Snack Boys, Snack Daddies & The Erewhon Market Persona | Andrea Hernández, Snaxshot

[00:01] Welcome to Boys Club Interviews. This is a show where we bring on people much smarter than us to talk about the new internet. I'm Natasha Hoskins. I'm Dina Burke. And this is Boys Club. Wait, is it just Boys Club? It's just Boys Club. The Boys Club podcast? No. Just Boys Club. [00:19] Hey, good to see you. [00:20] Nice to see you too. We've been on vacation, took a week off. I hope you missed us. I hope we were missed. I hope we were missed. We took two weekends off of the newsletter, which is unprecedented. There's been... [00:35] 80, I think 80 newsletters that have been sent. 80 weekends. Wow. [00:39] Wow. That's extraordinary. [00:41] I know that is extraordinary. Extraordinary. [00:43] It was odd on a Sunday morning. Usually I'm like drinking my coffee and finding some stupid tweets. But digging into the bowels of TikTok for an intro or an outro. [00:55] you [00:55] Bye. [00:56] But anyway, it's good to be back. This episode, so great. Who did we have on, Dina? We had on Andrea Hernandez, who is the founder of Snackshot. Mm-hmm. [01:08] When we posted the teaser that she was coming on, there were a few... [01:13] people who were like so juiced about it. Collab of the summer, I think is what they're saying. [01:20] I think that there is a lot of Boys Club and Snackshot crossover, which you love to see. If you don't know Snackshot. [01:29] You have to give them a follow on Twitter, I'd say, primarily, secondarily.

[01:35] Instagram. She does... [01:37] trend forecasting for the food and beverage industry. [01:41] And now that when I say it, [01:43] In that way, sounds super boring and dry. She is hilarious. So funny. It's hilarious. Such great takes. [01:50] As someone in, dare I say, media... [01:54] To have... [01:55] The... [01:56] concise and thoughtful process. [01:58] takes that she has, but make them funny. [02:01] is a gift. She has a real gift. She's an artist. She's an artist. It's consistent. It hits on a moment that we're in where everyone's doing these cool little mini cans, [02:13] of low alcohol, [02:15] drinks and they're doing their yeah they're doing their [02:19] $20.00. [02:21] tiny olive oils and she's just like [02:24] capturing it. And if you're at all interested in, I'd say consumer packaged goods, I think it's a [02:30] She's an important follow. She is. So on this episode, we talked about niche media outlets and properties. We talked about the evolution of brand when it comes to marketing. [02:41] consumer packaged goods and what it means to build a legacy brand in this generation. [02:46] And then we close the episode out with some of her takes. [02:52] And her defining... [02:54] Some of the things that I feel like she's coined on the internet when it comes to this industry, this industry being like food and Bev. [03:01] and cool kid food and Bev. So give it a listen. [03:04] Tell us what you think.

[03:13] Andrea Hernandez is the founder of Snackshot and she is a trend spotter extraordinaire. I'm going to describe Snackshot as a media company covering the latest in food and Bev trends. She's been featured in the New York Times, Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, Wall Street Journal. It's subversive, it's really smart, it's really sharp. [03:34] Think newsletter, Twitter, Instagram, but also a really engaged and devoted community of people, thousands around the world. You're very much the mother of snacks, very much beloved by the boys and the boys club community and share, I think, a very similar spirit. So welcome to the show. [03:51] Thank you so much for having me. I feel like this was obvious. [03:54] pairing them like [03:55] That needed to happen. So I'm super excited. I affectionately call our community snack boys, which I think we talked about earlier, but a snack boy is your fuck boy meets air one market persona. Wow, I love it. I couldn't love it more. [04:12] So yeah, I also use my official title of cult leader, because I do believe when people start self-denominating themselves as snack boys, then you really did. And the fact that you can make people do weird stuff, like getting into snack seances, doing all these like literally grown ups going around a snack tour in the middle of the day. I feel like, you know, I feel like I'm very confident about not using community as a bastardized term that it is now more so of like,

[04:42] - The first time we have been in the first time, [04:42] all of this. I love it. I love it. We're so excited to have you on. And there's a ton we could talk about in terms of new media and that whole landscape and evolving world. But first, we'd love to hear about you and what your career looked like before this. How did you get here? How did you start Snackshot? Snackshot, like a lot of Gen Alpha Kids, was a product of the pandemic. So it started in 2020 at a time where sourdough starters [05:12] We're the equivalent of a sub stack. I started Snackjob like seven months into being like unemployed and being in a country where our lockdown was super strict. Our airport was closed for seven months. There was no way of getting out of the country and nobody could come in. So what I had as a background and what I went to actual school with, I did marketing, business, communication. My career was... [05:38] started off getting very much into PR, then kind of went into e-commerce and then it kind of ended into like social and then strategy. So I had been working in multiple agencies across my 20s. And it's so funny because when I look back at sitting down my advertising classes, like it was like a kind of villain origin story where they're teaching you like, this color makes people feel this way. And like, here's how to get people to, you know, eat faster or whatever. And I'm like, is this like my villain origin story? Like, I feel like we're the bad people [06:08] Like, I don't think that's normal, you know? And so Snackshot started as when I remember doing Twitter. I probably had like less than a thousand followers on Twitter. And it was so funny. I was just doing all these threads. I had so much time in my hands. And I was kind of looking at food and beverage because it's something people like, oh, how did you come to like snacks? Snacks are universal. Food and beverage is like literally the cornerstone of every person's life. It's just like inherent in your fucking life.

[06:38] of being able to sniff the bullshit of, oh, you know, like sun-dried tomatoes repositioning themselves as plant-based jerky? Like, fuck no. Like, I see what you're doing there and you need to stop. I'm going to call you out on this bullshit. So it's had that origin. And then I remember people actually saying like, oh, I'd love to, you know, see this more in like a long form content. So when I made the decision of starting a newsletter, I had that this kind of like, okay, Andrea, the past decade, you spent it doing things that really didn't feel like they had a purpose. [07:08] more. And it just felt like I didn't really ever feel identified as much with what I was doing, but got to pay the bills. And so I really wanted to have a manifesto of, okay, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this completely an antithesis of everything that I use in my past decade working in agency life, the growth hacks, the building BS narratives, I really wanted it to have this curation aspect. Like there's so many fucking things out there. Like what should people really [07:38] And all the VC, DTC, CPG, people that are just hyping each other up, jerking each other off on the same fucking things over and over that you see these startup cemeteries of things like Juzaro that raised hundreds of millions of dollars. And I come from a country that's one of the poorest countries in the world. So I'm very grounded in reality of this is so stupid. [07:57] And so with Snackshot, I kind of wanted to use parody, hence the snack boy persona or the snack daddy, which is like the big food companies with the big pockets. This industry is so fucking boring. All these industry trade publications, they use all this jargon that's like sort of like a financial shit with like,

[08:13] One of the things that I liked about you guys too is that you also use those. How do we make it in a language that an average person can understand? And so I remember... [08:22] writing the manifesto of Snackshot as a platform itself has to be about curation. I won't do any pitches. I won't do any sponsorships or advertising. If this has anything of value, then the biggest validation is I would get shared organically and that I wouldn't have to be spending money and doing all these things to get more noise out there. And I think that was the most important thing. Is this something that is going to be something that's adding to the noise or it's helping people parse through the noise? So that's kind of the origins of Snackshot. It [08:52] to curate what was happening in the space and sort of also dig deeper into these food and beverage trends of like, where is the money coming from? Does this have legs to stand on? Or is this going to be, you know, another activated charcoal thing where it was like super hyped and then it fucking just went away. [09:07] Those are the origins of Snackshot. [09:10] As someone who spent, I don't know, $75 on some activated charcoal pills three years ago, that really hits home for me. It hits home. Okay, so you mentioned it as Snack Show as being curation as a service. And it really, really lands for me and I think for Boys Club in that we're living in this age of sort of information overload and totally overstuffed media diets. [09:36] Talk to us about this idea a little bit more. And if you feel like that still stands for what you're doing with Snackshot and how you see it in the future.

[09:44] Oh, 100%. I get the warm feeling of, I love to hear people say that back to me like, oh, you talked about this. That makes sense. How 24 hour news media cycles happen, right? That didn't happen to keep people informed. They come out of how do we sell more advertising, right? [10:14] Thank you. [10:14] generation psyche. I wanted to help people understand there's a reason why there's many books written on the paradox of choice. The more choice you have, the less pleasant it becomes to make a choice. And you see this happen everywhere, especially as we grew up with the internet as a novelty. So we kind of embraced it like crazy. We're like, oh my God, I'm going to go online, hang out with my people at like Penguin Club, whatever. Like it was kind of very exploration [10:44] shift from connection to how do I keep people engaged as much as possible so that they're clicking on all these things, etc. So for me, it was [10:52] Curation as a service was not just in tech, but everything around us is being created for us to overconsume. [10:59] What's the next big shiny thing? And nobody really talks about how millennials, we literally inherited these like broken ruins, but we're being scapegoated because we grew up next to this technology that brought down walls and barriers and basically introduced this

[11:15] whole array of information and there's this amazing book that I always like to reference that was written in the 40s. That's called the Library of Rebell and this [11:24] Arthur Borges, he talks about this library that exists that contains every book ever written, past, present and future. And it's then like, spoiler alert, it talks about how that [11:35] access to everything leads the society to their own demise. He even talked about fake news in a way. They didn't know what was fake from what was real. There's a quote he says, like, in an expanding universe, the concept of originality is null. So to me, like the curation as a service was kind of saying like SaaS is the new SaaS curation as a service is a new software as a service that in this [11:57] time and place where there's an influx of everything, influx of noise. So there's abundant information being created constantly on all these platforms. We are going back to curate, which by the way, the origins of the word curate means to heal from Latin, curar. And I wanted to bring it back to its origins. We're like, this is how we heal as a generation by kind of creating friction where it's needed and then also removing unnecessary friction. [12:27] as a guiding point as opposed to gatekeeping is where it saw us as a service came from. That's a really beautiful way of looking at what the role of like a curator is. And especially in the age that we're living in with, [12:38] AI and the development of content that will continue in an, [12:44] in an expedited way having a specific and clear point of view is going to be the future for

[12:52] I think a lot of people's media diet and how they choose and what they choose to consume. One thing that we've felt a lot of tension around in building Boys Club and building a media brand is... [13:04] I think the most successful media brands come from sort of starting with a niche interest and building an initial community and sort of cult following around initial more niche interest and then expanding that inevitably to something larger to actually create a business that is sustainable and that can grow. And you've... [13:25] done that successfully and had a similar experience of starting with maybe just snacks and then expanding more broadly to CPG as a whole and beverages and this whole world of food and beverage. And you've done that in a really organic and successful way. And I'd love to hear from you how that evolution happened and how that felt for you. What I really care about is that whoever is here wants to be here. And as we've grown, our open rate has never gone below 60% from the start [13:55] done this from a way where it's like organic [13:58] that people i remember two months into it i was like getting a message from the head of culinary at starbucks and they're like andrea i'm so such a fan of snack shot i was like what the fuck sent this to her because that was so far out of my network i remember like emmett shine who i'm pretty sure you guys are familiar from pattern brands and remix party obviously he's done really well for himself in business and i kind of [14:20] looked up to him in a lot of different ways. And one of them, I remember when I was starting early on, one of the key things he told me was like, you need to have your walls. What are your like basics? And I remember I was like, okay, the Snackshot foundations are curation.

[14:33] content and then it expanded to like consulting and obviously like the thing that was not expected at all was community i didn't start snack shop to build community in the beginning it started from an audience me talking to the void and then the void talking back and all these different platforms that i realized oh people want to have more of a conversation happening and so people always ask me like what was your hack or how did you do this there's riches and niches [15:00] having to serve something that's mostly underserved but also the thing the key thing that i again was a rejection of traditional which was i don't want to have like advertising or sponsors where i can't speak my mind which a lot of these publications and especially the mass media ones they have to censor themselves in a way or they have to like you know agree to things that they don't want to be money constraints whatever and i remember thinking when i started my first patreon first of all i didn't even have access to stripe so i couldn't even monetize my newsletter if i wanted [15:30] I remember thinking, okay, I'll start a Patreon. And then it was like, oh, [15:34] If you find that this is valuable, here's what ways you can contribute. And I remember doing three different tiers, like 5, 10 and 25. What was shocking to me was people subscribing [15:44] to tears that didn't exist. So like I had people [15:47] signing up for $100 a month, $[redacted address] for me to validate there's immense value [15:55] out of what I'm putting out there. And people are saying that to me instead of me trying to drag that from them. And I think a lot of people try to go the opposite way where they're like, here's like all these like think boys. I'll be like, I took zero to fifty million dollars of revenue and they'll be like sending you all these PowerPoints, whatever. And they like charge an insane amount of money, whatever. And I think that a lot of what really will be successful is when you create something that

[16:24] people can say this is different this has a unique point of view it's not regurgitations of the same fucking bullshit there's so many different things out there that are just regurgitations no unique kind of pov or angle and it's another rsss so many have you seen that so many users are just like rsss feeds of oh this link is interesting this link is interesting he's like oh my god but who gives a fuck about the link let me know what you think about it that makes it so different i want [16:54] necessity. I can do that myself. I want to know [16:57] what your POV is. And I think we're going back to people understanding that [17:02] the origins of the internet was that number forums like you would go and you would go to a specific forum about a specific subject and people would be like, ASL, age, sex, location, whatever. And then you realize like, Oh, I, you know, I resonate with this topic, whatever. And I think the internet is definitely trying to get back to those origins of we congregate around commonalities or niches like you guys mentioned. Yeah, you talked a lot in that answer about this idea of rejecting the traditional that that's something that's [17:30] that resonates a lot and I know that you [17:33] spend a lot of time thinking about brand, looking at different brands, evaluating the brand landscape. [17:38] And [17:39] food and beverage. [17:40] specifically, but also just more generally as well. I'm curious your perspective, what you think it takes to make a remarkable or defining brand. I saw your post about off limits. Do you think that a brand has to take a risk in order for it to be remarkable?

[17:57] right now or what's kind of your perspective on it? [18:00] I think [18:01] we haven't seen because obviously we haven't been living long enough [18:06] What? [18:07] Building a legacy brand looks like for our generation. So we are talking about in the 2010s, I like to call them better for you chasm, these brands [18:17] have been around for like 10 years. [18:19] Maybe something like La Croix that was something that started the late 80s. [18:23] that okay it still has some relevancy even now that it's losing it to liquid death i like to tell people you have to think about this in the long run yes it's okay to be just the brand that's selling you a cupcake or a cookie whatever but what you want to actually build is a universe and this is why you see these legacy brands kind of be everywhere so like big food understood that the snack daddies were smart enough to know [18:48] We need to have [18:49] something that's a gravitational pull that brings people to us so for example coca-cola a lot of people think that it owns christmas because they've created this whole universe around happiness and that famous commercial that was in madman on the happy coke song so i think that a lot of brands are always kind of chasing a trend and riding on the coattails of a trend because they're just chasing an easy exit or pump and dumps where it's like you you build out a brand and you just like [19:19] to buy you out. I like to think of creating a brand universe as what's going to be a differentiator. And you're starting to see McDonald's and these big brands go back to their legacy roots because they realize, oh shit, like our characters are...

[19:34] still relevant decades and decades later. And how they're interacting with these new generations may differ. But that brand universe that they built, their core is still the same. Pizza Hut is another good example of that. Even in the merch that they're doing, etc. I feel like brand universes is all about what is your gravitational pull that brings people in, whether it's an idea. I've used brands like Gia, for example, that says like feels like Gia. And it's all like [20:04] peer teeth, memories you can remember. And you have to start really investing in the brand. And I think we're seeing a reversal and going back to basics, as opposed to just like, you know, copy, copy, because of those sea of sameness, people realizing like, oh, yeah, everything looks the same. And so people going back and trying to invest in brands like Pool Suite, Vacation is like one of the most successful examples of honing in on what my core is and creating a universe that [20:34] expands into merch. People are realizing that, yes, it takes time to build a brand and that it's not just something that an agency putting together a Pinterest mood board is going to be able to do for you. Yeah, that is super encouraging for us as the founders of Voice Club because we've spent a lot of time working on building the brand without the products and trying to, and using the language of universe building and world building. And how do you [21:01] create an atmosphere and an understanding of what your world is prior to trying to shill a specific product to the people who are obsessed with your brand. Obviously, PulseSuite is an amazing example of that. And I actually love the references to these legacy brands that aren't luxury brands like a McDonald's or like a Coca-Cola that have done a really amazing job of doing the same thing and have stood the test of time.

[21:25] for so many reasons, but one of them is because you're like immediately in a world when you think about any of those brands and that being what really makes them successful and stand out. And a [21:33] modern millennial D2C consumer packaged goods were instead of trying to create a new world, we're trying to ride the wave, like you're saying. And you see that even in technology, the things that stand out are creators who are [21:47] breaking the algorithms and are doing like weird stuff on TikTok or short to break through the noise and have something that feels distinct to them. So I see that in a lot of ways. And I think that's an amazing way of... [21:57] consolidating what [21:59] make something stand out in today's landscape. Boys Club does really well at translating itself. [22:05] IRL and URL. You guys have nailed it. So you guys are. Thank you so much. Oh my gosh. It means a lot. Yeah, it really does. I'm like, I'm honored. Okay, some quick fire on trends. I want to hear your takes. We're going to list a few trends out. And if you could talk about them a little bit. Let's start with [22:24] cozy brands. I've seen you talk about this. Can you give us two or three sentences on what a cozy brand is to you? [22:30] Yeah, a cozy brand is a brand that, especially after a pandemic, it was all about bringing that sense of being home and at home. The best one that I can think of is pattern brands, where it's like this new take on what does, you know, staying at home or building a home beyond like a bed, bath and beyond. I feel like bed, bath and beyond was like the cozy brand for like 2000s. [22:51] Does that make sense? Totally. For example, pattern brands came at the perfect moment. 2019 was all about like, we're the burnout generation. We are always on the go. Cozy brands are like bringing us back to enjoying that state of enjoying your home. You know, you're building your apartment. You're sharing this home with your family. And so bringing us back to like that enjoyment of...

[23:12] being at home [23:14] Nice. That totally checks out. I love that. Okay. Another one, quick fire. I saw your idea of creator package goods. So referencing Emma Chamberlain and her coffee brand, just unpack that for us. So I like to say creator package goods is like the new wave of CPG. And if you look at the success of something like Emma Chamberlain, she just announced another collaboration with a snack bar [23:39] today, she's been able to, again, building her brand universe, expanding beyond just like a YouTuber into someone who has the potential of being maybe Gen Z's generation of Starbucks. You know how like our generation grew up with those like Starbucks bottles. This brand has a lot more relevance with the younger generations. And so creator package goods is like these YouTubers array into CPD, but without [24:03] the sort of dismissiveness and instead saying, hey, these people are being really smart, like Emma Chamberlain hired X, [24:09] Red Bull executives and all she has to do is leverage her brand. Mr. Beast is another good example. Logan Paul that's created when one year has become the most hyped up brand that has Gen Alpha kids. [24:22] doing it like if it's like the new supreme or whatever drop and so i think creator package goods is in its infancy of course but we're starting to see it develop more in food and beverage but yeah i feel like people dismiss it a lot because of like the youtuber persona but i think that they're being more smart than we think totally totally agree okay third space grocers i want to hear what you have to say so the idea of this and this is something that literally there's

[24:52] the third space and how they're focused on technology and on pickup and efficiency of just being that space maximizing orders per square foot and they also like eliminated that medium angle and now there are two extremes there's either just like the takeout ones they're removing the seating space they're just making like those standing coffee things some of them don't even have bathrooms anymore and so it's not really being as a hangout place and then on the [25:22] Starbucks, which are the reserved ones that are three stories high, but they're also not places to hang out. And instead you're starting to see the rise of sort of the grocer cafe as a new third space. So Papa Grocer is a good example. Fox Shark is a good example in a much more larger scale where people are actually going there. They're working from their computers. Then they're having their snacks. They'll have their lunch. Maybe they'll have like a glass of wine. So this is like our generation's new version of third space in the absence of [25:51] Starbucks as they're focusing more on doing other stuff. Wow, we could honestly, we should have booked three hours to have this conversation and done like a big Lex Friedman, like five hour podcast with you because this would have been like, I would love to keep talking. We're gonna have to to do it again. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me and and let's do an event together. Boys club snack shop club. I love it. Let's do it. Obsessed. All right, guys, have a good one. Take care. [26:21] I don't know that I have any draft tweets. I've not really been in a content production mode. I got really into my book this past week on vacation.

[26:35] Because of that... [26:37] I... [26:38] wasn't on my phone good for you can you believe [26:44] I can't. I'm happy for you, though. I had the opposite experience. Have you been at peace with you? I have been loving it. The problem is... [26:58] Then I... [26:59] I just don't want it back. [27:01] Once you're away, you're free. You know? Anyway, you had the opposite experience? I had the opposite experience because I launched Boys Club on Threads this week. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And spent quite a time, quite a bit of time on Threads. And I had a great time. I'm having a great time on Threads. Oh, I'm so glad. So I've enjoyed it. I've been getting all the notifications. So you're crushing it. Thanks. Okay. I have two tweets. Tell me. Neither are very funny. And one is actually just a request. [27:31] THE END OF THE YEAR. [27:32] Okay. Which is, it's... [27:34] Fitness people, what's your workout boost song? [27:39] For me, it's this one. And then it's a screenshot. I want a thread of people... [27:42] giving me their like [27:44] top workout songs. So then I can make a playlist of it and then I can use that to work out with. [27:50] Because I find that for my workout busong, like really helps in my workout. It actually helps me finish a workout. And so – [27:59] if I could crowdsource a list, but I guess the issue is that not everyone will have the same taste of me. Exactly. My recommendation here would be to have everybody drop their...

[28:10] "Favorite Workout Playlist." [28:12] because then you're going to get a few playlists that are really good and you don't have to do the work to compile. Right. [28:18] You're hesitant. I don't know why. If I could get... [28:21] the top song, like your one song. [28:25] Cream of the crop. Yeah. Everyone's cream of the crop. Then I can make a cream of the crop playlist. Wow. [28:31] Mega playlist. Mega playlist. Okay. And then my second tweet here is... [28:36] Again, not funny, but earnest. Can someone tell me exactly what a toxin is? Like a scientist or someone not in the goop circle of influence? [28:47] Goop burn. [28:48] Major goop burn. It is a goop burn. Goop burn alert. It's like, what? [28:55] Do you know what a toxin is? [29:00] No. [29:01] I think it's made up. It's bad. It's sin. [29:04] A toxin is sin. That's all I know. [29:08] I think we've been sold a shoddy bill of goods with toxins. I think it's big wellness. It's big wellness. It's big wellness. Yeah. [29:18] I want to take a stand. Wow. Oh my gosh. Stand for something or you'll fall for anything. Exactly. I have no tweets. Well, I just created one. [29:28] right as we were getting ready. And it's a picture of my husband. [29:34] with his back turned towards me. [29:37] and half of his back just tomato red.

[29:41] And a quote, am I burnt? Because it's really bad. [29:46] It's really bad. I think I'm going to ship it. [29:50] Ship it. Great. Okay. See you later. Dina, where are we going to be in September? We are going to be at Permissionless in Austin, Texas. Permissionless too. It's happening and we're curating the culture track for the conference. So if you're into the stuff we talk about here, you should come and have a good time with us. So email your boss, tell them that you need to go and buy your ticket [30:20] scored for boys club members come hang in austin friends [30:27] This is where we make an ask. We're in our call to action era. It's CTA times. Rate and review this podcast. Subscribe to our newsletter. And if you're feeling extra generous, [30:39] Send it to one friend. [30:42] Thank you for listening. We love you. Bye.