How Ithaca Hummus Scaled to $50M Without Venture Capital? Mike Gelb with Chris Kirby | Consumer VC

**Chris Kirby** (0:00)
I think I realized I didn't want to spend my life inside of someone else's vision. I decided to start a farmers market hummus stand at the Ithaca farmers market in order to get my arms around like some personal demons that I was battling. So you are not walking by me without either having a sample or getting absolutely harassed. You couldn't make it better at home if you tried. Product's great, this guy's kind of crazy, but the growth is there. So if a batch isn't right, we throw it away.
I do not want to be a professional fundraiser. Once you raise money, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Now you're on someone else's timeline 24 hours at a time. The product is the entry fee, but it's not the whole game.

**Mike Gelb** (0:42)
Hi, I'm Mike Gelb, and this is Consumer VC where we talk about what it takes to invest in and build scalable consumer businesses. If you're enjoying the show, hit that subscribe button. It helps more folks discover these conversations and sign up for the newsletter at the Consumer vc.com. I send a weekly roundup of the latest consumer deals, trends and product expansions. Plus, you'll get first access to new episodes. Today on the show, I am delighted to have Chris Kirby, who is the founder of Ithaca Hummus. Ithaca Hummus is a premium brand known for its super fresh, clean label approach to hummus. There's a saying I love, go slow to go fast. And when I think about that, I think about Chris and Ithaca's journey. They spent years thoughtfully expanding, moving slowly, but on purpose, until they were ready to hit the gas. And this year, they're on track to hit 50 million revenue for 2025, which is incredible. We're going to get into how they did it. Also how they did it without raising traditional venture and raising private equity. And some of the strategies that helped them grow on their own terms. But before we have Chris on and before we get into it, I want to tell you about our presenting sponsor, Highbeam. With Highbeam, you can get the credit you need to stay ahead. With tariffs rising and cash flow tighter than ever, Highbeam gives brands access to flexible credit lines and cards built around their cash cycle. For more information, check out highbeam.co. And lastly, a quick disclaimer before we get into it, all content on the show is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing here should be considered investment advice. Now, without further ado, let's get into it. Here's Chris.
Chris, thank you so much for your time. How are you doing?

**Chris Kirby** (2:33)
I am doing great. It's a beautiful afternoon here in Raleigh, North Carolina. Doing awesome.

**Mike Gelb** (2:38)
Love to hear it. It's also beautiful here in LA. I will be honest. It's usually, I'm very lucky. It's usually pretty beautiful here in LA, but let's get into it. I want to start first, the early part of your career. I think the first five, 10 years or so, you were in the restaurant industry, if not mistaken. Why did you want to enter the restaurant industry? And is the bear, if you've seen the bear, anything like the real thing?

**Chris Kirby** (3:04)
Okay. All right. So two-parter there. I got into the restaurant industry. I mean, it was my first job. You turn 14, 15, you start to want stuff, right? I want that thing. So your parents are like, go get a job. And so a restaurant was just like where I could get hired. I got a job washing dishes at a local restaurant where I grew up. And, you know, that was hot. It was loud. It was chaotic. But for some reason, that energy just like spoke to me. So I also loved the way that in a restaurant, you're kind of exposed to all these different parts of a business, you know, where in like a... If you work at a manufacturer, you work in sales, like you kind of are only exposed to like one silo of the company. Whereas in a restaurant, you see it all from like purchasing raw materials, manufacturing, if you will, sales, customer service. Everything is right there for you. So I've always had this entrepreneurial itch. And I think I also liked what a restaurant did for me in that sense as well. So when I graduated high school, I just decided to keep rolling with it. I went to culinary school, and then I spent five or six years going on touring around the country, working in different fine dining restaurants.
So the bear, honestly, painfully accurate, I have to say. The anxiety, that relentless pressure, the unspoken hierarchy that's going on in there, it really captures the emotional intensity of the back of the house better than anything I've ever seen. But I say painfully because they do a really good job, but they have to condense it down into these hour-long episodes, so they almost overdo it in some cases, which I'm a little bit of a critic of that, but overall, I say it's pretty accurate.