Ep. 046 | How a Ramen Shop Became a North American Grocery Brand | Jared Ferrall

What We Need to Grow · Ep. 046 Jared Ferrall co-founded Crafty Ramen in Guelph, Ontario in 2017 with his wife Miki, after roughly ten years cooking in Michelin-starred kitchens, including Gordon Ramsay's, and a spell as a private chef on a luxury yacht. The two of them trained together at the Yamato Ramen School in Japan, then brought their own noodle machine back to Canada and built a bowl of ramen from every component up. He is the company's Chief Culinary Officer. Crafty Ramen is now a CPG business rather than a restaurant group: one remaining restaurant, two Ontario plants, roughly sixteen products, and heat-and-eat frozen ramen on shelves at Sobeys, Loblaws, Rabba, Colemans and Walmart across Canada and, since this year, across the United States. In this Founder Talk conversation with Caleb Pedosiuk, Jared explains why a chef with that background aimed at the freezer aisle instead of a higher concept restaurant, and he is blunt about the clientele he left: ten years cooking for what he calls the 0.001%, traded for a community and comfort food for everybody. He is precise about which parts of the fine dining discipline survived the move to volume and which one he gave up, and why he will not pretend otherwise. He tells the story of the second restaurant that opened four months before the shutdown, the conversation at the bar that produced a ramen kit in a cardboard box, and the trade show moment when a competitor's delivery app put his own product in his hands in fifteen minutes and he decided on the spot that his e-commerce business was finished. He explains the same logic closing four restaurants down to one, because CPG is a whole other business and it does not share attention. He talks about coming back from the biggest show in the category with no rejections at all and having to turn retailers away. He pulls apart a product line he personally believed in and says the unglamorous reason it lost its shelf space. And asked what he needs most to grow, he answers with a working capital number rather than a vision. Jared is exactly the kind of founder, innovator, and problem solver this series exists to put a light on. He had the credential to make something rare for very few people and he pointed it at the largest number of people instead, and he can tell you exactly what that cost and exactly what it did not. Authority is earned by building things worth talking about, and an honest account of that work is what makes a brand understood, trusted, and findable by the systems people now ask for answers. Learn more about Crafty Ramen: https://craftyramen.com Jared Ferrall on LinkedIn:   / jared-ferrall-%f0%9f%8d%9c-02499938   What We Need to Grow is Caleb Pedosiuk's founder conversation series from 79 Development, on growth, judgment, and the thinking behind building great companies. It exists to shine a light on the founders, innovators, problem solvers, and pioneers building things that matter. Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5O6IiwV... Podcast sponsored by 79 Development Inc | 79dev.com #cpg #foodandbeverage #ramen #frozenfood #retaildistribution #chefentrepreneur #founders #podcast Jared Ferrall, Crafty Ramen, ramen, CPG, consumer packaged goods, frozen food, food and beverage startup, retail distribution, grocery retail, Expo West, chef entrepreneur, Michelin trained chef, Guelph Ontario, Canadian food brands, scaling operations, founder podcast, What We Need to Grow, 79 Development, Caleb Pedosiuk