An Interview With Martita Mestey
Large enough total addressable market size.
As a part of our series called “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Adam Melonas.
Adam Melonas is the CEO and founder of Chew, a Boston-based food innovation lab that boldly redefines what’s possible in the world of packaged food and beverages by creating products that are delicious, nutritious, sustainable, profitable and scalable. Under Adam’s leadership, Chew has partnered with some of the world’s largest food and beverage manufacturers and helped them overcome barriers that currently exist in the industry to create game-changing new products. With his “anything is possible” state of mind, Adam aims to empower and embolden companies with the tools and mindset needed to revolutionize a new and improved generation of food and beverage for the world’s rapidly evolving consumer.
Adam’s radical approach to shifting the future of the food and beverage industry was shaped by global influence and a background in experimental and progressive cuisine. After leaving Australia at age 19, Adam worked with esteemed restaurants in five countries in roles including Executive Chef/partner at Otto’s, a fine dining restaurant in London, Chef De Cuisine at the Shangri la Hotel in Dubai, Head Chef of Jade on 36 in Shanghai, Chef De Cuisine of Burj Al Arab in Dubai, and Culinary Director of the Lab at La Terraza del Casino (El Bulli Group) in Madrid.
During his time working in fine dining, Adam realized his mission to democratize good food and beverage, making healthy, quality food accessible to all. In 2013, Adam founded Chew with the belief it is the responsibility of the industry to be the trailblazers for lasting change. Since launching, Chew has worked with the world’s largest and most influential food and beverage companies and progressive startups to create more than 4,000 products that offer solutions to pressing food-related issues of our time including combatting childhood obesity, malnutrition and severe food allergies. In addition to his work with Chew, Adam has developed, manufactured and launched hundreds of products across international markets. He has developed and created multiple product categories for The Australian Chia Co., formulated and manufactured concepts for IKEA and served as Chief Innovation Officer and co-founder of Unreal Brands (Unjunked Candy).
His latest venture is the launching of Fastfood TM, a first-of-its-kind line of high-performance sports nutrition products engineered to fuel elite and amateur athletes. Inspired by his passion for endurance competition, and real food, Melonas created Fastfood to introduce an impactful alternative to a sports nutrition marketplace that is saturated with artificial ingredients and pseudo-science.
Outside of his work in product development, Adam is a competitive Triathlete and also spends his time sharing his vision for the future of the industry through his work consulting with government health agencies around the world and by serving as a mentor for the Harvard University Innovation Lab and as a Senior Fellow at Babson College.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”? Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I grew up in Australia, born and raised in the capital city of Canberra. I was a hustler as long as I can remember, never really ever satisfied and always looking for ways to create a better situation for myself and my family. I started my first business when I was eight-years-old washing cars. This business quickly expanded into gardening. I then started cooking for my family when I was around nine, as I thought food should be something to be enjoyed and experimented with. I then left school early, as I wished to get on with building my career, so I got an apprenticeship as a Chef. Being so young, I was naturally more inquisitive and asked a lot of questions no one was seemingly able to answer, so at 18, I got on a plane and left for London.
Can you share with us the story of the “ah ha” moment that led to the creation of the food or beverage brand you are leading?
I am first a lover of all things food, and I am obsessive about choosing the right things that go into my body, as well as the bodies of my family. I have an insatiable desire to improve the quality and access of food for everyone. When I became a triathlete, I was shocked that really the only choices I had to fuel myself meant that I had to sacrifice my values. I was irritated with the poor performance choices, and the inferior ingredients, so I tasked a team of scientists and chefs to right this wrong!
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I can’t recall a story that is relevant to where we are today. Apologies.
What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they start a food or beverage line? What can be done to avoid those errors?
They create a product they love, and they don’t spend the time to understand if there is a large enough total addressable market to ensure it can be built into a business. Take your time in the beginning to talk to not only people who potentially love your product, but also those who don’t, as more lessons are typically learned from the naysayers than the raving fans.
Let’s imagine that someone reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to produce. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Do your work to capture the true costs and ensure your budget stretches. Most early stage businesses die due to running out of money vs being a bad idea.
Many people have good ideas all the time. But some people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. How would you encourage someone to overcome this hurdle?
Ideas are free, businesses mean committing and obsessing! I always tell my teams “If it’s not worth obsessing over, it’s not worth doing”.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
There are a lot of experts and advisors who are generous with their time and willing to listen and give advice. Talk to as many people as you can before committing to anything. Consultants are good when you feel confident you are onto something special.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
I am a bootstrapper at heart! I have self-funded five different companies over the last 10 years, as I feel strongly in learning my own lessons with my own capital. Consumer businesses are an exception, as they are very cash intensive, and in most cases, if you do not scale them fast enough, often someone else will hijack and scale your idea.
Can you share thoughts from your experience about how to file a patent, how to source good raw ingredients, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer or distributor?
Patents should be written and filed with a great patent lawyer. There is so much weight placed on exact words in a patent, and these words will determine not only the approval of the patent, but as importantly, if this patent is granted, it will determine its defensibility.
Here is the main question of our discussion. What are your “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand” and why?
Great product idea
Great team
Large enough total addressable market size
Sustainable profit margin
Strong stomach!
Can you share your ideas about how to create a product that people really love and are ‘crazy about’?
I typically start by trying to create things that once people experience them, they simply cannot live without. This process usually starts with me, then through many conversations with trusted friends, strangers and team members, we try to pressure test and co-create to make these ideas stronger.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
Everything we do at Chew and Fastfood is aimed at making the world a better place one bite or sip at a time. We are about making delicious food and beverage products and technologies, while ensuring all products are made only of real food.
If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
For me, it’s ALL about the democratization of good food. I spent the first part of my career making expensive food for rich people. The realm of luxury cooking is quite addictive, as you get to use the most expensive ingredients and transform them in wildly unscalable ways. What I am most inspired about these days, is to use this same skillset, but direct it to making food massively scalable, available to most, and products that create maximum positive impact to people and the planet.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Adam Melonas of Chew On 5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.