We recently connected with Voeun Veth and have shared our conversation below.
Voeun, looking forward to hearing all of your stories 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?
It started as a beloved family recipe. All of my siblings and me waiting for the next batch of jerky that my mom would make. We savored every bite, and couldn’t wait for more. This longing led my wife and I to learn the recipe from her and with her blessing, start making it for family and friends. What began as her original flavor of Cambodian-style, thin sliced, crispy, spicy, beef jerky, turned into seven unique blends of our favorite flavors. We rolled them out, one at a time, to get feedback from friends and family. Eventually we knew we had to move forward and get serious with making it a real business. We got in touch with our state Department of Agriculture, our city officials, and found out what needed to be done to move forward. We set up an LLC, got our business license, permits, website, a place to make our jerky, and the green light to go ahead after all the red tape had been cleared. We had so many things to look into, and our heads were on swivel, spinning in every direction. What should we use to do our books? How do we get employees? What’s a HACCP Plan? What about start-up capitol? All of these things were foreign to us, but we took them a step at a time with the help of the people at the Department of Agriculture helping us to understand what process was next. We had friends that lent a hand with their skill sets, asking for nothing in return. Our graphic designer friend helped us create a logo, the website, and other things as well. A basketball buddy that is a lawyer, helped us create NDA’s and advised us on legal matters. We used loans from family members with super low interest that were paid back later to help us with start up costs. All of these things came together over time as we leaned into this new direction.
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
We are a family business. We have family values, and like to reach out to help out people in need. We do fundraisers, help with charity work and are able to impact the community through our jerky business. Our jerky is not your garden-variety thick and chewy stuff. It’s very unique. The flavors are authentic Cambodian recipes. My mom is an exceptional cook and her jerky was always such a treat for us. That’s the kind of thing I want to provide people with when they take a bite. Every mouthful should be an experience. The unexpected and delightful crunch is what people notice first. Our jerky is texturally like crispy bacon, or a potato chip. Flavor-wise, it’s an explosion in your mouth. We marinate our beef with an umami wave before we dehydrate it. Our most sought after flavor is the Honey Glazed Sriracha. We take jerky to a whole new level with our thin and crispy texture, and amazing flavors, but the Honey Glazed Sriracha takes our jerky to an entirely different playing field. The texture is thin and crispy, but with a sweet and spicy glaze that brings a carmelized taste and texture to the party. It’s a winner, to be sure!
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
We manufacture our own beef jerky. It’s an incredibly time consuming process and makes it difficult to focus on advancing the growth of our business due to the focused time we need to take on operations. We tried to find someone who could copack the jerky for us. There are plenty of copackers out there that will take your recipe and churn out beef jerky for you that you can then sell to customers. However, we learned the hard way that there are not any copackers out there who can produce the thin and crispy jerky we have, and definitely not with the flavors we use. That realization cost us over 30k, disappointed customers, and set us back significantly in our timeline. Hopefully this is a cautionary tale for others to be prudent when they look for the greener grass on the other side. We even flew out to the copacker, taught them how to do it, and watched them produce a few batches. But what we got after we came home was a majorly subpar product that we couldn’t even use, and no recourse to get it corrected.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
We use social media, word of mouth, and farmer’s markets/expos to get our name out there. We have a really great community here. People try to support each other, and they share our jerky with friends and family because it’s something they really love. That’s one of the best strategies and compliments we’ve seen.
Contact Info:
Image Credits
Lori Hicks, professional product and owner photo.