We recently connected with Christina & Mitch Smith and have shared our conversation below.
Christina & Mitch, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
We first came up with the idea for Herbivore Bites during the pandemic lockdowns after taking an online cooking class. It had only been 9 months since we started our plant-based journey and we wanted to learn how to cook more plant-based foods. (When you switch from eating everything to only eating plant-foods, there is an adjustment period for not only your body, but your taste buds and we were struggling with certain food cravings.) The one thing we found that really helped us through those times was adding seasoning blends to foods. Unfortunately we had a hard time finding seasonings that were clean with no preservatives. So one day Mitch just started playing around with different spices in the kitchen and it wasn’t long until he made a delicious version of Italian seasoning except ours tasted just like sausage! (Today this seasoning blend is our Italian Sausage HOT Seasoning.) Shortly after making this flavor, we decided to make a milder version that wasn’t as spicy and had a bit more sweetness. (Today this seasoning blend is our Italian Sausage MILD Seasoning.) We found ourselves using these seasonings every day because they were helping to satisfy those cravings we were having especially when we put them on bread, potatoes, mushrooms, pasta, tofu, vegan butter and more. Even salads tasted better when we substituted our seasonings in place of dressings. A month or two later we decided to send a few bottles to our son for his birthday. We packaged them up pretty with fun labels and sent them off. (He isn’t plant-based, so we were very curious to get his opinion.) He LOVED them! He told us the flavors were fantastic on meats as well as with cheeses, creams and butters – the foods we no longer ate. It was at this moment we realized more people were eating plant-based foods, so maybe we should make this into a business.
Soon we began researching what was required to create a home-based food business. It took the better part of 6 months to really dig deep into the various food cottage state laws, city laws and federal laws to find out the rules of what we could and could not sell. Plus the state we were living in at the time had recently voted to expand their food cottage laws, so now we just had to wait for the new rules to take effect. This gave us time to start figuring out our packaging, how we were going to ship our products, what kind of labeling requirements we needed to have on our products as well as sourcing ingredients. It also allowed us to create several other seasoning blends including our delicious Cinnamon Sugar Seasoning and our one-of-a-kind Taco Seasoning. Over the course of those few months, we ended up with numerous packaging samples and had various label designs before choosing our final product. We also had to source ingredients from multiple suppliers to see which company was going to work best for us and our products. But the work didn’t stop there. In order to sell products to people, we knew we were going to need a website and a social media presence. It took us an additional three months to build our website and get our social media accounts set up.
Almost 9 months after our initial idea for selling plant-based seasoning blends, we were ready. On January 20, 2022 we launched our brand – Herbivore Bites!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Christina – I am a millennial entrepreneur, plant-based foodie, dog mom and soon-to-be yoga instructor. I have my Bachelor’s Degree of Science in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management and a Minor in Professional Writing as well as two additional Associate’s Degrees in Business and Science. I also have 10+ years of experience in public service as a Librarian. I have started multiple small businesses with my husband including our non-profit charity, where we handed out over $16,000 in educational scholarships. Currently, I am Herbivore Bites Social Media Manager/Marketer and I assist with Product Development. Because of my background in business management, I run a lot of behind the scenes at Herbivore Bites including website development, labels and packaging, supply orders and overall brand maintenance. In addition, I manage our Product Tester Program.
Mitch – I am an Army Veteran, retired Firefighter/Paramedic (20 years) and business entrepreneur. After 25+ years in public service and running medical calls, I have witnessed the long-term damage our non-nutritive processed food has caused to our bodies. I am Head of Product Development and Research (you know, the idea guy creating seasoning blends and dry mixes). I handle the packaging of orders and assist the company as needed.
We are a husband-and-wife team with a passion for entrepreneurship and cooking. When we originally went plant-based in 2019, we both had multiple health issues (Christina struggled with endometriosis (horrific periods) for 15+ years; Mitch struggled with prescription-drug-induced liver damage, sinus problems as well as acid reflux) and we were sick of the healthcare system, so we decided to try changing our diet. Within months of eating plant-based, we saw results with Christina having much more manageable periods, more energy and weight loss while Mitch had been able to get off ALL of his medications, had fewer sinus issues, much more manageable acid reflux and also lost weight. After a while though we started running into the same problems – we were battling cravings from the foods we use to eat and it was difficult finding plant-based products that met our standards and needs (clean, organic ingredients with no preservatives).We figured if we have these problems, then there must be others struggling with the same issues.
Our mission is to create health and wellness products using all natural ingredients and eco-friendly sustainable packaging. We specialize in creating premium seasoning blends and dry mixes that are plant-based with low salt and sweetened only with natural sugars. We globally source the cleanest, highest quality of ingredients. We use certified-organic ingredients as often as we can and when we can’t find organic ingredients, we use kosher or the next highest quality. We take pride in NEVER using any chemicals, preservatives, dyes, fillers or dioxides in any of our products. Our belief is what you put into your body should heal your body, not hurt it, which is why our food products are packaged in compostable food-grade bags or glass (NEVER PLASTIC). Our food packaging also helps to keep excess waste out of landfills while reducing the negative impact on the environment.
We want our potential customers to know our products are made to help support a plant-based, clean eating lifestyle and satisfy your cravings. Currently we have ten different seasoning blends (both sweet and savory) available for purchase including a homemade ketchup and a homemade pizza/pasta sauce as well as one flatbread/pizza dough dry mix with new seasoning flavors and dry mixes coming soon – like oatmeal packets, bagels, pancakes and more! Furthermore, we sell an array of fun merchandise including shirts, coffee mugs, reusable tote bags, cutting boards, canvas wall art and more. We also have a Product Tester Program that we open 1-2 times a year which allows selected participants to try out new products, take surveys and give us valuable feedback. (You can find more information about this on our website.)
Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?
Our products are available for purchase on our website – www.herbivorebites.com. We originally were selling on Etsy, but earlier this year our products started becoming censored on that platform. For example our Food is Medicine coffee mugs and cutting boards were rejected due to “Items making medical claims.” It’s heartbreaking to watch something you’ve built be torn down and we believe it is unacceptable to ban things like PLANTS, so we took a stand and stopped selling all of our products on Etsy. While selling on the Etsy platform was easier, especially with customers searching for food products and finding Herbivore Bites plus SEO was already built in, we could not in good faith use a platform that takes away our personal freedoms and rights.
So even though we have had to start over and move our previous customers to our website, we feel good about being able to sell our products and designs without the fear of being banned, suspended or accounts being disabled. As we grow bigger, we hope to sell on other major platforms, but we will see.
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
Absolutely! So we manufacture all of our own food products in-house. Originally, we looked at multiple vendors to help us manufacture our seasonings, but no one company sourced all the ingredients we needed for certain flavors, which meant we had to learn how to do it ourselves. First we were going to make large batches of products that we could turn around and ship out immediately. However, we found that even though it takes a bit longer, hand-blending smaller, made-to-order batches of seasonings kept them fresher with more flavor than those made in larger batches. (This is because seasonings naturally lose their flavor and color over time, as their volatile oils evaporate plus our seasonings will start to clump together due to our use of no preservatives.) So by making our products to order we can assure our customers that what they buy from us will not have been sitting on a shelf for months or years.
When you manufacture your own products, you learn a lot of lessons along the way. There have been a few times when our supplier was out of stock of certain items (due to supply shortages) and we attempted to substitute with different suppliers. It didn’t always work out because some suppliers use hidden chemicals or preservatives in their spices and we could taste those added fillers. We also noticed some suppliers herbs weren’t as fresh as the company we chose to work with, so now if our supplier is out of something, we just have to wait until it is back in stock. Another lesson we have learned along the way is because we do not use preservatives in our products, we have to cure some of our products. Our curing process takes anywhere from 2 days to 2 months depending on the product. During this time we have to consistently mix our products while also letting them vent off and breathe. (This process originally came from certain herbs that needed to be dried and cured before consuming.) We have also recently found a product that is used in the health and wellness field, which has been helping to keep our seasonings from clumping and we are hoping to release this item soon.
We have no formal training and we create our seasoning flavors through trial and error; simply mixing various herbs and spices together until we have something we like. We then use our Herbivore Bites Product Testers to help us finalize our flavors and products in addition to helping us come up with new product ideas.
As far as the merchandise we sell, we design everything in house, but we do not have the capabilities to print and store all our products, so instead we send out our designs to a third-party manufacturer that helps us print and ship our merchandise to customers.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.herbivorebites.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/herbivore.bites/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/herbivore.bites
- Other: https://linktr.ee/herbivorebites
Image Credits
Christina Smith