Today it's a brand and merchandise design company making fully custom products for brands across CPG, culture, and beyond, from Seven Brew Coffee to Liquid Death.

We talked to Brendan about cold DMs, 4am pitch calls, and why he'll get on a plane for a one hour meeting.

Here’s his story 👇

I'm Brendan Lebitsch, founder of Off Menu, a rebrand of High Life Tech. We are a branded merchandise design company that partners with brands across every industry from CPG, experiential, and cultural brands, to create merchandise that doesn't come from a normal catalog. Our offering includes full merch programs, custom product development, influencer and gifting, packaging, and we run the public web stores for some of our larger clients.

You started at 17. What made you want to start your own company?

When I was 14 I got a job at an ice cream place cleaning tables for six bucks an hour, and I thought I was the richest kid ever. But I was always more fascinated by the other side of the business, how it was run. I'd ask the owner about everything, even the financials. Then one day at soccer a friend brought up drop shipping. I read a book on it that week and just started. I pivoted quickly after the first month once I realized I wasn't making money on phone cases, and i just kept running with it with no real end goal in sight. I still did all the normal college stuff and internships as I really had no clue how far I’d go.

There are two ways we work.

Some brands, like Liquid Death, already have their creative and don't take outside pitches, so they need a partner who understands product development to help them build it.

Other brands, like 7 Brew Coffee, work end to end with us to develop full collections. They'll say they want a camo collection or a performance collection, and we put together the designs. Either way it starts with the campaign goal: what's the event, who are you targeting? Then we look at your brand, what you've done before, and what's trending in merch, and we build tailored concepts from there. We called it the Concept Room at Off Menu but now has become Test Kitchen with Off Menu. The point is we're not slapping a logo on a website product, we're leveraging your brand's IP into things people actually want.

Grit and cold outreach. With Liquid Death, I cold emailed concepts. Didn't hear back. Then reached out again a year later. They told me they don't take outside concepts, but they did need a suit cuff, which was exactly what we'd pitched, so we developed it.

With 7 Brew, I was in China for three weeks and they said I could meet their guy Dustin at 4am my time. So I met him at 4am from my hotel, pitched, and we started on their first Valentine's Day hats. We've done two collections and a giveaway with them since. I'll also just get on a plane. I once flew five hours to LA for a one hour pitch and took a 9pm red eye home the same night. I have no problem doing the grunt work to get in the door.

Our CRM performs well because it sends straight from the inbox instead of a server, so it stays out of spam.

But Instagram DMs are the sleeper. We've done at least high six figures, close to a million dollars, in sales just through Instagram DMs. When I started I'd sit in my college dorm and DM 40 brands a day until Instagram would ban me for the day. I did that seven days a week.

Streetwear kids, who are often 18 to 20, answer faster on Instagram and will pay right there over Zelle. Even now I'll DM a brand saying I'd love to make merch and ask who to contact, and they'll hand me an email. People think it's nuts. I think it's awesome.

NetSuite runs our ERP and financials. It's about $20,000 a year which is expensive, but I was losing money on late and mismatched bills doing everything in spreadsheets, and the big players in our space use it.

We use Pipedrive for CRM and Apollo for sourcing leads. Our main project management platform is Lark Suite, which is built by ByteDance and is China based, so our team doesn't need a VPN. It's an all in one: drive, docs, wiki, calendar, messaging, and project boards, and it's free up to 100GB.

And we just started using Air for creative ops, since our pitches go through so many revisions and Air keeps every version.

Be way more organized from day one. I wish I'd gotten into a rhythm with systems earlier. I built everything for what worked for me and saved files everywhere with no naming conventions, so our backend data is messy and hard to track down.

Once I hired our first two full time employees this year, there are no rules for them to follow. I'd set the groundwork for real systems at the start. It would have saved a lot of headaches and let me scale faster.

Favorite book? The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

Favorite business podcast? Founders, by David Senra

Entrepreneur, dead or alive, you'd trade lives with? Elon Musk. Regardless of what you think of him, what he's built is insane. Neuralink, catching rockets with chopsticks. Maybe Richard Branson too

Current hype song? "Come and Go."

Favorite basketball team? The Oklahoma City Thunder, going back to the Durant days

Favorite all-time player? Russell Westbrook

Favorite games you've witnessed or played in? Knicks Game 3 in the playoffs this year. I was at a bar until two in the morning. Ridiculous.

📈 Today's issue was sponsored by Sam's List, a marketplace helping founders find vetted, industry-specific accountants, bookkeepers, fractional CFOs, and financial advisors. It's run by Kimi, one of the founders here at Founders Basketball, so if you need help finding the right fit, reach out to her directly ([email protected]) or at samslist.com.

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