How a third-generation New Jersey snack brand is optimizing their operations with AI

My grandfather started a little nut shop in Newark, New Jersey, in 1929, and it kind of stayed that way for the next seventy years as my dad and uncle joined the business, too. It was one of those old-school family things; you helped out your family. As a kid, I loved going to work, packing up the peanuts coming out of the roaster, and spending time with my grandfather. I didn't realize it was a pretty lousy business, with fewer and fewer customers each year.

When I was a freshman in college in 1998, the internet was taking off, and I had an idea to start this thing called nutsonline.com. I drew up a business plan, and they gave me a budget for about 500 bucks. I found a kid at school who could build a site for me, and I spent much of my freshman year launching it, doing literally everything from taking the pictures to writing the descriptions. After graduating, I went into investment banking for about six months, but I just had this entrepreneurial bug. I wanted to build something. I went for a walk with my dad and uncle and said, “I want to join the family business.” They said, “You’re nuts.”

When I eventually joined full-time in 2003, it was my dad, my uncle, and two employees. That’s it. We had about 150 products—nuts, dried fruit, seeds, spices, and some candies.

As Google grew, so did we. Today, we have over 500 employees running what I call a “snacking utopia,” where we sell thousands of products and manufacture about a third of what we ship, from chocolate gummy bears to white chocolate-covered toffee cashews.

Now it's at the point where we need to start fine-tuning our approach, launching other channels and really curating the experience. There's still so much opportunity to do better, not so much a reinvention of the business but an evolutionary chapter. That’s where AI comes into play. My feeling is that if you're not an AI-first organization, you're going to be left in the dust

Gemini has also been a great creative collaborator. I’ve used it to help with brainstorming brand names, designing product packaging, and drafting language like marketing copy. Just recently, my colleague needed a press release, so I gave Gemini some context and color, and before my colleague finished the ask, I sent over a draft. It’s like magic.

At this point, we’re just scratching the surface, but these tools point toward a larger shift. We're getting close to 100 years in business, which is really cool. I believe AI has the potential to infuse meaning and purpose into what we do. It’s almost like this magic elixir that helps people reach their potential and focus on the higher-order stuff. For us, that means time to interrogate questions like how do we invent and manufacture the best products? How do we reinvent the way we interact with our customers? That has to be an AI-first approach.