FOND Bone Broth, a woman-owned, San Antonio-based maker of flavor-infused organic bone broth, has seen a year-long period of revenue growth at her retail business.
FOND, founded by Alysa Seeland and her husband Isaac Seeland, saw its revenue triple in the past year. Alysa Seeland declined to give the company's revenue last year, but said it's currently between $2 and $5 million.
Alysa Seeland now serves as CEO while Isaac Seeland is creative director of the company. The company, which has eight full-time employees and makes 12 different flavors of infused bone broth, grew its retail business by 860% and its direct-to-consumer sales by 373% year over year.
Seeland credits much of FOND's rapid growth to hiring Chief Operating Officer Tara Lane last year. Lane oversees FOND's production and syndication as well as the company's focus on health and wellness. The San Antonio company partners with organic pasture-raised farms nationwide for ingredients and now has manufacturing facilities in Texas, California and New York, as well as a warehouse in Austin.
Since its focus is health and wellness, Seeland said, its glass packaging is 100% plastic- and aluminum-free, and the bone broth has no preservatives, additives or artificial flavoring.
All flavors are on shelves at Sprouts stores nationwide. In addition, two flavors can be found at 189 H-E-B locations. Another five of its 12 flavors will be hitting H-E-B this summer, said Alysa Seeland, along with the launch of an H-E-B-only flavor, Napolito, which is infused with nopales, habanero and cilantro.
“The journey from rural farmers markets to being in more than 2,000 stores, triple-digit growth and a booming online business has been challenging and also extremely rewarding, especially as a woman in a traditionally male-dominated industry,” said Alysa Seeland.
After years of health issues including an emergency appendectomy, Seeland turned to bone broth for its health benefits, infusing it with different flavors to enhance the taste.
The Seelands launched the company in 2015 at New Braunfels farmer's markets and later at the farmer's market at the Pearl in San Antonio. The company was a finalist in H-E-B's annual Quest for Texas Best in 2017 and won a $10,000 grant that year from the San Antonio chapter of Les Dames d'Escoffier, a philanthropic organization of women leaders in the food, beverage and hospitality industries. And in 2018 it won a $10,000 grant from the Austin Food and Wine Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering awareness and innovation in the Central Texas culinary community.
In 2019, the company went nationwide due to a sizable investment from San Antonio businessman Randall Mays, managing partner of Mays Family Enterprises and CEO of Running M Capital. In 2020, FOND was given $50,000 in credits for advertising and promotion through a program with KeHE, a national wholesale food distributor.
"(It's been) an incredible gift, so I’m always thinking about how we leave our world better than we found it," Seeland said.
