We recently connected with Mike Hernandez and have shared our conversation below.
Mike, appreciate you joining us today. Taking care of customers isn’t just good business – it is often one of the main reasons folks went into business in the first place. So, we’d love to get a conversation going around how to best help clients feel appreciated – maybe you can share something you’ve done or seen someone do that’s been really effective at helping a customer feel valued?
When we launched Pequín our Chile mascot he was an instant hit at the FC Dallas matches and every time he made an appearance, this one young fan always came and found him to shoot a photo. Each time he came with a bigger and bigger entourage. Behind the scenes, we had engaged with the FC Dallas organization to figure out who this young fan was so that we could surprise him at the next match with some special co-branded gear from both organizations for being such a great fan our ours!
Mike, 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?
When I graduated high school I knew I either wanted to go to the CIA to become a chef or to Tulane to blow things up with lasers. While blowing things up won out and cooking was a background activity for many years, our flagship season-all product, Chain Reaction®, started development almost immediately after I moved away from New Orleans because I was missing those Cajun and Creole flavors. Fast forward 23 years and Casa M, the house of Manny and Mike, had become very well known for hospitality and great food. So much so that when guests were leaving they would corner Manny and ask “What did Mike use on that?,” “Will he give me the recipe?,” and things like that. So he looked at me and said “If you could design a label for that and put it into a shaker, that would be great so that I can stop selling dime-bags of Chain Reaction® out of the kitchen.” Two months later, the company was born.
Our driving force was to provide great seasoning blends that provide The Essence of Flavor® in low-sodium products that let customers do Chemistry in the Kitchen® and Spice Confidently® knowing that they can add as much or as little of our product to their individual taste and never risk over-salting. We pride ourselves on the fact our blends are all natural with no fillers, MSG, animal products, gluten, nuts, or dairy.
The company formed around a brand manifesto that represents the brand’s values, all centered around a return to hospitality and civility around the dinner table over a shared meal. https://casamspice.com/pages/brand-manifesto
Our catchy product names, like Chain Reaction® as an homage to Mike’s physics background, Free Range® for chicken, Good Shepherd for lamb, Whole Hog® for pork, and Hooked for seafood, combined with a commitment to 100% customer satisfaction round out our offerings and differentiators from the competition.
Can you talk to us about your experience with selling businesses?
At the end of the day, while the “milestone” price of a deal makes it attractive, it is very much the case that whatever cash you don’t walk away from the closing with, is not in any way guaranteed. While the situation that drew me to stressing the importance of this situation ended well, I sold a consulting company along with a partner to a public company looking to take our name and list on the NYSE as a pivot in focus to our industry. I came in as COO, a seat on the board, and tied for the single largest share-holder. My business partner of 14 years got over ambitious and 6 months later I was separated from the company and all the “earn out” funds and debt were at risk and I was no longer able to control that “asset” any longer. All deals have shared risk and should have shared risk because it’s the best way to ensure there’s skin in the game on both sides, but be comfortable enough with the deal that if you don’t get another dime past that cash at closing, you’re’ good with it… because now that it’s happened to me, I’ve heard MANY stories from others that are similar and wish I’d heard them before we structured the deal the way we did.
Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?
As a food brand with seasoning blends that are a medley of flavors themselves, one way we build brand loyalty is through recipes on the website that show both on-label (i.e. using Good Shepherd on lamb) as well as off-label (using Pecking Order on pork ribs) uses of the product. We tie that in with bi-weekly email newsletters that show off the recipes and we’ve recently introduced interactive “shelf-talkers” that have a QR code on them that redirects a shopper in-store in real-time to see recipes with that particular spice blend.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://casamspice.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/casamspice
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/casamspice/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28672447
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/casamspice
- Youtube: http://youtube.com/c/casamspice
- Other: https://linktr.ee/casamspiceco