# Fabalish Progress Update | Fabalish

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/feed/152967
- Entity ID: wefunder:feed_item:152967
- Published at: 2022-02-23 16:57:30 UTC
- Updated at: 2025-07-18 11:03:01 UTC

## Author
Paul Majcherczyk

## Subject
Fabalish

## Content
To all our Wefunder investors, thank you!!! 2021 was another incredible year for us, with over 3.5x growth in revenue and an exciting sales pipeline for 2022. Our fundraising round is closing in a few days (February 28th), and we're thrilled with its success and all the support we've received. In total, we've raised over $1,000,000 for this round (both on Wefunder and privately). We are also very excited to share the latest Fabalish update! Key Updates / Executive Summary:Revenue of $825K in 2021, up 3.5x from $233K in 2020 (which was up 3.7x from $63K in 2019).We have a strong sales pipeline for increased retail distribution in 2022. We're thrilled to announce that we landed Wegmans, one of our key target accounts with over 100 locations in the North East. Additionally, we are expanding our product offering with Hungryroot (our anchor account), which until now has only been selling our zesty zucchini falafel.Our growth last year has been driven by strong retention and repeat business, across a relatively small number of accounts. A very promising sign as we begin to expand into more accounts!We are now operating out of our new dedicated facility, which will allow us to scale up to an estimated revenue run-rate of $10M. If you're in the NYC/NJ area, come visit us!We're very excited to have been selected as one of 10 finalists (out of an applicant pool of several hundred) to participate at the Natural Products Expo West Pitch Slam in Anaheim this March. Expo West is the "Superbowl" of expos for natural foods, and we're very proud of this recognition.We've hit our target of raising $1M for our current round. We will be closing this round at the end of February (both privately and on Wefunder). We will accept additional investments up until February 28th, so if there is interest to participate, please let us know as soon as possible. We are planning to open a new round, at a higher valuation, in the coming months to give us further marketing firepower in supporting Wegmans and other key accounts, to expand our product offering, as well as to continue acceleration of the business as a whole. More details to follow - please reach out if interested!For further details and elaboration, see belowSales:75% of 2021 revenue was from retail, and 25% from direct online sales. Our primary growth channel moving forward is retail (online retailers + brick & mortar).Wegmans (consistently rated one of the top retailers in the country) will be launching our dips this year - date is TBD. They will be reviewing our falafel in the coming months. This is our first major brick & mortar retail account, and success here will give us a huge opportunity to open larger regional/national accounts. We're very excited for this, and plan to do everything possible to ensure we make Wegmans a success. Hungryroot was a major account for us in 2021, generating nearly half of our revenue just by selling our zesty zucchini falafel. We are now launching our Tzatziki with them this March, with plans to add our other dips later on. They also asked us to create an exclusive falafel flavor for them!Fabalish is onboarded with UNFI and KeHE, the two largest natural foods distributors. We've expanded our sales effort to include natural food retailers across the country, with promising progress across accounts such as The Fresh Market, Whole Foods, Thrive Market, Harmons, and Fresh Thyme. We're hoping to share more good news soon! Operations:We recently completed the move into our new and dedicated facility (8,700 sq ft) in Carlstadt NJ (in the Meadowlands by NYC). We just passed our USDA Organic inspection, allowing us to begin production here. This will give us the ability to scale for the next couple of years, up to an estimated $10M revenue run-rate, and perhaps more depending on the level of automation/efficiency that we can achieve.  With this facility move, we have a 20x increase in cold storage available to us, and an immediate 5x increase in throughput thanks to six new pieces of equipment, which vastly improves automation and reduces labor. With the ability to drive down labor costs and order raw goods in larger volumes, we anticipate increasing our margins up to 45% this year (and more in 2023). Current margin is around 35% (before trade spend), up from ~25% at the end of 2020. Being vertically integrated adds a significant number of advantages for the long term, such as control, reduced costs, increased innovation, and nimbleness in a fast-changing environment. Marketing:We hired a fractional CMO last quarter, who is taking lead on our marketing efforts. Strategy is currently being defined, but the primary focus is on supporting our retail partners. This includes trade spend, digital couponing, demos (both digital and in-store), and targeted ad campaigns (instacart, criteo). We expect a detailed execution plan to be ready by the end of Q1. Brand Vision / Product Roadmap:Our vision is to become the leader of cleaner, healthier plant-based foods, with the goal of reaching $50M in revenue in the next 5 years. While we currently have two product lines (dips and falafel), they are only part of a broader strategy: Expanding into condiments and spreads. While we are working on additional flavors for our dips, a key focus area is to launch mayo's - a much larger category. There is no clear plant-based leader across condiments, dips, and spreads, and our vision is for Fabalish to be the gold-standard for flavor enhancing your dishes with our award-winning, organic, allergen-friendly, clean-label products. Expanding in the freezer. The freezer aisle is full of highly processed products, including lab-engineered alt-proteins and "TV dinners". Many health-conscious consumers stay away from this aisle, but we're going to change that. Our Fabalish bites (both sweet and savory), offer clean convenience and delicious flavor without compromise. We're working on additional flavors of our chickpea veggie bites and launching a line of chickpea brownie bites (which have been very successful as special releases on our website).  ----In closing, we are very excited with our growth and the opportunities ahead of us! Industry trends continue to head in our direction, and we're very proud of the recognition that we're getting. Most prepared plant-based products today are fairly junky and highly processed, and that's what Fabalish is solving for. More importantly, we're able to achieve award-winning flavor. We strongly believe we're at the forefront of the cleaner and healthier plant-based trend that is emerging, and we're looking forward to a promising future of growth and fixing our food system! As always, please feel free to reach out with any questions. Jess & Paul