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FORBES.COM JUNE 30, 20 19CONTRARIANENTREPRENEURSventures. “Our backs were against
the wall from day one,” says Leigh.
First order of business: Raise some
working capital. The kids quickly
sold the bed-and-breakfast, netting
$100,000 after taxes. Two thirds of
that went to a used candy-wrapping
machine to package the bars, the rest
toward organic peanuts and honey.
“With all of your... fi nances invested
in peanuts and honey to the very last
dollar, you sure as heck got to fi gure
out how to sell this bar,” Leigh says.
Next, they specialized. Bud moved to
San Diego, where the family was origi-
nally from, taking some of the clan
with him. (He would die of his disease
in 2009.) Leigh, Bill, Amyas and Cha-
risse stayed in Sacramento, sharing a
two-bedroom apartment. Bill went on
the road to pitch their snacks, branded
as Perfect Bars, to natural-foods stores
and grocery chains up and down the
West Coast. Leigh, Amyas and Cha-
risse stationed themselves at home to make the
products.
Still, by 2006, after a year in the business, the
Keiths had made little headway, and they had
enough cash left to fund only one more month
of operations. Then, by chance, Bill met a Whole
Foods store manager at a music-and-art festival
in northern California. She loved it and fi gured
Whole Foods customers would both dig the idea
of a preservative-free protein bar and be curious
enough to pick up one from a refrigerated case.
Perfect Snacks got a 30-day trial at the man-
ager’s Berkeley Whole Foods. Bill was the in-store
pitchman. With no money for a hotel, he lived
in his car for a month, showering at a gym. Per-
fect Snacks sold $20,000 at that Whole Foods in
a month, more than it had in the past six months
combined—and enough for Whole Foods to ex-
pand Perfect Snacks to ten more northern Cali-
fornia locations. “That was the match that start-
ed the wildfi re,” Bill says.
Revenue hit a million dollars two years
later, and soon a Costco deal followed. Then
sales really took off after a cash infusion from
the 2015 VMG investment allowed Perfect
Snacks to place bigger orders from contract
manufacturers and, in turn, take larger orders
from grocers.
After throwing caution to the wind to start
their business, the Keiths, who still own the ma-
jority of Perfect Snacks, are now moving morethoughtfully. They’ve chosen to concentrate on
rolling out Perfect Kids (portioned for lunch
boxes) and Perfect Bites (tiny cubes in resealable
containers) rather than launching entirely new
products. (“They’ve stayed really focused. A lot
of companies like that get some success and start
trying to extend the brand into a million other
things,” says John Foraker, former CEO of An-
nie’s, the organic mac ’n’ cheese company.) As the
Keiths project sales reaching $130 million by the
end of 2019, their battles revolve around fi nding
enough refrigerated trucks to ship their goods
cheaply—the boom in fresh grocery items has
led to a shortage of drivers and freight prices are
surging—and persuading grocery stores to give
them better real estate. For now, they’re largely
in dairy cases, and the Keiths envision their
products in little coolers by the registers, the way
Red Bull displays its drinks.
“We have the story, the product and the people
that can really build this to be a household name
and become hopefully an iconic brand for gen-
erations,” Leigh says. “The rolling pins are gone.
We’re just getting started.”WINGING IT
The Vault“When we fi rst
started, we
said there is no
existing market
for Red Bull,” said
company founder
Dietrich Mate-
schitz (March 28,
2005). “But Red
Bull will create it.”
Mateschitz did it,
largely through
genius market-
ing—spending
as much as 30%
of revenue on
ads—that turned
a fi zzy beverage
originally made
in Thailand into a
global, hip “energy
drink.”FBittersweet Success Cont.FINAL THOUGHT
“IF YOU CANNOT GET RID OF THE
FAMILY SKELETON, YOU MIGHT AS
WELL MAKE IT DANCE.”
—George Bernard ShawBunks Near The Butt er
With six kids in six years, the Keiths were crunched for space. Papa Keith
converted kitchen cabinets in their small San Diego home into beds.