Banza: Brian Rudolph. The Chickpea Pasta That Nearly Turned to Mush

Guy Raz (0:00)

Building a business means being 10 people at once. The strategist, the spreadsheet person, the one fixing the office sink. US Bank made a card for exactly that kind of hustle. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA Inc. Some restrictions apply.

Wow.

Brian Rudolph (0:34)

Yeah. Honestly, I was more concerned with people's fear in trying to figure out how to address that.

I had someone call me crying because they were so scared. And they love Banza and they give it to their kids all the time.

Guy Raz (0:47)

Yeah.

Brian Rudolph (0:48)

And, you know, it's like maybe more than I wanted to admit, my identity had been wrapped up in this idea of I create healthy food and to then be told and get messages from people on the Internet who don't even know you, that are accusing you of...

Guy Raz (1:13)

Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists and the stories behind the movements they built.

I'm Guy Raz and on the show today, how Brian Rudolph built Banza into one of the biggest pasta brands in the country, all based on one ingredient, chickpeas.

If you've spent any time at a grocery store lately, you've probably noticed that protein is everywhere. It's in chips and snacks, in bread, breakfast cereal, candy, ice cream, soda, even water, and all that's becoming pretty normal now.

But not that long ago, if you wander down the pasta aisle and saw a box of high-protein pasta, you might have been confused, right? Because pasta is supposed to be carbs. The protein is the stuff you put on the pasta, like meat sauce or clams or cheese.

But of course, the pasta aisle, just like almost every other aisle, is now filled with products promising more protein, including the brand we're going to talk about today, Banza. Banza was the first pasta on the market made from chickpeas, which, as you probably know, are packed with protein. But when Banza's co-founder, Brian Rudolph, started tinkering with the recipe back in 2013, protein wasn't really the point. Brian was sensitive to wheat, and he was trying to find foods that made him feel better. And along the way, he started experimenting with an ingredient he already loved, chickpeas. And chickpeas, it turned out, had almost everything going for them. Yes, they were high in protein, but they were also high in fiber, low in fat and naturally gluten-free. What they were not was easy to turn into pasta. And as you'll hear, it took Brian a long time and a lot of really terrible batches to figure out how to turn chickpea flour into pasta that people would actually want to eat. But eventually, he did. And just five years after Banza launched, it had become the fastest growing pasta brand in the United States. But then 10 years after launch, Banza faced a public relations crisis that threatened everything Brian and his team had built. And we'll get to that a little later. Today, Banza is sold in more than 25,000 stores across the US. As for Brian, he and his older brother and co-founder, Scott Rudolph, grew up in Westchester County, New York. Their mom was an audiologist and their dad was an orthodontist. And after Brian graduated from college in 2012, he moved to Detroit to join Venture for America. It was a fellowship started by Andrew Yang to bring young entrepreneurs to cities that were trying to rebuild their economies.

Brian Rudolph (4:10)

A lot of people now know it as the thing that Andrew Yang did before running for president. He started this non-profit with the idea of creating jobs in cities that had lost jobs and doing it through entrepreneurship. And I think for someone just graduating from college, I get to have this opportunity to be a part of a small company and join a really great community of people who are also part of the program.

And yeah, that's what brought me to Detroit, getting to be the first employee at a tech startup.

Guy Raz (4:38)

And what was the name of the company?

Brian Rudolph (4:41)

The company's name is Quikly, and they're actually still around. The idea was to basically create a feeling of Black Friday, but on other days of the year where you could create excitement and urgency around offers for big brands. And I was doing everything, right? Customer service, reaching out to, at one point, 60 people a day cold just to get our product on their radar. And it was an incredible way to learn.

Guy Raz (5:09)

So you were there, you would be there for two years, but during your time there, I guess, from what I've read, you started to think about, I mean, understandably, like, hey, what could I do? What could be interesting to me? Because the fellowship was really designed to expose you to startup culture and with the idea, I imagine, of encouraging people to start their own thing. And clearly, tech was not the thing you were gonna do because you didn't.