Snacks start-up TrailSteaks hits $1 million in sales first year

Alan Bazzell and Jason Wilga achieved success by the time they were in their 30s. Both men had solid jobs working as financial planners with combined salaries of $750,000 a year.

But last year they traded it all to sell meat snacks.

“We achieved a very high level of success in one industry but we just really see that this product, because there is nothing out there like it, has unlimited potential,” Mr. Wilga said.

Mr. Bazzell, 37, and Mr. Wilga, 35, started TrailSteaks in Chattanooga in January 2007 with an investment of about $500,000. They crossed $1 million in sales in their first year.

On Aug. 1, their steak snacks hit the market under the Remington Arms Co. brand.

The product is called a steak snack, and while it is similar to jerky, the business owners stress are trying to stay away from identifying their product as such. Instead, they focus on the differences between their product and other popular jerky-style goods on the market.

“We have created a way to make steak shelf stable,” Mr. Bazzell said, describing what separates the company’s steak snacks from jerky.

The concept of the meat snacks came in the form of a memory from Mr. Wilga’s childhood in northern Michigan. His grandfather owned a convenience store where varieties of smoked meat were so popular they pulled people from all over the state to tiny Alger, Mich. The jerky from his grandfather’s store was perfect for the market, Mr. Wilga said, except for one problem — it required refrigeration.

But the two businessmen were able to overcome that challenge with a cooking and preparation technique developed with help from students at Michigan State University and Deerborn Sausage, the Michigan-based company that makes the snacks exclusively for TrailSteaks. The company makes a line of snacks that include beef, elk, turkey and hunters sausage.

The steak snacks start out as chunks of meat that are tumbled, 600 pounds at a time, with 250 pounds of spices. Once the spices have been absorbed, the meat is put onto hangers and into a smoker, where it stays for five to seven hours, depending on the cut of meat.

Because of the unique cooking method, the meat snacks are more tender and moist than other products, Mr. Bazzell said.

Once the men had a product ready for market, Mr. Bazzell sold his Chattanooga-based financial planning practice and Mr. Wilga left his corporate job at American Express in Birmingham, Ala., and moved to the Scenic City to get the company going.

Today, the two men are talking with international companies and big-box retailers about selling their product under different labels. In February, Mapco Express began selling the products in its stores under the private label Sadlers brand.

“As we’ve been marketing over the last year and a half, we’ve been amazed at the opportunity that has presented itself,” Mr. Wilga said.

If the growth continues, Mr. Wilga predicts sales could jump to $5 million to $8 million in the next few years. If that happens, Mr. Bazzell said the company could move production now being done in Michigan to Chattanooga. Right now, that goal is part of the owners’ five-year-plan.

Mr. Bazzell said the company has the capacity to produce about $20 million worth of meat snacks each year.

TrailSteaks employees four people at a modest headquarters off Jersey Pike. A national sales force of about 30 independent contractors works to pitch the product at conventions and expositions across the country.

“We’ve had to keep it lean and mean,” Mr. Wilga said. “We made a strategic decision to invest as much money in growing the brand and sales, and making relationships rather than coming in and hiring a bunch of people.”

While neither of the men are from the area originally, they and their families loved the city so much they decided to locate the company here.

Mr. Bazzell says that in hindsight, it probably would have made sense to have relocated to Michigan since the production facility is there, but the end goal was to get that operation in Chattanooga.

“We could have done this business from anywhere,” he said. “But this is home.”