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The Foodynamics Interview - Getting Your Recipe Freeze-Dried from Concept to Reality
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May 15, 2025
Foodynamics is a co-packing and private label freeze-drying company in Wisconsin. If you are curious about what the freeze-drying industry offers aspiring entrepreneurs, this interview is full of new and useful information to get your wheels rolling spinning! Timestamps for topics are located below. Subscribe for more videos https://youtube.com/@freezedriedbusiness Join my weekly newsletter for more new and tips on freeze-drying: https://freezedriedbusiness.com Timestamps - 1:02 Interview Starts - 5:02 What is Private Label for Freeze-Dried Products? - 8:27 Co-Packing Requirements - 10:19 When Did Sean See the Opportunity to be a Private Label company? - 12:45 Pros & Cons to Having Someone Freeze Dry for You - 15:45 How to Freeze Dry Pet Food - 17:15 What Types of Pet Food is Being Freeze-Dried? - 21:02 Evolution of Freeze Dryer Machines Being Used - 24:21 How Do You Justify the Cost of a Commercial Freeze Dryer vs Home Freeze Dryer? - 27:36 The Reality of Running a Business with a Harvest Right Freeze Dryer - 29:28 How to Navigate the Freeze Dried Pet Food Market - 35:30 What are the Opportunities in Freeze-Drying for the Future? The Frozen Assets Podcast series is all about exploring the world of the freeze-drying industry and hopefully inspiring you to achieve more in your business by looking at current entrepreneurs and companies in this growing industry. Full Playlist of Frozen Assets Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8uz0_2xUyEIGWHjImLMBkll8M0ykaama
View Video Transcript
0:00
hey it's David with the freeze dry business and the frozen assets podcast Series where we focus on everything freeze drying and freeze drying
0:06
entrepreneurship today if you're interested in freeze drying or wanting to know more about what's happening in
0:11
the freeze drying industry well this interview that I'm going to share with you today is with the owner of Foody
0:16
namics this company is based in Wisconsin and they have several commercial freeze dryers that they rent out to hundreds of people who want to
0:24
freeze dry different types of recipes they really help people basically take their business in their re recipe to the
0:30
next level and you're going to hear from Shawn Jones who started a freeze dried pet company using countertop branded
0:36
freeze dryers just like we all use today and then grew his company to fill the needs of people who are looking at
0:42
accelerating their freeze drying business so if you don't want to watch the whole video or you don't have time I've got time stamps Below in the video
0:48
description if you want to reach out to Sean and talk to him about what he has to offer through C- packing and helping
0:54
you grow your freeze drying business I'm going to put his content information below in the video description as well now let's get to the interview with
1:00
Shawn Jones of Foody namics Sean tell me a little bit about what your company is
1:05
because I think you manufacture some free product but you also do some food and some white labeling for people who
1:12
want to get into pet food so tell us a little bit about what food Dynamics is about we own two brick and mortar pet
1:19
supply stores called what's in the bull Pet Shop we had a couple Harvest Right freeze dryers in the back room from the
1:24
beginning that we were freeze drying treats for cats and dogs and selling them in our store and we had a few
1:30
brands that came in and some owners of big Brands came in and they said could you do some research for us on products
1:38
because most of the bigger freeze drying companies have a lot of mqs and we were like sure we're science Geeks so we did
1:44
some research for them freeze dry some stuff and then our business really started to grow
1:49
because we said we could start freeze drying for you and our food Dynamics spun off of what's on the bowl we
1:56
actually started out as raw dog barkery which is one of our brands we changed our name to foodie Dynamics because we
2:02
started to private label for about 250 companies now we also got duped a couple
2:07
times by suppliers we started sourcing products from grocery stores and graduated to Sam's Club and the the club
2:14
stores and then to Restaurant Depot now we work with Brokers from all over the United States and Order tens of
2:20
thousands of pounds of meat every week we started out with lots of Harvest
2:26
Right freeze dryers and we were up to I think 30 at one time that's when we graduated to a Parker and now we can
2:32
we're producing on a day what used to take us a year it it was a great journey in a phenomenal way to start a business
2:38
we really swear by starting small proving the concept and then taking that
2:44
big entrepreneurial leap this is interesting because there's a lot of avenues for Revenue to be captured with
2:51
freeze drying you can make your own product rented out and private label like you're doing or do the whole
2:57
production so I want to better understand Sean for people that are listening what is private labeling
3:03
because it's very common across a lot of other different Industries but what does Private labeling mean and how is that
3:11
being done on the freeze drying side private label is an one of the things
3:16
that we didn't realize right away is that many of the the brands that we really admire and head up on pedestals
3:22
actually don't make a thing themselves they use what are called co- packagers or
3:27
co-manufacturers to do all of the production for them it might be their recipe it might be their formula but
3:32
it's all done and the reason why private label exists and I'll give you an example the facility that we have now we
3:39
own one small brand there's no way that we could support the facility that we have now with just one brand and we even
3:46
see that in the pet industry even in the toothbrush industry we went to the private label Expo in Chicago last year
3:54
and we discovered that there's really only two places in the world where toothbrushes are made chances are when
3:59
you buy a toothbrush at Target or Walmart or Walgreens they all came from the same place it may have been that
4:06
Brand's or that company's design but they were still manufactured by somebody else there's some large pet food
4:13
manufacturers around us here they manufactur 20 other brands in the same facility the reason for that is there's
4:19
no way even if we had a brand in every pet store in the world that we could support this facility without making
4:26
other brands as well we signed non-disclosure state statements with all the brands we make things for a lot of
4:32
them are proprietary formulas some of them they're delivered to us and we freeze dry them we just verify the
4:38
ingredient sources but we really don't know the secret sauce yeah we're the freeze dry company and we've got a lot
4:44
of inquiries about people that want survival food done or freeze-dried apples for snacks or candy and we
4:52
haven't moved in that direction we're about to do another expansion and that is definitely something that we'll be
4:59
able to offer in you know the next year so Sean I want to dive into a little bit
5:04
more of the private label because this was really fascinating someone who has their own homemade recipe for pet food
5:12
that theyve been doing for a long period of time maybe they actually have a recipe walk us through what do I do if
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I'm wanting to get this done by somebody else and test it out and then
5:24
manufacture it because I know that it's going to explode and create a business for me what does it actually look like
5:30
contacting you and and we get that a lot first the first thing that people
5:39
need to realize is that the recipe for a complete and balanced meal for freeze dried is going to be a little different
5:44
than if they were just making it fresh in their home because of the minimal nutritional loss during the freeze
5:50
drying process you do have to account for that in your freeze-dried recipe help walk
5:56
through process of that food formulation we charge a nominal fee for it once they
6:02
have their recipe we're still a small company so we don't have any minimum quantity
6:08
requirements they can share the recipe with us we'll sign a non-disclosure statement and we'll talk to them about
6:15
the process and make the food and put them on our production schedule we let them know the cost these are the ingredients in my product I want to make
6:22
this many pounds of food and then we're able to tell them not only that if it's a complete diet how much it would cost
6:28
per pound to make Plus freeze drying fee we operate pretty
6:33
quickly once it's on the production schedule we'll make the food we'll refreeze it pan it and then it'll go
6:38
into our freeze dryer when it comes out we can do two things we can send it back in bulk we can actually package it for you
6:45
and we work with design teams to to design packaging and send it wherever you want
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it to be sent and we also can do fulfillment for people too we have fulfillment Partners if they were going
6:58
to start selling it online we could do that too awesome so it's like a drop in ship
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type of point in sale so if I'm in Idaho which I am I could say hey here's my recipe can you give me a quote for doing
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all of it from taking the recipe and making that actual product putting it in
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the freeze dryer freeze drying it ensuring that it has all the types of testing for nutrition and everything
7:24
that you would need to actually put on a label to sell it as a pet food and then
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you also offer services for packaging it up designing that package and if they didn't want to do it themselves you
7:35
could find a way to ship it and they don't even have to handle the inventory that's a full surface type of Suite
7:41
that's great and we the way we do that is similar to our specialty is freeze drying we partner with a 3pl fulfillment
7:48
center they fulfill for Amazon and chewy and other smaller companies as well that
7:54
all inch into your margin of how much you would make on the product because there's always an extra fee for every
8:00
service people starting out will opt to do their packaging themselves because it
8:06
just makes it cheaper have some people actually they'll provide us just with they'll say
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okay can you Source chicken hearts for us can you freeze dry chicken hearts for us and send them in bulk even if they're doing their own freeze drying they may
8:17
have customers or just the need to more usually we can say if you have a couple
8:23
Harvest Right freeze dryers we know what the output of that is we can ship them now it seems like if you're going to go
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this route using food Dynamics to be your co-packer and private label this is
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there a minimum type of pounds of production and freeze-dried product that
8:41
you're generally seeing with all the different brands that you work with that they need to have kind of a a delivery
8:47
point of okay I've got all these clients waiting for this type of Demand versus somebody who's just starting out where
8:53
do generally your clients land in that Spectrum we have a broad spectrum of
8:58
clients that we have uh clients that have pet food in every single ended pet store in the country we
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have people that don't have their formula yet they're just dipping their toe minimums if they're just wanting to
9:13
do treats or even if it was a minimally processed recipe where it was just a few ingredients and we were making a
9:19
supplement or a treat for someone we we're very dedicated to still to
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small businesses CU that's how we started and we don't have any minimum orders for things like that if someone
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said I want 10 lbs of this we would do 10 PB if they said we want to do a test
9:38
Market of this we're limited in our facility from we can maybe make 500 lbs
9:43
at a time raw material but we also have a partner nearby and their minimum is 6,000 lb that would end being probably
9:50
around 1,500 lb of freeze-dried product some of our competitors or some of the companies that we compete with their
9:57
minimums are 20,000 lb of finish freeze-dried weight wow that's amazing to be in this
10:03
Lane of really and that we enjoy the most is working with new entrepreneurs I
10:09
helped someone incorporate the LLC earlier this week it was we love doing
10:14
that no matter how much growth we would experience that would ever change for us
10:20
yeah and so maybe going back to the private label evolution of your business
10:26
you said you had two original brands that you were were freeze drying how did you see this opportunity saying you know
10:33
what the opportunity for freeze drying for us we see as being an actual co-packer how did you know to kind go
10:40
about that because I know that there's large freeze dryer co-packers anyway how did you figure out your Niche to go into
10:47
this side of things because we were the ones contacting another company to make it for us we ran into two things the
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ones we really wanted to work with were at full capacity door had minimum order requirements we could have bought a
10:58
large Parker freeze dryer for what their minimum was there were there's free there's private label or Co
11:05
co-manufacturers with capacity it wasn't at the Quality that we were expecting the pet industry you can call something
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human grade and that means it was scraped out of a drain in a human facility we're and this is just us we're
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very ative to the quality of the product and the traceability of the products that we allow in our facility we just
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saw the opportunity in the market and backed into how much we would need to produce
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to be competitive in the market and that led us to we need to make this for other people we knew we had enough contacts in
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the industry to start up and and do just fine there's incredible demand in freeze drying and freeze drying anything I I
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don't think we're in the infancy of the consumer understanding what freeze drying is so I think there's a lot of
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opportunities yeah I agree a lot of people ask me where are we at in the trends of the industry I would say
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everyone's freeze dry and cany there's a lot of other industries that are not
12:03
even starting to birth and become an actual consumer recognizable
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freeze-dried product pet food's been one of those that has been around but now
12:14
everyone's taking their existing wet type pet food and now freeze drying it so it creates a whole another sector of
12:21
their product line which is another Revenue source as well so what would you say though looking at your previous
12:28
brand that you had yourself and then looking and saying we need to be able to scale where how does somebody know
12:35
whether they're supposed to maybe look at co-packing and doing it versus keeping on their same track of buying
12:41
their own freeze dryers and doing it all themselves are there pros and cons can you explain what the differences might
12:47
be between having your own freeze dryers versus having someone do it for you absolutely one of the things that we
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discovered is we haven't invested a lot in promoting Our Brands reason for that is marketing and
13:00
bringing a brand to Market is a completely different process sometimes companies decide do I want to create a
13:06
brand and is my specialty going to be marketing and selling and finding
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Distributors and going to trade shows or am I going to be a manufacturing
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facility it's a completely different business process you have to decide where you really want to go it is
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difficult to do both if you look deep in the pet industry there aren't that many many Brands out there that facture their
13:33
own products a lot of the brands if you look look deep enough you realize some of them don't even have an office all of
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their employees including the owner or the CEO work from home and there's not an address anywhere I think it's kind of
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it's kind of genius and then there's that balance of okay we're going to have some things C manufactured and we're going to stay in our lane and and do
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what we specialize in to do we decided we're going to stop doing that there's
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other companies that can do that at scale that's not what we wanted to do we didn't have the space for it although
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it's a similar process something we decided we weren't going to do we're going to specialize in freeze drying are
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we going to focus a lot on bringing our our own Brands to Market absolutely not that's that's not our skill set
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sometimes people ask me why don't you push your brand if you go to some of the major trade shows like super zoo or the Global Pet Expo every year it's 300,000
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Square ft of pet products and I always say imagine holding my brand in the palm of my hand and say I'm going to beat out
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all these other people that's not in my wheelhouse but if you're really good at marketing and really good at bringing a
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brand to Market that's your Niche that's your strategic decision to do we made
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the decision to go into manufacturing and there's sometimes we question our decisions but because it's it's a has
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completely different challenges yeah that's a I do think I do think manufacturing has predictable
14:54
return CU you could spend a lot of money on marketing and sales one of the things I look at when when I take a look at the
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forecast of the freeze drying industry how do you earn money with a freeze dryer you can be a small business and
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process everything yourself just doing things that are more localized you can also develop a brand that's more State
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focused and recognized as the freeze drying company of your for your own State you can then go out to your region
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you can then go out to go to the different targets of different audiences and I think also renting or being a
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manufacturer of your of freeze drying product there's a huge demand for that and so if you have LS in your freeze
15:35
drying production and you just don't have that Demand yet you can also be licensed to co-ack and help people out
15:41
in that sense I think there's huge demand for that for sure Sean I want to ask you just a little bit about the
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process for freeze drying pet food I'm a little bit more unfamiliar with the benefits to freeze drying pet food
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specifically can you tell us in layman's terms what is freeze drying Pet Foods purpose what are the benefits and why is
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it something that big huge global companies are investing in why is that the case in the pet industry we've all
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seen the commercials recently for like farmer dog and fresh pet there's a shift in the pet industry to feed more real
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food or real fresh food the best way to preserve food is going to be freeze
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drying that industry not unlike the human industry convenience is really driving's decisions that I need
16:29
something that's shelf stable something that is going to be better than something I would buy out of one of the
16:35
big bags I knowah is ultr processed when I always say in the I'm the worst
16:40
physician on the planet they would tell all of us to eat more real Whole Foods and less processed foods and the same is
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happening in the pet industry so you very rarely see really junky or
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processed foods being freeze-dried it's usually quality food being freeze-dried and that's what the Mark is demanding
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it's the fastest growing segment in the pen industry so most of it is driven by uh by the Shelf stable quality food it's
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a little bit of a deterrent because it literally doubles the price but for the convenience of being able to have this
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really high quality food on your shelf that could be there for a really long time so Sean I want to ask you about the
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types of animals you're seeing freeze-dried pet food come to Market dogs and cats come to mind right but
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there's a lot of other animals horses guinea pigs snakes all types of
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reptiles so what are you seeing come to Market that you can tell us about we're seeing increased demand in the small
17:35
animal sector those guinea pigs and reptiles and we get a lot of requests to
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freeze dry cockroaches black soldierly larvae to freeze dry crickets and that
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type of thing and now AFCO is it's not a government organization but the closest thing they have they've approved insects
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as a pet food for cats and dogs freeze dry carrots for horse treats
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the interesting things is we've been Freez drying minnows for 9 years and it
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it never occurred to me but we had someone said hey could we use that as bait absolutely you could keep in your tackle box for 20 years and it' be fine
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there's all these I think discoveries happening happening where you freeze drying is an
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option is always an issue but I think we've scratched the surface on freeze
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dried for especially For Animals outside of cats and dogs in the industry yeah I actually it's funny you
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mention about the the fishing side for bait because I I've been in freeze drying for probably four or five years
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now one of the things I thought about with fishing was I did find a Asian
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company that was making fish food like cubes and they it's like you sprinkle
18:50
flakes on your fish tank but they were creating cubes that was more concentrated and it slowly dissolves in
18:56
the fish tank which I thought was brilliant but the second thing I thought was building off of the cube I thought
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it'd be really unique if somebody could build like a 3D printed box that has
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different vent holes and you literally put freeze-dried product in there because as if it's becomes a powder it
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could just expand so thinking of fishing if you cast out that little box with
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freeze-dried fish type bait it would slowly leak out of those holes therefore
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attracting the fish in and I thought that would just be a very interesting invention that somebody could do it's a
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wide VAR variety of products and I think there's still opportunity for Innovation
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there and I I still hope that on The Human Side something happens in the
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industry that makes freeze drying every so all the consumers know what freeze drying is it's going to change
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everything the consumer realizes that something is freeze-dried yeah big prod it big I
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think once the consumer is familiar with what a freeze-dried product or what that
20:02
process is and it's more widespread then you're going to see a lot more Brands not even call themselves
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a freeze dried company it's just going to be you're going to have a product that is Freez dried and that processes
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how they're making the product that then they go to market with so I think Freez dried as an industry name like kleenexes
20:24
to tissue paper that's what freeze drying is going to be known as but you're going to all these Branch offs of
20:30
people creating different things you know something else but it's going to be a freeze-dried product I I think about
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astronaut ice cream all the time people know what that is but they don't realize it's a freeze dried product freeze dried
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is very popular because people were using freeze dryers to make candy pop there could be a different term for
20:49
freeze dried candy in that it could be popped candy it could be crunch candy something like that that is now an
20:56
industry known term that you're what I'm what am I eating or I'm eating a popped candy that could be anything yeah so
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Sean now you're in Wisconsin and you had some Harvest Right freeze dryers that
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you had you said you had close to what 30 of these freeze dryers so then you
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bought a Parker freeze dryer which is a commercial freeze dryer walk us through
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your evolution of the machines that you worked through pros and cons and what
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are the benefits that you saw throughout your proc process to eventually getting more of a commercial freeze
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dryer that's a really important question because if we were starting the process
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now there's so many other options that didn't exist when we were at that
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point of okay we really need to scale this freeze dryers even Harvest D coming out with their extra large and their
21:50
large commercial one that those weren't options and along that scale we were like
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okay at that point was like we can't buy any more Harvest Right freeze dryers it
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just takes so long to fill them all and the labor we weren't going to be competitive on that when we started to
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look for co-manufacturers we really knew we wanted to grow at one point with the
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Harvest rights we started to have some maintenance issues and you reliability issues cuz ours literally ran
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247 24/7 it was like if that defrost cycle was completed at 2:00 in the morning I was there refilling it that's
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where our best margin was there's that process of figuring out at what point
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you can support more of a robust freeze drying system or do you use a coal
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manufacturer don't want to not have a strategy we've now invested millions of
22:47
dollars into our facility it's a huge leap and I'm at a point in my life where I should be planning a lot closer for
22:52
retirement than taking these risks wife is a saint an angel looking
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at this freeze dry industry we like could I have 50% of the capacity of that freeze dryer filled before it's even
23:05
installed and and that's we've been able to do that our current Parker six freeze dryer is at near capacity right now and
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we're at that point where we're looking at the science of the freeze drying because the the Parker freeze dryer you can really change the settings in it and
23:20
every single run that we do in it there's a big difference between a commercial freeze dryer and a harvester our freeze dryer not only has more
23:26
capacity it also freeze dries faster more than twice as fast we are literally looking at can we shave 10 minutes off
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in this protein to get that extra 10 minutes out of the machine and we celebrate every single efficiency that
23:39
we create by modifying our recipe it's like any manufacturing machine whether you're making Widgets or
23:45
freeze-dried products you're constantly looking at how to maximize this very expensive capital
23:51
expenditure if the Parker Summit had existed and we were at that point we
23:57
would have jumped on that that in a second it was a little bit of a stretch to go to a Parker 2 which is like a two cart system cuz that's yeah expensive
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and yet there so there was nice to have that Medium ground to use and one of the
24:11
things that the selling point for us was just the hey this can freeze dry twice as fast as the Harvest right so that's
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how we produce more in one day than we did in a year I think you're a great
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person to ask because I get it ask quite a bit across a lot of people who are in
24:28
large large freeze drying operations they have a lot of harvest rights just like you were but they're having that
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struggle with how do I justify purchasing a an $85,000 Summit or a
24:42
$150,000 Parker 2 whatever the those costs are what seems very intimidating versus you divide 85,000 by 5 uh th000
24:51
which is the XL and you have what is that 15 or so Harvest Right freeze
24:56
dryers so it's like how did you justify those things did it take a while what can you talk to us about that the way we
25:03
decided to make the leap is we really knew our costs were big we were able to
25:09
drill down on what are our costs including not just the cost of our freeze dryers we knew what the
25:15
electrical require we know what the cost of our products are we know what our labor cost was we went on our rent our
25:21
insurance basically taking all that information in and then forecasting so if we had this amount of business and
25:27
this is the Revenue that we'd be able to generate we'd be able to generate this amount of freeze-dried product and we would be able to sell it it's sometimes
25:34
really basic it says your operating expenses minus what you would sell your product for and you say I need this much
25:41
business to support a payment on a larger freeze dryer we didn't do that analysis soon enough if we had um we
25:49
might have moved to that Parker to pretty quickly but by the time we did the analysis we were confident with the
25:55
Parker 6 now I can tell you the challenge we have now is we have a Parker 6 our next machine is going to be
26:02
a Parker 10r we're ready to do that right now we've scaled most of our operations as
26:09
if we had not only our Parker six but we're ready to have two Parker 10 hours
26:15
in addition to that so we have all the overhead expenses of a 14,000 ft facility we have room in our facility
26:21
for two or three more Parker 10rs but so we're incurring those expenses although
26:29
we're not we don't have the revenue to support it so it's a real struggle very lucky I have another business that is
26:35
able to fund our expansion or if you get a big enough loan it's
26:42
scary we're fortunate that we're freeze drying your fortune you're in a business that there's high demand our next our
26:50
Parker 10r it by the time it's installed we'll have 75% of the capacity filled
26:55
pre-orders yeah and you said a facility down the road also has some freeze
27:01
dryers that can do those things too for someone listening to this and saying
27:06
okay I've ran my numbers but I'm still only at 50% capacity of getting a
27:12
commercial freeze dryer look at the amount of demand that large companies
27:17
are looking to fulfill orders like freeze drying is popular and demand enough not just in the US but globally
27:25
that you can fill those types of gaps and be your own co-packer in the interum while you're building up your own demand
27:31
for your own brand your spot on it fill the Gap yeah I talk about the difference
27:39
between a harvest right and other brands of Home freeze dryers there's a lot of credit to be given to Harvest Right 10
27:45
years ago who basically built the technology and sophistication of a
27:51
freeze drying process with the condenser and the vacuum and everything and said we're going to make it the size of a
27:56
mini fridge and make it affordable for people to put in their homes that was amazing what they didn't intend I
28:02
guarantee you is the amount of people that would use their home freeze dryers 247 operations for a business that's not
28:11
that how they created that naturally you're going to have maintenance issues there's a lot of Maintenance that goes
28:18
on with running your an appliance like that 24/7 and but there's always been these
28:24
larger commercial grade companies that have been building freeze dryers for pharmaceutical the marijuana industry
28:30
the pet food industry for years before Harvest right and that's what they're actually focused on and I think if
28:37
you're a company trying to scale your freeze-dried product you've got to look at commercial freeze dryers it's just
28:44
not scalable for you to have 30 to 50 home freeze dryers the amount of
28:49
cleaning of those trays the amount of Maintenance the amount of pump CH oil changes it's just yeah it's just not
28:56
doable people under estimate the energy consumption of those small freeze dryers
29:01
for a while when we we did the transition from 30 to our Parker 6 we
29:07
didn't see a s look look at it this way those the the 30 freeze dryers that we have were consuming close to what a
29:13
commercial freeze dryer would do with with a thousand times the capacity so
29:19
you don't have to have 30 different dedicated 20 amp circuits to run these freeze dryers you just need one power
29:26
source to run this commercial freeze dryer Sean I've got another question for you more on the operational side food
29:33
safety for pets as well it's a highly regulated sector and having FDA
29:40
regulation to scale your business is a big expense and complicated can you walk
29:45
us through the pet food side is it more regulated than human consumption what
29:51
does the FDA look for if you're starting to look into this how can it be less intimidating for someone looking into
29:56
going to into this space the fortunate and unfortunate part pet food is the FDA
30:04
actually there's no government entity that overseas pet food there's no legislation FDA the
30:11
USDA involved if something bad happens unfortunate part of that is because
30:17
there's not any specific legislation when they get in involved you don't know what you're dealing with because it's
30:22
based on that individual inspector or whoever is doing the enforcement because it's it becomes arbitrary so you really
30:29
don't know you don't know what the law is you don't know cuz there is no law so they they know some harm came to
30:36
someone it's a it's a wild west industry but on the other hand we encourage the
30:41
things that helps us draw in customers hired a consultant right away and we're going beyond what the FDA would require
30:48
we're actually working on our ucation which was like one of the highest standards you can do for food safety rather than being intimidated by
30:55
it in the pet industry you're food safety operations need to be the same as a restaurant if anybody can achieve that
31:03
most of us at when we make stuff in our home we're going to meet those standards you're just following a written standard
31:08
even if you're doing a small freeze drying business go to a local techical college and take a Hass up so basically
31:16
the food sanit sanitation course they're free sometimes they're not even $100 to take I don't think it's
31:23
something to be intimidated by I think even if you did it and you didn't plan on really scaling a large business it
31:29
would make what you're cooking at home safer yeah and there's probably a lot of
31:34
things that we don't realize that we should be doing at home like the FDA doesn't even recommend that you wash a chicken in your sink because you're
31:41
going to spread contaminants rather than prevent them that's the best thing you can do yeah and I think it's you have to
31:48
understand restaurants can run underneath like in really poor food
31:54
safety conditions but they're still open they're only only going to get shut down
31:59
if they have enough Point stocked when they have that health inspection so their food can be really good but they
32:06
also can have high susceptibility to getting someone sick as a consumer you
32:11
might be really concerned with that other consumers might be like I've been to East Asia I've had great Vietnamese
32:18
food and I'm okay with it being cooked in something that hasn't been washed every single time it's been changed out
32:24
so it's like the consumer side is like hey some people are going to be concerned with food safety other people are not and then on the regulation side
32:32
the the FDA isn't going to come to your location every single day in certain situations and so it's really up to you
32:40
of what type of standards are you going to hold your company to nice for what you're offering in terms of services for
32:47
being a private label company is you have those types of regulations already
32:52
done somebody else doesn't have to go through that process is that right yeah they don't have to do
32:58
transferable through being a co-packer we're more hypervigilant in
33:04
our safety standards any raw products or frozen products delivered to our facility I require the traceability to
33:10
tell the temperature of every single truck that product's been transported we require that level of transparency and
33:17
traceability of the products that we allow in our facility we actually stop making certain products because
33:23
suppliers weren't able to meet those standards that's how I sleep at night otherwise
33:28
you have to start lock coding everything that little lock code that's printed on every single package that leaves here we
33:33
could literally Trace back to probably when was picked up at a farm I see a lot of benefits to having a
33:41
co-packer because if you see these larger global companies it's hey I don't have to go and do these things cuz
33:48
somebody else is doing it for me it's brilliant I wanted to ask you this important note my wife gets on me all
33:54
the time about I'll tell everybody exactly how we do everything and she's like why do you do that you're going to
34:00
lose customers I like if they're going to do it they're going to do it I'll Stand red stroller with you and help you do it for Skittles a lot of people have
34:08
been freeze drying Skittles I know that Mars Wrigley is going to make their own freeze dried Skittle because they have
34:15
the source to the product but I guarantee you that they're going to be finding a co-packer to make those freeze
34:21
stri Skittles they're not going to go and have to develop their own facility new expenses in that end have to figure
34:28
out the right temperature recipe packaging all that type of stuff for a brand new product they're going to just
34:33
find out how to do it the consistently at the same time how to Brand it how to
34:39
trademark it which they're really good at and then they're going to find someone to do it for them you got to find the different Avenues but it can be
34:45
really fun to do your own processing too and that's how Mars and probably every company should start even a company as
34:52
big as Mars there's one of they're one of the largest in the world how they'll start
34:58
and then if it's a big hit they'll just buy the co- Packer yeah and that would be a huge
35:05
Payday for that co- Packer but that's how they do things if you really wanted to test the waters see if you can scale
35:11
your business and you're really good at marketing and sales get a co-packer and your co-packer isn't going to be mad at
35:16
you if you decide to develop your own facility that if you're mad about that you shouldn't be in the business cuz
35:22
you're going to be upset 247 considering the fact that you have several hundred clients already that are different
35:28
brands there's enough demand and and you don't have to worry about that Sean if you can think of a couple
35:34
opportunities within the freeze drying space for people just starting out maybe have that marketing mindset are there
35:42
opportunities you could tell us that you're seeing that people should start exploring or doing some research about
35:48
whether it's food pet food maybe it's not even food related that you've been seeing pop up as you've been in this
35:55
industry this long I could tell you if if you're already freeze drying and and
36:00
I think a lot of people will freeze dry products they might even sell them at farmers markets then you have the cottage
36:06
industry that protects you from having to have that FDA inspection and everything and the same goes for pet food if you're already freeze drying I
36:13
would freeze dry some pet treats and take them to the farmers market I always look at market segments
36:20
and I was like you have a pretty good chance that people like apples so they're like freeze-dried apples but I
36:26
always say in this industry you have a 70% chance whether the people at the farmers market have a cat or a dog that
36:33
you have better chance they might buy a pet product than freeze-dried apples cuz you can get apples everywhere I think
36:39
there's tremendous opportunity to make pet treats and how do you make them meat could be Hearts it could be liver it
36:44
could be chicken breast dogs and cats are carnivores so you stick with meat can they eat apples absolutely they love
36:50
them put them in a bag and call them for dogs I think those they're great opportunity in the pet industry
36:57
there's great opportunity for supplements I watch commercials all the time that they sell 30 grams of
37:04
freeze-dried fruits and vegetables for 50 bucks and would cost me 25 cents to make I think that's genius I guarantee
37:10
they're having a co-packer make those for them and they their sales and marketing company I think there's those opportunities to take a free- dry
37:18
product and package it how you want I think most important
37:25
thing to realize is the there's a skill of being a manufacturer and making food
37:31
it's like a chef might have be able to create these amazing recipes and the food but they might not be very good at
37:37
Running a Restaurant they're just different skill sets and different requirements if you're really good at
37:44
freeze drying stuff and really Innovative and everything and then somebody is really good at graphic
37:49
design and really good at advertising marketing and sales maybe that's a good partnership I think about the lot of the
37:54
younger generation that really understands social media and Tik Tok specifically when you if you really
38:01
understand how to pull people in and purchase a product through that type of
38:07
Channel you don't need to go and purchase freeze dryers maybe you need to purchase a couple to test out different
38:13
products maybe that's more for presentation wise for selling it but you can use a co-packer to say Hey you
38:20
produce me this and I can sell anything and I know how to do that through my social media tactics my strategies and
38:26
my expertise same thing goes for trade shows people are really good at being able to sell large Distributors a new
38:32
product and sell it for you look at your strengths weaknesses and passion do you like producing product cuz if you like
38:38
it like you do and your wife I really have fun making different products for
38:44
different people and even myself but then you're going to have to Outsource the marketing and the advertising because maybe you're just not very
38:50
skilled with that absolutely one of the things we offer to all of our customers
38:55
if they want to come to our facility we'll put them in a white coat and a hard hat and we can take pictures and
39:01
video of them making the products so they can tell that story and make freeze-dried pet food not back there
39:08
every day anymore cutting meat and putting it in the freeze dryer we have a team doing that I think telling that
39:15
story and I think it's also helpful to be able to sell it to be able to say you know what this is product this is how
39:21
it's sourced this is how it's made these are the food safety standards we have in place because it's really important to
39:26
us from a consumer do you get the question course aren't asking that question they assume everybody is making
39:33
their own stuff I think they just care about where they're sourcing it from hey is it us made is it exported some people
39:41
care about that I see freeze-dried product selling for 99 cents at Walmart
39:46
and some people are going to that that whole demographics for people that shop at Walmart are going to buy the cheapest stuff they're not going to buy something
39:52
for $10 an ounce but there are people that are going to buy the fruit from $10
39:58
an ounce because they know that you're freeze drying organic produce or maybe
40:04
you're not adding any sugars or ingredients in its us m one of our customers was so important that they
40:10
actually flew from each Coast one one from California one from New York and we
40:16
met them at a farm and spent the entire day with this
40:22
family find their sources and understanding how these animals were raised because on their website they're
40:28
going to have pictures of them on that farm they're going to have descriptions of how these animals were raised that's
40:34
really important and it's really important to us and we're making the
40:39
product we connected them with the farm but it's their brand it's that is their
40:44
mission and that's what we love about being the co-actor we get to travel all over the place verify our sources we meet a lot
40:52
of amazing people that it's really important to are they making it no
40:58
yeah they know every single aspect of How It's Made how it's sourced and the food safety they know the material the
41:05
the packaging is made out of now outside of the links in my video
41:10
description for this interview where do people find you and start digging into
41:16
more about your services and they feel feel inspired where can they contact you they can find us on our website at food
41:22
dynamics.com it is the best way to remember it is food dyamics because it's food Dynamics with 1D the domain name
41:30
with 2DS was like $27,000 and food Dynamics with 1D was 11 bucks so that's
41:35
how we made that decision but there you go we like we the the play on words of the food dyamics type thing so food
41:42
dynamics.com brand is raw dog barkery so all one word rawg
41:48
bar.com and our trade shows we usually go to super zoo in Las Vegas in August
41:54
and in March it's the Global Pet Expo in Orlando the pet food for in Kansas City in
41:59
March or April this year well probably next year we'll probably be at a lot
42:05
more trade shows but um anyone ever has any questions we're really more than willing to answer we're transparent on
42:12
everything we do it's been awesome to talk to you Sean we've been talking with Shawn Jones owner of Foody namics
42:19
private labeling if you're interested in taking your recipe or something that you're thinking about you can give them
42:25
a call contact them via email the website and from what they have all the
42:31
brands that they work with they can do any type of service that you're looking for in the freeze drying side to get
42:36
this all to fruition and seeing your product come to life
42:42
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#Business Operations
#Farmers' Markets
#Pet Food & Pet Care Supplies