We were lucky to catch up with Alfredo Infante recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alfredo, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?
One of the biggest challenges in creating our product is the cost of raw materials. As a result of Covid, we like many other industries, are being negatively affected by the lack of available resources. The silicone we use to produce our product, has gone up in price because it is in high demand. In addition, the price of shipping has gone up and are now more variable than ever. Shipment delays and back orders have also presented frustrating challenges.
This has led to us having to raise prices for our customers – which we wish we could avoid. While we are known for our 4.5-star rating on Amazon, our Awards of Excellence and our recognition by many award-winning Pitt Masters who love using our gloves, we also appreciate that our customers find our product to be high-quality and affordable as evidenced by our yearly growth of sales. We are also on pace to double our sales doubled again this year.
We continue to look for ways to cut costs and make our product 100% USA made and produced. However, we realize that to do that, we need to invest in a costly liquid silicone rubber injection mold machine. While we realize this is a big upfront investment, the long-term benefit of having this machine locally available would help us expand our product line tremendously. Along with that, we are also looking for an investor to help with the research and development of additional patented products. Bringing customers affordable high-quality products is our goal. The best way we can do that is to have reliable mold machines and materials to protect our customers and give them reliable, safe cooking experience.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I was born in Miami as the first of three siblings to Cuban parents. I was raised in a household with a mother and father who were hard-working professionals. In fact, my mother was a professional ballerina, and my father was a landscape contractor. As a kid, I always enjoyed the outdoors and going to different job sites with my father as he met with GC’s and architects. I watched and learned as he went over design drawings, worked with clients and problem-solved. I was always intrigued by people who imagined a concept or design first in their minds and then made those ideas come to life. I knew I wanted to make ideas come to life and create tangible masterpieces too. So, seeing amazing homes and communities designed and built from the ground up led me to my first passion – landscape design.
Following in my father’s footsteps, I chose to work in the family business, Forever Green Inc. I began working with him while in high school and even after graduating from Christopher Columbus High School. I then studied landscape architecture at the University of Florida and later became a certificated arborist. While attending the university, I also began the process to become a firefighter with Miami Dade County Fire Rescue. Interestingly, I discovered that firefighting was another passion of mine. I’ve always felt compelled to help others and I was always drawn to the excitement of fighting fires so, what better career to choose than firefighting! Therefore, when I got the call from the county to pursue my career as a firefighter, I seized the opportunity. To this day, I am honored to work for one of the best departments in the nation and enjoy serving the residents of Miami-Dade.
It was at the firehouse that I discovered yet another passion of mine – cooking. You see, as a firefighter, you basically live somewhere with seven different people for 24 hours shifts. It is a brotherhood like no other and living in south Florida is beautiful because we have people from all different parts of the world. So, cooking at the station is particularly fun because there are lots of styles and tastes that I fuse together to meet the preferences of my fire family. Let’s face it, other than having some intense calls, the other thing that brings us together is a well-cooked meal. After all, there’s no better place for good food than a firehouse! It has truly been a great way for me to explore my passion for cooking while learning to integrate styles and spices from a variety of cultures.
Cooking is something I do quite often. While cooking, I noticed one of the challenges for so many people on a busy day, is that you must try and cook fast. Due to the demands of the job, we are constantly running emergency calls and must respond to them quickly. At that point, I thought to myself, “There has to be an easier way.” I wanted to marinate food, BBQ it and/or pull pork, and get things out of the oven with a pair of gloves that provided safety, accessibility, and versatility. Yet, there was nothing on the market that did everything easily and effectively. I wanted to be able to remove one or both hands swiftly and be able to spring to the next step of the cooking process seamlessly. And that is when I had my “AHA!” moment. The idea for the Easy On and Off MagneCHEF Gloves first popped into my mind. At that moment, I realized that I was going to have to create the gloves I wanted to use – the gloves that do it all.
After a few prototypes, the MagneCHEF Gloves were born. I brought them to life with the help of a Kickstarter Campaign in 2015 and I’m proud to say that my wife and I raised the $25,000 we needed to begin our MagneCHEF journey.
That is how the MagneCHEF gloves came to life – they embody a combination of safety, efficiency, and love for cooking. As a fire fighter, safety and efficiency are paramount. As a family man, cooking for those I love and sharing time with family and friends is what I consider that life should be about. You want to cook and spend quality time with others and that’s what separates us from the rest of the competition.
As a company, our focus is making cooking experiences the best they can be. Our goal is to give cooks the freedom not only to cook, but also to gather and enjoy themselves and those they are cooking for. We understand that cooking is caring and that when you cook, you are not only creating meals but also creating memories. We aim to develop cooking and grilling accessories that are easy to use and multi-functional.
Our patented products streamline workflow and increase efficiency by providing high-quality accessories that make it easy to move from one task to another. The magnetic clips featured on the MagneCHEF BBQ Gloves also solve the “lost glove” phenomenon by keeping the gloves together when not in use. This innovative idea gives chef’s a third hands by allowing for easy in and off of one or both hands at a time.
I am also excited to announce the release of the all new “Freedom BBQ Gloves”. They are five finger neoprene extended cuff BBQ gloves with the added feature of our magnetic clips for easy on an easy off access. They are a game changer in the barbecue and grilling world. Now, customers have a choice between the original silicone three finger design and the more traditional five finger glove.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Having the “AHA’ moment for a product or business idea to me was the easier part. There are many people out there that have had great ideas in the past but lost their window in time because they did not move quick enough to seize the moment, or they just didn’t have enough passion to believe it would succeed so they didn’t take the risk. I knew this would not happen to us. My wife and business partner had a vision and passion to see it through all the way.
Moving forward with funding was not easy. At the time we were saving up for a new home and then we decided to pivot and use that capital into our newly founded business. We had no idea that the burn rate in the beginning of a business especially a product was so drastic, but it was.
We spent a lot of money on engineers, drawings, trademarks, and patents. We knew at this rate we could not keep up. Every month the balance sheet did not have money coming in just going out. So, we decided that crowd funding would be a good way to bring in the money we needed to complete molds and get our first initial order. So, we chose Kickstarter as the platform to help us get that much needed capital.
We knew in crowdfunding you needed to have a big first day splash and that would get you the momentum on the site to get shared and meet your objective. Our goal was $25,000 in 30 days. This amount of money would be enough to create two molds that were needed.
So, we thought why not share it with our friends and relatives and maybe they’d give us enough momentum. Then we thought realistically people will support you but not at the exact time you want them to. it would be on their time which is totally understandable. Then we thought well it would be better to have a big party at a nice venue with all of them there. We can talk to our good friends Roberto and Avian Guerra at La Caja China and they can show off their amazing Cuban roast box with a nice big Lechon(pig) while showcasing our new Magnefuse gloves.
That is exactly what we did. Our friend Marisol Sierra was the event coordinator and she reached out to another friend Felipe that was the manager at Ball and Chain at the time in Little Havana and reserved the back outdoor patio for our event. We had a bar setup there by our good friend Gabe Urrutia who is an ambassador and author. Then we hired a few waitresses that would take drink orders and give “I pledged today” stickers when people placed their Kickstarter orders on their iPhones in front of them. I’d say about 95% of the party had the stickers by the end of the night. Was a little bit of shaming…..maybe but common you’re enjoying free food and a free first drink. That is a pretty good deal in my book!
Needless to say, we made a great splash that first day and carried enough momentum to get us to our goal of $25,000.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I hate to bring up this word up to your audience because it’s so overplayed, but Covid has made a big impact on our business. On the plus side since people were stuck at home or doing a lot of cooking and grilling, we saw a spike in sales and before you knew it quickly sold out. We were backed up over a month in sales. When we were able to play catch up with our next batch we were steadily growing.
However, on the flip side we are having a looming problem that not only us, but the world is facing. There are shortages everywhere some real some fake. The shortage of raw silicone is very real, and prices have more than doubled because of its high demand. This has led us to have no choice but to raise our own prices.
While we are known for our 4.5-star rating on Amazon, Awards of Excellence, and recognition by Award winning Pitmasters and Chefs we also more than anything appreciate that our customers find our products to be high quality and affordable.
We continue to find and look for ways to cut costs and make our product 100% USA made and produced. However we realize that in order to do that we need to invest in a costly Liquid silicone rubber (LSR) injection mold machine. While we realize this is a big upfront investment, the long-term benefit of having this machine locally available would help us expand our product line tremendously.
In the meantime, we have tried different gloves and materials to see what glove if any can be used with our patented magnets. I always mentioned in various testimonials and podcasts that I was never a fan of the cotton fiber or thin flat silicone gloves. But there was one glove that I thought was an overall good glove and it has gotten much better over the last few years. It’s a neoprene heat insulated BBQ glove.
So, I started to play around with it and found the common attributes that would make our magnetic clips work seamlessly with it. That important attribute was that our MagneCHEF glove and this Neoprene glove were both non collapsible which was all I needed to begin sourcing it. So we finally have a manufacturer that does high quality gloves in Asia and then we attach our plastic USA made “Freedom clips” on it. The new name of our gloves are called the “FREEDOM BBQ GLOVES”. “Take a stand free your hands” is our slogan. We also created an amazing Apron that allows more options for removing the glove easily. We just started a soft launch on our site for the Freedom Gloves and they are selling very well.
Along with that we are now looking for an investor to help us with not only that mold machine but needed capital for R&D of our other patented cooking and BBQ products. Bringing our customers affordable high-quality products is our goal. The best way we can do that is to have a reliable mold machine and materials to protect our customers and give them a reliable, enjoyable, and safe cooking experience.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.magnechef.com
- Instagram: magnechef_bbq_glove
- Facebook: @MagneChef
- Linkedin: Alfredo Infante
- Twitter: @Magnefuse
- Youtube: MagneCHEF