Not many middle school hobbies flourish into multimillion-dollar businesses, but that’s how Brendan Cawley found his way into the snack foods industry. Since his earliest days making homemade beef jerky, he has expanded his Righteous Felon Craft Jerky brand – which now does about $10 million in revenue annually – into healthier snack distributor RTZN Brands, something he hopes will become like a Costco of better-for-you snack foods down the line.
Cawley’s interest in jerky started when he was about 10 years old. His uncle, who worked in a steel mill in Pittsburgh, created his own jerky and sold it to others at the mill. A young Cawley was intrigued so his uncle showed him the process. Not long thereafter, Cawley bought an inexpensive dehydrator and began experimenting.
His friends soon became interested, too, and Cawley would sell them packets of his concoctions. It was thanks to one such exchange that the name of the company came about. Trading a small bag of jerky in the bathroom of his Downingtown middle school for cash, a teacher walked in suspecting the worst. Selling dried meat wasn’t a crime, but their friend group found the bust hilarious and it became an inside joke.
Though they stopped making jerky for about 15 years, Cawley started experimenting with it again in his 20s. At the time he was working in operations finance at Sikorsky Aircraft, now part of Lockheed Martin. “At that point, the writing was on the wall that the natural food movement and the better-for-you movement and categories that were previously seen as junk food were getting a premium take on them,” Cawley said.
His instincts were right. A recent report from Fortune Business Insights projected that the healthy snacks market will grow to over $108 billion by 2027, a more than 38% jump from the $78.13 billion the industry recorded in 2019.
Their interest piqued again, they started to consider if this hobby could become a business. When it came to names, one of the friends brought up their old inside joke about them being righteous felons. The name stuck.
The tongue-in-cheek branding soon extended to the products – like O.G. Hickory, Habanero Escobar and Fowl Capone – which in part came out of the outlaws and cowboys mystique that once surrounded the jerky industry. Their first product, the O.G. Hickory, used a slightly modified version of the original recipe and remains a best seller.
Based in West Chester, the brand was officially launched in 2013 after that group of friends and Cawley’s two brothers pooled their resources, funneling $15,000 into the burgeoning business.
None of them had formal culinary experience. Instead, Cawley’s experience at Sikorsky proved valuable for not only launching, but scaling Righteous Felon. For several years he juggled both before deciding to pursue Righteous Felon full-time.
Today, the brand has dozens of products including eight beef jerky flavors, a turkey jerky, plus meat sticks. In addition to the core flavors, Righteous Felon does limited collaborations with other area purveyors for its R&D line, like Victorious B.I.G. Beef Jerky, made with Victory Brewing’s Storm King Stout.
As Cawley worked to scale the brand's reach, he saw how other smaller food companies were struggling to do the same. “The consumer packaged goods [industry] is just a really competitive and tough place to compete in,” he said.
Righteous Felon was in a different situation than many given the portability, profitability and long shelf life of jerky. Bypassing the traditional distributor route, they created their own network and within five years were shipping across the nation to upwards of 1,500 stores, Cawley estimated. During that time, they decided to bring in one of their sales representatives, who was working with other small food purveyors. Using Righteous Felon’s network, they launched Artisan Snacks. Both Righteous Felon and Artisan Snacks now fall under parent company RTZN Brand Strategy.
Artisan Snacks uses Righteous Felon's distribution network to get other small better-for-you food businesses into larger markets by shipping products together. It works with over a dozen companies like Hippeas, Lenka Bar, Philadelphia-based Mavuno Harvest and Tate’s Bake Shop, to place products with luxury hotel chains the Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, Four Seasons, and Ritz-Carlton, plus NetJets and professional sports leagues.
Cawley says the move has been mutually beneficial and that they collectively reach some 5,000 or 6,000 stores across the U.S.
RTZN does about $12 million in revenue each year, with 80% stemming from Righteous Felon, Cawley said. Most of the remaining revenue comes from Artisan Snacks, with a sliver of revenue coming from its newest venture, Wild Nature Pet.
Wild Nature Pet debuted in 2021 and is already showing signs of success. Cawley estimates it did about $100,000 last year. They’ll look to further build the brand, which currently offers three flavors of jerky treats for dogs.
Like with Righteous Felon, the goal was to create a better-for-you brand for pets. Both Cawley and Wild Nature Co-founder Collin Phelan have dogs and wanted to give them treats that were up to their standards.
The pair met through mutual friends and hit it off. When Phelan sought Cawley’s advice on supply chain, the two eventually decided to create Wild Nature together and bring it under the RTZN umbrella. In addition, Phelan joined RTZN as its director of e-commerce, something he has extensive experience in. Already Wild Nature is available through big retailers like Chewy and Sierra Trading Post. Their goal is to create the same distribution for it as they have with the other brands.
That’s only the start, though. Cawley foresees a big future for both Righteous Felon and RTZN, with RTZN selling better-for-you brands in a bulk model like Costco. “That's kind of the long-term vision is capturing more pantry share,” he said.
Do you foresee going international?
I hope it's part of the maybe the five-to-10-year plan, but there's just so much more room to grow here and it's so competitive that we just really try to stay focused on the areas we want to win in and make sure we're not stretching ourselves or our resources too thin.
How do you make Righteous Felon stand apart in the market?
The biggest differentiator I think with our products versus the competition is just the quality of meat that we use. It really comes through in the finished product. We source all-natural, pasture raised black angus, which is typically the meat that's used in steakhouses.
Will you expand Wild Nature Pet to more products?
I think so. We wanted the brand to be broad enough to go wherever we saw opportunities within the pet space but still sticking to the core brand principles which is clean and nutritious superfoods for dogs. … There's supplements that Collin is looking at. Food toppers are another area that we're exploring. There's definitely tons of growth ahead for that.
What are your goals for RTZN?
The biggest focus of our overall company is e-commerce. That's one of the reasons why getting [Phelan] to join our team was such a pivotal moment. What we're also seeing is we have a lot of online jerky customers that also add dog treats to their order. And so there's this cool thing happening where we start to see the potential where we capture customers through Righteous Felon, we determine whether they have pets, and if so, we can let them know that we have supplies for their pets and we can sell them both pet food and jerky in one transaction. Once they trust us, and they trust the brand for their dog and they also love the beef jerky, we can then start to introduce more of these partner brands … and really be this cool, better-for-you Costco, buying in bulk for your home pantry.
