The Baconer was founded in 2016, by husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Camilo Velasquez, his wife, Elisa Lewis, and their friend and business partner Dana Young in Emeryville, Calif. In 2017, Camilo quit his day job and the trio’s sole focus became growing the premium bacon business, selling his unique bacon products at farmer’s markets around the Bay Area. As demand grew from selling directly to consumers to offering products to retail customers, the company’s production moved into a local commissary-style, commercial kitchen in Oakland, Calif., then to a federally inspected facility in Santa Clara and later, production shifted to a pork-processing co-packer.

As distribution expanded to include customers operating specialty grocery stores in the Bay Area, growth in the foodservice channel began to flourish and soon, operators of boutique and even national hotel chains began placing orders, including the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco. With an established, thriving e-commerce site to keep the business growing during the height of the COVID pandemic, business was good, and the future looked bright, including partnerships with retailer Eataly North America and Food52, an e-commerce website targeting foodies and food companies.

The best of times

In a MEAT+POULTRY feature published in early 2022, Velasquez said the company’s sales doubled in each of the previous three years and the team was expanding the brand at that time with the rollout of a line of bacon-focused rubs. Fueled by the marketing muscle of the team, those rubs were mentioned in a holiday gift segment on “Good Morning America,” in late 2021 and The Baconer’s products were included in Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Journal, while the premium bacon products were recognized by Saveur magazine, Bon Appétit magazine and other publications.

In early 2022, business was thriving and the future was bright. Preparing to scale up production and distribution, the company began embarking on an equity crowdfunding campaign. But later that year, obstacles began to multiply at a staggering rate, and The Baconer faced its most challenging and ultimately its final year as a business.

Velasquez, whose primary role in the company was in product development for The Baconer, said there is a lot to be proud of as he looks back at the past six-plus years since the company was founded.

“I was and am so proud of the product line we created and its acceptance in the market as well as the brand and story that the entire team built around the products,” he said.

“My first proudest moment was when the first grocery store buyer called me and I didn’t have to go after them,” Velasquez said. “They came to us and said ‘we want to place you.’”

He was equally as proud when the company secured the partnership with Eataly.

“It’s a fabulous store that I have admired since they first opened. I had sort of thought to myself at various times, ‘if I could ever have something in there, wouldn’t that be amazing?’” he recalled.

That dream came true when a representative of the foodie-inspired store contacted The Baconer team and ultimately began stocking their products on the store’s shelves.

“What I walk away with is just feeling incredibly proud of it,” Velasquez said about the business. “It feels like big successes.”

Elisa, whose background was in graphic design and branding, said she looks back on the lifespan of The Baconer with pride and realized the sweat equity paid off.

“We built a very successful brand,” she said, “great storytelling, great packaging, great design and all the marketing around it that we did was really successful; that was a big success that felt good, and we did that really well.”

Bacon business evolution

With Dana Young working primarily in a marketing role and in partnership with a husband-wife duo, the team maintained positive relationships throughout the life of the business venture.

“We still like each other, we’re all still talking,” Lewis joked.

Looking back, Lewis attributes the success of the partnership to the team’s complementary skillsets and their commitment to supporting each other and communicating throughout the business venture.

“We were all able to really grow in our respective roles,” she said, “because early on I think we developed really clear communication; really supportive and open. We really worked on that communication and that was one of the reasons why we were so successful.”

Looking back, Camilo admitted that working as husband and wife had its inherent challenges.

“You’re around each other all the time, 24 hours a day, and you can get into this sort of whirlpool of fixating on things and you sort of end up in a little bit of an echo chamber,” he said.

It was in those situations when having another party weigh in was valuable. Having worked alongside Dana at a previous job, Velasquez respected Young’s ability to provide a different view than his.

“It was really good to have Dana as that third voice who really thinks about things differently and is eternally optimistic,” Velasquez said. “When we would start to spiral, she would say ‘wait, hold on, let’s look at this from another perspective.’ That changes the dynamic and it changes the decision making and it changes how you progress through things. That’s part of why I wanted to partner with her in the first place.”

In terms of roles, the three partners understood that flexibility and teamwork was part of the job and they each would occasionally assume additional responsibilities.

“We were all aware of the fact that when you are in a startup, you have to wear multiple hats,” said Lewis.

As an example, she said while her primary duties were focused on website maintenance, branding and marketing, it wasn’t unusual to work in running the inventory system, handle shipping duties or step in wherever needed.

Bacon-preneurs

With no deep-pocketed investors backing the business Velasquez and Lewis agreed that they were more risk averse than some start-ups that have more financial support. As a bootstrapped food company making choices required plenty of consideration and patience. Sometimes the choice was deciding to take their time.

“We were very intentional, we were very strategic, and we were very careful,” Velasquez said.

Some situations, however, were surprisingly eye opening, including making the jump into digital marketing, which seemed like a no-brainer initially. A seasoned and trained marketer, Lewis said that was a hiccup she didn’t see coming and something other entrepreneurs should carefully consider before making the leap.

“We didn’t really understand it and it’s a beast,” Lewis said, adding, “I think a lot of people don’t understand it and they just think, ‘Oh, I’m going to write some Google ads and the orders will pour in.’”

The couple agreed that a valuable takeaway was that regardless of the social media platform, a successful digital campaign requires a substantial and sustained financial investment or in lieu of that, a substantial amount of time to create content every day to cultivate and maintain and grow an audience.

“It’s a full-time job,” Lewis said.

In the meat industry, bacon has been one of the hottest categories across all channels, which served The Baconer well for years and improved the acceptance of innovative, premium products among consumers and independent retail operators and foodservice outlets.

Lewis said especially when the company first launched, being a company in a food segment that was on trend was a huge benefit and people welcomed a new product in the segment and were anxious to try it.

Velasquez agreed, saying because the products were so different from the commodity sliced bacon options that are widely available, the company’s Lardons, bacon steaks and ground bacon differentiated them in the marketplace.

“With our product line we were trying to get people to work with it in new ways. That just created more willingness to experiment with a product people were already interested in,” he said.

As they grew, Lewis and Velasquez said they wished that rather than reinvesting every penny back into the company they would have paid themselves, even if it was a token amount, rather than being so hard core about the bootstrapping mentality. Eventually the stakeholders did pay themselves, but they agreed it would have been more beneficial sooner.

“We should have paid ourselves from day one,” he said. “Just for that psychological aspect that ‘I am building myself into this and being realistic that my work has a cost and value.’ So many people think, ‘Oh, I’ll pay myself later.’”

Lewis agreed that getting paid is part of the psychological well-being of entrepreneurs that is often overlooked.

Bacon bubble

Thanks to those sacrifices and more, the company did grow and exposure on several national media platforms fueled the momentum with 2021 being one of its best years. Next, the stakeholders agreed a crowdfunding campaign would catapult them to the next level.

“We had what we thought was a really solid plan in place and the milestones we were reaching were really exciting to see,” Lewis said. “Things were going really well.”

And then an economic downturn combined with brutal market volatility in 2022 flipped the script, seemingly overnight.

“Maybe not surprisingly, but the best time then kind of smacked into a wall of the most challenging time,” Velasquez said.

About halfway into the launch of the crowdfunding campaign, which was exceedingly successful at that point, all the momentum The Baconer had built was quickly thwarted by inflation that peaked midyear, including rising transportation and fuel costs, which was devastating for a small food company shipping perishable products through the cold chain. Also fueling the market volatility was the possibility that the California-based company could face a dire pork shortage with Proposition 12 legislation looming. Additionally, many of the larger contributors that were planning to invest in the crowdfunding campaign began paring back their investment plans significantly.

It was that perfect storm of instability and skyrocketing costs that ultimately caused The Baconer’s stakeholders to fold.

“A bigger company probably could have weathered through it,” Velasquez said. “It was going to push the three of us personally into very uncomfortable financial territory. We looked at it very clear eyed and very matter of factly and decided among us that this was the time,” he said. “It was like, ‘OK, this has been a great run; an incredible thrill but this is a storm we’re not willing to go through.”

The trio had many meetings to discuss strategic options as business slumped and achieving goals wasn’t occurring any longer. They began exploring options to deal with the downturn, including considering venture capital investments.

“We just weren’t up for that,” Lewis said of the VC option. “It just didn’t make sense for us.”

A handful of potential buyers expressed interest in acquiring the brand but given the economic and market volatility at the time, they were unable to justify a deal at that time.

Other options, like taking out second mortgages or borrowing money to stay afloat were not viable options for the team either. Ultimately, the option that made the most sense to consider was broached.

“What if we close? That’s an option,” Lewis recalled discussing.

When the last of the potential suitors reluctantly declined to make a deal, which was approximately in September 2022, the team agreed to close The Baconer.

“We looked at everything and left no stone unturned,” Velasquez said, “and it was pretty clear that it was time.”

By the time the decision was made, production had already been cut considerably and stockpiled inventory was being processed and final shipments were filled to wholesale customers while the last of online orders were processed and filled.

Shuttering the business wasn’t like closing a retail store.

“There wasn’t a specific day that was like, ‘shop closed,’” Velasquez said. “It happened gradually, because when you’re going through the process, you try to keep as many doors open as possible. You never know what might come along. So, you’ve got to keep the lights on, keep the website functioning and delivering orders. It’s a process.”

Sage advice

Looking back and reflecting on the lessons they took from their business venture, Lewis and Velasquez said they wish they would have had a better understanding of the financial side of running a food business.

“I think the financial planning part would be one area that I wish we had gotten a bit more advice in,” Lewis said, “and having a deeper understanding of what you’re really getting into and how much it’s really going to cost.”

Velasquez echoed that sentiment and said it’s easy for some startups to focus on the products and figure out the financial piece later.

“You might think, ‘once my volume grows, then I’ll be making money,’” he said. “That’s really not true because if you’re really growing your business, all your money is sitting in the warehouse; you’re always growing your inventory and growing your inventory and that’s where all the money goes.”

Instead, be profitable from the beginning they advised new entrepreneurs, and pay yourself from the beginning, even if it’s a modest amount.

“Don’t fall into thinking, ‘I’ll just do more of what I’m doing and then I’ll be making money.’ You’ve got to find ways to make those extra dollars and eke out a little more margin,” he said.

Velasquez said if a food company has a low-margin product it should also have a high-margin product to balance it out. Landing a single big name retail customer that cuts deeply into margins needs to be offset by many smaller customers that buy in smaller volumes but generate stronger margins.

“Scale alone isn’t going to do it. That approach has killed more companies than I can think of,” Velasquez said.

The couple also touted the value of being engaged with a community of other small companies in the food industry to exchange ideas, provide each other with advice and serve as a source of support.

“You’ve got to be plugged into the community,” Lewis said.

Next chapter

Since closing The Baconer, Young, Lewis and Velasquez joined forces again, to form a marketing team, Burning Ear Media. The new venture offers services to a variety of businesses that include public relations, e-commerce, social media, email marketing and brand building.

“We felt like we were really successful in terms of building a brand and creating a story and we want to help other companies do that,” Velasquez said.

Meanwhile Lewis and Velasquez have channeled their passion for food by catching up with friends and family, hosting get-togethers and cooking food for fun as often as possible.

“For the last six years we really missed the whole social component of our lives because we were working all the time,” Lewis said. “We want to give back to our support group because everybody really took care of us for the last six years.”