Everyday is about doing the best we can and constant improvement. Nothing is given. We stay humble and work hard... and have a sense of humor, because that is important in Chicago.
We exclusively sell to foodservice operators. We seek to push forward the frontier of food by being a not-so-secret source for good ingredients. We've spend a long time figuring that out and are ready to deliver that.
You have to be a lunatic to start a foodservice supply business post-COVID. We are going against both the odds and the national distributors. But we are making it happen. Brick by brick.
a few years post-restaurant jobs, Cooking finally evolved into a relaxing activity. no opening/rush/closing chaos and i finally had my own space to cook involved meals. Being on a shoestring budget i looked for ingredients that had bang for the buck. You can probably surmise what those were, and my spice cabinet grew exponentially. Attached : a picture of pasta on fire - not AI.
spice tinkering officially began in 2022, where we focused on "white space" flavors - combinations not widely known or done before. I believe Our korean coffee rub was the world's first. this was all sparked by hanger in the jewel spice aisle at $8 for 0.25 oz of chipotle powder (insane). figured i could do better and it would interest avid home cooks. This iteration was called Counterculture Foods, launched in 2024.
Counterculture foods was a cottage food operation, with limited sales channels. While the products were great, We decided to rebrand to tigerbird - as a flying apex predator sounds insane. eventually we started offering both retail and custom food-service options.
Today, we do foodservice only. I learned nearly all of my street smarts in restaurants and i wanted to contribute to the froniter of food via spices. We serve as a resource to chefs in chicago where there is an immense, vibrant entreprenuerial food community. We love it. and we'll keep up the good fight.