Inspiring Conversations with Ani Babayan of Dardimans California

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ani Babayan.

Hi Ani, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
This project – turned business started about five, six years ago at home. My parents decided to re-create a few Armenian delicacies using my great-grandmother’s recipes. Cliche, yet true! They recreated some dried goods that they wanted to expedite the drying time/process for. My dad bought a dehydrator to dry some of the stuff they were making in less time. It worked really well and he went along dry some other items for fun. One of those things he experimented drying were oranges from our own backyard tree. He first sliced them like regular slices, kind of thick, and they came out very hard, almost inedible. He then tried to slice them paper thin, and the result is what we have today. Seeing how beautiful they turned out and tasting as good as they looked, we couldn’t imagine passing up more fruits to dry and try. We started with our own oranges and soon after landed on a variety of Californian fruits. The fruits looked beautiful and tasted just as good. We couldn’t pass up trying to sell them, so we signed up for Farmers Markets around Los Angeles, local school and community tabling events and started learning about packages and boxes and how to present the fruits best. After about a year of selling at these markets and events, my dad took the leap and rented an 800 sq ft warehouse in Van Nuys and we started making samples. I took my own leap of faith and left law school and joined him. We just started slicing and drying hundreds (at the time) pounds of fruit a day to get lots of samples. We took the samples around to different stores we thought we could get some feedback or even sales from. After having great feedback, we did our first tradeshow and things just picked up from there. Today, we have a 13000 sq ft facility, we have all our original staff with us from when we first started, we sell to 11 different countries and we have four different promising product lines comprised of 18 varieties of fruit.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Absolutely not. It is more bumpy than smooth, and you never catch a break! But you do it for those smooth moments, and actually if you believe in what you’re doing – you take those bumps with no complaints. Struggles were to learn a lot about a lot of things. Learning about food and the industry and manufacturing it when you have zero background or education in it. Working with a lot of custom solutions since we have a unique product that no one ever has had or worked with. We struggled with Having good help and bad help and some tough relationships. We struggled with cash flow, receivables, payables and organizing operations. And all these struggles often coincided together!

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Dardimans California?
We want you to know that we own a product that is a breakthrough in snacks and is creating a category of its own. We are proud to deliver a quality product with a quality aesthetic, Something that makes people smile when they bite into it. We are set to be considered the closest thing to fresh fruit, and that’s what sets us apart from all other “dry fruits” or “fruit snacks”. There’s no middleman between fresh fruit and all other fruity snacks, and we get to be positioned right in that middle. We are proud of making people feel good when they have our fruits <3

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
When there is eagerness and momentum in your every day and whatever brings it. It could be your daily tasks, your community/market feedback and undoubtedly seeing people enjoy what you’ve made for them.

Pricing:

• $1.99-60.00

Contact Info:

• Email: info@dardimans.com
• Website: dardimans.com
• Instagram: dardimans
• Facebook: dardimans

Image Credits
Mittongtare Studio Marks Garden