We were recently featured in Austin Business Review, in a long-form founder interview by Ethan Brooks covering the real story behind BEEST Snacks. The piece goes deeper than the usual founder profile, touching on marriage, missteps, the move from Bolivia to Austin, and the single $39.95 kitchen tool that changed the trajectory of the whole company.
A few of the threads we talk about in the interview:
The co-founder question. Nicole and Lucas are co-founders, husband and wife, and engineers. They met at university, where Nicole attended the thesis presentation that would eventually become BEEST Snacks. A few months later they were married and building the company together. The interview opens with Lucas insisting on answering the spouse question first, because in our case, it genuinely is the most important question on the list, and because Nicole is the reason the business is still standing.
The living room production plant. Before BEEST had retail shelves or a comanufacturer, the very first regulated production run happened in Lucas's mom's living room while she was on a work trip. PVC strip curtains on the doors, workflow signals painted on the walls, a sealed-off glass door. It was how we went from "idea in a plastic bag" to retail in record time.
The relaunch that saved the product. We launched Crunchy Jerky in the US in July 2025 as shredded strands. People liked the taste and the texture, but the format was unfamiliar. David, at Wheatsville Co-op, was kind enough to offer thoughtful feedback and summed it up in one word: "confusing." We went back to the kitchen with a $39.95 adjustable mandoline slicer, worked out how to translate the cut into production, and relaunched as Crunchy Jerky Chips in January 2026. The same retailers who passed on the shredded version started picking us up within a week.
Why Austin. We researched cities. Multiple articles pointed to Austin as the home of three of the top ten CPG startups of 2023. We tried Dallas first because we had a connection there, but it wasn't the fit. The moment we landed in Austin, the green, the pace, the people, we knew. We moved here on July 12, 2023, three days after Nicole's birthday.
Where we are now. Crunchy Jerky Chips in beef and pork with 48 and 46 grams of protein per pack, zero grams of added sugar, and three main ingredients: meat, lime juice, and spices. Charcuterie Trail Mix with 52 grams of protein, delivering the feel of a charcuterie board in a bag. Our first Austin POS, Manana Coffee, and are now on shelves at Wheatsville Co-op, Parker & Scott, Royal Blue Grocery, and a growing list of independents. Also started expanding to independent retailers across the country, shoutout to Buena Bodega in California, our first out-of-state retailer. Golden Ticket winners at the KeHE Trend Finder competition, fast-tracked for nationwide distribution. And, as of this month, ranked #42 on RangeMe's Top 50 Food & Beverage Brands out of roughly 90,000.
There's a lot more in the full piece: the $100 brownie cart at age 12 (with a picture you CANNOT miss,) the gas station chain account locked in from a hospital bed, the 2,000 pounds of meat thawing the night COVID lockdown, and the one under-the-radar Austin spot Lucas recommends for thinking through hard problems.
Read the full interview at Austin Business Review: https://austinbusinessreview.com/p/beest-snacks