Behind Brune Kitchen: From Lawyer

By Erin Fasano

Tania Sweis and Jahan Shahryar have known each other since law school where they bonded over their love of baked goods and late-night nachos. It wasn’t until they entered a big law firm in LA after graduation that their shared love of food would blossom into a burgeoning cookie company on the brink of breaking out. As one of the top three fan-selected winners of Favorite Brand at the Startup CPG Alley Rally at Expo West, we talked to them about their founding experience and building their company, Brune Kitchen.

When Tania and Jahan moved to LA, they worked for the same law firm in a high stress, long hour environment, and quickly found themselves eating “quick fix, processed, packaged snacks” that they could chow down on in between meetings. But after a while, the grind of the job paired with the processed foods they were eating started to take a toll on their physical health. After researching online, the duo decided to go paleo and clean up what they were putting into their bodies. At first, they felt isolated from the eating occasions in the firm (good-bye 3pm birthday cake), but they persevered. In their free time, they scoured online forums for clean products and recipes that would fit their new lifestyle, but it was hard to find good options. They kept finding products that felt like imitations of what they wanted to eat, falling into what some call the “good for” category – like a cookie that’s good for being gluten-free, for example. As they continued to research, they found tons of people online trying to make the same lifestyle shift who were also disappointed with options.

To fulfill her own cravings, Tania took up baking in her free time, experimenting with “cleaner” ingredients to try to make copycat recipes of their favorite indulgent treats.

She began introducing new ingredients into her experiments – like tahini, an staple item in both Tania and Jahan’s Middle Eastern upbringings. What started out as a first stab at a tahini-based cookie led to the birth of Brune Kitchen: paleo, vegan, gluten free, and actually delicious soft-baked cookies that set the precedent for clean, sweet snacking.

Tania and Jahan launched Brune Kitchen direct-to-consumer in August 2021, and just a week or two later, had retailers knocking on their door to carry the brand. After the early hits, they got scrappy with sales and started driving around to local stores to pitch the brand, selling it in door-by-door. Brune can now be found in about 30 doors, including

California’s retail darling, Erewhon. They’ve launched into a distributor and are now working to scale their retail distribution. As a small business with limited resources and a quickly scaling presence, it takes a lot of (wo) manpower to manage retail locations. They find themselves frequently communicating with retailers, often in person, to ensure that their products are being displayed and stored properly and that they are keeping up with demand. Their distributor has been immensely helpful in this effort, but they have found it best to remain involved as much as possible. They are still learning from their early accounts, but are ready and excited to scale at both a local and national level.

Persevering and learning every step of the way has been key for the duo from Brune. They know there is no textbook for CPG, but they rely on other founders, communities like Startup CPG, and trusted peers for invaluable advice – and advise others in the industry to do the same.