Abraham Kamarck, True Made Foods

What’s the inspiration behind True Made Foods?

I always hated ketchup. It’s basically red corn syrup. As a father of four, I had dreams of my kids never eating ketchup. That dream did not last long. I got tired of fighting battles over ketchup at the dinner table and in restaurants, so I decided to win the war and make a better ketchup. Someone gave me the idea of hiding veggies in ketchup and it struck me that the veggies could also replace the added sugars! I had grown up being taught by my Sicilian mom to cook pasta sauces using carrots as the natural sweetener that balanced the acidity of the tomatoes. 

The Kamarck family

My mom taught me that sugar wasn’t necessary, it was a ”lazy hack.” I thought that if it worked for pasta sauces, it might work for ketchup too. It did, and True Made Foods was born. 

Refining ideal flavors must be a challenge. What's the taste-testing process like? 

It is challenging, because we don’t have an army of quality assurance people. Instead we rely on friends and families and experts, like Ed & Ryan Mitchell. For ketchup flavor, I lean heavily on my kids and their friends. My kids have attuned ketchup taste buds and can really tell when something tastes different than what they are used to, which is so important when creating ketchup. Kids have double the taste buds that adults do and children are born preferring sweet flavors and being more sensitive to bitterness. Lastly, kids are the ultimate honest arbiters, they will not hesitate to tell me if they don’t like something.

For our barbecue sauces, usually I do a round of taste tests to make sure the flavors are in the ballpark, and then I send the samples to Ed & Ryan for the final consensus. The Mitchells have over 100 years of combined experience working with and manipulating barbecue flavors and come from a family of pitmasters, so their feedback is invaluable.  

How did your brand become the official ketchup of two baseball teams?

We always dreamt of getting our products into stadiums. As a parent, I wanted to make going to a ballgame less of a stressful experience and it makes me breathe easier when the kids get the same ballpark hot dog and fries experience without all the corn syrup. 

In late 2019, out of the blue, the Red Sox front office contacted us first. They really liked the idea and the brand, and they crafted a deal for us that was hard to turn-down. Then when the Red Sox deal was announced in 2020, ballparks and arenas all over the country started contacting us. It turns out that everyone hates working with Heinz. We decided to work with the Nationals, because they were local, but once we have the capital and a bigger team, we will easily be able to start expanding. 

How did you meet your pitmaster? How do you work together? 

Barbecue was on my list of foods to disrupt, but I knew I couldn’t do it alone. I love barbecue, but I am no pitmaster, and I didn’t want to be another faux barbecue brand. I started doing research and Ed Mitchell’s name kept coming up. I reached out to Ed, and got him and his son, Ryan, on the phone in 2017 and we just clicked. Pitmasters Ed and Ryan MitchellEverything I said about wanting to make barbecue healthier again by removing the sugar resonated with them. Ed had just been diagnosed as pre-diabetic and was taking a hard look at his diet and how much sugar had crept into barbecue recipes over the years. Ed & Ryan’s ethos was returning barbecue to its roots and preserving the legacy, tradition, and culture of their family. As a cherry on top, Ed was also a fellow veteran, having served in Vietnam. 

On the surface, it'd look like Southern barbecue and old-school Sicilian cooking wouldn't have much in common. How have you bridged that gap, or is there less of one than we'd think? 

There is one common thread in all modern American cuisines, no matter the origin, copious amounts of sugar have been added to all these recipes. If you go back a few generations, pre-WWII, sugar was an expensive luxury and used sparingly. Vegetables grown in the garden, however, were cheap and used abundantly. 

In Sicily, my dirt-poor ancestors did not have access to sugar, but they could grow carrots in their garden. A hundred years ago, African-Americans in the South were also not given access to sugar. Sugar was a luxury reserved for the rich to use in their tea. Southern cuisine, especially barbecue, was developed by African-Americans being creative with cheap, “throw-away” ingredients. Sugar was not one of those ingredients. In the last half century, sugar crept into every Americanized cuisine. Recipes that never used sugar, like pasta sauce, now add sugar by the tablespoon. True Made Foods’ mission is to return all our cooking to its roots. 

What effect has your Naval service had on the way you operate? 

As a Naval Aviator and helicopter pilot, I learned two important lessons. We had to be ready for multiple missions and we had to know everything about the aircraft. We were built to be jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none. As a founder, I have to be intimately familiar with every aspect of my business, without always running that part of the business myself. Kamarck in the NavyNaval Aviators are also trained early on to quickly prioritize actions when everything is going to hell all around you. 

A startup is like an aircraft that is constantly having one emergency after another. To survive in a time and resource restricted environment, you have to quickly prioritize and execute. As we were taught in flight school - Aviate, Navigate and Communicate. The most important first step is to always keep the aircraft in the air.

Tell us about some ideal pairings with your condiments and favorite foods!

I have a weakness for fried foods, and I am obsessed with fried pickles. I love our new line of sauces because they make fried foods so much better and so much healthier as well!  I mainly eat fried foods that I cook myself, so I can use healthier breading and oils, e.g. chickpea flour and avocado oil. For fried chicken, our new Memphis-style BBQ Sauce or our Honey Mustard make an incredible pairing. I love fried fish and I always marinate the fish in our Eastern Carolina Vinegar BBQ Sauce and eat it with our Cayenne Hot Sauce. Fried veggies from hand cut French fries to fried cauliflower and Brussel sprouts are amazing with our veggie ketchup. It creates that perfect balance of sweet and salty without going overboard. 

How do you handle risk and competition?

My approach to handling risk in my company, brings me back to the main lessons I learned as a Naval Aviator. I was trained to prioritize in a high information environment and focus on keeping the aircraft in the air - staying alive. I take the same approach to running True Made Foods. This approach allows me to tighten risk controls and stay focused on the most important parts of the company and let some things slide that are not as critical.

Food and beverage might be one of the most competitive industries in America. It takes a lot of money to launch a food brand, but these costs increase exponentially if your products and brand do not create a connection with the consumer. Our goal is to be the absolute, hands-down best product on the shelf in three categories - health, taste and authenticity.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced while launching your company?

The industry economics. Food is a volume business and the entire industry from production to distribution to grocery shelves is built around large volumes of products and huge companies. A startup, with smaller sales volumes, is inherently inefficient, and it is extremely challenging to get through that sales hump and start seeing economies of scale. The Kamarck Kids helping out

The good news is that making it through those difficult years has taught us to be incredibly efficient, creative and resilient!

Have you learned anything new or surprising about yourself through this process?

Absolutely! Every time I think my patience has been tested to the extreme, I’ll find a way to bounce back. My patience for people and results have been tested again and again, and every time I think we might be done, we come back stronger. 

Why did you decide to raise from the crowd via Republic?

We want True Made Foods to be something special to every customer and so it only makes sense to share our success with more of them. We hope we can have thousands of small investors on Republic who are all vested in helping us change the way America eats!

What’s your team culture like? 

We have a super small team, but we are all very close despite being all over the country. Our team culture is a natural extension of our personalities and commitment to the True Made Foods mission. The team in Raleigh, NC

First and foremost, we LOVE food. Half of our non-work conversations are around cooking, and we never travel as a team without trying to find the best local restaurants. Second, we are all so committed to improving our food system and getting sugar out of the American diet. Lastly though, we’re just scrappy and embrace our underdog status and the challenge ahead of us!

What is your superpower?

My superpower is nothing fancy, just the ability to keep going. I guess it is grit. We’ve faced so many set-backs and broken promises from previous investors, vendors, and partners, yet I keep waking up ready to fight for True Made Foods everyday.

What’s your kryptonite?

Binge watching Judd Apatow and or old Adam Sandler comedies. My wife wanting to stream a comedy or wanting to expose my kids (now that they’re getting old enough) to some of these classic comedies will kill all productivity I had planned for the night. 

Do you have any unusual routines or habits? 

This may not be unusual, but I make my kids’ breakfast every morning and it’s gotten to be my evening and morning routine, almost like my alone / quiet time. I prep the oatmeal and eggs the night before and wake up before everyone else and make everything that morning. I give the kids the same breakfast every morning - oatmeal with chia seeds, scrambled eggs and apples (on the side). It’s become so rote that I can make the entire breakfast without thinking. The only challenge is that my kids keep getting bigger and bigger, so now we go through nine eggs every morning just feeding them. BBQ in NYC

What do you like to do in your spare time? 

This is a hilarious question. I have four kids and a start up business. I have no spare time. Time not spent on my business is spent shuttling kids between events and practices and cooking and cleaning...and carving some free time out for just me and my wife.

Are there any apps or gadgets that you can’t live without? 

The two non-work apps that I probably use the most are the Nike Fitness App and the Nike Run Club. The Fitness App has so many great workouts and programs from top trainers and so many different types of workouts that let me work out anywhere, even if I only have fifteen minutes. Effective and flexible workout programs are saviors given my insane schedule.

If you could give yourself one piece of advice 5 years ago, what would it be?

Plan for the long haul. When I first started this business five years ago, I really thought I could scale it so much faster. That urgency helped me get going, but it also caused us to make a lot of mistakes early on. I would tell myself, this will work, it’s going to be huge, but be patient and focus on getting things right. 

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

It’s not really a piece of advice, but some words of wisdom: “It takes ten to fifteen years to be an overnight success.”