Landing your first national retailer is a huge milestone for any startup, especially one that's trying to create a new grocery category.
After first selling at the Logan Square Farmers Market during the pandemic, Chicago's Kooshy Croutons — still just a startup of two run by brothers Jon and Matt Wachsman — launched nationally at all Whole Foods Market locations last week.
"We're bringing innovation to a category that needed it, and the fact that Whole Foods took us on nationally instead of, [as] they often do, a couple-regions-type of approach, really showed us that we have something here," Matt Wachsman told Chicago Inno.
Wachman previously worked as a brand manager at Kraft Heinz for almost 10 years before launching Kooshy Croutons at Chicago-based food innovation incubator The Hatchery.
Kooshy Croutons offers vegan and dairy-free flavors for snackable croutons that include Mambo Italiano (garlic, basil, parmesan), Almost Naked (sea salt, black pepper), Poco Picante (chile, lime) and French Toast (cinnamon, maple sugar).
One of Wachsman's first goals was to "take over our backyard," and after landing at five Mariano's across Chicago, followed by Olivia's Market in Bucktown, Dill Pickle Food Co-Op in Logan Square and now Whole Foods, he'll look to scale the operation and disrupt what has been a "sleepy or stale grocery category."
The Chicago startup recently crossed 3,500 doors since the product launched commercially in February 2022 and is now available at around 500 Whole Foods Markets nationwide.
"We were making it by hand and had all of our friends from different Chicago restaurants that were out of work that helped us cut bread," Wachsman said.
He said he expects the startup to look to do a raise later this year or sometime in the first quarter of 2024.
"We like to think that the investors we've seen thus far get what we are doing and see us as being in a sleepy category and not one of these plant-based meat products, but rather see us as a smart approach to an underserved part of the grocery aisle," he said.
