Entrepreneur Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm partnered with Entrepreneur Media that is dedicated to backing passionate and innovative founders as early as day one. In this series, we are profiling the amazing entrepreneurs Entrepreneur Ventures is working with to share their insights on building and growing a thriving business.
Darin Alpert is the co-founder of Gheelish, a CPG company that is taking over snack aisles across the country. He spoke with Entrepreneur to share how he and his co-founder brought his concept to life, and all of the small details that resulted in nationwide success.
Please give us the elevator pitch of Gheelish.
Gheelish is a snack brand —popcorn, chips and soon cookies — made with organic ghee and super clean ingredients. Ghee is clarified butter originating from ancient India that is created by simmering butter until its water evaporates and the milk solids separate out. Removing the milk solids strips away almost all the lactose and casein, making it much easier to digest for those sensitive to dairy.
What inspired you to create it?
I’ve got a gluten and lactose intolerance. After an exit with my last company, Find Me Gluten Free (app for finding gluten-free restaurants/bakeries), I always wanted to start my own CPG brand. I fell in love with ghee a few years ago and saw a gap in the market for a snack brand with ghee as the focus. It boasts a rich, nutty flavor and is packed with fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K), antioxidants, and beneficial fatty acids like butyrate, which support gut and immune health.
What do you look for in an investor, and how have they impacted this company and past companies?
Mark Cuban invested in Find Me Gluten Free and Gary Vaynerchuk is one of our Gheelish investors. Both obviously super successful and entrepreneurial. They’ve both taught me that outworking everyone is one of the easiest ways to succeed and execution beats ideas. Everyone has ideas, but 99% of people never execute or make something of them.
How did you get your product into a national food chain?
We started by cold emailing the CEO of Sprouts, got a meeting with their Innovation team, brought samples my wife and I made in our kitchen and 6 months later got on the shelf nationwide. It’s a pretty crazy story in hindsight. It was all made possible operationally by my incredible co-founder Nick Bilotti.
What is your best advice to entrepreneurs looking to get into the CPG space?
We didn’t take the traditional route of farmers markets, DTC, local stores, or Amazon. For our category, it would have been hard for a variety of reasons. That said, for a lot of categories I think it does make sense and I would start there. I would also highly recommend getting product to people you don’t know to try. Your friends and family don’t want to offend you and say your product isn’t good.
Talk about the importance of packaging and how yours has evolved.
We actually went through a considerable rebrand from what we first launched with. For us, ghee isn’t known by everyone and we wanted packaging that looked familiar and something they’d recognize elsewhere. For example, our rebrand takes you back to the type of popcorn you’d see at a drive-in movie in the 1950s, which is timeless and super nostalgic.
Photo credit: Gheelish
What’s something small, like a daily routine or mindset shift, that changed the way you lead or perform?
I have a few non-negotiables that get my mind right every day. I start my day with a workout or long walk before 7 am. It’s the quietest part of my day. I also wake up and hydrate with electrolytes and drink a cup of coffee. I’ve also exclusively taken cold showers for the last 4 years regardless of whether it’s summer or winter. It’s been great for mental clarity.
What does the word “entrepreneur” mean to you?
An entrepreneur is someone who identifies an opportunity in the market and acts on it. The keyword is “act.” A lot of people have a ton of ideas and don’t ever step into the arena and compete.
Please share a “You won’t believe this!” story about running your business.
A few weeks after we launched, I was in the UPS Store in Scottsdale, AZ, wearing a Gheelish shirt, shipping some Gheelish popcorn and Michael Phelps walked in. I gave him a few bags and got an awesome photo of him holding the bags!
Entrepreneur Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm partnered with Entrepreneur Media that is dedicated to backing passionate and innovative founders as early as day one. In this series, we are profiling the amazing entrepreneurs Entrepreneur Ventures is working with to share their insights on building and growing a thriving business.
Darin Alpert is the co-founder of Gheelish, a CPG company that is taking over snack aisles across the country. He spoke with Entrepreneur to share how he and his co-founder brought his concept to life, and all of the small details that resulted in nationwide success.
Please give us the elevator pitch of Gheelish.
Gheelish is a snack brand —popcorn, chips and soon cookies — made with organic ghee and super clean ingredients. Ghee is clarified butter originating from ancient India that is created by simmering butter until its water evaporates and the milk solids separate out. Removing the milk solids strips away almost all the lactose and casein, making it much easier to digest for those sensitive to dairy.