Forij - Functional Granola that Delivers Serious Brain Power
The Story of a Brand Show
Ramon Vela
4.9 • 147 Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2023
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode is brought to you by Sendlane.
Parker says, "we're really focused on cognitive health. Some of these mushrooms can have really incredible, really impressive medicinal value for basically maintaining really clean and positive cognitive health, but also helping improve cognitive health. So whether it is memory or mental energy like processing capability. On a fundamental level, they're really helping your central nervous system, primarily in your brain, to prune and also grow your neurons. So it's almost acting as like neural food."
Today, we interview Parker Olsen, Founder of Forij. Forij is loaded with brain nutrients, their functional granola delivers serious brain power. And their taste is award-winning; all without any of the high sugar or fake ingredients.
We discussed:
* What he's grateful for
* Revisiting Parker's personal why and what drives him
* Experiencing "ego death" and learning that the "obstacle is truly the way"
* Challenges of the brand including margin erosion, less capital expenditures, debt capital, economies of scale, and making a pivot
* A breakdown of the new product - functional granola bars and their ingredients & flavors
* His blog and the hundreds of articles on mushroom, brain health, and all the other benefits
* And so much more…
Join Ramon Vela and Parker Olsen as we break down the inside story of Forij on The Story of a Brand.
For more on Forij, visit: https://www.forij.co/
Subscribe and listen to the podcast on all major apps. Simply search for "The Story of a Brand" on your favorite podcast player.
*
This episode is brought to you by Sendlane.
Here's the deal: I have a gift for you from our primary sponsor — Sendlane. They're giving away their online course eCommerce Academy - Email & SMS Marketing!
This course gives you the step-by-step playbook to drive more revenue and retention with email & SMS. This is typically a $500 package, but for our listeners, it's entirely FREE when you get started with your FREE 14-day trial of Sendlane.
When you do, chat with their support team and let them know you're one of our listeners to get full access to hours of course content that will help you make email marketing your #1 growth engine.
Visit https://storybrandgift.com to get the details, sign up for a free trial and get your gift!
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Last year, I was living out of a pop-up camper van for a year, driving around the U.S. |
| 0:03.6 | And opening up grocery stores. |
| 0:05.4 | And during that, that was a really challenging time for me. |
| 0:08.4 | And I feel like I almost went through what I would define as like ego death, right? |
| 0:13.0 | Like, it was almost this like coming of, wow, if everything hits the fan, like, |
| 0:17.9 | porridge goes under and I don't have a job or something. I could probably move back home with my parents and I would still have my health and wisdom. |
| 0:24.6 | And it made me feel grateful for anything and everything in a sense. |
| 0:28.6 | And I think my general outlook on life and I work at this, |
| 0:32.6 | this isn't just something that comes really naturally, |
| 0:34.6 | but is something that was coined as like the obstacle is the way, |
| 0:39.1 | where I really like the idea that any and every single obstacle and challenge can really be an |
| 0:45.8 | opportunity. Yeah, there's tons of challenges going on right now just to list a few. We have an |
| 0:50.8 | existing product line, which is a granola concept. And over the past 12 months, |
| 0:54.6 | like our margin structure has eroded significantly, right? It's not really a sustainable product |
| 0:59.7 | anymore. And in part of launching this new product was seeing that happening and saying, |
| 1:04.4 | okay, this isn't it. We cannot make this margin structure work as it's eroding with our current |
| 1:10.3 | partners. And we did some searching around. |
| 1:12.1 | And I'm not sure we're going to kill the product line. |
| 1:14.6 | But part of why we launch our new product line was because we needed something with a lot stronger margins. |
| 1:21.5 | And I love our new products. |
| 1:22.6 | I think they're awesome. |
| 1:23.3 | To me, it's great. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ramon Vela, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Ramon Vela and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.