A jerky craving leads to a jerky business

Two local kids who flew the coop for out-of-state colleges found they missed the taste of home, so they decided to recreate it.

Matias Figueroa and Nathan Ammerman are the cofounders of Grazeon, a local jerky company that goes live Monday. They're the guests on this week's Business Outlook podcast episode, which is focused on small business.

Here's a sample of the conversation, which has been edited for clarity.

Business Outlook podcasts are released on Monday afternoons and are available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud.

How did you come up with Grazeon?

Matias Figueroa: "We've been a fan of this particular type of jerky for a long, long time. This is like a childhood snack. I remember going snowboarding with Nate and doing all the outdoor activities and just enjoying some classic carne seca out on the slopes or in the gym or whatever it may be.

Going back, when we moved out to college, we just realized we didn't have it anymore. It was a treat we didn't have access to — one of those things we took for granted."

What makes carne seca different then other jerky?

MF: "Carne seca is a much drier version of beef jerky, much lower water content. It is actually traditionally northern Mexico and New Mexico. ... It's super popular (as a) regional snack. Honestly, I think it is very much just for the Southwest region as of right now, and we saw problem there."

Nathan Ammerman: "Mostly its just really dehydrated. Most of them have a water content almost like five times more than carne seca and so it's really crispy, almost like a chip. There is no water content, enough to where you do not need silica gel in it."

MF: "On top of that the shelf life ... can be like five, six months, depending on the bag and our shelf life is a year."

Why don't you like Jack Link's Beef Jerky?

NA: "To begin with, one of the things is me and Matthias are very health-conscious. We both lift a lot. We are both very athletic, so we care about what we put into our bodies.

One of the things that peeves me the most about non-carne seca or other brands is you look at the ingredients and there are a bunch of things you don't know, a bunch of colorings. ... This is supposed to be jerky and a flavoring. ... Jack Link's is probably the biggest culprit in that way, huge cooperate jerky."

MF: "And it's disgusting."

How did you come up with your happy cow logo?

MF: "When I developed the first logo, it was that old cowboy and it just was not what we were going for. Then we brought Nate on; Nate has so much (artificial intelligence) experience. So we were able to go in and kind of give particular prompts to the AI models and eventually we pulled something very similar to this out of it."

NA: "The biggest thing about being a modern company is using modern technology. So we were sitting there, vision boarding and trying to say what we want. We have pictures and stuff and it's just like, 'Okay, what is really good at taking in data and giving us more data to work with?'"

What's your story?

NA: "Actually, we went to preschool together."

MF: "We did. Serendipity."

NA: "Yeah, so funny, and then we were apart for awhile. No elementary school, middle school but we went to the same high school."

MF: "I guess we re-met in high school and we got a lot closer and then going to college after that we still stayed close. Then we came up with a brilliant idea, if I do say so myself. Brilliant idea called Grazeon."

Being in college is a pretty chaotic time to start a business. Why did you start Grazeon now?

MF: "It is just something that is super awesome, and it interests me. Business itself interests me and so when the opportunity presented itself, it was something I just could not pass up, even with the stuff I had going on."

NA: "Going into college for computer science, there has always been an itch that I really want to scratch that I do not get to. It's very formal, and I think entrepreneurialism is big and you get to expand and get to think outside of the box. "