We recently connected with Suz Iventosch and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Suz thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us 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 are in the spice business! We’re selling an actual product! That is what our food blogging friends think is so wonderful! We were not so sure we wanted to dive head first into this competitive world, but because our blends were so popular with friends and family we did. We first got the idea of selling our spice blends, because so many of our family and friends, who had tried them at dinners at our house and loved them, asked us to make them a batch to take home. We did that for a number of years, before the question “Why don’t you sell these?” became a common refrain. Newly retired, and not sure of making that kind of a commitment, it took me a while to warm up to the idea of solidly committing to a new start up business. My daughter, Courtney, and I had the food blog, where many of these spice blends were born, and that project, alone, took up plenty of time. Ultimately, after much consideration, we decided to make a go of it starting with three of our blends: Diavola Spice Rub; Peppercorn Perfection; and Ranch Revolution. Just this past summer, we added a fourth blend: Taco Temptation.

Going from an idea to execution requires some industry knowledge and connections to people and places that can be a bit elusive. It’s hard to get much information from competitors, and so we had to find resources that could help us navigate the industry. We got very lucky, and when we went to visit a commercial kitchen where we thought we’d package our own spice blends, we were introduced to a consultant who suggested a local company that not only sells bulk spices in local markets, but also packages spices for other vendors. We were thrilled, because we actually bought our bulk spices from this particular vendor at one of our favorite Austin markets, so we knew the flavor would not vary from what we’d been creating all along. This would be amazing, because we also would not have to rent space in the commercial kitchen, nor would we need to sterilize, fill and label our own jars. Nothing is more off-putting than crooked labels, and now we wouldn’t have to worry about buying a special labeling machine for that purpose.

But, finding the supplier opened up a whole new set of projects, including label design and color schemes, creating nutrition panels, obtaining UPC codes, developing QR codes and scaling our home recipe up to commercial quantities. This whole process took us about four months to complete before we were ready to go into production. Production took about one month from order date to delivery of our product.

The next step would be the toughest … creating brand awareness and finding customers. This is an ongoing project, as with any business. We are always striving to fill the pipeline with new customers.

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.

Susie: I’ve been a foodie my whole life! My mom was a fantastic cook and loved to entertain and I always loved being her assistant. She gave me free rein in the kitchen from an early age, Before long, the whole kitchen was my oyster. Since 2004, I’ve been a newspaper food columnist, creating recipes for our readers to enjoy, which has been incredibly rewarding. When I was a young mother, my husband and I encouraged our three children to take part in the cooking and as a result they have all become amazing cooks and foodies themselves. This makes us exceptionally happy! We believe a happy home begins in the kitchen and thrives at the dining room table.

I started this blog in 2019 to document and add to our collection of family recipes so my kids could easily find their favorites to make in their own grown-up world! It’s been super convenient for the whole family to have our recipes easily accessible on our blog, and it has morphed from a recipe collection for our family to one for our friends, readers, and subscribers, too. When Covid hit and my daughter, Courtney, was home from her Broadway career to spend time with us, we decided to join forces and we have never looked back. We would love to have you as part of our “spicing” and “blogging” community!

Courtney: Growing up in the foothills in Northern California, I’ve always had the outdoor adventure bug. Turns out I wound up with the performing bug, too 🙂 I was lucky enough to pursue my Broadway dreams for 12 years, and though it was very strange to be away from that world for one and a half years during Covid, I absolutely loved being with my family, spending time in the great outdoors, and cooking up a storm! And what a great gift it is to team up with my incredible mom on the Treks & Bites team, bringing our fun recipes, adventures, and fitness fun to you! Nowadays, even though I’ve left New York, I haven’t left Broadway, because I occasionally go back to perform with Wicked on the national tour and get to enjoy the best of both worlds! Thank you for following along on our journey – we hope to keep seeing you for continued fun in the food, travel, and fitness realms!

Suz & Courts: We love to adventure, travel, exercise, and cook together and it’s been a ton of fun working together on this project! Because we have curated our recipes from dishes and ingredients that we have enjoyed all over the world, we wanted to include snippets from those locations and cuisines as part of a travel portfolio. One of our very favorite things to do when traveling is to dive into the local markets and grocery stores. We love to see what kinds of spices, produce, cheeses, olives, sauces, and local fare they purvey. And we love trying their recipes when we get back home.

We know that so many families pack their days full to the brim, but still want to gather at the dinner table for a delicious, nutritious home-cooked meal. After a busy day, there’s not always enough time to create fancy dishes with lots of ingredients. This is where Treks & Bites spice blends come into play. They are time savers that help busy people turn everyday ingredients into extraordinary meals with just a few shakes.

We created these spice blends from several of our blog recipes that called for a wide variety of different herbs and spices. We soon realized that not everyone keeps such a vast collection of herbs and spices on hand. Even for us, it is so much easier to have them already blended and ready to add to our dishes. We started pre-blending large batches for ourselves, but soon it became a popular request from our friends and followers, too.

When we decided to package our spice blends, we wanted them to be all-natural products, made with only the best herbs and spices, which is one reason that we use pink Himalayan salt in our blends. We also love the flavor! People love to add a touch of spice to their meals, and what better way to hit those spicy notes, than to cook with spice blends that pack a punch! This saves time, while producing the kinds of flavors we want to see in our dishes. Treks & Bites packs uniquely delicious flavors in every jar of our spices.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

We get so excited whenever we get a new customer! And naturally, being a new business, we are always stoked whenever we get an order from anyone, but especially when we get orders from repeat customers. That is how we know they love our products!

When we get orders we often include a free sample of one of our spice blends that they did not order, as a way to spread the word. We also encourage all visitors to our website to sign up for our monthly newsletter where we offer lots of seasonal recipes, some using our spices and many that don’t, but always great recipes with beautiful photographs.

We also include a recipe card with each order, that includes one recipe for each of our spice blends. This helps customers get started with our spices. We also encourage our customers to leave comments on our blog sharing their recipes and how they used our spice blends in their home cooking.

One thing that we want to do, but have not done yet, is to create an email for all of our customers, offering a special discount on any reorders they want to place. Sometimes people buy a seasoning but then put it in the spice drawer and forget to pull it out again. We want to encourage them to keep our spices right in the front of their spice collection!

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

By far, our best sources of new clients have been tasting events and word of mouth. Our wholesale business has been built with persistence in reaching out to retail buyers, but the sales have been fostered through in-store demos and tastings. For our online store, we have primarily sold through word of mouth, despite conducting several months of Meta, Google and Pinterest ads. We quickly learned that this type of marketing effort did not work very well for us. We believe that with so many seasoning options available in the market, the best bet is to get people to taste our blends in real food, just how we use them at home!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://treksandbites.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/treksandbites/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/treksandbites
• Twitter: https://x.com/treksandbites
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@treksandbites

Image Credits

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