Ofek Ron On Protein Production Technology Podcast

“The larger the chain gets, your ability to do things is limited, because they have thousands of products in hundreds of stores. Doing a demo is one of the most expensive things. You pay $200 for a one-time demo of three hours. Now you do it in 100 stores, it's 20K for one day. You won't be able to do it. So you try to be creative: you bring an influencer, you partner with the chain. And in the end, the product needs to sell.”

Protein Production Technology Podcast · Alternative Proteins · November 2026

Context

Asked how Oshi plans to keep sales going once it is on supermarket shelves. He lays out why in-store promotion gets harder and more expensive as chains get bigger.

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Transcript

Protein Production Technology Podcast Around 30:03 into the episode

Ofek Ron

…host third parties to do the certification. And for the ingredient, we need to switch one of them. We need to approve one of them. We didn't know what will be the next launch date. They said no for September. Maybe it will be next September. But so far it looks good. We're on track for December.

Nick Bradley

That's going to be a Christmas present for lots of people, hopefully. Now, they're getting onto those shelves. That's one battle, but staying there, I guess that's the harder, the harder one. So what do you guys have to prove once those products actually arrive in Whole Foods? Yeah,

Ofek Ron

so first of all, we need to share. We're already in the market. We have a bunch of chains that are already carrying the product, which is Earthfair, Town and Country, Bristol Farms, LaSense, Clarks, and a few others. Okay. So, and we're just next week getting into Hy-Vee to 125 stores, which is one of the largest in the Midwest chains. So we already proven that we have the velocities to stay on shelf. But, you know, in each place, it's different. Like one place, in order to get people to know about it, you have the ability to put signs on the store. It's a small chain. You just talk with the owner. It's like, can I put some posters so people know about it? Put some stickers like, yeah, go. And the larger the chain gets, your ability to do things are limited because you know they have thousands of products in hundreds of stores. Like if each one would put a poster, like everything becoming more structural. So you need to study on each place how you drive velocity, how you drive introduction. And doing a demo on the place is one of the most expensive thing. Okay, you pay for one-time demo, $200 for like three hours, someone demoing it. Okay, now you do it in 100 stores. Okay, it's 20k for one day. Like you…

Nick Bradley

Another huge change for you has been geographical. So you started in Israel, we know that, but you've now relocated full-time to the USA and you're building the business from there. Now, Oshi has grown up during a really extraordinary period for Israel. Has that changed the way that you think about…

Ofek Ron

So my struggle is actually that because I'm from Israel and Israel is now in the news of every country in the world. So some people are putting their, let's say, thinking of Israel on the thinking of the company. And in the end, it's a pity because, you know, we are a very simple company trying to…

Nick Bradley

has being an Israeli founder changed the conversations with investors or customers in ways that you didn't expect.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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“We met the buyers of Whole Foods in March at Expo West. On the spot they said, let's launch it in a few months. Let's plan for August. August turned to December. Then: the certification of your factory is not a certification that Whole Foods is accepting. One of your ingredients is a new ingredient for Whole Foods, you're using mycoprotein, we need to approve it. It was very stressful along the way.” — Ofek Ron, Protein Production Technology Podcast

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