We were lucky to catch up with Juan Salinas recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Juan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of our favorite things to brainstorm about with friends who’ve built something entrepreneurial is what they would do differently if they were to start over today. Surely, there are things you’ve learned that would allow you to do it over faster, more efficiently. We’d love to hear how you would go about setting things up if you were starting over today, knowing everything that you already know.

1. Have Manufactuing ready and with a solid contract. 2. Have a solid sales strategy
3. Don’t overspend on marketing
4. take advantage of first to market

Juan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have a PhD in Food science and worked for over 25 years developing snacks for several of the largest CPG companies in the US. I am also a competitive natural bodybuilder and endurance athlete. Although I enjoyed the process of creating new products for these companies, I was not satisfied with the snacks I was making. The problem was that we didn’t care about the health and nutrition aspects of our snacks, instead we just wanted them to taste good. Being that I am also a Sports Nutritionist, I knew I could create something better. I wanted to create a snack that had a balanced nutrition and that it was made with clean and simple ingredients. A snack that I could eat myself and that would support my active lifestyle. in 2015, the company I was working for was sold and I knew that was the perfect time to start my own and create my own healthy snack. in 2016, I created P-nuff Crunch, a baked peanut puff snack made from Peanuts, Beans and Rice. The first nutrition based peanut puff snack in the market. The snack was developed with both nutrition and taste in mind. The result is a snack that contains 5g of complete plant based protein, low in sugar and fat but high in fiber. The carbs are low glycemic index so they are digested slowly and dont promote weight gain. This snack is perfect for anyone that want to have a tasty snack but without the guilt that comes along eating unhealthy traditional snacks. Our goal is to promote healthy, nutritious snacking and active lifestyles.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I started my business by using my savings from over 25 years of working as in the corporate world. I started with about $150K. The key here was to manage this capital to make it last until you start making some money back. This entails doing just about everything on your own and looking for ways to partner with experts at a low cost. The issue with starting with a low capital is that it takes longer to get results, however it does help you learn everything about the business a deep level which I believe sets you up for having a better chance of success. Unless, of course, you are already a seasoned Entrepeneur. Having worked for 25 years in the Food Industry also helped me build a large network of friends which I utilized for expert advice and services to lower my start up cost. Additionally, my experience as a food product developer helped eliminate product development and manufacturing cost which can be very costly. another source of capital I had was from my brothers. I provided some equity to them in exchange for capital of about $250,000 I needed to purchase equipment.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

We currently manufacture our won product. The main reason is because our products contain peanuts and given this is an allergen, most co-manufacturers do stay away from these products as it can potentially create contamination to other non-peanut products. A hard lesson we learned early on and that caused us a lot of delays and business. We worked with 2 comans who agreed to make our products just to have us exit before a years time as they found better opportunities making non peanut allergen products. After this experience we decided to purchase our own equipment and find a space at a manufacturing facility to run it. We found a place but the owner never learned how to run our equipment so we had to do it oursleves. This caused an attention shift from sales to operations which hurted us. The facility was soon in financial trouble and was sold to an investor who had us exit without notice soon after the takeover. This haad an impact in our business as we had no inventory to sell and no place to install the machines. After a 7 month delay we were able to find a new place, build it out, and install our machines.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.pnuff.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pnuffcrunch/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pnuffcrunch/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/71771259/admin/

Image Credits
Vincent Colindres