Chomps Takes a Bite Out of Meat Snacks

Chomps' Story, from Rashid Ali, CEO and co-founder of Chomps

I co-founded Chomps alongside my business partner, Pete Maldonado, in 2012. This all started when we met at a poker game years ago. Pete mentioned he was starting a company and we quickly realized our complementary strengths — Pete’s entrepreneurial drive paired with my background in finance and operations — made for a strong partnership. We launched Chomps as a small startup, selling meat sticks directly to customers through Facebook ads from Pete’s apartment. We turned a profit within the first 30 days, and we’ve been growing ever since.

How does Chomps’ product stand out?

We’ve always focused on a great tasting snack that uses high-quality, real ingredients. Our meat sticks are made with high-quality, thoughtfully-sourced, grass-fed and grass-finished beef and venison and antibiotic-free turkey — all with no sugar, hormones or artificial preservatives.

What were some of the early challenges for Chomps?

Our original idea was a mail-order business called Logic Meat Locker, focused on delivering high-quality, grass-fed frozen meat. We launched in 2012 but quickly ran into a major hurdle — shipping frozen meat at a small scale was prohibitively expensive and logistically complex. While exploring our next move, we noticed our co-packer was also producing meat sticks, which sparked a new idea: What if we created a shelf-stable, better-quality version of the meat snacks we grew up eating? That insight led to a major pivot, and Chomps was born.

What's a recent challenge the company successfully solved?

Keeping up with demand is one of the biggest hurdles — and as the fastest growing snack brand in the U.S., we’re continuously looking for ways to tackle this. In order to meet demand, we recently opened a new manufacturing facility in Mexico, Mo., in partnership with Western Smokehouse Partners. This opening, along with six other facilities across the country, will help double Chomps’ production by 2026.

What keeps you up at night today, and how are you trying to position the company to weather those challenges?

As the company has grown, we’ve been very intentional with the team we’ve built around us, starting small and gradually hiring folks. Especially as we scale and add more employees, it’s really important to me that Chomps maintains an exceptional, people-first culture.

What's the best advice you can give other food & beverage entrepreneurs?

Be resilient and relentless. Pete and I both come from immigrant families, and that upbringing instilled in us a deep sense of grit, resourcefulness and drive. We learned early on to stay curious, work hard and keep moving forward — even when
the path wasn’t clear.