Del Trio: Fiber-rich smoothie bowls that are good for your gut.
- KLS
- Feb 28
- 9 min read
For the 163rd feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Del Trio and Co-Founder, Javier Villareal. Del Trio is a family-owned business that manufactures non-dairy and fiber rich smoothie bowls. Their mission is to improve America's gut health through fiber-rich products. They envision a future in which smoothie bowls take an important part of the refrigerated set as a delicious and spoonable breakfast option.
"Together Talks" feature # 163: Del Trio presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
Can you reflect on a goal you set, achieved, and how it made you feel? Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business? How have you dealt with being the face of the company?
How have you grown due to becoming an entrepreneur? What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most? Share a decision that you made that was detrimental? What is your why?
Story of how it was created?
The name of the company is Del Trio because I co-founded it with my two brothers. One of them is my twin and then my younger brother. We all operate the company and we're the leadership team within the company. It all started a couple of years ago. We've all had, since we were young, digestive issues. Nothing major, but we've always had bloating, stomach pains and stuff like that. A couple of years ago, I went to the doctor and after he performed an endoscopy, he asked me about my fiber intake. That's when it got me to think and realize: I had been so focused on consuming protein that I had completely neglected fiber. Once I started incorporating fiber in my diet, all these problems that I had just started fading away. After I started doing some research, I realized that this is a very common situation in the United States. In fact, most Americans are consuming twice the amount of protein that is suggested by the FDA, and they're only consuming half the fiber.
When we went to the shelves and we started analyzing the fiber options that consumers had at their disposal, we realized that the shelves are infested with protein options, but there's really no fiber options. Especially in the dairy section where protein is the main focus for all brands. That was a pivotal moment for us in which we decided that we were going to solve this situation. We were determined to offer consumers healthy and fiber rich options that would support gut health while maintaining the consumption experience of a yogurt. That's how our products were born.
The smoothie bowls themselves are sort of like yogurt in the sense that they are a spoonable and thick semi-liquid, but they have a different texture because of the nature of the main ingredient which is fruit instead of milk. We actually built a super parallel experience in the sense that yogurt offers high protein while we offer high fiber and yogurt offers probiotics while we offer prebiotics. Probiotics are the bacteria that live in your gut and prebiotics are the food that those bacteria consume. In a sense, they both support health but the approach is slightly different. Their approach is to “populate your microbiome with good bacteria” and we “feed those bacteria so that they can reproduce.” So they actually complement each other very well.
What separates you from your competition?
This is a refrigerated product. There really isn't anything else in the market in the refrigerator section. If you go to the frozen section, you will see other smoothie bowl options that are not ready to be consumed immediately, they contain all sorts of undesirable ingredients like sweeteners, stabilizers and flavors, and they have added sugars. When we decided to develop these products, we knew we wanted to create something that didn’t require preparation or thawing and we knew we wanted to offer something with a super clean ingredient deck. In other words, something practical and super healthy. Because of this, we only use real fruits and ingredients that we process from scratch. We literally peel bananas, mangoes and all the ingredients that we use. This yields an extremely fresh result unlike anything else in the market.
Additionally, because we’re pioneering a new line, we often compare ourselves against plant-based yogurts even though we are a great option for both dairy and non-dairy consumers. So, if you compare our nutritional panel vs the yogurt alternative options, you will see that we're better off in most of the parameters. We have more protein, more fiber, zero added sugars and less saturated fats than most options out there. As a consequence, our smoothie bowls are designed to drive incremental sales in the yogurt set instead of just cannibalizing market share from other competitors.
What have been the biggest challenges?
The entrepreneurial journey is just filled with a lot of challenges. Fortunately for us, getting our product on shelves has been easier than I was expecting. However, the real challenge in this industry is to get consumers to try it and integrate it into their weekly basket. Especially for a new brand that is only getting started and that is pioneering a new category. So, right now we’re doubling down on driving awareness and particularly driving in-store trial. That's something that I'm dealing with literally every day and that we have to get very creative with in order to have the largest impact while being efficient with our limited budget. That's our top priority and it’s what I focus 90% of my time on right now.
Can you reflect on a goal you set, achieved, and how it made you feel?
In this industry you need to sell 3 times before a single penny flows in your direction. You need to sell your products to supermarkets, distributors and then consumers, which is super slow and capital intensive. That was my biggest concern when going into the project because we set-out to get into at least 200 doors within the first 6 months. Fortunately we were able to achieve that within the first couple of months and it was something that really motivated the whole team because we overcame the first hurdle fairly quickly, which in a sense was a validation that buyers were buying into our vision of helping Americans improve their digestive health.
Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
Our goal for 2025 is to reach at least 1,000 doors and to have velocity metrics that prove that our products can outperform other products on the shelf. It is top priority for us to build that story with data because it will help us scale significantly faster, which is why generating awareness and trial is key for us at this stage.
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business?
The three of us have always had that entrepreneurial spirit. That that's been something that we envisioned for ourselves. However, when you’re building a brand that appeals directly to consumers, the scale and amount of capital that is required can be overwhelming and it doesn’t leave room for mistakes. Especially because you might be selling millions of dollars and still find yourself burning cash and struggling to raise money to continue advancing your mission. This is something that concerned me before starting and still continues to concern me.
How have you dealt with being the face of the company?
We're brothers and there's a lot of trust between us. However, we’ve also had to learn to work as a team. Before we even started, we sat down and literally asked ourselves whether we were going to be business owners first or family first. For us, family is and always will be first and that’s what we concluded. So, we might have a tough day at the office, but we know that once we set foot outside of the office, we’re family first and we leave any resentment or disagreements back at the office. It has certainly been a very interesting journey but I am convinced that I couldn’t have asked for a better team and a better face for the company.
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?
I think we all feel special. We feel like we're going to be the exception to the rule and that we’ll be super successful right off the bat. However, being an entrepreneur is way harder than it looks and, when you launch a company, you need to be aware of the fact that there's going to be a lot of pain. A lot of pain for a long time and you need to be willing to postpone gratification. That's the main thing. If you want quick results, then entrepreneurship is not the way to go about it, because everybody in the company goes before you. Everybody's going to be receiving their paycheck in the organization and you will have to cover everybody else’s needs before yours, which means that you need to be willing to take that responsibility and wait to get rewarded.
How have you grown due to becoming an entrepreneur?
I've evolved completely. I'm definitely not the same person I was when we decided to start a company. I have become significantly more objective and less emotional. I believe that it’s the ideal way to operate a business because emotions really get in the way. If you get emotional, that alters your vision and it doesn't necessarily help you make the best decisions.
Additionally, when you're an entrepreneur, you need to wear a lot of different hats. From accounting to procurement, production, sales, marketing, etc. There's so many things that encompass being an entrepreneur and you obviously can't have specialists in every field, especially in the beginning. That requires you to learn a little bit about each one of those disciplines, which is really tough. It forces you to be self-aware and it helps you be objective about what you're good at and what you're not good at. Then the goal is to double down on what you're actually good at. Being an entrepreneur has definitely given me a really wide vision and it has introduced me to things I never thought I would have gotten involved with.
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?
The leadership part is something that is really fulfilling for me. I love being a leader to the team and spearheading the resolution of tough problems that no one in the organization has the experience to solve. We always use the analogy with the video game, Age of Empires, in which there are parts of the world in which you’re living that are completely blurred out and as a leader you’re responsible for finding what they hold and how to find them. As a leader, you have to discover those places on your own without really having anybody to guide you. That's something that I really enjoy and that I really look forward to dealing with.
Share a decision that you made that was detrimental?
We are from Mexico and, in the beginning, we thought about trying to address both the U.S. market and the Mexican market. We quickly realized that we need to be laser focused, especially in a market like the United States, where everything is so expensive. If you try to cover two markets at the same time, you're not going to be successful in either of them. You need to be laser focused, not only in terms of mind share, but also in terms of budget. That's a strategy we toyed with but ultimately decided against.
What is your why?
From a personal perspective, I go back to my kids because my family is everything to me. I know I speak for my brothers as well when I say that family is something that really drives us and helps us keep moving forward.
From a business standpoint, we have a very clear mission to help others that are facing the same gut issues we did. We really want to impact society in a positive way, so making convenient and healthy food more accessible to consumers around the country can certainly be a way to do that. Especially now that people are a lot more aware of the impact that fiber has on their gut and overall health.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
Seeing your product on the shelf is something very special. Very, very special. I always talk about going to a grocery store and seeing all the products that are sitting there, you're not really seeing a product. Instead you're seeing a realized entrepreneurial journey that was filled with pain and resilience. A whole story of a founder that had to go through so many things in order to put that product on the shelf. When we saw ours for the first time, it was a really, really special moment that I know the three of us are going to never forget.
Piece of Advice
When I have conversations with friends or family members about starting a company, the first thing I tell them is to make sure they have found a real problem and an outstanding solution. If you only have an okay solution that is as good as the other options in the market, don’t go for it because you will simply be pouring your money into a cash burning hole that will struggle to scale and that will ultimately burn you out. If you're going to take the leap and become an entrepreneur, spend a good amount of time and resources into the research and development phase because that piece of value that you’re developing needs to be an outstanding solution to a common problem if you want it to really scale enough to become a business. So make sure you have something truly valuable and try to get objective metrics that back-up your hypothesis to minimize risk.
In Closing
KLS wants to thank Del Trio and Co-Founder, Javier Villareal for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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