Chicago based Kooshy Croutons puts a new spin on a classic salad topping
CHICAGO (CBS) -- It's Foodie Friday, and we're taking a look at two brothers who turned their love for bread and reinvented the way people think of croutons.
When brothers John and Matt Wachsman, decided to quit their jobs to go into business together, starting with a crouton revitalization project just made sense.
Matt: "It's a stale category."
John: "We are the two biggest crouton evangelists out there in the country probably right now."
John: "So every category has evolved, and for some reason, croutons just hadn't."
Matt: "We wanted to do something we're passionate about, and there's really nothing we love more as an entire family than bread."
So, breaking bread was the best way to break into the industry.
John: "So that's what sort of led us to eventually stumble upon croutons."
The two had backgrounds in start-ups and food marketing but not production.
John: "Tremendous food consumption, but nothing to do with production."
They figured it out the good old-fashioned way.
Matt: "We just started baking a bunch of sourdough bread."
John: "We wound up having to make it ourselves for like over a year, you know, cutting all the bread, cleaning all the baking trays. like it was crazy difficult."
Matt: "Hours and hours, I can't tell you how much sourdough we ate."
It all started from humble beginnings in a local small business incubator.
John: "We were able to cobble together a bunch of friends of friends of friends to help us make it."
Kooshy Croutons quickly made their way onto the shelves of major retailers.
John: "One of the first customers we got was Mariano's."
Matt: "We could not make enough product-cutting croutons by hand for 44 stores, so they were nice enough to let us start in five."
John: "We just needed to figure out a way to scale our production. Now we work with the manufacturer in the Chicago area that helps us produce it in large quantities so that we can now service about 4,000 stores across the country."
Kooshy's popularity is rooted in a simple approach.
Matt: "Everyone loves bread. And as long as it's a quality product, there's no reason to feel bad about eating it."
It's easy to feel good with Kooshy, from their pop-y colors, little bread mascot, an array of unique flavors, and unforgettable name.
John: "We were going in there as a disrupter, we could have called it like Matt's Organic Crouton or something like that, but that's not really us. Bread is joy!"
