In a recent interview with Adam Torres, Jim Pakulis talks about how Boosh Food makes healthy and delicious plant-based diets more accessible to consumers.
Listen to the full interview of Jim Pakulis with Adam Torres on the Mission Matters Business Podcast.
What mission matters to you?
Boosh Food aims to replace meat-based diets with plant-based diets, encouraging people to get into eating healthy, delicious food for the sake of animals as well as themselves, Pakulis explains. Likewise, he notes, the brand is dedicated to preserving limited natural resources.
How did the Boosh journey begin?
Pakulis says he views the plant-based sector as a place of cutting-edge transformation, and credits co-founder Connie Marples for laying the brand’s foundation.
“She suffers from celiac disease, and therefore, has a sensitive diet,” he says. “When a few friends asked for recipes for her plant-based foods, she took the lead and began manufacturing and selling frozen meals to local health stores. The Greater Vancouver area showed positive response, and Boosh continued to grow from there.”
Today, Boosh food is available in a growing number of retailers throughout Canada, including Whole Foods, Safeway, IGA, and more. Currently in the process of expanding the team, Pakulis notes, “We’ve got a great internal support team, including a sales manager and consultant with 15+ years of experience in the food industry.”
The need for the plant-based food industry
Pakulis stresses the necessity of plant-based food by explaining that people can’t survive solely on animal-based diets. “We have limited resources and we need to focus on (the) preservation of Earth,” he says. “Moreover, we should take better care of our health by consuming nutritional, plant-based, non-GMO, gluten-free food in our bodies.”
He notes that a transformative shift is taking place as younger generations are evolving their dietary habits and moving toward plant-based diets as the norm rather than the exception.
Tell us about your growth strategy.
“We began in a conservative fashion by going public with approximately 16 million shares outstanding,” Pakulis says, noting that more than 27% of those shares were owned by the founders, who still work fulltime for the company. Moreover, he says he doesn’t draw a salary and explains that Boosh focuses more on retail investors than institutional investors.
“We try to be as different in the marketplace as possible,” he says. “Our products are at three sections of grocery stores: frozen, refrigerated, and shelf-stable products.”
He goes on to explain the company’s quintet of revenue streams. The first is organic growth, with the expansion from 125 in early 2021 to over 600 stores today. The second is growing the Boosh brand in the US, including an agreement with one of the premiere food brokers called Thrive Natural Foods. The third is acquisitions; Boosh made three last year and is currently on the lookout for more synergistic acquisition targets. The...