BUNKY: Better-For-You Protein Popcorn with No Weird Ingredients

KLS

5 minutes ago

10 min read

For the 268th feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with BUNKY and Founder, Davis Freeman. Light, satisfying, and endlessly snackable - Popcorn was always more than just a treat. I craved a better version of the snack I loved. Protein bars were dense, shakes were chalky, and most options felt like a compromise. So, we reimagined popcorn into something new: bold, clean, and packed with complete protein. BUNKY, a nickname given to me by my brother - now stands for feel-good fuel with no tradeoffs. Each bag delivers up to 22g of protein, and crave-worthy flavors, with zero seed oils or weird ingredients. It's snack time, upgraded-for busy days, better choices, and anyone who believes healthy should still be fun.

"Together Talks" feature 268: BUNKY presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA

Story of how it was created?

What have been the biggest challenges? What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business?

What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur? Share a decision that you made that was detrimental? Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?

Piece of Advice

Community Callout In Closing

Story of how it was created?

My name is Davis Freeman, also known as Bunky. I launched the brand in August 2025 with the vision of making popcorn better.

I've always loved popcorn. Growing up, it was my ADD-focused snack when I was studying. Later on in life, I reintroduced it into my health and wellness goals. I was initially training for three marathons when I was about 25, and I became very focused on what I was putting into my body. I was also very focused on food and beverage, and I've always been fascinated by the CPG space.

At the time, I was in a corporate role, and I went into the office kitchen and saw that there weren't really any snacks that benefited me. So, I turned back to popcorn because I had done some research and found that popcorn is actually a relatively healthy snack. It has the right carb count, it's light and airy, and it has quality fiber that can be beneficial for training, especially marathon training.

I started using it as a snack to keep me full throughout training and to keep my body fueled with the right carbs. But I noticed that when I browsed the shelves and looked through my office kitchen snack pantry, there weren't any quality popcorn brands that were adding nutritional benefits while also making really great flavors.

So, I decided to go out on a whim and start testing things myself. I reached out to some of the best manufacturers in the popcorn space and the protein space, as well as flavor houses, and tried my best to create a protein popcorn that tasted like it didn't have any protein in it.

I spent about four to five months being a mad scientist in my home kitchen, with my roommates thinking I was crazy. I finally got to a point where I was comfortable sharing my recipe with a co-manufacturer, and we started our first sample iterations.

Those sample iterations took about nine to ten months to really get perfect because, at the end of the day, you want to have the right protein count that makes it exciting, but you also want the taste and flavor to be exactly like the traditional popcorn that you know and love, just with cleaner ingredients and the added benefit of protein.

We finally got to the sweet spot and did an initial run and launch, selling direct-to-consumer and through pantries, cafes, wholesale, and small independent retailers throughout the year we launched in August.

As we sold out of that run, we launched an even bigger bag size to really go after natural grocery retail. The focus was to get into all the best premium natural grocery stores throughout the country. For a small startup like myself, it's a difficult and long trajectory.

At the end of the day, the taste really needs to be the differentiator. After working on it so diligently, the taste succeeded with retail buyers, who became really interested in the product.

We spent four to five months with the bigger bags doing direct-to-consumer sales and then eventually got our first approval from a grocery chain here in Southern California, Bristol Farms, to get into all of their stores.

After an extensive period of being onboarded by UNFI distribution, we finally got to the point where we launched in retail with distribution coming out of UNFI. We launched in Bristol Farms in September, which was last month, so it took quite a bit of time to get things up and running.

We're finally here, and we were also able to launch in Haggen Market in Washington with another distribution center through UNFI. We're quickly expanding our retail footprint while also trying our best to expand our social media presence, continue to sell product direct-to-consumer, and really grow a fan base for the brand, as well as introduce new flavors for the upcoming year.

We have some really exciting new retail launches coming up. The focus at the moment is prepping for those retail launches, preparing the new flavors, and trying to get those out as quickly as possible.

Back in May of this year, we sold out of those bigger bags, and we had what I'd call a meaningful sold-out moment. What I mean by that is we really needed to go back to the drawing board in terms of cost of goods and our margins.

It's a very slim-margin business being in popcorn, and we finally got to the point where we found a new co-manufacturer that was able to work with us and really revise those costs of goods to get everything out there. Then, when September came around, we were ready to go with this new manufacturer that loves us and wants to work with us.

I'm very excited about that because it's gotten us to the point where we can really scale things up. Now we're also working on the new flavors, which we're really excited about.

The goal is to introduce some fun and unique flavors to the market that have never been seen before in protein popcorn. We're potentially looking at doing some exclusivity-based retail launches with one or two of the new flavors. We're also expanding our social media presence and trying to get people excited about the brand and want to be part of the BUNKY ecosystem.

I think that we don't take ourselves too seriously when it comes to content and marketing materials. That's the whole idea with popcorn. Popcorn is a fun, easy snack that I just wanted to make better.

What have been the biggest challenges?

I'd say that CPG is a very competitive landscape in general. Bootstrapping this to date has been pretty tricky, especially trying to understand the landscape of retail and retail distribution and how much that effectively costs.

The CPG business is not a cheap business to be in. As a first-time founder, I really didn't have any expectations of how much production runs were going to cost or what in-line marketing expenses would be per retailer. Really understanding that and how it effectively works into our cost of goods and the whole business in general, while running a lean and efficient business to get us to the next point, has been a challenge.

I would say another challenge has been trying to find a co-manufacturer that wants to work with you at a small scale to start, help you get to the next bridge, and take you on. It's very important to make sure that your cost of goods makes sense for different channels of distribution.

Initially, I tested TikTok Shop and Amazon. Those were really great channels for awareness and actual sales, but they were hurting us because of the dimensional weights required for shipping popcorn. Even though you're shipping air, your dimensional weight and the size of your packages across these fulfillment channels really matter.

That's why I've learned that shipping beverages is a lot easier than shipping a bag of chips or a bag of popcorn because the products are a lot smaller within their fulfillment centers. Shipping is a big part of the game that should not go unnoticed. It was definitely a learning curve understanding those channels, what the fulfillment fees look like, and learning early that maybe they weren't the right channels for us at the time, but they could potentially be later on.

There are a couple of other challenges, too, such as knowing where you want to focus your energy when it comes to selling your products. I would say direct-to-consumer definitely has the highest margins because you're not going through any middleman. But with a product like ours, popcorn is such an impulse purchase.

From what I've realized, we can continue to have direct-to-consumer sales, but our biggest opportunity is figuring out how we can get our product on the shelf and get people to see it, grab it, and go. That's where I think the real win is within our specific category.

It's different for every category. You can have a really successful B2C e-commerce business that can shoot through the roof and create demand. A part of me still says that I think we can figure it out and continue to launch new flavors and make our demand exciting within e-commerce.

Then the other part of me is saying, we need to dedicate our time to getting onto shelves.

What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business?

I've always been fascinated with becoming an entrepreneur. Both of my parents are entrepreneurs themselves. My father is in beauty and skincare manufacturing and wholesale, so I understand parts of that side of the business. My mom is in women's fashion, specifically retail in LA.

It's kind of what I grew up on and what I know to be meaningful and fulfilling within life. I'd say that I always wanted to do something entrepreneurial. I found a path that was very focused on the health and wellness aspect.

I'd say job stability is a scary thing. I previously worked in some corporate roles, and that provided comfortable job stability. I wouldn't say that I was necessarily jumping straight into the business at first. I was doing it on the side of my corporate job.

Then it finally came to a time where it was go time. The business was starting to pick up, and I needed to dedicate all my energy toward it.

I think that there are risks and challenges across all types of businesses. For me, it was about wanting to see this thing through and continuing to learn because, at the end of the day, there's nothing better than learning while doing and creating something for yourself.

I'm still scared to this day about whether or not this thing is fully going to work. A lot of people give me credit for not having a co-founder or anything, and I think having a strong support system has definitely helped.

Thankfully, I get some mentorship from my parents and friends in the space. But, yeah, I'd say there have been tons of challenges trying to learn. I think it essentially has been a graduate school program. It's like, don't go to business school; this is it. You're jumping into the ocean with a bunch of sharks, and this is what it is.

What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?

I think at the end of the day, I've been doing a pretty solid job at marketing, and that was something that I needed to do myself because it's the whole story of the brand. It's about myself and my journey.

Taking on the role of being in front of the camera and telling the founder-led story was something that I needed to do, needed to learn how to do, and needed to become comfortable with. I'm still not comfortable with it to this day, but I do it because I need to share my story and share how the brand came about. That's what people connect to.

I've also had to really understand the operational side of the CPG space, including distributors, retailers, pricing, sell-in prices, and in-line marketing expenses. I'm also dealing with marketing for gifting creators and retail buyers and really learning how to manage all of that operationally. That's something I've had to teach myself.

So, yeah, I would say I did think I was going to be in front of the camera, but this much? Probably not.

Share a decision that you made that was detrimental?

I think it relates back to launching in channels that are inefficient. TikTok Shop and Amazon specifically were definitely great for awareness in the beginning parts of the business. But as I started to understand what was happening while we were doing it, we were getting eaten up by a lot of money and expenses required to fulfill orders and deliver to fulfillment centers.

Allocating inventory for those channels is a lot, and it requires a lot to launch from the get-go. Everyone kind of talks about it. The first thing they ask is, "Are you on Amazon?" Initially, I was like, yes, we're on Amazon. But now I say no. It doesn't make sense for us right now because we're still trying to be lean and work efficiently.

I think that if we were to be bigger and have different-size format bags and shipping cases that were efficient for Amazon fulfillment, then it would make sense. I've learned a lot about how those fulfillment fees eat into margins drastically and can put you in the negative pretty quickly.

Everyone kind of sees, from a general consumer perspective, that if you're on Amazon, that's a good sign that you're picking things up. But I think the learning experience there was to be mindful and aware of what channels you're launching in, and what channels you're thinking about launching in, before you do it because it could significantly impact your sales and revenue.

I'd love to be on Amazon and TikTok Shop at some point because I think they're both really good channels. We're going to need to allocate advertising spend, inventory, and fulfillment fees that are dedicated to fulfilling the product to customers, along with sampling for TikTok Shop and finding effective creators who are going to post your product and banking on the possibility that the product video gets a solid amount of views.

That requires a lot of spend, and it requires understanding if your product is the right product for those channels. I think there are different types of companies, whether it's a sour candy company or a flaming-hot chip, that create some sort of marketing appeal and virality and make it a lot easier for those channels to succeed.

I think what we were doing at the beginning was that we just didn't have much of a dedicated strategy. Now that I'm further down the line from that predicament, I've understood a lot more about what we need to do to get to the point where it makes sense to launch in those channels.

Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?

Launching in our first major account that has 14 stores, Bristol Farms, was a really rewarding moment. I grew up shopping there as a child, with one being seven minutes from my house growing up, and seeing BUNKY on the shelves there for the first time was incredibly rewarding.

I'd say that when we get to a national scale and I see it on shelves across the country, that will feel very rewarding as well.