Brian Lai is the Founder of The Only Bean. The Only Bean is a company based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that is on a mission to unlock the potential of beans through innovative food products that are healthy, delicious, and sustainable. Brian has been in the consumer goods industry since 2015. Before starting The Only Bean, he founded a brand called BOCHA that created better-tasting coffee and tea using innovative and traditional brewing methods worldwide.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Brian Lai talks about his company and products
- How Brian chose their bean snack flavors of sea salt, Sriracha, and buffalo
- Why The Only Bean?
In this episode…
Ever had bean-based snacks? What about bean pasta? It’s an innovation from the lab of a food scientist to the mouths of vegans, people with gluten intolerances, and everyone who loves to enjoy healthy pasta made 100% from beans. A terrific product, right?
In this short episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast with Dr. Jeremy Weisz, you’ll hear from The Only Bean Founder, Brian Lai, about their keto-friendly, gluten-free, vegan, bean-based super snacks and products. Stay tuned!
Resources mentioned in this episode
Sponsor for this episode
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Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…
Episode Transcript
Jeremy Weisz 0:19
Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, I am the founder and host of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. And this is a special episode. I am actually interviewing founders and CEOs live at the Sweets and Snacks Show. And so check it out. We have some amazing companies featured check this episode out and before I get to that this episode is brought to you by Rise25 at Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships. How do we do that? We help you run your podcast we are an easy button for an organization or business to launch and run your podcast I’ve been podcasting for over a decade now. You know for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way to do that than to profile the people in the companies I most admire, feature them on my podcast and shout from the rooftops so what they’re working on and what they’re doing. So if you’ve thought about starting a podcast you should if you have questions, you can go to rise25.com or email [email protected] to learn more. Now check out today’s episode, live from the Sweets and Snacks show.
Jeremy Weisz here We’re live from the Sweets and Snacks show. I’m here with Brian of The Only Bean and Brian talk about your company and some of the products.
Brian Lai 2:02
Yeah, so we started our company about four years ago. We’re based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And we call ourselves The Only Bean because we’re a bean based food company. So we focus on using beans as our core ingredients to create innovative food products. Our first line of products was actually pasta made 100% from beans. And then our what we’re showcasing today is our line of snacks. We have crunchy roasted edamame beans. They’re available in sea salt, Siracha and buffalo. We launched this on Amazon about a year ago. So we’re actually a best seller on Amazon. And then today what we’re trying to do is grow into retail stores and reach out to distributors and brokers and things like that.
Jeremy Weisz 2:41
So how did you choose these flavors?
Brian Lai 2:44
So we actually sea salts was an obvious flavor to start off with. And then we kind of did research on online to look at keywords and see what’s trending and what flavors people are looking for. And then we also had to balance that out with what actually goes well with an edamame bean. And surprisingly I mean Sriracha and sea salts was obvious, but Buffalo was a surprise to us, that actually tasted really good. And then we are working on a few new flavors as well. Wasabi, soy sauce will be one of those.
