Jesse & Ben's Beef Tallow French Fries Doubles Its Retail Footprint Following Major Seed Fundraise

Forbes

3 days ago

A beloved french fry whose story originates on a humble food truck in the nation's capital is now an American mainstay.
Today, Jesse & Ben's french fries doubles its retail footprint across the country, entering all Whole Foods Market, Fresh Thyme Market and Sprouts Farmers Market locations, the company tells me. Jesse & Ben's has also just closed a second multi-million dollar round of funding in its first year in business
Cofounders Jesse Konig and Ben Johnson are riding a wave of impressive business growth while tirelessly working to perfect a seamless supply chain operation. The brand brought in more revenue in July 2025 than all of 2024, predicting upwards of 30 times year-over-year growth by the end of 2025.
Jesse & Ben's has become known for its three simple ingredients, most notably, beef tallow. 'Beef tallow is just a no-brainer,' Konig tells me. 'All the history…and the taste.'
Fast Casual, Fast Friends
Konig and Johnson met during their freshman year at Wake Forest University, neither with a plan to ever pursue a career in food. 'We basically procrastinated getting real jobs by starting a food business on our campus to make some money to travel after we graduated,' Konig says. In the early to mid-2010's, food trucks and fast-casual restaurants surged in popularity due to their more convenient ways of eating fresh food.
Largely inspired by the expansion of Sweetgreen, the duo started a food truck in Washington, DC in 2014 with the intention of taking it fast-casual some day. Swizzler Gourmet Hot Dogs became a presence throughout the DC area, largely known for their house-cut fries. The menu expanded over the years to become a higher-quality fast food concept. 'We were doing regenerative grass-fed beef burgers…sourcing buns from a local bakery.'
By 2019, Swizzler was ready to lay the groundwork for a brick-and-mortar location. 'If we could show a model of a better fast-food chain that actually is using really high-quality food, maybe that's how we can make an impact,' Konig remembers thinking. 'We signed a lease in DC's Navy Yard neighborhood…Nats just won the World Series…it felt like perfect timing.' The pandemic decided otherwise.
They started freezing their fries because it solved their labor issue when the business was suffering, tweaking the recipe because the frozenness changed the texture. 'We were like, 'holy shit, this tastes better than everything we've done.'"
A Saturated Category
The simple act of freezing their fries helped Konig and Johnson survive a rough few years. Now that Swizzler is a success in its own right, they felt confident enough to explore additional business opportunities. Going down a French fry rabbit hole, they realized the grocery store set didn't represent all of the fun that their customers always had with their fries–determined to change that. 'We've both sat and cut pounds and pounds of potatoes…We've staffed people. We've run a restaurant,' Konig says. 'We knew we were able to get this proof-of-concept figured out.'
In June of 2024, Jesse & Ben's launched its line of frozen hand-cut french fries in independent stores in the Mid-Atlantic region. By the end of the year it was in Whole Foods Market stores in the region plus other natural grocers like Mom's Organic.
'[Konig and Johnson] definitely understand volume coming from a restaurant background,' says Chris Manca, Principal Category Merchant for Frozen Meals at Whole Foods Market. 'They know how to hustle.'
Manca says that the category is changing rapidly because customers are looking for something new in the frozen section. 'Jesse & Ben's was the closest any of us tasted to something that felt like it could be served to you in a restaurant,' Manca says. 'Customers are coming to the freezer aisle looking to recreate restaurant experiences at home.'
Many emerging brands today attempt to fill a void that consumers are looking for. But Konig and Johnson took a riskier approach. 'French fries is a pretty saturated space,' Manca says. 'They were not afraid to jump in and tackle that space by bringing a really fresh perspective to better packaging.'
Its all-American brand, helmed by RVH Design, is defined by its mascot: cartoon emblems of Jesse and Ben themselves peeking through a french fry-headed trench coat. 'There are basically three giant multi-billion dollar faceless corporations that own all these brands,' Konig says. Here you have the founders themselves greeting their paying customers in a playful way in the grocery store freezer. 'We want to be proud and held accountable to the quality of our product and putting our name on the bag is a great way to do it.'
Jesse & Ben's has quickly become a beloved product in households in every pocket of the country, often selling out. 'They're selling more quickly than some of our buyers were expecting, which is a great problem to have,' Manca says.
In the Spring, it entered all Sprouts Farmers Market locations, and is now in the process of rolling out in Whole Foods across the country. 'We would have been lucky to get one. We've gotten both,' Konig says. The product is also about to be available on Thrive Market's online marketplace. Their next goal is conquering the conventional retail space.
Jesse & Ben's fries currently come in Classic Avocado Oil & Sea Salt, Avocado Oil with Rosemary & Garlic, Beef Tallow & Sea Salt, and currently exclusive to Sprouts Farmers Market, Sweet Potato Fries with Beef Tallow.
Belgian Style, Twice Fried
When you're walking down the boardwalk with a cone of fries in one hand, pinching a bunch of them towards your mouth in the other–that's the feeling Jesse & Ben's achieves. But it's not coincidental. It's precisely engineered.
Each Jesse & Ben's fry is three-eights of an inch thick. 'It's not as thin as McDonald's, not a super-thick steak fry–kind of in-between where it's still a thin French fry,' says Konig. Although the shape of the McDonald's fry wasn't the exact goal, there's something about the world's most famous fry that strikes a chord with Americans.
As for the beef tallow, the intention goes beyond a source of oil; it's an homage to the French fry itself. 'Fries started in Belgium…they always made them in beef tallow,' Konig explains. 'When [McDonald's] first started out in the 1950s, they had a three-ingredient fry made with potatoes, beef tallow, and salt.' Jesse & Ben's beef tallow comes from 100% grass-fed, grass-finished farms.
The twice-fried technique, where starch is taken out before an initial fry in lower temperature oil, also makes them taste like anything but store-bought. Where the brand capitalizes on the store-bought experience is that the consumer completes the process themselves, performing the second fry at home just moments before it hits the kitchen table.
Inserting a frozen fry, as opposed to a fresh potato, into hot oil, helps achieve a mashed-potatoey, pillowy interior with an ideal crispy outer layer, and locks in flavor.
Konig and Johnson hunted specifically for Russet potatoes. 'It's the best fry for a French fry in the US,' Konig says. The brand intentionally keeps the skin on, too. While it does work to obtain the most sustainably sourced ingredients possible, the primary goal is taste and accessibility. At the moment, the brand does not source organic potatoes. They would hope one day to source organic and regeneratively farmed potatoes, but they felt it would be unfeasible for a startup without its own farming operation. 'Organic [Russets] in particular is almost always done on the West Coast,' Konig explains. 'We are testing potatoes for certain inputs, like glyphosate, that people have concerns about so we can have that level of transparency.'
Having just three ingredients in the product was enough to show the consumer that they deeply care about the integrity of the fries they are selling. 'If we could get 90% of the concerns resolved but not get the organic stamp on our bag, that's fine by us,' Konig says. 'We want to win against the biggest players in the potato space…You've got to win on flavor, taste and craveability.'
A Natural Investment
Jesse & Ben's raised a pre-seed round of funding around the time of its 2024 launch. But due to how quickly the product exploded on the market, another round was needed to boost production. 'We thought it would be a little bit slower growth,' Konig says. 'But we're selling out…we need to make sure we have the cash to support this level of growth and invest in our facility.' Several funds, including Willow Growth Partners, Siddhi Capital and grt sht ventures, contributed to the 7-figure total seed round.
Jesse & Ben's received an initial investment as part of the first fund formed by Brandon Alster of Sling Ventures, which was the first and only VC fund involved in the brand's pre-seed round when the product was in only 200 stores. 'In the first 12 months on shelves, I've not been involved in a company with faster growth,' Alster tells me. 'French fries, according to many sources, are the number one most-ordered item at restaurants in the U.S. It's a category that has really been left behind from an innovation perspective.' Alster also points to the rise in air fryers as a reason why this product resonates with today's consumers.
Alster's fund, which was formed in partnership with Regatta Capital Group, focuses on brands that are not necessarily 'better-for-you,' but, as Alster puts it, 'natural-for-you.' 'For the most part,' he says, 'every fry on shelves until Jesse & Ben's has anywhere from six to nine ingredients in them…These guys have spent an inordinate amount of time over the prior decade really perfecting the clean ingredient french fry.'
Konig is fervent about keeping his product simple, as a french fry should be, and delivering on an experience his customers will want to repeat. 'We're not trying to reinvent things,' he says. 'We're just going back to basics with ingredients and making it a fun brand that people are excited about.'