We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matt Feldman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matt below.
Matt, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?
Finding the right name for a business can be a surprisingly tough and frustrating process. First, you have to find a name that aligns with your business and its mission and then you have to hope that the name is trademark-able. For weeks and weeks I shuffled through dozens of names waiting for the right one to “click” in my head without success.
Since I wasn’t having luck finding a name myself, I decided to pull in some creative brain power from my family including my mom and sister. We decided that it’d be much easier to trademark a Hawaiian name and being that I’m from Hawaii / Native Hawaiian, this would align well with the business.
During one of our brainstorming sessions, my sister, Mackenzie said “What about Moku? It means “land” or “island division”. As soon as she said it I knew Moku was it. It’s easy to pronounce and aligns perfectly with our mission of creating sustainable products that help preserve the land. Last but not least it could be easily trademarked. After that long grueling process, I had my brand name and I was off to the races! Thank you lil sis!
Matt, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’m Matt Feldman and I’m the Founder of Moku Foods. With the help of two Michelin Star Chefs, we’re turning king oyster mushrooms into the most delicious meaty jerky that’s packed with Fiber and Protein. I did not have a food background before starting Moku but once I knew I wanted to pursue mushroom jerky as a business, I networked with as many founders as possible in the Food & Beverage space to pick their brains and learn the lay of the land.
Why Mushroom Jerky? Well industrial cattle farming is literally destroying our planet as more forrest land is being destroyed to meet the rising demand of beef in the world. As I started playing around with culinary mushrooms in 2018, I knew if cooked the right way, mushrooms can earn their way into the diet of people looking for a meaty, nutritious foods. With little competition and a growing category, I decided to get started in the jerky category. After 2 years in the kitchen doing over 100+ iterations with two Michelin Star Chefs, we launched Moku in 2021. We now have 6 flavors in over 1,000 stores nationwide including everywhere from grocery stores and airports to hotels, and health food stores.
Our mission is to bring more delicious, sustainable foods to consumers that are better for both our bodies and the planet.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
After two failed attempts at finding a manufacturer that can produce our jerky at scale, I finally found one an hour away from me in SoCal that looked promising in being an early partner for us. We ran multiple successful tests at this facility and now it was time to do our first big production run which would produce the first bags that we’d put on the market and sell to our first customers. Keep in mind I was two years in and many of my friends, family, and investors were eagerly awaiting the launch of Moku.
On the day of the production, I drove to the facility to pick up all 3,000 units to then drive them to the fulfillment center before the big launch the following week. After bringing all 15 boxes from my car into the facility and checking them in with the staff, I was walking out with a smile on my face before thinking, “you should probably try the product before handing them off”. Listening to my intuition, I popped open a box and opened a bag. As soon as I opened the bag, I could tell something was very off. The smell was off and the texture looked super mushy and wet. I took a bite and had to spit it out…. What the F*CK happened I thought to myself… At this point everyone was looking at me in shock. I stood there for probably 30 seconds thinking of what to do. There was only once choice, trash all of the product, call off the launch and find somewhere else to make the product.
This was a gut wrenching decision but it was the only one. I had to go back to the drawing board. I hired a new chef to tweak the product, moved production to the midwest, and prepared for a new launch 15 months later in 2021 during Covid.
While i took some tough blows to the head during this pivot, Every decision felt very intuitive and in flow. As long as I’m reacting and making rational decisions that feel aligned, I welcome any challenges and am okay with any outcomes. At the end of the day, all we really have control over is how we react and respond to challenges that come our way.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Once I decided to pursue Moku as a business, I quickly realized that it would take some serious start up capital to get off the ground. I saved up every penny for a year working my full time tech job to seed the first $100k into the business which allowed me to set up the very early framework for the business and hire a talented chef that could make our prototype. From there I presented the prototype and the company vision to 100+ investors until I convinced about 8-10 folks to invest in Moku. The first round of capital was $1.8m. It sounds like a lot but after the many production trials, we were never stacked with cash at any given point. We then raised a $600k crowdfunding round on Republic prior to launch. After a successful first 6 months of launch, I was fortunate enough to raise another $2m to continue growing the company. This last round was in 2021 and we are currently raising a small round to get us to profitability later this year. The goal is to become profitable in ’24 so that we don’t need to rely on outside capital in order to continue growing the business.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mokufoods.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mokufoods/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/feldmanmatt/
- Twitter: @mokufoods