Pinole Blue is a food product company that offers tortillas, mixes and snacks made from organic blue corn. This is an interview I did with one of the company’s cofounders. Kyle Offutt, in July 2020 as I saw their growth on TikTok skyrocket to 60,000 followers in just two months. Since then, Pinole Blue’s TikTok following has more than doubled (138K as of October 2020) with their videos having nearly 2 million likes and millions of views.
According to Kyle’s answers in the interview below, their TikTok presence has had a direct impact on their business, with surges of orders on their ecommerce store following every popular TikTok video they post, resulting in steady revenue and a loyal customer base.
I’ve highlighted some of the most important questions and blurbs from our interview in bold below.
Julee:
What made you guys join TikTok?
Kyle:
It was a new platform that was growing over the pandemic. And I had seen that Chipotle was doing really well on it. They were one of the only food companies or really businesses that I saw on it, but I saw that they were doing a lot of unique and creative stuff, and they were getting a lot of engagement on it. So, we decided to test it out.
And it's a video platform and I've always been a huge video person. That's what I like doing is video content. And I used to have a Vine way back in the day and it reminds me of if Vine were to have been updated over several years, a platform similar to that with a lot of storytelling that was done on the platform and lots of trends.
I had previously created a TikTok account for myself and started to experiment on it and make different types of creative content for art and those types of things. I ended up getting a following of 20,000 on my personal account pretty quickly so I knew that it was pretty easy to grow if you did the right things.
Julee:
How long were you on TikTok before you created the account for Pinole Blue?
Kyle:
Probably about a month or so. So I had about a month of testing different things on my personal account.
Julee:
Would you say COVID was one of the reasons why you created the business account? Or was it because you had already been testing it and you saw the organic potential on there?
Kyle:
It was a little bit of both.
Julee:
With COVID, was it because you had more time to spend on there and that's what prompted you or did you feel like engagement was growing due to COVID?
Kyle:
Engagement was definitely starting to grow on there. I didn't have any like extra time, probably had less time when COVID started happening because we ended up making a shift towards doing a lot of local things and making food to-go meals. There was a big shortage of Maseca, which is what 90% of the tortillas around the US are made with and there was no more supply of that – a lot of tortilla factories weren't able to operate, and even right now they’re probably lower capacity than normal. So our demand took over a lot because our tortillas have all-natural ingredients – like corn, water and lime – we were some of the only tortilla factories locally that were able to produce any type of tortilla.
Julee:
I see. Is that ingredient short right now because the factories aren't running or is there a supply chain issue?
Kyle:
Yeah, I think it’s because the factories aren’t running.
Julee:
That's awesome that you found time for it even though business was already picking up. When you join, did you have a specific goal or strategy in mind?
Kyle:
Not too much. I just knew that we wanted to continue to tell our story. Our biggest battles have always been education. For the tortillas, it's pretty straightforward, but for other stuff like pinole and the tribe, a lot of it is pretty unknown. Even with our biggest target markets being Hispanic, a lot of Hispanics, since it's just a certain region in Mexico, even Hispanics don't always know everything about this particular indigenous culture. So education and storytelling has always been one of our hurdles that I think ended up becoming one of our biggest, like unique selling factors on the platform of TikTok.
Julee:
Right, because there's a social component to your company as well that many people don't know about.
Kyle:
Yeah, social and cultural. And there's just a good story behind it. A lot of people are now able to get a product that is something they normally only had in Mexico, or if they grew up in Mexico or when they visit their other family there. Now they can get a piece of what’s normally only made in Mexico.
Julee:
When you joined TikTok, did you see traction right away, or was it something that happened over time?
Kyle:
Yeah, our first video got over 400,000 views. So, we immediately got a following of almost 10,000 followers just from that first video. And I had seen a trend where people were telling their entrepreneurial or startup stories, like coffee shop owners or other people who owned businesses. And so we just made an account and followed that trend of telling our story.
I was following our account from my personal account. Then our friend Lisa from Telehue Food started doing a little bit of TikTok and was doing some food videos and she was following us. It just exploded from there. I think it just had all the right components and TikTok does a really good job at targeting. Their algorithm knows the perfect people and puts it in front of those people. So we just have a really good audience that our content kept resonating with as it grew.
Julee:
There are a lot of folks on TikTok that tell their story, but I feel like you guys do it in a pretty unique way – and that's probably why your posts gain so much traction and you’ve got that nice following. What do you think sets your content apart from other storytellers?
Kyle:
There are a lot of aspects to it. We're a bit younger and I think TikTok, at first skewed a little bit younger, and now I think everybody's on it because of COVID. And there's just been so many people starting to get on it. But at first, there was a pretty good Millennial and Generation Z based audience on it. So our content helped kids see that running a business is something that they can do, which made it a little bit relatable there.
Then you have Eddie (Pinole Blue’s Cofounder) and I who are from two completely different cultural backgrounds coming together – that's another unique aspect of it. He's got his skills and background and I've got mine and then we just try and show our process behind things which is completely unique. We show how we're different from everybody else, and we do a little bit of education with ‘Hey, this is how we're different and this is why we're doing things differently.’
We're also showing good, positive things in the time of COVID, which you're used to seeing how bad everything is, and you know, shed a little bit of hope and light and make good out of the situation. And then we try to show our personalities, entertain and be goofy as much as we can and I think that helps a lot, too.
Julee:
Do you think a big part of that is authenticity? For example – a lot of people see Facebook as kind of like a political platform now and then Instagram is like your curated life, and TikTok is as close as we get to the real authentic stuff nowadays. Do you think that that type of atmosphere on the platform and the type of audience is a big piece of why your content does so well because of that authenticity piece of it?
Kyle:
Yeah 100%. I really like TikTok because of that. I mean, I have some decent camera equipment and used to make a lot of videos and have cinematic stuff but with TikTok we've really just went with filming everything on an iPhone. It's not super professionally well done. It's very candid, it’s really authentic. Anybody can do it pretty easily. And it just shows that rawness and normalcy to it. So I think that definitely helps a lot.
We also try to show day-to-day things and we don't try to hide or be perfect. We show some of the struggle or the different things that we do on that. So I think yeah, definitely like that vulnerability and authenticity play a huge part in it.
We've done a lot of live streams and tried to share that story and found a lot of people connect with us and people really seem to understand us. I think making those vlog type things, it feels like they know us in a way and they're being friendly with us and we're able to chat with them over live streams and answer all their questions and share our story in so many different ways possible. So it's been really interesting when we do live streams, they ask very specific, detailed questions about each one of us, and they call us by name. It's a pretty wild experience. I think that connection and seeing a face behind the brand and not just a product, you're actually connecting with the people who are behind the scenes and you see the production. All those things just create a very strong solid base.
Julee:
I know the last time we connected you were pretty new on TikTok, your account was maybe two months old, but you were already gaining traction. And you had mentioned to me that it had impacted your business as well, which is interesting, because with a lot of social media marketing and content marketing, you always think of it as this slow burn, where you're going to create content for long periods of time regularly, and maybe, you know, a year down the line, you might see it impact your business. But it sounds like it's impacted your business almost immediately. Is that right?
Kyle:
Yeah, I mean, I think now we're just a little over two months and we've gotten over 60,000 followers so it definitely changed. It feels like overnight for us. We've had the business for around two or three years from the very start – idea to now, and we've been on the road creating content that entire time. But TikTok just happened to be the perfect timing and platform for us. It was a perfect storm of things. we were doing a lot of, like I said, local tortilla sales and doing the food and then we ended up getting so overwhelmed by orders from online, shipping all over the US, that we had to completely drop all of that and just focus on supply chain management and how we were going to ship out. You know, our stuff doesn't have preservatives so that was a big battle figuring out how we're going to get some of our products shipped in the heat of summer, insulated and frozen, so that they don't go bad. And so we've had a lot of learning to do in a very short amount of time.
Julee:
Do you attribute that growth to Tiktok? Do you have tracking methods for knowing that it came from TikTok or was it that once you started your account, a big bump came in revenue?
Kyle:
Yeah, every time that we had a big video – we've had a few big videos that have went anywhere from 500,000 to I think our largest is 1.8 million views – we just get a huge surge of orders. And right now there's not really a tracking method that you can use because Shopify and TikTok, there's no way to integrate that there is with Instagram. I think it's just such a new platform that nobody knows how to, or nobody has made the software to implement to track ‘Hey, this is where it's from,’ but we can see that it’s a direct link click. And so I'm pretty sure that's where it comes from. And then we've also got our Instagram account attached to that. And then I'll notice you know, the following on our Instagram will get bigger when we have a large video from people that are following TikTok. And so people that are going through all of our media, you can intuitively track but it doesn't spell it out for you. But when you have a video that hits a million views, and then you see a surge of traffic, you can connect the two.
Julee:
I'm not sure if you're comfortable sharing this, but is there a certain percentage of growth that has happened that you found since you started your TikTok account. For example 10%, or whatever that may be in terms of your business revenue or business metric that is most important to you?
Kyle:
I'd say that we like hugely shifted to a lot of e-commerce. Our business just mainly shifted is how it happened. So, locally, you can do a lot, but you hit a cap and a limit, and you just do that every week. Versus with e-commerce and how buying behaviors are shifting, at least for now, some people are still going to the grocery stores and buying a lot. But it's been a battle for us to get on grocery store shelves. With the time that it takes to get approved and do all the negotiation with the buyers and the margins that they take out, it's just a very long and hard process. But now a lot of buyers are switching to things like HelloFresh, for instance. There's a ton of people that have switched to something like that, where they just have food delivered to them, or a lot of people are doing food delivery now. And so for somebody to go on and buy food products online, used to be really hard and now it's just kind of become the norm. If things stay that way and buying behaviors stay like that then I think it's just a whole new look at ecommerce with food brands where that really wasn't a thing before. So now we're just much more national than what we were before. we had been you know featured on things like Bon Appetit and and Midwest Living which, you know, would spike us for a while when those articles would come out and then we'd have those return customers but this has been something that's helped us really connect to a lot of different subgroups and places and not have to spend a ton with targeted advertising to get there.
Julee:
Right, because the organic reach is so good on TikTok. So since there's still a lot of reluctance around TikTok and many businesses still aren’t on there, which is a good thing in terms of our opportunities, but what would you say to those who say TikTok is too young and they can't sell their products on there. Obviously you've proven that's not true because you have been able to sell and get those bumps through TikTok. Why do you think that is? Is it because, like you mentioned, there's an older audience joining TikTok now, or do you feel like it's because the younger audience is influencing their parents buying behaviors? What are your thoughts on that?
Kyle:
Yeah, if you go on TikTok and you spend a little bit of time and go through some rabbit holes, there is an audience and a niche for everything. I mean, it is crazy how many subgroups and things like that are on TikTok. I think unless you're on the platform, you just really don't see it. Because I’ve told tons of businesses and other creators around here about it and yeah, everybody has the same response, “I'm too old for it,” or “it's just a younger audience, nobody’s going to buy from it.” I make the suggestion and if others don't want to follow, it's more on them. For us, we're just going to try and lead by example and keep going on with it.
And because there's not a lot of businesses on it, it is more advantageous to us because it doesn't saturate the market at all. So I used to do a lot of influencer stuff back in 2014 through 2016. We were some of the first to really monetize stuff on Instagram and Twitter. So I had an e-commerce store on there before and it was the same thing when we first started there, too. It was very easy to get sales and lots of organic reach. And as time went on and as it became more normal and more people started getting on the platform, it just becomes harder and harder and more expensive. So, for me, I haven't really advertised it too much just because it is so advantageous to be one of the first businesses on there. When you're ahead of the curve, you just get so many exponential results. We're just trying to get everything that we can out of it at the time. I think it will probably be like everything else. As soon as it becomes normalized and more people are on there, it'll just become a norm.
People are hesitant, you know. If you're doing something and it's working decently for you, then you're probably gonna stay on what you're doing. For us, we're always used to being dynamic and trying out new things so this fits with our culture.
Julee:
I think this is the evolution of social media, right? This has happened on nearly every single app. Like there was a time when Facebook was for young people. And then Instagram and Snapchat. One of the main concerns around TikTok is that it might go away tomorrow, like vine went away and like various apps go away. Do you feel like your time and effort on TikTok would still be worth it if say tomorrow the app is shut down? For example, right now they're talking about banning it in the US like, if it went away tomorrow, would you feel like your investment in TikTok was still worthwhile?
Kyle:
Yeah, 100%. We've got a lot of returning customers now that they're coming, our revenue has been pretty steady ever since we started on TikTok. I think like if you have a solid strategy in social media, you should always be conscious that any platform that you don't own could go away tomorrow. The only thing you own is your website. So I think you've always got to be ready for that to happen. And like I said, when I did a lot of influencer marketing in the past, and I had large pages, we have that happen where our pages would get banned, or the platform just didn't like working with influencers since they weren't making money. Sometimes they would make things really difficult and algorithms would change and your traffic would go way down. You know, just like Facebook, for you to reach your entire audience that you have, you can't do it organically anymore, you've got to have some paid ads to reach everyone. So I think in the back of your head, you should always be prepared to not have that platform anymore and be ready for it to disappear the next day. So you have to try your best to transfer your audience to as many different places as you can. Now, I don't think you should spread yourself too thin and be on everything, but if you pick a couple platforms that you're really good at and you get people on your email list and you get them coming to your website and you've got that good relationship with them, then you'll you'll probably be fine. We probably wouldn't experience as much growth but we try to have a plan, just like with COVID, that if the worst case scenario happens, what we would do.
Julee:
It sounds like you're not attached to TikTok per se, you're pretty app agnostic. It's more about where the attention is and what's working?
Kyle:
Yeah, I would love for TikTok to stay around. But we've just learned from platforms like Vine and algorithm changes that happen that things really can change overnight, especially withTikTok and the controversy and the government wanting to ban it and the potential data that they might be collecting. Beyond that, I think you have another big, big issue with them, which is the music and the sounds that they use. I think they've been fighting legal battles with a lot of the big copyright companies for actually using those. I think it's something that makes that platform great that you are able to use these mainstream songs that are really catchy and that everybody knows, in videos, which you just can't do with any other platform. But it seems to also be getting them in trouble. It's kind of a catch 22 because I feel like TikTok is really what is making the Top 100 Charts right now. This platform is making a lot of independent artists huge overnight, so maybe that's something that they don't like. Even with big songs, I feel like it's really propelling them and even really large artists are making songs just for the platform. So I think it shows how powerful it is. There are a couple hurdles that we will have to see what happens. We’re just keeping an eye on it day by day and trying to make the most out of it while we have it.
Julee:
So I know you mentioned that you've given advice to other business owners about TikTok or just telling them, in general, your experience on it. What is one piece of advice that you generally give, or if you can give one piece of advice to small business owners, or any business owner or marketer in general about TikTok, what would that piece of advice be?
Kyle:
It's really the same as all the other pieces. It's about storytelling and really trying to make a connection with people, being authentic, and then showing people how to use your product. You [the business owner] know the stuff inside it out and how it works. But something that's obvious to you isn't always obvious to other people. So just making simple recipe videos. showing how to use it in your everyday life is extremely powerful, too. Those are like the biggest components that we do is just storytelling, being as personal as possible, and just showing people how to use our stuff and have fun with it and make things.
Julee:
You mentioned there were few pieces of content for you that really took off, was there some commonality between those or a trend that you're seeing?
Kyle:
TikTok is really weird, things kind of blow up out of nowhere. You just have to make content. From what I've seen, sometimes following trends and using those sounds are really good. Just trying to make stuff that's unique and that people haven't seen before – those are both related. Like use a trend but be unique in some type of way. So you can’t completely copy, but you can use something that's popular and twist it in your own version. I think those are our largest videos.
Julee:
That makes sense – offer some sort of unique value on top of an existing trend.
Kyle:
Yeah, you just have to have fun with it and try and act like a creator. A lot of people are going at it from a business angle and I think if you go at it almost like we have where it's a hybrid of a business and as if we're like another YouTuber or content creator, then you can get pretty good results. You can't just talk about how awesome you are, you've got to have some relation in there. It's a social platform like all the other ones so you can’t just showcase you all the time.
Julee:
I think TikTokers are a bit more alert when it comes to companies being too salesy or really anyone being too salesy. Have you gotten that experience from the platform where it just feels like, the more produced or the more business-y your content is, the less engagement you get?
Kyle:
Yeah, for sure. People that are younger, they're just so used to seeing things like that. You have to be a lot more creative with the way that you connect with people.
Julee:
So what's next for you on TikTok or otherwise in terms of marketing moving forward? Do you have specific plans in mind or are you just gonna continue doing what you're doing?
Kyle:
Pretty much, we're just going to try and make as much content as we can. And we always try to reach out to influencers to make strategic partnerships with them, for people who are going to be the right fit. It also gives us an advantage because there's some influencers that have worked with us in the past that probably aren't on the platform. So it gives us a little bit of a leg up where we can offer something that's mutually beneficial. Like if they helped us create some content, we can help drive traffic their way. We can pay them back for help that they've given us in the past when they were the ones with the larger audience and were advocating for us, now we can kind of flip that around and give them some exposure.
Want to learn more about TikTok? Here are some other pieces we’ve written about the platform:
Julee Ho Media is a boutique photography company specializing in CPG, food and beverage brands. Click here to get a quote and discover how we can help elevate your brand.
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