When I first discovered Steve’s Ice Cream, a small batch ice cream company based in Brooklyn, New York, it was like I had found frozen dessert nirvana. I freaked out after taking a spoonful out of my first pint of Sweet Corn & Blackberry Preserves, and that’s when I realized that discovering up-and-coming food makers across the country is like being let in on some of culinary’s best kept secrets.
The same feeling ensued when I first walked into Mantry’s two-person office at WeWork Soho. The space looked lived-in (the team has been there since 2012), despite the lack of extraneous furnishings. I found the usual office suspects like simple desks and black chairs, but the piece de resistance was a shelf crammed with small, wooden crates filled with artisan food gems, such as Wild Elderberry Shrub made from hand-picked wild elderberries from Napa, California; stone-ground Olive & Sinclair chocolate from Nashville, Tennessee; and a bottle of their favorite Thai Chili Sauce from Herdon, Virginia.
The occupants of this unique space are Reggie Milligan and Anthony Hancock, who co-founded Mantry, along with Kyle Zien in 2012.
A subscription service that captures America’s tastiest offerings, Mantry finds the best artisan foods and delivers them directly to customers’ doors.
Geared towards men, Mantry wanted to target the group of guys who wouldn’t typically hang out in farmers’ markets, but would ultimately enjoy products like whiskey salami from Utah or Bourbon barrel-aged maple syrup from Vermont.
“We’re guys, and we know that guys are usually pretty easy to impress when it comes to food,” says Reggie, the co-founder and creative director who writes all the recipes, chooses and photographs the products for each Mantry box.
Much like a food-of-the-month club, the growing startup sends out wooden crates filled with full-size, hand-selected artisan products, and a detailed booklet full of recipes, applications, and stories about each product, all revolving around a specific theme like “Hecho en America” or “Thank You, New England”.
“The application is important because it’s the one thing to get the product, but we’ll show you five quick ways to incorporate the product into your meals,” says Reggie.
“One time, we sent a really cool pistachio butter, and we included a recipe to throw it in with bananas and almond milk for a smoothie.” He further explains that their customer probably already loved it on toast, but now they’re using the pistachio in new ways that enhances their tasting experience. It’s this same philosophy that the team aims to carry across in all their boxes.
The Mantry team recommends customers to incorporate the products seamlessly into their lifestyle. For example, ditch the restaurant for a night and invite some friends over for a meal.
“Trust us, put like a pint of ice cream on the table and top it off with one amazing salted caramel sauce and some peanuts. Watch what eight people do, two glasses of wine deep,” says Reggie. “And all you’ve done is rip the top off three containers. People will think you’re a legend.”
Deciding to forgo the typical online food store route, the Mantry team went with the subscription model because it allowed them to have more flexibility. “When you’re just selling one bottle of hot sauce to a guy, you might only have him as a customer once and never see him again,” says Tony, co-founder and chief technology officer. He further explains, “At least with a subscription model, we’ll have that guy as our customer for at least a month until they cancel.”
It’s the element of surprise that’s been keeping their customers waiting patiently each month, and eventually clamoring for more.
“People don’t know what products they’re going to get when they subscribe. So we’ll get people who won’t like a particular product, but when it shows up in their crate, they try it anyways because they paid for it. And they end up loving it. It happens a lot,” Reggie says.
Reggie comes from a traditional culinary background. He started his career at the age of 14, apprenticing in some of the top Michelin-starred restaurants in North America such as Lumiere and French Laundry before he launched his own business. “People asked me how I worked 17 hours a day, but with something like food, it was such an educational experience,” Reggie says. “It’s a passion craft.”
Eventually he got burned out after building a burgeoning career in fine dining restaurants before he turned 20, so he decided to pursue a degree in entrepreneurship at the University of Victoria. He enjoyed cooking, but in 2011 he felt impassioned to start his own business called The Social Feed, which is best described as a communal dining meets Meetup — a very large dinner party in the simplest terms.
Through the startup scene in Canada, Reggie met Tony Hancock, a former engineer and the co-founder of e-commerce site Ethical Ocean that showcased eco-friendly, fair-trade, and organic products. Both of their companies got acquired around the same time, so they decided to start a new project together and developed the idea for Mantry.
Taking their collective adoration for food online, they founded Mantry as a way to connect small-batch products to consumers. After they noticed that talented food artisans weren’t getting the exposure and shelf space at supermarkets, they make sure every Mantry box celebrates food and successfully showcases makers across America.
However, the original vision for Mantry changed early on. Initially, the co-founders thought they were going to fill each box with exotic international fare like salami from Italy and hot sauces straight from Costa Rica. But their first crate themed “Born in the USA” was such a hit that the team decide to focus exclusively on American products only. Once they decided to keep things local, the team set up their warehouse in the States and started using American-made crates for every Mantry box. The result? An entirely Americanana theme that has become very closely tied to the Mantry brand.
The team has come a long way since their early days delivering Mantry orders from the back of a car. The company has seen a lot of growth since its launch, and can now claim 22 themed boxes, a robust following, and notable mentions in many top publications.
The Mantry team is constantly inspired by artisan makers who are zealous and devoted to their products. “When you’re meeting a maker who is really passionate about hot sauce, you can tell that the product’s probably going to taste amazing,” says Reggie. “Tony and I both tried this Thai Chili Sauce from Virginia and we were blown away. We were like, ‘So your name is Adam and what the hell do you know about Thai chili sauces?’” Adam explained that he recently got married and his wife stole her grandma’s recipe and started bottling the sauce.
“We hear so many stories like this where someone starts a second business by taking grandma’s recipe and bottling it,” says Reggie.
Many of their crate ideas come from trends they’re seeing in the food industry. “If we see that a lot of people are interested in something like street food, we’ll go around and find six products from the best street food makers in the country,” says Reggie. “We’re just paying attention to what’s interesting what’s bubbling up in America in the scene of craft food.”
When it comes to their own pantries, the teammates can’t help but laugh, as most of their waking hours are spent at the office or in different cities to discover new products. In Reggie’s apartment you’ll find: “A really nice bottle of olive oil because you can put olive oil on anything, like a tomato, and people will think it tastes amazing. A good caramel sauce that you can put over ice cream, and good salt.” Tony, a vegan, keeps kale, raw cashews, and dates at home.
Having built Mantry from the ground up, Reggie and Tony can now advise aspiring entrepreneurs. “If you’re not comfortable giving up your sanity to build a business, then you’ve got the wrong idea,” Tony says. Sometimes lofty goals can overwhelm early founders, so Reggie recommend starting small and setting reachable goals when you’re starting out.
This same philosophy applies when he talks about his customers. “There’s an amazing write-up called 1,000 True Fans written by Kevin Kelley. Instead of trying to capture all of America, I just need a little sliver of people who care about what I do.”
The Mantry team is proof that if you do what you truly love and stay passionate, your job won’t feel like a job. Reggie says matter-of-factly, “ When you find something you’re interested in, the definition of ‘I’m at work’ and ‘I’m off work’ doesn’t exist.”
Photographs by Lauren Kallen