Leveraging Partnerships is the Recipe for Business Success with Ibraheem Basir of A Dozen Cousins
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Navigating Partnerships for Your CPG Brand…
Partnerships are the key to success in business, especially in the CPG industry. We can’t do it all ourselves. Whether it’s hiring a team or finding investors or working with brands and retailers, partnerships truly help us to grow our businesses.
In this episode, I’m interviewing Ibraheem Basir, CEO and founder of A Dozen Cousins, a natural food brand inspired by the flavors of his youth. Ibraheem shares the heartwarming story behind his brand, how he’s been able to leverage partnerships to grow his business (like partnering with Marvel!), and how to tune out the noise and focus on making the best product he can.
We also talk about the importance of prioritizing wellness as a business owner and Ibraheem shares his intentional methods of self-care. Remember to take care of yourself as much as you take care of your business.
Subscribe to the Food Means Business Podcast with Hudson Kitchen founder Djenaba Johnson-Jones to hear the personal stories and “secret ingredients” of abandoning your day job and starting a CPG food business.
In this episode, you’ll learn...
[00:39] The story behind the founding of A Dozen Cousins, Ibraheem’s natural food business, plus why he picked beans as their first product
[07:27] How partnerships and bringing in the right people are the secret to success in business, and how to find the right investors
[10:23] How to keep your head down in business and not focus on what others are doing, while still striving to make your product the best it can be
[12:28] Leveraging retail and brand partnerships
[16:15] Wellness is important for all business owners and Ibraheem shares how he takes care of himself
If you want to hear more about how to leverage partnerships when building your consumer-packaged goods food business , be sure to tune into this episode:
Links mentioned in this episode…
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About Ibraheem Basir:
Ibraheem Basir is the founder and CEO of A Dozen Cousins, a natural food brand inspired by the traditional Creole, Caribbean and Latin American dishes that Ibraheem grew up with. He started A Dozen Cousins so that it would be easier to enjoy those authentic cultural recipes made with wholesome ingredients.
Connect with Ibraheem:
Follow A Dozen Cousins on Instagram
Connect with Ibraheem on LinkedIn
Stay Connected with Djenaba Johnson-Jones:
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[00:00:02] Djenaba You are listening to the Food Means Business podcast, which features the personal stories and secret ingredients behind what it's like to abandon your day job to start a CPG food and beverage business. I'm Djenaba Johnson-Jones, a former marketing executive turned entrepreneur and founder of food business incubator Hudson Kitchen. Join our community of fellow food business owners and subject matter experts to learn and laugh with us as we explore a startup world that's a little more culinary and a lot less corporate these days. So, Ibrahim, welcome to the Food Means Business podcast.
[00:00:36] Ibraheem Thank you for having me, man. I'm excited to be here.
[00:00:39] Djenaba Good. So we would love for you to start and tell us your story, your transition from going from corporate America to a food business founder.
[00:00:45] Ibraheem Yeah. So if it's okay with you, I'll even take a little step before. I grew up in Brooklyn, originally in a really big family, so I have nine siblings. 11 nieces and nephews. And then when my eldest daughter was born, she was the 12th cousin, which is where the brand gets its name from.
[00:01:01] Djenaba I love that name, by the way. It's fantastic.
[00:01:03] Ibraheem Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, you know, I always like to start there just because food was really central to like my experience growing up in such a big family. That was how we connected with each other is how we show each other. Love was how we celebrate holidays. And so I always had a connection to food, you know, as we all do, of course. But it felt very intense for me. And so I always knew I wanted to work in the food industry. Fast forward many years. I started my career at General Mills, which is of course an international multinational food company. I had a chance to work on a lot of different brands, so I worked on the conventional side of the business on Gushers, fruit roll ups, Fruit by the Foot, Progresso soup, and then also had a chance to work on the natural organic side of the business. So they owned brands like Marbar, Food Should Taste Good, Annie's organic. And it was during my time working in that natural organic space that I really fell in love with this idea and this ethos around, like the quality of food, right? And just being mindful of like, what we're eating, what we're putting in our body, how that food is grown and what impact it's having on the people who make it and the planet and so on. So all that stuff resonated with me and the gap for myself was just around like the flavors. I grew up in this very much kind of black and Latino melting pot in New York, where I was eating jerk chicken and yellow rice and black eyed peas and empanadas and like the types of food that I was eating wasn't really what you found in natural grocery stores, and certainly not at that time. But it's evolved a lot in the last five years. But at the time it was really hard to find a lot of stuff. So the goal with A Dozen Cousins really was just to see if I could bring those two worlds together. You know, I wanted to create a brand that felt really cultural, really authentic, that echoed the communities I grew up in and that I'm still art of, but also at the same time leverage everything that I had learned about ingredient quality and sourcing and innovation and etc.. So we launched a business in 2019. We started with beans. We have a line of ready to eat beans that are all fully cooked and seasoned. They're made with real vegetables and spices and cooked in avocado oil. Following year, we launched a line of rices that are cooked in bone broth, so they have seven grams of protein, a few grams collagen. Last year we launched our seasoning sauces, so they essentially help you make a restaurant quality entree in 20 minutes or less. And when you put it all together, really, we have this kind of complete meal solution, right? You can grab a few of our pouches and put together an entire meal, vegetable, grains, protein. So that's the intro to the business in a nutshell. But I'll pause there and see if you have any follow up questions.
[00:03:35] Djenaba Sure. So when I was reading your story, it made me think about growing up. But my parents are from the South, and so every dinner was Sunday dinner. So it was like smothered pork chops and biscuits and all that stuff. So maybe think about that. And I remember being in my room, doing my homework and smelling that good food that was we were going to eat together. So that was really exciting. So thank you for the memories there. But my question to you, though, is why beans? You mentioned a bunch of foods during the intro. Why did you start there?
[00:04:03] Ibraheem Yeah, it's a great question. I started with beans for two reasons. The first was that like symbolically and strategically, what I wanted to do with this brand was to combine taste, health and culture. Those were kind of the three pillars of the brand, right? And so I spent a lot of time thinking about that trifecta. And there are a lot of foods that hit on two of them, but not three of them, right? Where it's cultural, they taste good, but it's probably not that healthy, right? Or it's really healthy, but it doesn't taste that good or so on and so forth. So for me, beans was the sweet spot because like pound for pound. First of all, legumes are some of the healthiest foods on the planet, right? When you think about protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals, you could eat beans every day, multiple times a day, and you would be better off for it. Right. So from just a pure health perspective is unimpeachable in terms of like the health quality of beans. Right. Secondly, from a taste perspective, beans are such a great palate flavor, right? Canvas flavor in the sense that like, you know, you put some is garlic, a little bit of fresh peppers, a little avocado oil. Like these issues, in my opinion, are very savory, they're very decadent and like, I enjoy eating them. And then finally, culturally speaking, there's this almost emotional connection between beans and so many black and Latino cuisines. Whether you're talking about peas arise in Jamaica or China, in Trinidad, or red beans in New Orleans, or black beans in Cuba. Like you could go down the list, right? You have these beans that are really culturally introduced in terms of how we eat. So that was the reason. It was just it was the perfect first product for us. I always intended for the brand to be beyond that, but I still am really happy that we started from a business perspective, you know, the bean category was also very attractive to us just because there wasn't a lot of innovation at the time. And again, that's changed in recent years and since we've launched, I think there's a lot more activity in the category. But when we started it really was just this sea of canned unseasoned kind of private label beans, and we felt like there was a great opportunity to bring some convenience to the category and some quality to the category. And again, we're really proud of what we've done there.
[00:06:07] Djenaba It really does make a difference. I've had the black beans and it's so easy to add to a meal at the end of the day. So, you know, definitely really convenient for sure.
[00:06:16] Ibraheem I appreciate you saying that. There are so many people who they love beans, they're down to eat them, but they've never cooked a pot of beans.
[00:06:21] Djenaba It's the whole process of you having to, like, soak them and then cook them overnight. I don't have time for that or had the desire right to do that. So it's nice that your product exists.
[00:06:32] Ibraheem Thank you.
[00:06:33] Djenaba When you came up with the recipe, did family kind of inform the recipe and how you created it?
[00:06:37] Ibraheem Yes, they have some of those. So like Creole red beans is a recipe straight out of my mother's like cookbook. You know what I mean? That was a dish that we ate a lot growing up was just red beans and rice. However, as you can see, if you look at the brand, the palate is broad. You know, we pull from the southern U.S. all the way through South America. So certainly not all those flavors are native to my family's heritage. But, you know, the cool thing I always tell people is like, these are known dishes, right? You want to know what goes into Cuban black beans, Just Google it. You know, we didn't invent these flavors from scratch, but challenge really was like, how do we stay true to the flavor that already exists out in the world? You know what I mean? So that was somebody each the product, they feel like, okay, cool, this tastes like so and so that I recognize that. I remember that I rub it not like something that they just company just made up or messed up, you know?
[00:07:27] Djenaba Right. Makes sense. So I want to talk about partnerships. I think that the secret to success in a business is having the right partnerships and kind of like bringing in the right people. We start our businesses and we're by ourselves. Who did you bring in to work with you first to help you get the business up and running?
[00:07:42] Ibraheem Yeah, it's a great question. First of all, for the first two years of the business, I was the only full time employee at A Dozen Cousins. So in that first two years it really was exercising like, how do I get just enough of what I need for wherever I can get it? And so that looked like having sales brokers, for example. You know, our early sales brokers were very instrumental in terms of getting us that early distribution, getting us in front of retailers and obviously, you know, being able to pay them just based on commissions, right. Like the sales that they were able to deliver for us. So that was a very efficient way to do it. Then over time, you know, we added other agencies and other fractional providers where they would help us out for a few hours a day or a few hours a week and what have you. We kept building like that for a bit and then, you know, found that third year we hired our first full time employee, which was a director of sales to really help push top line. We then followed up shortly thereafter with a supply chain manager to help make sure, like everything delivered on time and as we were supposed to. We had added a marketing manager and we've expanded the team now a bit more than that. We have six full time employees. So that was kind of how we approached the event. A lot of interns in the early days that helped out at our particular projects, and so it definitely takes a village for sure.
[00:08:52] Djenaba Definitely, definitely. On finding investors. Like I have to imagine that's a marriage, right? Like you meet somebody you're dating at first you engage with them and it's like, how do you find the right investors for you?
[00:09:03] Ibraheem First of all, I was blessed in that I started my career in food and in CPG. So I had a network of like former colleagues and associates and people in the industry that I kind of had known for years already. And so, you know, we started off with just like three angel investors. They were all former food executives, people that I had worked with during the course of my career in different ways. And so they had like a high degree of just trust and faith in me and vice versa. I had a high degree of trust in them. And then that nucleus enabled our next fundraising round. Everyone who invested was like one degree removed from one of those people, and then in the next round everyone was like one degree from one of those people. And so thankfully I'm very fortunate in that I haven't had to bring on investors that were really unknown to me, are not completely unknown to me. They all kind of started with this stronger link, if you will, or a relationship that I have built over time, like in our most recent fundraising round. You know, we had an angel investor who was a fellow founder who we met when we were both just kind of growing our businesses. And their business, of course, ended up going like a rocket ship. So they were able to come back in and invest in ours. And so, yeah, I think just investing in relationships, being as patient as you can, being as discerning as you can, like those would be my general thoughts as it comes to investing side.
[00:10:23] Djenaba So it's hard to be patient sometimes because I think you see what's going on around you. And unfortunately we do. We see that in kind of a... It affects us in some type of way. So have you kind of kept your head down and focused on what you're doing and not what everybody else is doing?
[00:10:38] Ibraheem First of all, if I'm being honest, this is an ongoing struggle. I think any time you're in a competitive environment, which food and beverage or how, you know, a business is competitive. Right? At the end of the day, if somebody buys my product, they're choosing not to buy something else, whatever that might be. Right? Or they're choosing to give me money that they went and earned from somewhere else, right? Either way, there's there's a tension there. And that's good, right? That's healthy. But as a competitor, then, of course, you're looking at, okay, what's competition going? Is this better than our version of this thing and what can we do to get ahead of them? What makes us different from them? So I do think part of the game requires you to, you know, to have your eyes open to avenue, your eyes open to see what other people are doing, to take inspiration from it at times to swerve in the other direction at times. Right below it is an interactive thing. So that's first of all, if you can't do that, I'm ignoring my competition right now. With that said, in terms of just like having some sense of mental health about it, right? Like I think for me, number one, I have a vision and a goal for the company, which is very large and it's going to take many years to play out. And so stuff that's happening like week to week and day to day is not really the thing, You know, what I'm saying is like the goal. I know even when we first started the company, you know what I would hear from investors and retailers and I was like, Well, this is just the beans category. Who's going to pay a premium for beans? Or these flavors are so niche, you know, global foods are too small, blah, blah, blah. And it's like even just in the course of four years, it's been like a 180 and so many of those things. Right now, retailers all kind of understand you need more global flavors. People are more experimental with their palates, they want to try these foods. We now have four or five premium beans that are competing with us and doing similar things. And so the world evolves and changes. And I just try to stay focused on kind of the big picture, the North Star, if you will.
[00:12:28] Djenaba Let's talk about retail partners. So you're in Whole Foods and also in Wal-Mart, and they have vastly different Target audiences. How is your product successful in both of those places?
[00:12:37] Ibraheem Yeah, it's funny, when we launched into Wal-Mart, as you can imagine, it was a hotly debated topic amongst like my advisors and my peers who I talk to about it. And for the same reason that you alluded to, right. Which is like, hey, Wal-Mart is generally like a later stage retail or mass market going to different consumer. They like premium, natural consumer. I had a different perspective, which was that our brand in particular, it relies on a level of like cultural authenticity and awareness, right? And so at the end of the day, Walmart is one of the most diverse retailers in America, both socioeconomically, politically, like you can go down the spectrum. And so my perspective was, man, they have so many black and Latino families or families that are familiar with these cuisines that are shopping in Walmart every day. Like I think they would like some jerk chicken. I think they would like some Creole red beans or Cuban black, Right. Like, I felt like it would resonate on the more from, like a flavor and a cultural perspective, right? They might not be as attuned to like the use of avocado oil or that type of stuff, but I felt like they would understand what we were trying to do as a brand. And thankfully that's played out today. I would actually, ironically enough, say like Whole Foods and Walmart are probably two of our strongest retailers in terms of just like velocity relative to the category. And so really happy about the decision to launch there.
[00:13:53] Djenaba That's amazing and also brand partnerships. So you recently had a partnership with Marvel's Black Panther, which was for like my family, like that was a movie that we loved and we had tickets early and we went to see, you know, the first one that came out. I was there at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning. My kid didn't like it, but we were there because we had to see it. It was amazing. So like the fact that you were able to partner with them to create something special, those great. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:14:17] Ibraheem Yeah. First of all, I watched the first Black Panther back in 2018. I was in the thick of like developing A Dozen Cousins. So at that point we had in last year, but I was working on the idea kind of full time and I remember sitting in the movie theater, first of all, is an amazing film, really. I'm sure we all had that experience of seeing the representation, the storytelling, just the quality of the movie. And I was thinking to myself, Man, if I ever get the chance to work with them, I would love to do something like this is four years ago or four years prior to being able to do it. But I was like, I just in my head I was thinking about how we could tell the story around like the African diaspora and the impact on a lot of the foods that we make, even though we're not an African food brand per se. So much of the food of the Caribbean and Latin America have been influenced by the movement of West African people into it, into the Western Hemisphere. And so formerly enslaved African people. Right. And so I knew I wanted to do it back then. And it from then it was just a matter of like biding my time. I was always like checking these updates to see, okay, when's the Black Panther sequel, when's the launch day? Have they locked in the launch date yet? And finally they did lock it. It was 2022 and we reached out to the, you know, the Disney licensing team and we pitched the idea. Thankfully, they were really supportive of it and they were great partners, honestly, throughout like what? One of my best like brand partnership experiences, just in terms of like how they were on top of everything. They gave the feedback, they gave timely feedback and didn't make it a difficult thing to execute. And so really appreciate that.
[00:15:46] Djenaba So how long from the initial touch base with them did the product line launch?
[00:15:52] Ibraheem 11 months.
[00:15:53] Djenaba Oh, okay.
[00:15:53] Ibraheem Yeah, We had our very first conversation with them 11 months before it ultimately shipped to consumers.
[00:15:59] Djenaba Wow. Okay. That's a long lead time.
[00:16:01] Ibraheem You know, the first three or four months is just negotiations, right? Like, okay, what does the contract structure look like? Can you do this flavor instead of that flavor. You know what I mean? That type of stuff. Signed contract to launch maybe six or seven months, but it was still a meeting.
[00:16:15] Djenaba As founder, sometimes we get kind of into our businesses and we don't take care of ourselves as well. But I'm wondering like, how do you take care of yourself? Like what do you do for wellness?
[00:16:24] Ibraheem A great question. Also, maybe a probably opportunity for continued growth. So my statement I can share. So first of all, I have two young daughters. I have a five year old and a two year old. And so a lot of my time outside the law to spend with them. And so, you know, over the last few years, I've learned kind of my playbook for mental health, if you will. It's just like, number one, having dinner with the family every night, right? So like unplugging at a certain point, giving them a full attention and talking about their school day, answering the random questions that they have and things they want to talk about. Right. So that actually for me has been great because, you know, as a founder, sometimes you can just have the business in the back of your mind all the time. So having those two young ones to really pull my attention is helpful at times. So that's one thing I would say. Second is I try to get outside every day, whether that's by way of riding my bike, taking the girls to the park, some those taking a short walk to a store like I have found that like just being indoors perpetually is not good for my mood. You know, also, I think having a little bit of that outdoor time is helpful. And then the last thing I'll say is just building on those themes is on Saturdays, I try to have like active rest. You know, that means I get like, I'm not the type of person who can just chill on the couch or lay in bed because in my mind I'll be like writing a presentation in my head or I'll be pre drafting some emails that I want to send out as soon as I can get back in front of my computer. Right? And so instead, what I try to do is I have the days really, really actively planned whether that's going to a museum, go to the beach, taking a hike. Generally spend the day with the full family, then evenings, you know, my wife and I will try to get a date night in. And so again, just trying to have them be like well-thought out and active so that my mind can be locked in as opposed to just sometimes you just have a lazy day. Those have kind of gone away for me. I don't do those that much anymore.
[00:18:13] Djenaba Yeah, I'm the same. I'm trying to get back to that. But it's challenging not to think about work for sure. Do the girls understand what you do?
[00:18:21] Ibraheem For sure, man.
[00:18:22] Djenaba Do they think everybody has a line of beans and rice in the in the grocery store?
[00:18:26] Ibraheem Yeah. I'll tell you what, man, It is one of the great joys of my eldest daughter, who is five. First of all, I'll take her shopping sometimes, our mother will take our shopping and she spots it nine times out of ten. It's like if they go to Target and they roll down the meals aisle she'll stop me. Even if, you know, my wife is, of course, not buying our beans from the supermarket. It's not usually on our shopping list. My daughter will see it. Stop her. Call it out. She has like a little toy kitchen in our house and in the pantry is a bunch of, like, A Dozen Cousins products and she'll cook with them. And I think takes a lot of pride in a man. She comes to the office, you know, she's met the team. So I feel like she feels very much like, yes, you know, the family business and she's a part of it. Our faces on the package. There's little doodles of each of the cousins. So she's on there and she feels, you know, connected to it that way. What I think is really cool for her, for me to see it through her.
[00:19:16] Djenaba Yeah, it's definitely really cool. So at Hudson Kitchen, we have what I call the money bell where we ring it when we're celebrating something. It's in the lobby of our facility. And I'm wondering like, what are you celebrating right now?
[00:19:27] Ibraheem Man, if I had to ring one bell right now, I would see some really big distribution wins this spring. We just launched our bone broth rices chain wide at Publix, which is an account that we've been like slowly working on for years and a really big retailer, obviously in the Southeast. We just launched our entree sauces into a thousand Wal-Mart stores. So again, that's like a big, you know, big slice of the country. And then we have our seasoning sauce as launching at Whole Foods next month. Whole Foods is our first national retail partner. So they kind of still be able to expand with them. To add new products is really exciting. So I know that's technically three things, but I'll just cluster it into one. At the end of the day, when you create something, you want as many people as possible to be able to get it, to buy it, to enjoy it, to have it in their homes. And so retailers are a big part of making that happen. Excited about those.
[00:20:17] Djenaba That's amazing. Congratulations.
[00:20:19] Ibraheem Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
[00:20:20] Djenaba So thank you for being on the Food Means Business podcast. Please let everyone know where they can find out about you and A Dozen Cousins.
[00:20:27] Ibraheem Yes, you can find us at www.adozencousins.com. You can find us at Instagram @adozencousins. Connect with us, try the product if you haven't already and thank you again, I appreciate it.
[00:20:38] Djenaba The Food Means Business podcast was produced by Hudson Kitchen. It is recorded at the studio at Carney Point and mixed and edited by Wild Home Podcasting. Our theme song is by Damien de Sandys, and I'm your host, Djenaba Johnson-Jones. Follow Hudson Kitchen on Instagram at thehudsonkitchen and to get Food Business Bites right in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter at thehudsonkitchen.com/newsletter. Listen, follow and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. Until next time.