Wilder Market launches in Miami as premium neighborhood grocery with Major Food Group as founding investor

Speaker 2: Wait. The timing of this is crazy. Wait. What? Did the team do this in... Must have done this in

Speaker 3: last when I was talking about a spider?

Speaker 2: No. I'm not talking about spider timing. I'm talking about our next Oh, yes. What's going on? Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3: Welcome to show. Sorry. Was a spider my desk.

Speaker 10: You guys so much for having me. My husband and I are huge fans.

Speaker 2: Oh, amazing. Amazing.

Speaker 3: Thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker 2: Great to meet you.

Speaker 3: Since it is your first time, can you introduce yourself and the company?

Speaker 10: Yeah. Of course. So I'm Danielle Axman. I'm the founder and CEO of Wilder Market. We just announced today. We're opening up our first one in Midtown Miami Mhmm. This fall. Yes.

Speaker 9: Very cool.

Speaker 10: Like I said, to share more about it. But yeah, thanks again for having me.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. What goes into opening it? What what what is the competitive landscape like in Miami? Why now with Miami?

Speaker 10: Yeah. This is a great question. So I moved to Miami a couple years ago. I grew up on Long Island. Spent a couple years in New York City post college and then actually in LA for a few years. And I share that because it's where I see premium food shopping, boutique grocery stores more abundant, and moving to Miami, we don't have something like that. So I moved here a couple years ago, but really when I became a mom, I started to look at food differently. I really cared more about what I was bringing home to feed my family. I did a lot of research. I learned a lot and was really, you know, the more that I learned as... The more I learned about food and and the ingredients and what was important to really provide for my family and my kids, I became more empowered as a mother, but like more frustrated as a consumer where I wasn't finding what I was looking for at the grocery stores. I became really chaotic and I go to the farmer's market for certain things and somewhere else for dairy. And honestly, even when I found something that checked all the boxes, felt like this was really clean and safe for my family. It didn't taste good either. And so I wanted to put together... Create this this experience, this market that combined thoughtfully sourced ingredients, culinary excellence, and hospitality all under one roof. I'm so excited to share more details about that as well.

Speaker 4: Want to

Speaker 3: go back to Baked Rose. Tell me the story about your involvement because that's a that's a very fascinating story that I think people were, like, skeptical of and then it got acquired. And what what was the journey there?

Speaker 10: Yeah. Oh my god. Had so much fun doing that. So I joined the founding team at Babe Rose. After I left, I worked for the founders SoulCycle, and I was actually there during the the acquisition of Equinox. So then joined the team at Babe Rose. We sold the business to Anheuser Busch. That was for fun. But really, even though my my background is working with consumer, I would say, like, disruptive consumer businesses. Yeah. And then while those businesses were very different, they both taught me so much about building consumer brands, understanding what people want, and creating these experiences that people genuinely connect with.

Speaker 3: Yeah. So what did... What what did you... What lesson did you learn from the Babe Rose journey that you're either taking or adapting for this in terms of like working with celebrities, influencers, social media? Like, do you think your marketing will evolve over the next few years as you grow this the store?

Speaker 10: I love that. And I think I'm taking a lot of lessons that I've learned from those experiences. I think one of the biggest ones is that the strongest brands don't just sell products. They really understand what their consumer wants. They create something people genuinely want to be a part of. I think community is a really big aspect of that, and you see that the Soul Cycle with Babe Rose and so much about what we're doing. We wanna reimagine the neighborhood market, this place that used to be a hub of connection for the local community where you... You know, the owner knew you by name. They knew your favorite order. You had this closer connection to your food, and I think community is one of those things. We're meant to be social beings, and it's super important in anything, you know. We crave human connection.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Jordy? Yeah. To me to me, the thing that, that's like most exciting with a concept like this is just the focus on like, we had, one of the founders of Yes Chef on yesterday and I was realizing how much... I'm I'm just really not a foodie at all. But I am obsessed with ingredient quality. So, like, for me, I can't enjoy something if I don't have confidence that there was at least, like, some amount of effort put into the ingredient selection. And so, to me, it's like ingredient quality comes before taste. Taste is like very much secondary to that. And I feel like grocery stores and markets, like all over the country outside of obviously, you know, Erwan and and some other... A handful of other concepts, have always focused on like taste before ingredient quality. And so that ends up netting out where like I just won't I just won't shop in places like that. And I think that there's like this whole new wave of consumers that are in these key markets that very much think that way, which is like, I don't care how good it tastes if you didn't, like, put in the effort on the ingredient side first. I

Speaker 10: actually really agree with you. I think there's a huge new wave of people who care more about what they're putting in their bodies and on their bodies. We have more information now than we've ever had before. Right? And this is like something that's really important to me and to so much of our community. And so we developed something called the Wilder Standard. So it's basically a vetting process that that evaluates every single product that we sell. And it was really important to me that when I had this idea, sure, I've done my research. I have figured out what works for my family, but I'm not here preaching that to everybody else. I'm not trying to create something that's like super exclusive either. This is meant to be developed by independent experts. So I went out and put together this incredible team, that spans across nutrition, epidemiology, food science, agriculture. Ken Cook, the founder of EWG, Environmental Working Group, is one of the advisors as well. Actually, just with him this morning walking the store. If you're familiar with EWG, they come out with a clean 15 and dirty dozen list every year on produce, which ones retain the most pesticides and which ones retain the least. And I think, creating a standard based on experts is really what we're built upon. So that's the that's the thoughtful sourcing piece of this. And then you combine our partnership with Grass Fed Culture, which is a Michelin star culinary group based here in Miami with the same sourcing standards that we have. If you haven't been to one of the restaurants, you have to go. It's incredible. They developed the entire culinary program, the food and beverage menu, soup to nuts based on the standards that we've created. So that, again, you compare both thoughtful sourcing and culinary excellence. And then the third thing that I have to mention is Major Food Group came on as a founding Oh, yeah. Investor and strategic adviser and and I mean That's amazing. They're legends. I mean, truly the best in the business at creating hospitality experiences. I also was with Mario today walking the store, thinking about the entire customer journey from walking up to the store, what did the flow looks like. They've been really instrumental in helping us bring this vision to life.

Speaker 3: Well, congratulations.

Speaker 7: Do you have

Speaker 2: any idea on how many stores you think Miami specifically or the greater Miami area can support?

Speaker 10: Definitely think there's a lot of opportunity, not just in Miami, South Florida and even beyond in the Southeast Region. You know, if you think about... Well, to me... So we... The local sourcing is really important to us. We have incredible relationships with Bulbivarms. In my research, found that the agriculture in Florida is actually pretty incredible most of the year, something I just didn't probably even, like, thought about learning before this. But, with that, we have, Miami is... This is the local sourcing that we're focused on, and then we also have great partnerships with farms, in the Southeast Region. And to me, that's local because there's, like, a lot of, you know, things that you could grow in Georgia, Carolinas, you don't necessarily grow in Florida. So we wanna focus on those partnerships, and I think there's a lot of opportunity with post pandemic, the migration of people that have moved to these these cities, and are craving this type of experience.

Speaker 2: I'm very excited that you're set up there. Look forward to, visiting the store next time we're in Miami. Last time we were in Miami, I kept ordering bottles of water Mhmm. And they would show... I would order glass bottles, they would deliver plastic. I would get really frustrated at the substitution.

Speaker 4: You're looking at

Speaker 2: the solution? No. I know you... I know we won't have that problem with Wildlife.

Speaker 10: So you gotta come check out our glass juice, our organic cold pressed glass juices. You'll love them.

Speaker 2: You so much for coming on the show. Congratulations.

Speaker 10: Thanks so much.

Speaker 2: Have a good rest

Speaker 3: of day.

Speaker 2: Goodbye. Talk soon.

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