How Justin Mares built Kettle and Fire from a $100 smoke test

Executive overview

Most founders build a product, then look for customers. Justin Mares did the opposite: he ran a paid landing page test to confirm demand before spending a single day on production. The smoke test showed $100 in ad spend could project a profitable six-figure business — so he spent 10 months figuring out how to make bone broth at commercial scale only after validating that people would pay.

Validate that strangers will pay before you build anything.

Smoke test before building

• Searched online for volume: monthly searches, press coverage, influencer interest — all positive
• Built a basic landing page, bought ads, priced the product at $29.99
• Ran the unit economics: ad spend to conversion ratio projected a profitable $100k/year business
• Emailed every early buyer to understand their pain points — gut health, skin, joint health were common threads
• Used pre-launch customers to test samples and iterate on formulation before official launch

Being first in a category

• Launched in 2015 as the first grass-fed bone broth on the market
• Influencers in the paleo space were already recommending bone broth but had no product to link to — Kettle and Fire filled that gap
• First-mover status generated affiliate momentum without having to fight for attention
• Being first creates compounding advantages: four years of reps, lower cost structure, better product quality over time

Expanding from a core position

• Once a channel or category is working, go harder on it before diversifying
• Assess category size honestly: if the bone broth market caps your growth rate in four years, plan adjacencies now
• Adjacent moves make sense; 180-degree pivots usually don't
• Entered the soup category because incumbents were using low-quality ingredients — a clear gap relative to what Kettle and Fire already did well
• Avoided trying to grow the entire bone broth category (expensive, slow) in favour of taking share within it

Competing as the category matures

• Shifted messaging from "here's why bone broth is good" to "here's why ours is better"
• Retail price dropped from $11.99 to $6.99 per box as scale increased — margin returned to the customer
• Competitive moat: ingredient quality, long cook times, years of product iteration
• Strategy: run faster than competitors, not eliminate them