Inspiring Conversations with Bradley Bennett of Pacific Pickle Works

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bradley Bennett. Them and their team share their story with us below:

Pacific Pickle Works was founded in 2010 by Bradley Bennett, a Santa Barbara native whose spicy homemade pickles began as holiday gifts for friends and family and quickly sparked a craving amongst locals. Today, the company’s Union St. factory hand-packs its signature West Coast pickles all year ‘round, each batch a refreshingly crunchy, full-flavored salute to peak-season produce that lifts the pickle from sidekick to standalone snack. In 2016, the company launched an all-natural trio of one-step savory cocktail mixers including the multiple award-winning Bloody Mary Elixir made from their own house-made Worcestershire sauce as well as a vegan Michelada Shrub and their classic spicy Pickle Brine in a bottle for the die-hard pickleback fan.

Pacific Pickle Works’ full line of pickled vegetables is non-GMO Project Verified, naturally gluten-free, fat-free and most are certified kosher; offering shelf-stable convenience with zero artificial ingredients or preservatives. Pacific Pickle Works has won numerous awards for their products including three Good Food Awards, 4 sofi™ awards and various spirits and mixers awards for the entire savory drink mixer line.

Pacific Pickle Works is currently carried in over 3,000 retail and food service locations, including Whole Foods Market, Sprouts Farmer’s Market, Lazy Acres, Jensens, and Bristol Farms and is also sold online through Amazon and at pacificpickleworks.com. With its playful branding and bold flavor profiles, the company looks forward to delighting customers around the world as they gather together around the table.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Launching a CPG food business is never easy. Early struggles involved getting certified to manufacture shelf-stable canned foods in the state of California, followed by getting in front of the right people and growing the business enough to finally get placed in natural food stores like Whole Foods and Sprouts.

But the real challenges have come during the pandemic. While sales skyrocketed in the early days due to a surge in grocery store panic-buying related sales and online food shopping, the reality of late has been one of supply chain-related problems. The first problems had to do with getting access to the glass jars, metal closures and boxes needed to package our goods followed by a drastic increase in the prices being charged for those materials. In some cases, the prices of jars and bottles we use to package our goods more than doubled. On average, the cost of materials to package our products increased by 40%, but if we were to raise the price of our products to the consumer by that much, we would likely lose a lot of customers and shelf space in the stores. So we are stuck somewhere in the middle trying to balance between small price increases to the stores and the consumer while waiting for the cost of materials to come back down to a more reasonable level.

We’ve been impressed with Pacific Pickle Works, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Pacific Pickle Works was founded in 2010 simply as a small hand-crafted pickle company. Since then we have expanded our line of pickled products to include six varieties of pickles, eight varieties of pickled vegetables, 3 savory drink mixers and a growing line of food service products for restaurants and bars.

We pride ourselves for making one of the few all-natural preservative-free products on the grocery shelf. We have developed recipes that allow us to maintain that crisp and flavorful product without using things like sodium benzoate and calcium chloride or any other artificial colors or stabilizers in our pickles or drink mixers.

One of the ways we are able to maintain quality is by doing all of our manufacturing in-house. It is common these days for new products on the market to be outsourced to a manufacturing company to make them for the brand so they can focus simply on selling and marketing their own brand. As a matter of fact, as we have been improving our own manufacturing capability, we actually have taken on manufacturing as a co-packer for several other brands of pickled products as well as other condiments. We are good at what we do and have been building capacity in order to do this manufacturing for more and more companies that want high-quality natural products.

This year we had the privilege and excitement of being featured in a short sketch with Cookie Monster and Chef Gonger on Sesame Street! While we didn’t get to meet any actual muppets in person, it was so fun to have the crew on site filming us show Cookie how to make pickles. Catch us on S52 E30, or view the clip from our Youtube channel.

What are your plans for the future?
We have a long list of products we would love to bring to market and as time goes on we look to add a larger range of condiments and related products to our line. We expect to eventually offer a full catalog of condiments relating to the entertaining experience whether it be building your cheese and charcuterie boards and grazing tables, mastering the outdoor grilling experience, or refining your brunch Bloody Mary and cocktail game.

Contact Info:

• Website: pacificpickleworks.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/pacificpickleworks
• Facebook: facebook.com/pacificpickleworks
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTdKG_6TPQzBrC4kXzpiqKw

Image Credits
Silas Fallstich