Unlock E-Com CX Insights — Join Our Slack Community of Leaders Driving Real Growth.
Join Now!
1. Nutritious and delicious: Juan Salinas took his expertise in nutrition and food innvation and applied it to a very personal problem. A dedicated body builder and distance runner, he wanted to make a tasty snack he could actually eat as part of his training diet.
2. A great product is just the start: After formulating the snack, Juan spent years learning how best to sell that product at scale first through retail partners and then directly to consumers..
3. Learn about your customer: Juan initially thought P-nuff Crunch would appeal to young adults in their 20s. By listening to feedback, he learned the prime demographic was a little bit older.
4. Strategic placement: The total number of retail outlets isn’t as important as getting the right retail outlets, which is why getting into Whole Foods a year ago was such an important milestone for the company.
5. Keep pushing: Retail and e-Commerce aren’t an either-or proposition. Instead, they work hand-in-hand to create devoted customers who come back straight to you.
Launched in 2016, P-nuff Crunch is a crunchy peanut butter snack that is nutritious and loaded with protein. Sales have grown significantly since being featured on Shark Tank in 2020 in an episode that was memorable for two reasons: Juan Salinas removed his shirt to reveal his ripped physique, and Mark Cuban became an investor. When you dig into Juan’s story, you’ll see how his training regimen spurred his journey: He wanted a tasty snack he could actually eat.
Juan Salinas is the founder and CEO of P-nuff Crunch.
The snack itself is entirely plant-based, composed primarily of three ingredients: peanuts, rice and navy beans. The formula for marketing and selling P-nuff Crunch, however, is a bit more complicated, entailing a decade of steady work and constant improvement. Today, P-nuff Crunch is a growing company that draws half its revenue from retail sales in stores like Whole Foods and half from a thriving E-Commerce operation.
There’s a reason he’s called Dr. Juan. He earned a PhD in food science in addition to his Masters in sports nutrition, and he has worked to develop food products for industry heavyweights like Kraft, Nestle and Cadbury. Juan is also a body-builder and distance runner whose training regimen meant he couldn’t eat most snacks on the market, and this realization turned out to be an opportunity. “There was a gap for something that could taste good and have real nutrition,” Juan says. The result was P-nuff Crunch, a nutritious crunchy peanut-butter snack. At first, Salinas focused on getting his product on the shelves of retailers. The company had a Web site, but it was largely informational as opposed to being a place for customers to buy the product. Today, P-nuff Crunch has a thriving e-Commerce business that accounts for approximately half the company’s sales making it just as important as the company’s retail partnerships. “I feel like they need each other,” Juan says. “That’s one of the things I've learned. Just doing e-Commerce is possible, but it's tough.”
While the company has grown significantly over the past 10 years, it remains a lean operation with one full-time employee heading up customer service and a fractional employee who handles marketing initiatives with additional partners and agencies brought on board as needed. E-mail is one of the main tools used in promotions, and the company has a VIP list it uses to provide early access to specific sales and promotions. Juan said that customer feedback has been crucial in helping him understand more about his customers and what they want.
When Juan began selling P-nuff Crunch, he assumed the main customers would be young adults, people in their 20s who would be looking for nutritious food to eat on the go. By listening to customer feedback, however, he learned that most his customers were actually a little bit older, tending to be in their 30s and 40s. “Of course, it appeals to everybody,” he says, “but we see the core of our business being more of an older generation.”
Unlike most E-Commerce companies, the holidays aren’t the busiest time of year for P-nuff Crunch. It’s actually January when Juan sees the biggest boost in sales. “People are trying to be more healthy,” Juan says, “New year goals, we all have those at the beginning of the year, right? So we want to make sure we're there.” That’s the time when P-nuff Crunch tends to run some of its best specials as well as ramp up its demonstrations.
Abandoned carts were Juan’s first clue that shipping costs were a major impediment to his company’s E-Commerce sales. “People think that they're getting the price, whatever they see initially on the page,” Juan says, “And then they get to the checkout.” When Juan experimented with eliminating the additional shipping costs, he saw conversion rates spike. Now, that’s something the company offers when it’s looking to juice sales. “So that's something we do on special occasions,” Juan says.
After years of making its own product, P-Nuff Crunch moved to a command model last year and now someone else handles the actual production. “We didn't really have the volumes to support our own manufacturing,” he says. That provides some savings, but also requires him to practice his own quality control while also looking for ways to source ingredients at lower costs and think about innovating. “We’ve got a couple new ideas that we want to bring in this year in 2026,” Juan says. “Just based on some of the feedback that we've been getting from our customers.”
In the early days of his company, Juan worked hard to get his product in as many stores as he could. Today, he’s more strategic in his thinking, focusing on specific retailers. “Like Whole Foods,” Juan says. “We saw that as a very targeted retailer. We know we do well there.” P-Nuff Crunch has been available at Whole Foods for more than a year now. Central Market in Texas is another chain of grocery stores where the product has moved well.
Just go for it. That’s Juan’s suggestion when aspiring entrepreneurs because it’s very easy to talk yourself out of an idea or initiative. “It can get very overwhelming if you start thinking about everything that you have to do for a business,” Juan says. “Sometimes that just cripples up, just paralyzes you because you feel like you need to have a handle on everything.” Start small, and don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. You can always make fixes as you go. Once you begin growing, you need to keep an eye on how additional costs like distribution and marketing impact the bottom line of your business.
What excites you most about E-Commerce? “Going direct to consumer, I like that direct interaction with the customer.”
What is the single most important quality you look for whenever you're hiring someone new? “Passion.”
What is your favorite communication channel for support? “Live chat. I really do not want to get on the phone. If I'm getting on the phone, I have exhausted every other resource and it has not thrilled me. So for me, having worked on the back end of it, I am going for the chat every time assuming there's a real, helpful person there.”
What’s the last podcast you found interesting? “I do listen to a lot of entrepreneur podcasts, but the one that actually helps me a lot is the podcast ‘Bible in a Year.’ I listen to it every day and it gives me inspiration beyond just entrepreneurship. It just helps me learn more about myself and about what's really important at the end of the day. So I do recommend that: ‘Bible in a Year’ by Father Mike Schmidt. He's a pretty funny guy, too.”
Do you have a favorite thought leader in the entrepreneur space? “The ones that I've learned the most from is from other founders. You know, these are the guys that are out there, man, like, in the trenches and, you know, not theory, but actual practice. And I feel that I've learned the most from them.”
What would you say is your No. 1 challenge as a leader? “Staying patient. It's a long run, man. I say it's a marathon, not a sprint, but man, sometimes it's just feel like, okay, when is this going to turn, you know, around or when is this going to happen? When's this goal going to get there? And, you know, you could make some really crazy decisions if you're not patient.”
We're elevating customer experiences at 500 top E-Commerce brands (and counting). Let's see what we can do for you!
Learn MoreBook a call with one of our specialists today to see how TalentPop can assist you with putting together a solution for your customer service needs.
Learn More
.png)
