It’s a relief, almost, that the Truff brand of truffle-infused condiments tastes so good.
It’s a relief, because the Truff packaging – especially on their foundational product, the hot sauce line – is so obviously posh and fancy and, you know, Instagrammable that you’d think the substance couldn’t possibly match the style. Or that you’d be rightfully castigated as some kind of poser for having it in your kitchen.
So, though initially attracted by those bright and even sculptural surfaces, to actually try the stuff and discover that, damn, here’s a new sort of culinary hybrid that you and your best cook-at-home pals agree is superb, it’s, well, it’s rather validating, you know?
Funny thing is, the Truff guys themselves will tell you that they didn’t start out with a fine product that was later enhanced with great packaging. In fact, they didn’t start out with any product at all.
The Truff guys: Nick Guillen and Nick Ajluni, two affable, thirtysomething food industry entrepreneurs. And we’re telling you about them not only due to their company’s meteoric rise, but because they moved from Los Angeles to Austin in the middle of the pandemic. That’s right: They’re locals now, whose first taste of our city was around the time of Winter Storm Uri.
But – about that lack of product. See, Guillen and Ajluni met back in college (California State University at Fullerton) because they had overlapping friend groups and they were both heavy into business.
“I had a couple of little business ventures in college,” says Guillen. “Nick had a more promising venture than I did – a powdered beverage brand.”
“Which is a kind of food, right?” says Ajluni, smiling. “So that was where we first entered the industry. And we learned about how to make food products, and manufacture, and how to work with co-packers, and the supply chain, and things like that. But, while that was going on, we were also learning a lot about social media. Instagram was forming and becoming this cool app, and Facebook was obviously a thing – and it was the same time that companies were using those platforms as tools to grow their brands, using influencers to share the brands and create awareness. We were kind of at the forefront of that, which I think is just as relevant a part of the story as our background in food.”
“And while we were immersed in the social culture,” says Guillen, “we started scooping up these handles – for fun.”
“Instagram handles are, ah, they’re like domain names,” clarifies Ajluni.
“Yeah,” says Guillen, “and one of the handles we got was just sauce, s-a-u-c-e. And we didn’t know what it might turn into, but we figured it’d be worthwhile.”
“It’s a valuable handle,” says Ajluni. “‘Sauce’ isn’t just indicative of a food item, it’s also, like, something that’s cool, you know? Like, a car can be saucy. A nice sweatshirt can be saucy.”
Note: Both Nicks, while being interviewed, are wearing very nice sweatshirts.
“So, the question was, how can we create a great product and make it luxurious? What ingredients can we use for that?” – Nick Ajluni of Truff
“We understood the word’s dual meanings in food and in pop culture,” says Ajluni. “So we took it and turned it into a blog with a content feed of things we thought were saucy. There was never a particular sauce in mind, never a thought of making our own sauce. We just wanted to be the Instagram headquarters of what’s cool and hip and upscale in pop culture. And it started to work. The account grew relatively quickly – in five or six months, we were at 12 or 13 thousand followers – and we had some media outlets following us, some cool musicians, and we were like, ‘Okay, now what should we do with this?'”
“And we decided we should actually make a sauce,” says Guillen, “a sauce that would be representative of this, this ethos, this persona we were building on the blog. A luxury sauce. And then we narrowed it down. What kind of sauce? A barbecue sauce? A salad dressing? But, for us, we love hot sauce. And we knew hot sauce was having its cultural moment … And, from our market research into the hot sauce category, we saw a couple of areas that were a great opportunity for us. Because, one, a lot of the brands on the shelves, none of them had a big social media following. Instagram was brand-new, and the legacy brands weren’t too in tune with technology and social media. And, two, a lot of the legacy brands weren’t focused on a direct-to-consumer market, they were all about being on the retail shelves. We also saw that there weren’t any top-shelf hot sauce brands that existed – nobody was doing the Dom Perignon of hot sauce, right? It was just the legacy brands or this really cool craft scene – but there wasn’t any luxury hot sauce.”
Note: Truff is on shelves, too, now. In addition to robust online sales worldwide, the brand is available at, for instance, Whole Foods Market.
“So,” says Ajluni, “the question was, how can we create a great product and make it luxurious? What ingredients can we use for that? And how do we create a flavor profile that’s never been done before? So we looked at ingredients like saffron. We looked at caviar. And we looked at truffle.”
That final gambit is what eventually led to their success – and brings us to this necessary exchange: Do these guys use actual truffles?
“We do,” reassures Guillen. “We use nothing synthetic.”
“That’s one of the hard parts, with the business – there’s this stigma around truffles and truffle-infused products,” adds Ajluni. “And getting down to the basics and the science of it, having a mycologist on our team – an expert in mushrooms – who specializes in truffles, it’s enabled us to scale something that is typically not scalable. We’ve created our supply chain with that team, been able to ensure its quality and that there’s never anything synthetic – it’s something we’re very keen on. And it’s a trade secret.”
So, OK, we’ve noted the impressive taste of these Truff products – the hot sauces, the pasta sauces, the mayos – and we’re still stunned by the fancy packaging – courtesy of L.A.’s Colony Group – and we’ve got Guillen and Ajluni’s’ word that there’re no synthetic ingredients to the stuff. Only thing remaining, for the sake of this article: What are the two Nicks doing in ATX?
“Have you seen how good Austin is? The location, the people, the energy – it’s amazing,” says Guillen.
“We were living in downtown L.A. in the middle of COVID and, ah, we were ready for something new,” says Ajluni. “Our team’s all over the place – we have a couple hubs here and in Southern California, but a lot of people are remote, too. And Austin’s only a couple hours from the West Coast, a couple hours from the East Coast. And there’s a huge consumer packaged goods [CPG] scene – Whole Foods is headquartered here, amongst a lot of different brands. And a lot of our friends built their brands here. Austin’s a happening scene for CPG and food and beverage in general.”
This article appears in February 4 • 2022.