We were lucky to catch up with Traci Johannson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Traci, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

3SonsFoods began with my son, Luke, who absolutely loved Rhinos so much that he wanted to save them from extinction. Every Birthday party, since the age of 5 yrs old, Luke would ask his friends to bring donations for rhino conservation in lieu of gifts. So 5 yrs into Luke’s philanthropy efforts, we launched our business, when Ayden & George, joined the “charge” & we started selling my creamy cilantro sauce, Diablo Verde, to raise even more money! I had been giving this sauce away as teacher and neighbor gifts for years, so we all knew we had a fan base in place. However, it was definitely a gut feeling or angel, that told me we could make this into a successful business. I leant the business $3k which we paid back in 90 days. The boys and I launched our award winning sauce, free of preservatives, gluten, soy, eggs, & nuts, at our local Farmer’s Market.

Traci, 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?

3SonsFoods is a kid and Mom owned and operated company, and we produce a line of award winning salsas for the benefit of animal conservation. Diablo Verde donates to rhino conservation and Diablo Vegan donates to wolf conservation. Both Diablo Verde and Diablo Vegan is a salsa that doubles as the ultimate cooking sauce. The applications are endless, tacos, stir fry, burritos, eggs, salad dressing, enchilada sauce, finishing sauce for seafood, chicken, and steak, dipping sauce for vegetables and of course chips.

As a Mother I am most proud of building this business with my sons. We have presented to companies from HEB, to Albertson’s, Fresh Thyme to Walmart. We have competed in many business and food competitions and winning is so much fun next to your sons and business partners. I feel tremendously blessed to be able to be on this journey with my 3 boys, and on top of that seeing them give back to animal conservation makes my heart overflow with pride

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The first steps, also known as the start – up grind was for us to locate a commercial kitchen, and conduct shelf life studies, designed a label, source supplies and ingredients and by July 18, 2017 we were in business. The 4 of us started making Diablo Verde out of a very small commercial kitchen in Old Katy named Cottage Charm, the boys would make deliveries on their bikes to teachers and neighbors and every Sat we would sell on our local Fulshear Farmer’s Market. Many hot Saturday mornings were spent selling Diablo Verde, next to chickens in pins, and Rancher’s selling their free range beef and eggs to the locals. Sweat and hard work resulted in an overwhelming response from our community and it was an amazing experience to test our product and obtain instant feedback from customers.

So, our next step was to get into stores. We loaded samples of Diablo Verde in our car and went to the stores in our neighborhood. Basically we would just walk in and ask for the manager, tell him our story, hand him our sauce and once he would taste it we were on the shelves. We did not know anything about distributors like KeHe and UNFI, we were ignorant, but it worked to our advantage.

Next, it was time to build a reputation for ourselves, AKA – Building credibility so we started competing in competitions.

Just after Flood Harvey, we competed in the Chile Pepper Magazine Salsa Competition and we won 1st Place Best Salsa Hot & 2nd Place Best New Product. That Oct. we traveled to Austin for the Acton Children’s Business Fair and won Best Business Presentation. Austin has been good to us. We competed in the Austin Salsa Fest & won 1st & 3rd place in Green Sauce Judges Award and for People’s Choice we won 2nd & 3rd Place Green Sauce. And then there was the McKinney Salsa Fest where we won 1st Place People’s Choice & 1st Place Best Green Sauce! 2 yrs in a row and was able to raise money for the community kitchen there!

Then we got into our 1st HEB grocery store when our customers requested from Randal, the manager, that HEB carry Diablo Verde. We delivered, merchandised and demoed our product, and turned that 1 HEB grocery store into 12 HEB direct delivered Grocery stores in Houston, TX selling 3000 jars of Diablo Verde a month. Then, our life changed and we made it into HEB’s Quest for Texas Best competition!

The boys and I developed our own presentation, including a Power Point, a bit of acting and some fun dance moves for the big competition. We rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed some more. On the morning of Aug. 8, 2019 Ayden, Luke, George and I competed for the HEB Quest for Texas best competition at the Houston Food Bank and later that afternoon we were awarded Grand Champion of HEB Quest for Texas Best! And our lives changed along with our store count, from 12 stores to 254!!!

5 years later we are now in 1000 stores across the United States. To have our product on the shelves of stores, both independent and major retailers, has proven to myself and my sons that by visualizing your dreams along with hard work, is the key to making them come true!

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

The best way to build brand awareness in our industry is to get out in the stores, festivals, competitions, and sample your product. Being face to face with your customer base, is the best way to not only tell your story, your companies’ mission and also get people to sample and fall in love with your product!

Contact Info:

• Website: 3SonsFoods.com
• Instagram: @3SonsFoods
• Facebook: @3SonsFoods
• Linkedin: @3SonsFoods
• Twitter: @3SonsFoods
• Youtube: 3SonsFoods

Image Credits
Sari Bailey, Felipe Trevino