoughts? I was hoping some orders were going to come through.” And I was met with a lot of, no, I'm just not interested. Not right now. But the common theme question was, “Do you sell on Amazon or Chewy?”
And at the time, we were not online. We were not an Ecommerce brand yet. We had it on our website. But again, there was really no traffic to the website. It was a new product launch. So finally, out of frustration, I asked the last retailer, I'm like, “Why does everyone keep asking this question?”
And they're like, “Well, if we bring the product in and we put it on our shelf and our customer comes in and discovers the product, and then they turn around and purchase it. The next time on Amazon or Chewy or online, we lose the sale.” And I thought to myself, oh my gosh, this is like a dinosaur way of thinking.
Of course, the small retailer can't compete with Ecommerce. But why would you potentially not bring a product that's going to sell instead of worrying about them purchasing it online at a later date? And I'm like, they're loyal to you. They're loyal to your store. They like shopping small. These were all in my thoughts, right? So it was at that time I knew we had to go online.
And I fought for two weeks to get this listed onto Amazon. And it was relentless. I kept getting denied. They don't tell you why. It was a guessing game. And then I got our original four SKUs listed on Amazon. The first month, June of 2019, we had done $200 in sales. And I was ecstatic because I was like, “Oh my gosh, we're finally making sales, right?”
Short six months later, fast forward to December 2019, and we were already doing over 8,000 a month. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing what the retailer did not understand. The customer did, the consumer wanted it. There was a demand for the product. And from there, it just kept growing. We're now in over 15,000 stores. So the retailers now call us.
We've expanded our footprint online. We're D2C, we're Ecommerce, third-party platforms, Amazon, Chewy, Thrive, IARB, Target, Walmart, et cetera. And we just broke into grocery, Sprouts, Fresh Market, Mother's Market, which is a huge milestone for us. We're excited. We want to become a household name. But yeah.
What was scary in the beginning, pivoting to the peanut butter has turned out to be amazing. And it's all due to us going online in Ecommerce. We tried the retail route first, but Ecommerce really is what launched the product and got us in front of all of these eyes.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. I've got about a dozen follow up questions for you. The first one being, as you're developing the peanut butter in the background, where did that idea come from? Was it just like, this would be a good complement to what we're already doing? Or did you have a customer ask for it? I always like asking where did the idea for the product come from?
Tamara Coleman
Yeah. So I was already making peanut butters in my own kitchen for my dogs. I wanted something natural. That wasn't the traditional legacy brands that exist on the grocery aisle tend to have harmful ingredients or stabilizers. I was doing it because I was giving my dogs how to take medication regularly. So I wanted something to give them their medicine.
They detect it in food. Eventually, they detect it in cheese. And peanut butter was one of those things that actually masks the flavor of the pill or the smell of the pill. So that's where it started. But it turns out after research, peanut butter is one of the number one search terms for dogs. Whether it's a peanut butter treat, whether it's a peanut butter cookie, just peanut butter in general and no one had marketed peanut butter specifically to dogs yet.
So we wanted to reimagine what already existed. A household good commodity. It's been around forever, but let's make it better for you. Let's make it healthy. Let's leave out all the stabilizers and then we can add beneficial ingredients like superfoods. So that is exactly what Buddy Budder is. There's no harmful ingredients and it has superfoods in it, which are good for your dog. And that's how it launched. That's how it happened.
Chase Clymer
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You said that you did some market research and you found out about the volume of these search terms. Was that before you dove in more heavily or was that just validating to find out after you'd already put in some of this work?
Tamara Coleman
It was more validation after the work was already in. I just started looking and doing my research looking online and no one was doing the peanut butter specifically for dogs. People still go buy the legacy brands and give it to their dogs, but no one has reimagined it and specifically marketed it towards dogs.
Chase Clymer
Oh, I'll admit, I was guilty until I met you. And now I've got someone on the way.
Tamara Coleman
So that's it. And then when I was looking online, the biggest thing too, if you're looking for a product that you're going to jump in, especially on a third party platform such as an Amazon. There's saturation of everything that exists. No one had… There was no saturation. No one was doing it. Now, since then, there's been a lot of brands that have popped up. But we were the first. We are the biggest still today at what we do.
Chase Clymer
I want to talk about the choice to go online and the choice to embrace Amazon. I feel like there's a lot of negativity about launching into Amazon or in a third-party marketplace because it's not your customer. So walk me through having that moment where like, “Alright, we're going to try direct to consumer.”
And you chose Amazon over potentially owning your own audience and going that route. Just what was your thought process and why did you? Obviously, it worked out. So you made the right choice.
Tamara Coleman
Literally, the number one question when I was speaking to some of these retailers was, are you on Amazon or Chewy? The first 6 months didn't have sales, right? That was just to our own platform. I wasn't sure how to get all the traffic there yet. Other than ads, social media, posting. But I knew Amazon, we were going to get in front of all these eyeballs. And that was going to help us expand faster.
And Amazon still is a big partner today. They are pay-to-play. Everyone knows when I mean, when I first started, I was spending $10 a day, $300 a month on advertising and I was hyperventilating. I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, we really have to start making these sales. This is a lot of money today. Fast forward. We're spending seven figures advertising.” So they are more pay-to-play than they have ever been. But the sales match the ad spend. So it works out.
But it was because of Amazon that we were able to get in front of these retailers, it was because of Amazon that we got the traction that we have today. So I do... Whether you like them or hate them, Amazon still plays a big role today in what we do.
Chase Clymer
Hey everybody, just a quick reminder. Please like this video and subscribe if you haven't. We're releasing interviews like this every week. So don't miss out. Now back to the interview.
I've always had this thought around direct-to-consumer brands that when you hit a certain amount of sales, you get this economy of scale where your production costs actually get a little bit lower because you're doing things in so much volume and it produces a little bit more margin. So was going into Amazon with just all those eyeballs on your product, did it help you hit that economy of scale a bit faster in your opinion?
Tamara Coleman
Yes. So going on to Amazon definitely helped us hit that. Like I said, we have seen 40% to 60% growth year-over-year now due to us being on Amazon. So every year that we've been there, yes, our margins have improved, our cost has gone, our cost of goods go down. We self-manufacture our own product, which also helps. A lot of brands use co-packers. So our margins continue to improve just because we are the manufacturer of our own product.
And this company has been bootstrapped from day one. I grew it on my credit card with my Discover card. And then also because of the growth with Amazon, after you reach a certain threshold, they were offering loans and they were doing it against your sales, right? So they were, I took three different loans through the years from Amazon and paid them all back.
And they really ended up helping us also remain bootstrap, remain in control of our margins, remain in control of everything that we were already doing and had in place with manufacturing and quality and consistency.
Chase Clymer
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You mentioned earlier that Amazon helped you get into these other marketplaces and third party retailers. Was it just like the data and the velocity you just went, “Hey, look, this is how it works on Amazon to these other people and they went, okay.
Tamara Coleman
Yeah, kind of actually. Amazon gave us that validation and then you could see the reviews. We have four and a half stars across the board. More people complain in a review than they like to leave a positive review. So it was validation that people like the product. The consumer, the growth that was there, we could actually show them that data. And like I said, in the beginning, when they were not interested because we were potentially going to be on Amazon or Chewy. Now all of sudden, they are interested because they see the data that exists and with the positive reviews and the velocity, the turnover.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. I still think that it is like a legacy mindset about being scared of the internet and direct consumers as retailers. I remember we had partners back in 2018 that were like, we can't launch online because these other businesses will get mad about us. I was like, that is not... The internet is the future. And in 2018, the internet was huge already. It's not like it was a new thing.
Tamara Coleman
No. 100%. And that was the thing. We still today, we're trying to navigate and figure it out because you want to protect your indie brand that you build. Then you have to figure out how to launch into grocery and become an omnichannel brand and still maintain everything that you have online for Ecommerce. It's hard trying to navigate these waters and figure it out, right?
Because someone's always going to get upset about something that you've done and maintain your map pricing. That's the hard part too. So we have tried to keep that consistency with our pricing across the board, no matter what channel that we sell in. So it is always interesting. We are trying to navigate that and figure it out still today as we continue to grow.
Chase Clymer
Looking back, is there anything that stands out to you? Maybe a mistake you made along the way that you'd like to share with the audience and be like, maybe learn from this and don't do it the way I did?
Tamara Coleman
Yeah. Well, there's always mistakes, right? Like we've made some mistakes just recently when we were producing a large order and we forgot to put our hang tabs on before. So we had to take three days to work backwards to put on 20,000 hang tabs. But that's us specifically. Yeah, that was a huge mistake actually. I'm trying to think off the top of my head right now.
You know, this has been like jumping into the business in general, there's been some challenges along the way. Originally, I was jumping into a male dominated industry from the peanut crop farmers to the roasters. Starting in my townhouse kitchen, I was just making these recipes by buying these peanuts at my local grocer. And when I launched the product, then I started buying 30 pound boxes of peanuts from a regional distributor down in South Florida.
But I knew that wasn't scalable. So I had to figure out, okay, what am I going to do? And I noticed the actual roaster's name was on the side of the box. So I was like, I want to call this company and see if I can get them to sell me peanuts. And I called and actually got the CEO himself on the phone. And I'm talking to him and I'm like, “Hey, listen, you know, uh I make peanut butter for dogs.” And he started laughing.
And I'm like, he's like, “I've never heard of this before.” And I'm like, “No, because it's new.” And I said, “You know, look, I need to buy a pallet of peanuts. Can you sell me?” He started laughing. He's like, “I don't sell pallets of peanuts, we sell truckloads.” And I said, “Well, I'm going to be buying truckloads from you one day.” And he laughed again. And I was trying to vibe with them. Saying, “Look, I'm from Georgia. You're from Georgia.” And we were talking.
So by the end of the conversation, he decided to sell me the pallet of peanuts. And today we still buy two or three truckloads of peanuts from him. And we still laugh about a month, a month. And so we still laugh about this today. You know, but breaking into the industry as a whole is challenging. I jumped into an industry I knew nothing about. I don't have a pet food background. I didn't come from a corporate background. I didn't have industry knowledge.
I just jumped in headfirst and started working at it. And I've been learning every day as we go and grow. So there's always been some challenges. Also, the other challenge I would tell you would be, originally we launched our 17 ounce jars. And from there we were doing a different delivery method.
We had looked at a squeeze pouch, but it was a tear pouch and we ordered some, we tested it. But at the time it wasn't working out because of the natural oil separation. And then, it's not resellable. So it made it a single use treat, which isn't going to work at the end of the day as a single use treat. So two years later, we finally discovered after listening to some of our customers and the DMs, the comment sections of social media.
And they're like, “We just want a different delivery method. It's kind of messy with the jar. Sometimes we want to be able to use it while on the go or training or traveling.” And we ended up discovering the squeeze pouch. That was resellable. Our product is a, it's multifunctional because it can be used as a treat. It can be used while training, dog enrichment, pill masking. It can be used as a food topper. The possibilities are endless there.
So we have this squeeze pouch after listening to the customers, it's resellable and just launching that squeeze pouch alone, literally catapulted sales to 4X in one year. So this squeeze pouch was a really good move. But yeah, early on, it was going to be a tear pouch. That was never going to work.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. Just talking about listening to your customers and just pivoting along the way. With that, how much learning are you doing from the DMs and the poor reviews, like you said? How much does that impact the product?
Tamara Coleman
The customers, honestly, are the heartbeat of the company. We listen to them because they help develop the product line and tell us they want the squeeze pouch, the different delivery method. That's how that came to be. They talked to us about seasonal flavors, limited drops, we'll do polls and DMs and engage them.
Because at the end of the day the customer really is the one. They're not just the buyer, they really are the co-creator, right? Like we want to sense a community, we want them to be involved. And that's what helps grow the brand more than ever. So the customers play a huge role in our day-to-day operation and the decisions that we make.
Chase Clymer
The reason I'm asking you that is because I'm going to now get on a pedestal and preach to everyone that they need to do more customer surveys. They need to do more. They need to do more customer interviews. They need to. It's wild to me the amount of businesses that we consult with that haven't asked their customers any questions recently. And I'm like, why not? If they buy from you, they like you, they're going to answer some questions.
Tamara Coleman
Absolutely. They like to be heard. Every time we do a post and we ask a question, we get tons of responses. And it's amazing because you sort through it. What can you do? And they do feel involved at that point more than ever. And that's helped even grow our social media channels and grow the brand as a whole. So I think it's very important to engage your customers and talk to them.
Chase Clymer
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You said something a little bit ago about just having zero background, you just got started. So if you could talk to yourself back then, what would be some advice that you would try to pass along?
Tamara Coleman
I think all of us get into our heads about doing something right. You're waiting for the perfect time. You think that you don't come from the right background. You think you don't have the funding, the capital that it's going to take to launch the business. You're waiting for this perfect time to start. And now I started this business at 40.
Okay. I just feel like I'm one of those people. I don't have the background. The college educated background that comes from a fancy degree and it comes from industry knowledge and income from having big capital or any generational wealth. I had passion. I had an idea and I believed in myself. I bet on myself. And I just went out with the credit card and decided to see where this would go. And it's been the best decision ever.
I mean, I've bootstrapped this the whole way by staying lean, reinvesting every single dollar back into the business. And it's been, it's been huge in like not needing any outside capital. Today, the company still remains bootstrapped seven years later. And it's growing, it's working. I feel like a lot of people get nervous about starting.
I think you have to start lean, start messy, learn as you go. I mean, it's like flying an airplane while building it, right? Like we did this jar by jar, day by day, flavor by flavor. And that's the way we're still doing it today.
Chase Clymer
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. And that's the advice all young entrepreneurs need to hear or just entrepreneurs of any age. Let’s be real. Just do it. It's like, what are you waiting for? You'll make a mistake. It's gonna happen. Just know that.
Tamara Coleman
Yes.
Chase Clymer
And then just move on.
Tamara Coleman
Yes. You have to just keep going. That's what you have to do.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. So we've talked about this awesome natural peanut butter, the Buddy Butter. Where do I go if I want to try it?
Tamara Coleman
So I mean, we're in a lot of places today. We obviously have our website that we sell on. We are all third party platforms, Amazon's, Chewy's, Target's, Walmart's, Thrive's. \When we're in 15,000 independent retailers, that channel is growing every day. And we just broke into the grocery store. So we're in Sprouts, we're in Fresh Market, and we are in Mother's Market, which is in California. And we are in talks with some other grocers right now.
So we're really hoping to continue to grow and expand in grocery. But the next on the list to become a full omnichannel brand would be to break into some club and mass. And that's something that we're looking to focus on also in 2026.
Chase Clymer
Tamara, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show today and sharing all those amazing insights about the growth of your company.
Tamara Coleman
Thank you so much, Chase. It was nice talking to you today.
