021924
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What Else
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Now: What Else
On March 8th, 2023, my friend, and accomplished chef, Myles Snider and I got together in my kitchen. I brought the tallow, he brought the potatoes and tortillas. For months we planned to create something together: a fried food item that reminded us of the snacks we inhaled after school as kids.
The ones with aggressively 90s television commercials, and maximalist packaging. The ones our siblings cried for after we selfishly devoured the entire bag.
The ones that were very far from healthy, but fun to eat.
Although we romanticized these foods now, as thirty year old men, it wouldn’t make much sense to create something unhealthy. Our diets largely consisted of real foods, from local farms, and with forthcoming expiration dates.
So our collaboration had to yield something that wouldn’t kill us, or the others that would eventually inhale it.
Beef Tallow, rendered beef fat, is a very strong character with a challenged past. Most fast food institutions began their frying processes with tallow, including the world’s favorite french fries until 1990.
I’ve used it in my cooking for years, without needing to explain it to myself. And Myles has prepared meals all over the world with tallow.
Prior to the 8th of March, 2023, Myles had begun to gather a following of cooking and food enthusiasts. He’s quite loquacious.
I noticed and suggested that he develop and sell a product – you know – capitalism!
Myles is educated, both by way of University and culinary school in Mexico. He was interested in developing a product, something to add value to kitchen’s across the world. He expressed his desire to take his time, researching, product testing, and deciding on the best possible product by way of his own desire and data.
Before he finished so eloquently explaining this to me, I screamed: Tallow fried potato chips!
Which brought us to my kitchen on March 8th, 2023.
Myles and I had a special time that day: frying, laughing, and hypothesizing on an ideal launch date for our tallow fried potato chips…
“Is June 10th enough time?”
“Lets give ourselves till August.”
We shook hands as business partners and I agreed to run with the concept as the lead.
It was a blissful day.
After
A series of misfortunate events, a comedy of errors and a launch date still to be determined has followed.
I’m compelled to scratch the concept I had written previously to draft this note, just hours before we program and distribute it.
Thursday, February 15th, 2024. I arrived at the office later than what’s typical, for no apparent reason. As I walked down the alley way towards the glass doors, FedEx pulled up in a hurry.
Chase, Art Director, was already outside waiting. I silently gave him the honors and went inside, watching as two large rolls of bag packaging were pulled from the back of this FedEx truck.
With the help of the delivery man and a dolly, Chase brought the two rolls inside.
It was Dos bags, the name of the concept Myles and I began working on 11 months earlier.
11 months?
Yes, 11 months. Dos has been one of those situations where you imagine everything that can go wrong, and it does. Perhaps its on me to imagine something going wrong in the first place.
Nonetheless, what else could go wrong? The bags had arrived! The fun would restart now with tallow fried potato chips going into bags and reaching millions of people around the world!
I felt just as I did racing home from elementary school to absolutely smash a bag of Frito Lay Crunch Tators.
I even recorded a video, sharing with my friends and family that have supported me for 11 months.
All the problems that had risen with Dos had been solved by my team and I.
No contract manufacturer for tallow products? We’ll buy a food truck and make them ourselves!
No one to package the chips with the intricate machine from China that packs bags with chips, fills with air, and seals them? We’ll buy one from China and do it ourselves!
What else could go wrong?
Today
Today, in preparation for a production run with a dedicated team and potential long term contract manufacturing partner, we tested the big roll of bags on our machine.
Attempting to avoid something else going wrong, we fiddled with the bag's position on the machine for a few hours – afraid to admit what was obvious.
What else could go wrong? The printer of the bags could arbitrarily reduce the size of the printed bags from the prototype we approved and the smaller bags could not fit the machine from China that took 2 months to arrive on ocean freight.
Next
Eventually I admitted to myself the issue and began working on a solution. Without complaining, or becoming angry, I sat down and began to coordinate with my team and the teams we were working with for the best possible outcome, given the circumstances created.
As of now, nothing other than my dedication to a solution and the answer to what else is certain – the answer being:
There is also something else.
Thank you for letting me sit with you.
– mills
YouTube
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