Sonya Patel is the Founder of PUR Spices, a Cleveland-based food brand creating boldly flavored, top allergen-free sauces, spice blends, and freeze-dried snacks inspired by her family’s experience with food allergies. Since launching in 2019, Sonya has grown PUR Spices from a grassroots startup into a multi-channel business, with nationwide reach through Amazon and select regional retail partners. With a background spanning management consulting, nonprofit leadership, and education, Sonya brings a mission-driven approach to food manufacturing, with a focus on authenticity, ingredient integrity, and building a brand rooted in purpose.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [02:04] The tough realities behind running your own food brand
- [04:54] Why Amazon became Sonya Patel’s early growth channel
- [06:35] The trade-offs between control and distribution in CPG
- [15:22] Why Sonya refuses to compromise on freshness or integrity
- [17:47] How diverse career experiences shape lasting business impact
- [27:33] Authentic influencer collaborations built on real product love
- [30:21] Sonya gives a sneak peek at the next big thing in healthy snacks
In this episode…
Building a food brand from scratch can look glamorous from the outside — beautiful packaging, stocked shelves, growing buzz. But what happens when the reality behind the scenes is far less polished, and every decision carries real financial and operational weight?
For Sonya Patel, the key lies in understanding that building a food business is fundamentally about discipline and clarity, not hype. She explains that success comes down to knowing your numbers, understanding your supply chain, and the true costs of getting a product into customers’ hands. Whether selling through retailers or online, without a firm grasp on margins, sustainability quickly slips away. That perspective reframes growth not as visibility, but as the ability to build something that actually lasts.
In this episode of The Missing Ingredient, CJ Bruce is joined by Sonya Patel, Founder of PUR Spices, to discuss building an authentic and resilient food brand from the ground up. Sonya explores the realities behind scaling in CPG, navigating Amazon versus retail, and staying grounded in your non-negotiables. She also shares advice on pivoting through supply chain challenges and staying true to your brand.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- CJ Bruce on LinkedIn
- The Missing Ingredient
- Sonya Patel on LinkedIn
- PUR Spices
- ZENworks Yoga
- NOSH Live
- Wonder Women of Food
- Mugsy Bakes
- Terranean Herbs
Quotable Moments:
- “If you don’t understand your numbers, it is really, really, really hard to be sustainable in this business.”
- “Someone is always going to take your money along that path.”
- “You could have the best story in the world, but if you can’t convince that buyer why your stuff is going to sell off of their shelf, nobody cares.”
- “There are certain things I can’t compromise on, right?”
- “Be prepared to pivot, be prepared to realize that, okay, maybe option A didn’t work.”
Action Steps:
- Know your numbers inside and out: Understanding costs, margins, and supply chain economics is critical to building a sustainable food business.
- Choose your distribution channels strategically: Focusing on where your customers already shop helps maximize efficiency and reduce wasted marketing spend.
- Define and protect your non-negotiables: Staying true to product quality and values builds long-term trust, even if it impacts short-term margins.
- Be ready to pivot when challenges arise: Adapting quickly to disruptions like supply shortages can open new opportunities and strengthen resilience.
- Stay grounded and avoid comparison traps: Maintaining focus on your own journey helps prevent burnout and supports better long-term decision-making.
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is sponsored by The Missing Ingredient, a food and beverage marketing agency that believes a better future starts with food. They partner with purpose-driven brands to drive growth through smart, results-focused marketing — without the “set it and forget it” approach.
From brand awareness and paid media to content, influencer partnerships, and loyalty programs, they act as true strategic partners invested in your long-term success.
To learn more about how they help food and beverage brands grow with impact, visit themissingingredient.com today.
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Full Transcript
Intro: 00:01
Welcome to The Missing Ingredient podcast with CJ Bruce, where food and beverage founders, operators, and experts share the real strategies behind building successful brands. Let’s jump into today’s show.
Introduction and Guest Background
Cj Bruce: 00:15
Hey, I’m CJ Bruce and welcome to the show. This is the podcast where founders and leaders of high impact food and beverage brands who are serious about scaling. Each episode, I sit down with the people who power the food and beverage industry brand operators, agencies, vendors, creators, and retailers to uncomplicate the strategies that take brands from early traction to serious scale. This episode is sponsored by The Missing Ingredient, a food and beverage marketing agency. With over a decade in the industry, we take a different approach, starting with your business goals, looking at the full picture, and building a marketing strategy that actually ties back to growth.
From content performance marketing to influencer partnerships and AI powered workflows. We’re an extension of your team, not just another vendor. Learn more at themissingingredient.com. Now, before introducing today’s guest, I want to give a shout out to Nosh Live, which is how Sonya and I originally met. You can check them out at masslive.com.
And they do host great two day summits for the natural food industry. Now for today’s guest, Sonya Patel. Sonya Patel’s path into food has been anything but linear spanning management, consulting, elementary education, nonprofit leadership, and ultimately becoming an accidental food manufacturer. She’s the Founder of PUR Spices, a line of boldly flavored top allergen free sauces, spice blends, and freeze dried snacks inspired by her family and lived experience navigating food allergies. What started as an unexpected turn has grown into a full time mission, focused on scaling thoughtfully and bringing more flavor and trust to pantries everywhere.
Welcome to the show.
Sonya Patel: 01:45
Thank you. Thank you for having me, CJ. I’m excited.
Building, scaling, and choosing the right growth channels
Cj Bruce: 01:48
Yeah, I’m excited to have you here as well. Thank you. So let’s, let’s dive right into the real questions. So I think first I want to start with the you know, what, what do people romanticize about building a food brand. That is not true.
We’re going right to the heart right away.
Sonya Patel: 02:04
Where do I start? Oh, gosh. So I honestly don’t think people realize how difficult it is. And okay, so there’s a couple different paths you can take in CPG, right? So you can do what we did where we’re manufacturing and the sales, right?
I don’t think there’s a lot of us out there as small manufacturers who are trying to scale their own businesses. And then there’s the other side of it where you have an idea, you have a recipe, you know, you have something you worked on in your kitchen, and then you take it to a co-packer and say, okay, make this for me. Right? And both of those are super challenging. I don’t, I don’t think people truly understand like how well you have to know your numbers, how well you have to understand the supply chain and that every single stop on that supply chain is going to take money from you.
And regardless if you’re doing it yourself, right. So whether I’m manufacturing and selling at a farmer’s market or I’m using a co manufacturer and then selling it to a grocery store, who’s then going to sell it, right? Someone is. Or like in my case, we actually do most of our sales on Amazon, but someone is always going to take your money along that path. And if you don’t understand your numbers, it is really, really, really hard to be sustainable in this business.
And then also, I think people don’t always understand this notion of, you know, like there’s this glamorous thing about like, oh, how many doors are you in? How many doors are you in? Right? And that’s all great. But if you’re not selling on those doors, then it really doesn’t matter, right?
Because you’re going to get clearance and then you’re going to get delisted and then whatever. Like it was sorry not to be, but that’s the truth. And so I think there’s this notion and, and I do feel like the industry has moved a little bit back to like profitability because it, you know, like five, six years ago, it was all top line growth, top line growth, like nobody actually cared if you were making money. I think that’s shifted obviously because of, you know, the way things are in the world right now, that profitability does matter. But I think there’s this whole notion like this idea of, oh, I’m, I’m in Whole Foods or I’m in Erewhon or I’m in sprouts.
Well, you know, sprouts makes you give a ton of product for free before you can even, like be permanently on their shelf. Right? And people don’t realize that, like you have to put in a lot of money to actually like stay in the game. I guess let’s put it that way.
Cj Bruce: 04:30
Yeah. That’s great. I mean, so many, so many good nuggets in there. I think the I want to dig into the, the Amazon piece a little bit because I know, you know, really went in on Amazon. And just curious, how do you think about, you know, like the strategy and bet you made on Amazon and versus traditional retailer retail and like, how do they, you know, kind of work, work together?
How do you think about them as, channels?
Sonya Patel: 04:54
Absolutely. So I think of Amazon as our. Well, so let me tell you a little bit about why we got into Amazon in the first place. When I launched in 2019, I launched in the summer. And I also didn’t realize when you apply to farmers markets, those applications happen almost six months before you actually.
You know, like I should have applied in December for summer spots. Well, I didn’t even have a product in December. Right. So I applied to farmer’s markets and I pretty much got rejected from every single like local market because the spots were already filled. And the second part I realized is it’s really hard to drive traffic to your own website if you’re just starting out, like, you know, people pay thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for SEO.
And, you know, at that time, it would have been Facebook and Instagram ads and whatever it is. And to me, it was like, that didn’t make sense. I had this product, we had done our first batches of production and I had nowhere to sell it. I also had a network across the country because I lived in New York, I lived in Boston, I lived in California, and my friends were like, Sonya, just put it on Amazon. Like that’s where we shop.
So I legit started with 24 bottles of three different flavors on Amazon. That was it I didn’t like, and I did the listings myself. I took the pictures myself. I mean, it was like really like as grassroots as you can get. I guess it’s like, you know, but and it actually like, it was fine.
You know, we’d sell a couple bottles like, you know, every day. And I did fulfilled by Amazon. That was the other thing. Like I knew people valued prime, right? Like even pre-COVID, people really cared about prime.
Like you would look at a listing on Amazon. And if it wasn’t prime, you’re like, I don’t even know where this is coming from. Forget it. I’m not even going to trust it. Right.
And so, you know, I kind of manipulated my numbers to make sure that I was making money while being on prime. Right? So you jack up the price. That’s what you know, everyone also understands that you’re going to pay more if you buy it on Amazon. Pretty much if it’s a like a brand you can get in the grocery store.
And I, you know, in 2020, Covid happened and Amazon blew up. I mean, it just grew exponentially. And unfortunately, or fortunately, I grew with that wave. And so by the time 2021, 2022 hit, like we were so embedded in Amazon that it didn’t make sense to pull back. The other thing that happened is I realized how difficult it is to get into a grocery store.
I thought, hey, I have a great story. I’m a female founder. I’m, you know, like first generation immigrant, like, you know, food allergy safe. Yay. Who wouldn’t want us?
You know, like it doesn’t work that way. You could have the best story in the world, but if you can’t convince that buyer why your stuff is going to sell off of their shelf, nobody cares. And so I was lucky that we had gotten into a smaller retail chain in Cleveland called Heinen’s. So they’re they’re in Cleveland and Chicago. And but it was purely based on connections.
I went through an incubator program to start PUR Spices. So I got that lead. But after that, I mean, it was like cold email, cold email, cold email. And then, you know, it’s like, you really can’t control where your distribution is too, right? So if you sign on with a distributor, sure, they buy it from you, but you have no idea like how they’re placing it on the shelf.
Is it going to be in stock? Like what are they setting their pricing at? I mean, we’re still struggling with that where we, we gave our Msrp to a distributor. The distributor has it on the shelf. We have five flavors of sauces and two out of the five are different price randomly.
And it was like, why did that? And you don’t have control, right? I am sort of type A and I can control Amazon. I can say yes. No, I can switch it on and off.
I can decide what I want the pricing to be. I can decide what I want. For the most part, what the experience I want to be. Right? Like we we pre-package all of our bottles to send to Amazon so that they just have to pick it and send it.
So I’m, you know, I have my packaging inside, I have my like recipes and all of it. So there’s a lot more control than people actually understand with Amazon. And then the other thing is, again, like I said this in the beginning, someone’s always going to take your money. So whether you’re selling it to the distributor, who then sells it to the whole like retailer or Amazon takes my money, someone is taking my money and you get national distribution immediately, right? Like we, we can sell to everywhere in the country through Amazon and its people are already on Amazon to buy versus me trying to get them to my Shopify through Instagram or whatever it is.
Like that’s, you know, people are on Amazon looking to purchase things.
Cj Bruce: 09:45
Yeah. That’s great. Well, the the detail on that too. And just thinking about so there’s, there’s costs everywhere. You got to kind of pick pick a lane and they’ve already got distribution and people that are, you know, ready to go.
So I think that’s yeah. That’s super.
Sonya Patel: 09:58
Yeah. And don’t get me wrong, when you have to put marketing money towards it too, right? So we spend, we do add spend on it. So again, it’s like, do I want to do promotions in a store? Do I want to do ad spend on meta?
Do I want to do ad spend on Amazon? You still always have to do all of the things to make your business successful. You just have to decide what lanes like where are your shoppers and what lanes do you want to play in?
Scaling with limited resources and operational focus
Cj Bruce: 10:22
Yeah, and I think the, I guess picking up on that, like you think about, you know, I’d imagine the need to focus, right? Like it’s like you don’t have a huge team. And so how, where do you focus and how much can you do with the team that you have? And yeah, how much did that play into the.
Sonya Patel: 10:37
100%, 100%. We. So for about five years, I ran the Amazon by myself. And then I realized that things were changing faster than I was able to keep up with. And, you know, like literally those are people’s full time jobs.
So I found an agency and then now they handle all of our Amazon with parameters. I mean, we still do all of our own fulfillment. So in the sense, you know, we, we get all of our product ready, we send it to the distributor, like we send it to the distribution center and the fulfillment center, but they manage all of our ad spend and optimization and all that. Just because I knew what my limit was, and I knew that I couldn’t take it any further than what I had. The flip side of that also is when we fulfill our orders, we don’t have a three PL.
So when we fulfill our own orders on Shopify, it’s like it’s really a pain. Like, you know, you’re, there’s so much more efficiency when you’re just bottling one bottle and it’s like, you know, process like factory style, right? Or like assembly work. But then when it’s like you get random orders and this and that and the other, like it just takes so much more time. So I truly prefer someone.
If you’re going to buy one bottle, buy it on Amazon, don’t bother buying it on our website, right? Buy it on Amazon, see if you like it. And then if you want to come back and buy bundles or more, whatever. Yeah, sure. Come to our website and we’ll, you know, we can give you a whole, you know, pantry full of things that you might want.
So you just like the efficiencies that we’ve gained from just sending everything all at once to Amazon has been amazing compared to people coming to our website.
Cj Bruce: 12:12
Yeah. Interesting. Awesome. Appreciate you digging in there. I wanted to go into so you mentioned the pandemic a few times.
I know. Yeah. Talked about the glass bottle shortage in 2022. And so I’m curious just to dig into like a, you know, challenge question and hear again from you as the front lines. Like you tell us a little bit about that story and how did that change the way you think about the the business moving forward?
Sonya Patel: 12:37
Absolutely. So like I said, you know, decided to be the manufacturer as well as the Salesperson and everything else. And again, I, I don’t come from a food background. I’ve, I, you know, I, I had no sense of what I was doing. And so when we launched with our sources, you know, we were like, okay, we’re going to use these bottles.
I was able to actually pick them up from like the distributor because they happen to have a warehouse in Cleveland. So like, that’s how I started. I started just by picking them up in my car. And we grew, we grew, we grew to the point where, you know, we were getting like a pallet now. And I was like, wow, this is really cool.
Like we have a pallet. And then Covid hit and like, I don’t, I’m not 100% sure what happened to glass, but like literally everything like just, you know, became not available. And I was like, crap, like all of our pictures resemble this bottle. So we can’t even just switch the bottle size, right? You can’t switch the bottle size, you can’t switch the shape or the cap or any of it, or even the color for that matter.
So we were stuck. And so I actually decided, hey, let’s, you know, expand our product line instead since we were sitting idle and I can’t make the sauces. Let’s make dried spices instead. So we legit. That’s how an entire product line came about was because we couldn’t find the bottles that we needed.
And so I was like, okay, what else can we do? And so, you know, dried spices has always been a thing in our lives, like being Indian. Like, you know, my mom had a huge, like spice container and still does. And then there’s like a bajillion other bottles that, you know, go along in the pantry. And a lot of those back to the allergy part, like I can’t use a lot of stuff off the shelf because like the manufacturing trust, a lot of fillers get added that happen to be wheat.
And my, my kiddos are allergic to wheat. And so like, there was a lot of things that I was already blending at home anyway. So I was like, well, let me see what I can do with this. But we did it in a way that we put our own twist on it, right? So it wasn’t just like your typical spice blend that you’d find in an Indian store.
We, we did our own twist because I feel like growing up, I didn’t, I didn’t grow up eating Indian food every day. And like, I mean, if I had my kids Indian food every day, they would literally revolt. Like that wouldn’t like we’re, you know, we grew up, I grew up here and we’re a global society. And so I, I grew up eating a lot of different flavors. And that’s kind of how, you know, our house is still. And so I, I put my own twist on all of the, all, everything we do, actually.
Protecting product quality and defining non-negotiables
Cj Bruce: 14:56
Nice. I love that. That’s a good transition to the next question I was going to ask you about the, you know, the freshness aspect. And like, you know, you’re blending like blending these spices, right? And like, how do you, as you’re scaling the business?
Like how do you protect the freshness without, you know, hurting margins or making things complicated? Like, is that because you’ve got the manufacturing side, you’re able to do that? Or can you talk a little bit about about that.
Sonya Patel: 15:22
And probably not protecting my margins? I’ll tell you that like the, the business side of my brain is thinking is looking at my, my heart and being like, you’re the dumbest person in the world. Like, why? But my heart is with my integrity and I. There are certain things I can’t compromise on, right.
And so like, it’s just one of those things that I have to be okay with if the margin is a little bit less because I want to like we’re still, you know, we still use fresh garlic from Spain. We don’t buy Chinese garlic. We still use like freshly squeezed lemon juice. And the price has gone up day over day over day, literally as I’m purchasing it. But I don’t want to go to a concentrate.
I don’t want to. And that’s what a Koeman would have made me do actually is probably mixed a lot of my fresh ingredients. And so I think when you’re trying to decide who and what you want to be as a business, which I think is really important for a business person like that authenticity piece, you have to have your non-negotiables. And some of those things were just non-negotiables. So like there are days when we get a big order of, you know, spices.
And if I’m out, I scramble and I make it that night or I’m going the next morning. Make that for dried spices. I can do that. We’ve gotten better about keeping inventory of our sources because like we can make those in, we make them in a big kettle. So I can do like 500 at a time.
So one of my smart goals for this year was to make sure that I always have 30 days of inventory on hand. So we’ve gotten better about that. But the dried spices, I’m always, we’re always out. So like if you order on our shop or like if you order on our website and it takes me a couple of days, that’s usually because you’re getting a batch I made like that morning.
Cj Bruce: 17:08
Of the dedication to the freshness, I love it. Yeah. No, it’s an important call to your non-negotiables, right? There’s always things that there’s pressures and you’ve got to make these decisions. And it’s the day to day things that you’ve got to figure out.
And having that core is, you know, super important. Yeah. So you’ve touched on it a few times on your, you know, your background being, you know, not food. So I want to just dig into that a little bit. You know, I think again, doing the pre-show research, like at consulting, education, mindfulness.
Just curious how how does that diverse background, you know, how does that show up in both the business, but also your leadership and you know, how you think about things in, in the business today?
Sonya Patel: 17:47
Absolutely. So I think I’ve always known that I want to. So one, I always knew I wanted to be in business. Like even since high school, but I also always wanted to have an impact. So like everything I did, even as a child and, you know, in high school and college, it was always like I did a lot of community service and I did a lot of business related things.
I went into consulting because I thought I was like, oh, I’m being a doctor for businesses, right? Like, I didn’t fulfill my parents dream of being a doctor, but I’m helping businesses. Right? So it went from consultant being on the outside, but it didn’t feel fulfilling enough because typically as a consultant, it’s not your skin is not necessarily in the game as though that owners is right. And I mean, we were I was working with fortune 500 companies, but still, it’s like, you know, we do a presentation, we do a pitch, we make a recommendation whether or not they use it or not.
It’s, you know, up to them at the end of the day. So then I was like, okay, well, what if I go into internal strategy? So I feel like I’m making a little bit more of a difference. So I worked at Mattel doing international strategy and I actually loved it. I, I loved the job.
I loved the company. But it was in LA and it was really far from home for me. And so I decided to move back. And I, I always had this piece of impact in me in terms of like, I wanted to help people. So I was like this.
It was the perfect time to make the move into education. I actually thought I was going to run a school like the operation side of a school. That was that was my grand plan. If I had stayed in New York and didn’t move back to Cleveland, I think I would have been doing that. But, you know, life.
Doors open in different situations and so you just roll with it, I guess. But I education teaching was probably the hardest job I ever did in life. Even worse than a management consultant. And Mattel was great. But like teaching, I don’t think people understand the emotional piece of being a teacher as well.
Like you really get vested in your to your students. I taught at a, a pretty, like a very low income in a very low income neighborhood. And I taught in Bed-Stuy before it became gentrified. And so, and it was, you know, at a high performing charter school. So a lot of times my, my kiddos would come and, you know, I was tasked with teaching them math and reading, but they were so worried about life.
And am I going to have food? Is my home like it was? It was like such a conflicting mindset that I was, you know, that I felt like we were a part of. And so that’s how the mindfulness and yoga came in. Because when I moved back to Cleveland, I didn’t I knew I wasn’t a great teacher, actually.
I was really good at like the operation stuff of the school in terms of making sure my plans were done and my classroom was organized like all those things. But teaching wise, I was okay, like I was in the past. You have to also be real, right? Like you know what you’re good at and what you’re not. So when I came back to Cleveland, I had a grand plan to start this non-profit.
And you know, because again, I wanted to always give back. I wanted to have my own business. So I started a company called ZENworks Yoga which does yoga and mindfulness in inner city and like underserved schools. And so I ran that for ten years and it was great, I loved it. I’m still on the board, very passionate about the mission, but I wasn’t the one doing the work right.
I was running the business on the outside, you know, collecting donations. I wasn’t in the classroom. I feel like I need something that’s tangible that I have my hand in. And so that’s kind of how the food part came. I wanted I wanted a product, I wanted a company that was, you know, and then my kids had these allergies.
So it kind of just fit together. So everything I’ve done, I feel like has been very purpose driven though. Like, you know, I’ve been in, I’ve been lucky enough that I can make those choices also To decide like which path I want to take. I know not everyone has that option, but I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to make those decisions.
Staying grounded and managing founder pressure
Cj Bruce: 21:36
Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. I’m curious within. So now you know.
So the lead up to starting the the food business and then have you, you know, since you’ve started and like talked about some of the trials and tribulations, have there been anything, you know, any learnings or experiences from your, your, your past life, so to say that have come up and like you’ve been like, oh, yeah, this something that came up from teaching or from management consulting or any of that, that affects how you think about the business today.
Sonya Patel: 22:06
Yeah, I mean, I think so. I have a degree in finance and accounting that was my undergrad. And so like that obviously helped from like a business perspective in terms of numbers and things like that. I think for ZENworks, actually one of the biggest takeaways. So we, we store a lot of the yoga stuff in like part of our warehouse just because the nonprofit doesn’t have a space.
But we keep our posters up that we give to our classrooms about like breathing and like some movements and things like that. And I think one of the things that I always carry with me is like just remembering to stay grounded, right? Because this is, it’s really easy to get caught up in like all the, especially when you see people, you know, on, on Instagram or on social media or even LinkedIn being like, oh, I did this and I did this. And I, you know, it’s like, it’s very easy to start smiling and like thinking about like, oh man, I wish I was doing that or I wish. So I think just knowing and like being able to take that moment and like to pause, like, so we, we have a saying, it’s like, pause, breathe, reset.
And so being able to do that in my daily life because, you know, food manufacturing, running a business, being an entrepreneur, when it’s a 24 over seven job, two, there’s always a fire somewhere, right? Like, but also knowing like, okay, maybe that fire is not as important. We can kind of like, you know, it doesn’t have to become escalated that I definitely took from ZENworks. Yeah, just keeping myself sane.
Cj Bruce: 23:34
Keep myself sane. Yeah. I mean, take taking that that little moment, you know, before acting to make a huge, huge difference. That’s great. Absolutely, absolutely.
I’m gonna shift shift into another question around the the bold and airy bytes, which you launched and so curious about the, you know, can you take us behind the scenes a little bit as you think about like the brand architecture and like you have, you know, it’s on its own website, you got the PUR Spices brand. And just how did you think about having it be a separate subbrand? Was there certain things that went into that or. Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got through that process?
Sonya Patel: 24:07
You’re going to see my face because as any entrepreneur, you make mistakes. And this is one of those things that we are realizing which we’re going to end up, you know, course correcting very, very, very soon. We probably shouldn’t have labeled it as a separate brand. That’s step one that we realized. And the reason there’s a couple from a legal perspective to hold our trademark, we needed actually our PUR Spices logo to stay on the packaging for bold and airy, to keep everything under like to, to have because we weren’t able to trademark.
And so that was one miss. The second miss is, you know, as a business person, you have a hypothesis of like what you think is going to work when you do something right. My hypothesis when I launched was that this was going to be a TikTok shop sensation. That’s I literally thought I was going to target like the 16 to, you know, 24 year olds or even younger maybe, and their moms and dads. And it was going to be a TikTok shop thing, right?
So it was like in PUR Spices, this is not a TikTok shop thing. So I was like, okay, we have to have separate brands. Well, that didn’t work out because we didn’t have, you know, going back to resources, we didn’t have the resources to run an entire brand separately, which I think that’s that was the big miss is understanding what it takes to build a brand and then say, oh, actually, I’m going to build two brands at the same time. Like it just it didn’t make sense. And I don’t know where you live and you learn, right?
Luckily we were we made some good, like we had some good guardrails in place to not like do too much investing in the, the Bolton area brand. So for instance, when we, you know, the, the, the Shopify site is like a pretty basic site. We didn’t like put in too much money into it to, you know, that our packaging was like definitely our version zero packaging. And so we were able to learn what worked, what didn’t work. And so going forward, we’re actually collapsing.
So we combined our social media, we’ll be integrating the websites. We’ll be like, you’ll be able to have one store to shop from versus going to two different sites. That was the other thing I didn’t realize in my head. I thought I would have multiple tabbed pages and we’d be able to have one shopping cart, but that’s a lot more expensive to build than what I understood. So when that didn’t work, it was like, well, then we’re just literally building two separate companies, which doesn’t make sense at the capacity that we’re at.
So it was, it was pretty quick to realize that like, yeah, this is not going to work.
Cj Bruce: 26:47
That was great. Yeah, I’m glad we dug into that, though. It’s helpful to hear the, you know, the actual inner workings, right? Just the thought process that goes into these things and the learnings that come out of it. And you know, sometimes that’s the only way to, to really learn and grow and evolve.
Sonya Patel: 27:00
And you and you don’t know until you try, right? Like you, I, I, okay, like we did great on Amazon for that. I was like, okay, this is going to be TikTok shop and done. But it, you know, it didn’t work out that way.
Cj Bruce: 27:12
I appreciate you digging into that. Next thing I wanted to ask you about was the, you know, the kind of influencer marketing side of things. Like you’ve done a lot with chefs and recipe driven content. I’m curious, can you talk a little bit about how do those collaborations come together? And, you know, how did you why did you decide to go that direction and how have you been approaching those relationships?
Sonya Patel: 27:33
Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was actually one of my favorite collaborations that we did the chef series. I think it was a couple years ago. So when we initially launched PUR Spices, there was a couple restaurants that were using harissa in their restaurants.
So I actually went to those restaurants and pitched our harissa over whoever they were using. So a couple of the restaurants actually picked us up, which is really cool. And so and we’re still supplying to them. And part of the other reason why we did this was influencers are great and I have nothing against them, but I wanted to have recipes that weren’t just my own because initially our Instagram and I would post recipes were all our own, but my family’s vegetarian. My kiddos are not free and gluten free like it kind of limits what we can eat.
And so like, you know, like I would have to really just cook for the sake of cooking, which felt wasteful to me. So I was like, well, what if I got people who were actually chefs that, you know, could create recipes for? So all of those people were people that we were either supplying to their restaurants or to their stores. And they had a restaurant, kind of like a cafe connected to it. And they were all friends there, like they’re all friends of mine still.
And so it was a very, it was actually a really cool experience. And I, you know, I would love to do it again sometime, but I had a blast. And the only one that’s not a professional chef was my mom, which was, you know, she’s, she, she got a spotlight for a month too, because she has like a phenomenal cook. And so I felt like I had to give her that nod as well. And so I, I loved it my whole purp.
Like I’m very, very, I’m a very big stickler on like authenticity. And so like I. If you’ll notice, I haven’t done a lot of collaborations with like other influencers and things like that because to me, I want someone who’s actually used our products to be telling people how good they are. So I typically don’t respond to cold call content creators and things like that. Like I really, really want it to be people that have used our products and that like, you know, appreciate them and appreciate the, the care and quality that we put into them because, I mean, they’re legit hand made, right?
And so I want people to understand that and to appreciate that. And then hopefully they love it. And then that’s why they’re telling their friends and family about us.
Current business focus and product expansion
Cj Bruce: 29:55
Yeah. That’s great. The core main product taste and great being great product is at the core. And then, you know, sparks all these other opportunities from there. That’s great.
So we’ve talked a lot about, you know, the past for PUR Spices. And I’m curious to know what’s going on today. I know before we jumped on you’re talking about the freeze dried snack line. So I just wanted to give you some opportunity, you know, tell us what’s going on today with the business and what are you excited about?
Sonya Patel: 30:21
Yeah. So PUR Spices is just chugging along. We like we’re not adding new products. We’re not changing our packaging. That is like we’re good to go because we, you know, we just changed our label like two years ago, did all of that stuff.
And so we’re good to go now. So it’s going to, you know, I’m going to try not to be ADHD and like, be like, oh, I want to do this and this with this, but no, we’re good. So it’s stable, you know, still pushing along on Amazon retail. We’re not, we’re, we’re focusing on smaller retail, but we’re not necessarily looking at any big box or bigger chains or anything like that, just because the distribution numbers just don’t make sense given our price point and like what they would want to charge and etc., etc.. So we’re kind of keeping things stable.
I’m really, really excited though about bold and airy bytes. So our new packaging arrived just a couple days ago. So we’re starting production with the new packaging. When we initially launched, the pack size was a little bigger than a single serve, I think, but it wasn’t quite as like a multi serve. So that was a little bit of a miss.
And then we didn’t do flavor specific pouches because we weren’t sure which flavors would sell. So we were like manually putting a sticker for the flavor and a barcode on the back, all of it, right. But now we nail down our three prime flavors. So we have a pina colada, a banana pudding, and an acai apple pie. So these are all very like nostalgic slash sweet treats, right?
But like no sugar added, you know, just the fruit and the spice. So it’s this idea of a quick snack, a quick treat, a quick break in the midst of your day. Throw it in your bag. And so they’re a proper single serve now. They’re color coded for retail, which is and they’re, they’re just beautiful.
And we’ve reduced the pricing, which was big. So that way it feels like a single serve snack versus this in-between space of like, why am I spending so much for something that’s not quite, you know, with a zip and I can share it with my family. So I’m really, really excited about that. I, I have a couple opportunities in hotels. And so I think alternative placement, convenience, impulse, that’s what I’m going after.
Not necessarily traditional grocery, unless if the opportunity presents itself, that’s different, but I’m looking really more like alternative routes.
Cj Bruce: 32:49
Yeah. That’s interesting. Yeah, I like that. Awesome. Well, excited to see all that roll out.
I think the, I wanted to take us a little wider and see are there other, you know, other food brands out there like other people doing great work in food and beverage that you feel deserve more attention? Anybody want to, you know, give a shout out to.
Sonya Patel: 33:10
Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. So I am fortunate enough in Cleveland to be a part of this community called Wonder Women of Food Cleveland. And so it’s a non-profit that we started about, I think it’s been like three years now, two and a half, three years. And it was just a group of us female food founders, like CPG food founders that were, you know, we started with a lunch and a couple of meetings, and now it’s grown to over 100 women who all have food products, which is pretty cool, different stages. So we have people who have national distribution.
We have people like me who go the alternative routes. We have people who are literally just recipe testing. And I’ve made some amazing friends slash coworkers, whatever you want to call it. Like it’s a, it’s a phenomenal community. And in that community, there’s two women, Nina and Devin, and they run Mugsy Bakes.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of them yet, but they are a mug cake company. And it’s so, so, so, so smart. So, you know, it’s like a single serve pouch. You rip it open, Throw it in your mug. Add like an egg.
You don’t even have to add an egg. I think you can do alternative. Some form of dairy or non-dairy whatever. And then oil. And you pop it in the microwave for like a minute and a half.
And then you have a single serve cake, which is so, so, so smart. It’s naturally gluten free. They, they’re using almond flour, so it’s gluten free and they have a couple flavors and they’re delicious. And so I’ve watched them. They, they started after I did, I’ve watched them grow from like self manufacturing out of the same kitchen we were all at to now they have, they have a common and they’re growing and it’s really, really exciting.
But in their product is delicious. And I think we all, we all have the same vibe, which is really nice in terms of authenticity. They’re all, you know, they’re young moms, they’re doing things themselves. Like it’s just, it’s really nice. And so I would definitely check out Mugsy and then one of our OG members, Tina from Terranean Herbs, which I think is like her pita chips and satire.
I don’t know if you’ve seen Tina. Tina’s like, she’s like a superstar from Cleveland. She’s she’s been. But she’s kind of like my. Oh, I want to be you when I grow up.
Like she’s she’s kind of gone, you know, same thing. She self manufactures and she started with spices and then she has her pita chips, which are her like kind of her big product now that she’s leading with and, you know, she’s in the snack aisle too. And so I, I just really admire all the things she’s doing too. But two definitely companies I would check out.
Cj Bruce: 35:36
Nice. What was the name of Tina’s brand?
Sonya Patel: 35:39
It’s Terranean herbs.
Cj Bruce: 35:41
Terranean Herbs.
Sonya Patel: 35:41
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she’s a, it’s a Lebanese company, but she’s awesome.
Cj Bruce: 35:47
Awesome, great. Yeah. Everybody go check them out. And then we talked, touched on this a little bit before we started recording, but the AI question.
Navigating AI while staying authentic
Cj Bruce: 35:57
Oh yeah. I’m curious. You know, we’ve been doing a ton with AI and there’s, you know, there’s a lot of different I mean, AI is a very broad topic as well, but I’m curious just how, you know, the rise of AI impacted your business and the work that you do?
Sonya Patel: 36:12
Absolutely. So I have a love hate relationship with AI. And part of it is I think it comes back to the authenticity part of it. So from, from the user perspective, I see a lot of or sorry, from like an audience perspective, I’ll say it that way. That’s my hate part of it.
When I see a lot of AI generated content, I sat on this TikTok webinar, just like learning how to use TikTok for your business. And I was shocked when I was shown how many of the like the influencers on TikTok are not real people. And that was sort of my, I don’t want to be a part of this, right? Like I don’t want to be a part of that. And so I just, I’m very cautious about how I use it.
Right? So will I use it to do web research? Sure. Like will I use it to learn how to build a database for manufacturing? Absolutely.
Because I don’t know how to do that stuff. But in terms of putting out content, it’s like, I’ll use it as a starter, but I’m not using like super robust AI tools. I guess I would say I’m still a little wary about where everything goes and how it all, you know, shows up, I guess.
Cj Bruce: 37:28
Yeah. That’s great. I mean, I think it’s something common thread we’ve seen where there’s this, you know, this, there’s just multiple things getting pulled in different directions where like you’re having, you know, more efficiency and speed and all of that that’s happening at the same time. There’s, you know, a bit of a backlash and well, the authenticity still matters and you still want that and you still want the human connection. And, you know, especially in food, right? It’s like eating is very human.
Sharing food is very human. And there’s cultural connections and all these other pieces. And anyway, it’s an interesting space to navigate for sure.
Sonya Patel: 38:02
It is. And I mean, don’t get me wrong. I mean, I think there’s a lot of efficiencies that will come out, right. And there’s a lot of processes that can be automated and built and things like that. But it’s just you, you know, you just have to be wary of what you’re seeing and what you’re getting, I think.
I worry about my kids and not them not knowing, like what’s real and what’s not real like. And so I, I’m very conscious of what I put out there because I don’t want to be a part of the problem per se.
Cj Bruce: 38:30
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the AI kids side is a whole nother, whole nother podcast conversation. But yeah, I’m with you there. I’m like, well, I don’t know what is this going to be like for them? What’s the world going to look like for them?
Sonya Patel: 38:40
Yeah.
Cj Bruce: 38:41
Yeah, I, I feel that for sure. All right, Sonya, I’ve got I got one last question, but before I ask that, I do want to point people to your website. So PUR Spices and that’s p u r spices.com. Is there anywhere else? Obviously we talked about Amazon where you can find the product anywhere else.
Do you recommend people learn more about you and the work you’re doing.
Sonya Patel: 39:04
Yeah. And if you’re in the Cleveland area, you can check us out at Heinen’s or Market District, like in throughout Ohio for Market District as well. So yeah.
Final advice for founders
Cj Bruce: 39:13
Awesome. Great. Okay, so the last question is trying to bring us full circle to the, you know, the depth of the founder life that we started with. And so I’m curious, you know, from your perspective, you know, if one founder listened to this and, you know, walks away feeling less alone in the struggle, more confident in the experience, what do you what do you hope that they remember most? Or what would you want to kind of message you want to leave them with before we wrap?
Sonya Patel: 39:38
Sure. So I think it’s important to understand that you can always have a plan and you should work towards that plan, but always realize that things might not work out that way. So be prepared to pivot, be prepared to realize that, okay, maybe option A didn’t work, but there might be A, B, C, and D that could work. I’m a very big believer of like, things happening for a reason. And so if an opportunity didn’t happen that you really wanted to, you know, don’t, don’t give up.
If you’re still really passionate about what you’re doing, the other thing to always remember is that things are not always what they seem. And it’s really easy as a founder to get caught up in all the hype, especially during times when you know, there’s big shows or like there’s, you know, and people are kind of like, there’s, there’s that balance of being excited for someone, right? As you, we should always celebrate everyone’s successes, but not letting that get us down and not making us feel like, okay, I’m a failure because that person is doing this and I’m not there yet. Right? And I think that’s the key, right?
You might not be there yet. Maybe that’s not your path anyway. So always being okay with that. And, you know, taking take calculated risks, right? Like understand what you’re comfortable with and do those things versus trying to meet a benchmark that someone else set.
And I think especially when you’re like taking outside capital, you know, sometimes there’s this notion of you have to race a lot faster than maybe you really needed to. And just being knowing what you’re comfortable with, I guess, is the other piece I would leave with.
Cj Bruce: 41:30
Yeah. That’s great. I think it’s a great, great note to end on. All right. We’ve been talking to Sonya Patel, founder of PUR Spices. Be sure to check her out at purspices.com.
That’s purspices.com. Sonya, thank you so much for being on the show.
Sonya Patel: 41:43
Thank you so much, CJ. Appreciate it.
Outro: 41:46 Thanks for listening to The Missing Ingredient podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.