Sue Delegan: Co-Founder & CEO of Brutus Broth

Episode 610

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, I’m joined by Sue Delegan, Co-Founder and CEO of Brutus Broth. Sue shares the inspiring story behind how she and her sister launched Brutus Broth, a pet nutrition company that grew out of their love for their dog Brutus and their desire to offer healthier food options for pets. What started with a family bone broth recipe has turned into a thriving business that provides bone broth and other nutritious products for dogs across the country. We dive into the challenges Sue and her sister faced while building Brutus Broth, how they grew the business into over 10,000 stores nationwide, and the importance of health and nutrition in the pet industry. Sue also discusses her personal health journey and how she and her sister overcame significant challenges while launching and scaling the company.
Tune in to hear Sue’s incredible insights on entrepreneurship, balancing personal challenges with business success, and what’s next for Brutus Broth as they continue to innovate in the pet nutrition space. Now on The Kara Goldin Show!

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show today. I’m super excited to be joined by an incredible entrepreneur, Sue Delegan, who is the co founder and CEO of Brutus Broth and Sue’s journey starting from a personal place when she and her sister Kim wanted to find a way to improve the health of their dog, Brutus, who got to be on the company name, there you go. My dogs will be very jealous if they heard that. That led them to create Brutus bone broth, which is one terrific product, or series of products, I should say, but pet nutrition company offering nutritious and natural bone broth for dogs. So like I said, the story is incredible. I can’t wait for sue to share more about this and and also just sort of talk about the growth of the company. They’re on over 10,000 stores, obviously available on direct to consumer too, but she’s not only an entrepreneur, but also an advocate for breast cancer awareness. And is is really combining lots of things that she really is passionate about into this company that she’s created with her sister. So I love, love, love everything about it, and very excited to have you on. So welcome, Sue,

Sue Delegan 2:02
thank you, Kara, thanks for having me. I’m very excited to be here.

Kara Goldin 2:06
Really, really psyched. So okay, so first of all, what is Brutus? I guess we could start with the main product, Brutus bone broth, but then also the company, Brutus Broth, how would you describe it?

Sue Delegan 2:18
Yeah, so Brutus. Brutus was actually my rescue dog. When I got married, I rescued Brutus. He came to me from a high kill shelter. He had mange, he had been abused and so and just actually backing up on the story my sister, as you said, my sister and I started this company. And growing up, our mother always made us bone broth, so that was something that she did for us before it became really trendy. I know it’s a trendy item now, and so when I had Brutus, he was my first baby, and I followed suit and would feed him bone broth. So he lived a very long and healthy life. He was 135 pounds. And so if you know anything about longevity of big dogs, it’s usually about eight to 10 years, and he lived 13 and a half years. So when he started exceeding his years, people would ask what I was doing for him, including our veterinarian, and I would always say love and grandma’s bone broth. So when people asked where they could buy it and where I was getting it, I was making it at home. And if you know anything about making bone broth, it’s time consuming, and so a lot of people don’t like to take the time. They like the convenience. So we had the idea to look into the pet market, see what was out there. We realized there was some white space in the topper category, and so we started, really started in 2016 we spent about a year in R D. We partnered with a human grade manufacturer that makes bone broth for restaurants and hospitality, but they also work with third world countries in doing nutrient rich broths for starving people. So we always say that we like to partner with good people doing good things, and we partnered with them to make a nutrient rich, human grade bone broth for dogs, which helps with digestion, gut health, joint health, immune support. It really is a super food.

Kara Goldin 4:31
How did you you and your sister get together then, like, how did you guys both, what were you doing before, and how did you decide we’re both going to focus on launching this company. So

Sue Delegan 4:42
just moving back into my career, I worked, I started in investment banking, and then, to my father chagrin, I left investment banking and moved to Washington, DC and went into nonprofit. So that was a big. Shift, I knew that finance wasn’t for me, so I was a nonprofit for about 10 years, then had my first son, and then was pregnant with my daughter, and decided that I wanted to start a company. At that time, I was approached by some gentlemen to start a dairy company, which was very interesting. I I had, I had zero knowledge of the dairy industry, but it was really creating an innovative product to bring to the market. So I was kind of, they brought me on to be the head of the company, to be the face of the company, and help really market the product that we were in, I was with that company for about 18 months, and ended up leaving. I had two small children at home, and decided to take some time with them. And then when Brutus Broth came about, I had called my sister, who had moved to Hawaii. She had been in hotels and private equity prior to Brutus Broth, and so when I called her, she was really looking to do something as well. And we, even though I was in Washington, DC area and Hawaii, people always say, How’s that working with your sister? And I’m like, It’s great when you’re 5000 miles apart. So he has a lot of business knowledge. And so we decided to join forces and see how it goes.

Kara Goldin 6:31
So when you were you obviously had grown up with this. You’re a big believer in, you know, the product and and obviously had been using it on Brutus too. How did you actually go about taking this from an idea and a concept? Your first time founders, your smart women that are, you know, deciding to launch a company together, but it’s still this is your first startup that you guys have actually done where, the buck stops with you too, right? And so how did you think about, you know, actually making this a reality? I mean, what did you do first?

Sue Delegan 7:12
Well, you know, it was not, you know, overnight, it really, we kind of lulled over the idea for quite a few months, and then it was to the point where we sat down and said, you know, are we going to do this? Are we gonna if we’re gonna do it, we have to be all in and we have to believe 110% that it’s gonna work. And quite literally, I we partnered with some of the biggest manufacturers in the US, and we knew that before we even started talking to manufacturers that we wanted to go mainstream. We wanted a product. You know, a lot of people that start pet companies go pet specialty. It’s small, it’s a little easier to manage. But we knew that, first off, I’d much rather sell 10 pallets of product to target week than 10 cases to 100 stores a week. And we also always say you don’t have to be a millionaire to feed your dog good food. So we wanted to create a product that was available and accessible and affordable to everyone that had a dog. So we quite literally, I came home one day when we drew our line in the sand, and I opened up my laptop and I started calling manufacturers. So it was we hit the pavement running, and we knew we wanted to scale right away. So our first production was pretty significant. A lot of people couldn’t really imagine us investing as much money as we did. We’re self funded startup, and so we really believed that we could make this a success. And so that’s that’s kind of where it came from. It was. And people ask me, Do you think you were born an entrepreneur, or were you made an entrepreneur? I always say it’s both. We grew up. Our father is an entrepreneur. He instilled that entrepreneurial spirit in us, but we really have that grit and determination to not give up.

Kara Goldin 9:22
Yeah, definitely it takes that, because it’s it. You know, you can have all kinds of experience, right? Whether you’re working in investment banking, you’re working in private equity, working for another founder, but you know, when you actually go and try and get your idea off the ground, and it’s just you need to stay resilient. You need to know that it’s you know it’s not going to happen overnight, that you just have to keep pounding on it. So you definitely have showed that you’ve been able to do that. So today, Brutus brought this now available. Available in over 10,000 stores nationwide. When you think about distribution, you’re in retail, but obviously you have a direct to consumer aspect of this too. Are you truly omni channel? I mean, is that kind of what the goal is, is to continue to grow both of those.

Sue Delegan 10:20
Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, we do. We definitely look at, we weekly, look at our sales strategy, and we know that we need to be, you know, we need to be both online and in retail. That’s just the reality. We’ve had stores that come to us and say, You need to get offline. You have to get off Amazon or chewy. And unfortunately, it’s the necessary evil, because there are a lot of people that solely purchase their products online. So we have been very lucky in the fact that we have a long shelf life. So you know, during COVID, we did really well, because there are a lot of A and B were coming out of the US, so we didn’t have real supply chain issues, but also we had a long shelf life, so we were and we had a lot of inventory. So we were really lucky that we launched nationally in target the week that the COVID stay at home orders happened, and we continue to grow. So yeah, we’ve just been really lucky in the fact that we have an amazing product that people say their dogs try it and they can’t, you know, they they can’t eat without it now. So, and it just, it’s people see the health benefits, and so they love their dogs. They’re willing to to put bone broth on their food.

Kara Goldin 11:40
What surprised you about the dog industry? I’ll tell you. I, you know, have never launched a pet product, but I will say that I’ve been surprised over the years when I’ve heard, for example, and this is not related to your product at all, but like the, you know, dry dog foods frequently are in the same plants, and you’ll hear recalls, and it’s just, you know, and you’re looking at your poor dog who’s depending on you to make these decisions. I think you you touched on this a bit, but what has really surprised you about, you know, where some of these pet products are made as compared to what you guys are doing.

Sue Delegan 12:23
Well, I think you know definitely there is I’ve learned a lot about pet nutrition, and, you know, the quality of pet food. So yes, that’s definitely surprising. I do feel like I knew that a little bit before going into this with my own experience with Brutus. But you know, something that really surprised me, that people don’t know, and I have a lot of small pet business owners that reach out to me for help with this, is pet regulation. So I didn’t realize in food, it’s FDA. It’s regulated by the FDA. Pet is regulated state by state. So when we got into it. I took on I do all the compliance. Not anymore. We now have a outside person that does that for us, but I was doing all the state regulations and compliance. And every state has their own definitions of what you know certain ingredients can be said. So, for example, we have a small amount of sea salt that’s a very small amount for shelf stability, and we put sea salt on the ingredient label, but then they we were told we had to label as salt because ASCA, which is the regulatory body, doesn’t recognize sea salt as an ingredient, as an approved ingredient. So that was really surprising. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve become pretty good friends with a lot of the state regulators, because I’ll call them and say, you know, it’s not that I don’t want to be compliant, but this is, you know, I’m trying to be transparent with our customers. I don’t want to put salt when we have sea salt. So those little things are really surprising to me.

Kara Goldin 14:08
You talked about target and getting into Target, which I know you guys have just done super well there. Unlike other products, you know, like hint that I developed you, it’s, I would imagine it’d be pretty tough to to bring dogs in and actually do product sampling. But how do you get consumers to understand what you’re you’re doing? I mean, what has kind of been the thinking around the marketing and and sort of getting the word out about the product,

Sue Delegan 14:41
yeah, I think it’s it’s multifaceted for us. We have a great marketing team, and they definitely have thought outside the box. And just recently, we did a broth mobile, which is something that Kim and I have talked about since the very early days. Um. Um, when I was in college, I had a friend who worked for Cape Cod potato chips and would drive the little van around and hand out the little sample bags at the beach. And that’s really how they got their start. And I always thought, you know, if we had a van that could drive around to dog parks and events and yappy hours and hand out samples, and get the word out that way. So we did do that this summer along the east coast. We’re expanding it next year to go to the west coast. But also we partner. Our mission is to nourish your pet while giving back to the community. So we partner with over 200 animal organizations nationwide, and we do a lot of events surrounding those organizations. So it is getting the word out. It’s education, and it’s it’s being scrappy, because we are competing against the purinas of the world. You know, we don’t have the big marketing budgets that they may have, but we’re able to be nimble and think on our feet. So it’s been it’s been great.

Kara Goldin 16:04
I always say that it’s those love letters that you get from consumers that are, you know, when there’s a challenging day when, you know, you get that one email from somebody where a box broke or it didn’t arrive on time, and then you get this other email that is all about how you’ve saved them and how happy. I mean, those are the emails that I still have saved many of them over, over the years. But do you remember one of them that really kind of stuck with you?

Sue Delegan 16:38
Yeah, I actually have it. It’s on my desk, in my window, so but I had we work with Project canine hero, which is an organization that helps to re home retired military and working dogs. A lot of people don’t realize that retired military dogs retire with no benefits, so they usually have a lot of health issues. Sometimes they end up being euthanized. So they rehome them. And we had a dog, Jaeger, that was a bomb detection, explosive detection dog, and he had been in, I think he was serving overnight rack, and he his ear, is a black lab. His ear and part of his face was blown off by an IED and we had sent him a care package of bone broth, and that was probably one of the first actual letters that I got in the mail with a picture of him with our bone broth and a letter from his new owner saying how much it’s changed his life. So that has been that’s I cherish that a lot.

Kara Goldin 17:48
That’s awesome. Have you guys raised capital? No, we

Sue Delegan 17:52
did a small friends and family round at the beginning, but we have not done an official round.

Kara Goldin 17:59
That’s awesome. So when you think about where you are today versus those early days of launching, I mean, you must be so proud you have to stop and really think about all that you’ve accomplished. But what advice would you give to entrepreneurs, sort of knowing what you know about launching a company. I mean, this is you’ve obviously launched one and scaled it and, you know, and taken on the purinas of the world. I don’t know that you would describe it that way every day, but I mean, you’re, you’re really doing some incredible things and making a ton of pet owners, but also pets quite happy, including my Labradors. So when you think about everything that you’ve been able to, you know, really get out of this, what do you think is, is, kind of the key things. Yeah,

Sue Delegan 18:51
I think, you know, it sounds a little cheesy, and I know a lot of people say it, but it’s not to, it’s not to give up, and not to, you know, people. I’ve had so many people that come to me and say, I tried this idea, or I tried to launch this and it didn’t work, and and then they just give up. And it’s like we always say, Kim, and I always say, if the front door is locked, we go around to the back door. If that’s locked, we try a window. You know, you have to try many different angles and and again, it’s so cheesy. But don’t give up, because obviously there’s you can make it happen if you believe in it. And I also have entrepreneurs that come to me and say, I think I have this good idea, or I think someone would like this. And I said, don’t, don’t say, Think, if you say, think, then don’t do it. And it’s really important to there are days where, literally, I feel like I’m going to curl up in a ball, and still feel like I’m going to curl up in a ball and die, but you have to just keep going and and it’s it’s so rewarding, and you do have to celebrate the wins, because. Is, I don’t think we do it enough. And I say this to Kim a lot, I feel like we just keep our head down and keep going, but you really do have to celebrate the wins, because that’s what it’s about, and celebrate, you know, our team, our team is amazing. Surround yourself with really good people. I mean, that’s that’s something that’s really important to me in business and in life, just surround yourself as really good, smart people that want to do good things.

Kara Goldin 20:25
Yeah, no, it’s so true. You shared with me a little unknown fact to me, at least about as it relates to some of your different skews, but overall, that chicken is actually a big allergy for a lot of pets. You do? You want to talk a little bit about that, yes,

Sue Delegan 20:44
so I didn’t realize that that chicken is an allergen for a lot of pets when we first started. I remember when we first got our order, one of our larger retailers that placed an order had placed more chicken, and thinking, because chicken broth actually sells better in the human segment. And then we started looking at sales and and tracking our data, and realized that beef was outpacing chicken. So it’s still, it’s, you know, chicken is our number two seller, beef is our number one, but, yeah, there’s a lot of dogs that have chicken allergies, and so we actually developed a pork bone broth. Pork is highly digestible and it’s great for dogs with allergies. So we notice a lot of dogs that have chicken allergies. Now try the pork and really love it.

Kara Goldin 21:36
That’s terrific. So you have the you have the broth in the TETRA pack box, and then you also have the hydrated or dehydrated powder format. And then you also have treats too. What would you say if, what is kind of the the growing trend amongst consumers? Do you Do you think it’s shifting at all, not only from a flavor perspective, but what do people typically order?

Sue Delegan 22:04
Definitely, I think, you know, ingredients are really important to consumers today, even in grocery we’re in grocery people, we just reformulate our biscuits to be a more premium product, because we, you know, biscuits tend to be a product that people just used to just grab off the shelf what the cheapest biscuit was, and now it’s people are really turning around the package and looking at the ingredients that you know, when you’re in the grocery store, you see people doing that for their own food. You never really saw people doing that for their pet food. And that is, people are questioning everything. And I think that’s great. I think people should question things. I get customer questions all the time about, well, what’s what is this ingredient? What does this do? How does this help my dog? And I’m happy to answer anything, because every ingredient we put into our products has a purpose. So it’s it’s important. I think ingredients are really important, and consumers are so much savvier today than they were even 10 years ago, definitely.

Kara Goldin 23:12
So when you think about Brutus Broth in in I don’t know if it’s a year from now, five years from now, I know you guys are growing like crazy. Where do you see the company going?

Sue Delegan 23:27
You know, we think about this all the time. We talk about it all the time. We would love to be in every household again. I know it sounds a little cheesy, but people ask, Who is your consumer? I said, Anyone, quite literally, with a dog or anyone, sometimes with a cat. We do have people that use our products with cats, but I’d love it to be a staple in every household. And then beyond that international expansion, you know, we really wanted to capture the market in the United States before we started international expansion, so that’s kind of next in our strategic plan. But yeah, we’re just, I always say we love to spread the love. And that’s Brutus Broth.

Kara Goldin 24:09
I love it. One of the things that we didn’t get to touch on, but it the October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I know this is close to your heart and mine. But do you want to share a little bit about that before we close up?

Sue Delegan 24:27
Yeah, so both my sister and I are Broca to positive. So our father had prostate cancer, and so he found out that he carried the BROCA mutation, and then we actually found out on the same day I was living in Maryland and she was in Hawaii, and we found out exactly the same day that we had the mutation as well. I actually had a double mastectomy on my 40th birthday, the same month that we launched the company. Okay, so we had a lot of people saying, you know, pause the launch. You need to focus on your health. And for my sister and I, she actually had her double mastectomy three months later, and no one knew, except for our family and friends. Everyone professionally, I had Kim was with me during my surgery, and we had warehouse workers calling my cell phone and freight truck drivers while I was in surgery, and we just continued with the launch, because we really wanted to focus on the positive and good things. I didn’t want to wake up every day thinking about my impending surgery. I wanted to wake up every day thinking about my impending business and how exciting it was, and so that really kept us moving forward. And people would say we were crazy to launch a business while we were going through that, but it worked out. And again, it’s just it’s ingrained in us, so we just keep going. So,

Kara Goldin 25:58
so inspiring. So Sue Delegan, co founder and CEO of Brutus Broth, thank you so much. We’ll have all the info for Brutus Broth, and you in the show notes, but thank you so much for joining us today and sharing the story, and thanks to all the listeners for listening in as well. I hope you enjoyed this episode and until next time. So thank you again.

Sue Delegan 26:25
Thank you so much for having me.

Kara Goldin 26:26
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now. Bye.

 

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