About
Hey, we're Josh and Dan.
Best friends since we were eleven. We built Shred because the seasoning we actually wanted didn't exist on any shelf. The first blend got the only stamp of approval that counted: Dan's mom, in her kitchen, on a Sunday.
The problem with the seasoning aisle
Walk down the seasoning aisle and you'll see what we saw. Salt, sugar, maltodextrin, anti-caking agents, dextrose listed under three different names, masked MSG, and color additives that exist so powder doesn't fade on a shelf. None of it is illegal. All of it is filler.
That aisle hasn't changed in 30 years. The brands shuffled, the bottles updated, the labels got louder. The ingredients didn't.
Other CPG categories got disrupted while seasoning was asleep. Energy drinks got Celsius and Bloom. Water got Liquid Death. Seasoning got nothing. So we built it.
H Mart
The whole thing started in H Mart.
Dan was there one weekend afternoon, picking up short rib. The Korean BBQ shelf was right next to the meat case. He flipped a bottle. Maltodextrin. Modified corn starch. Sugar listed twice under two names. Caramel color. The cheapest version of every shortcut a label can hide.
He kept walking. The spice aisle was the same story on a different shelf.
That weekend he drove to his mom's kitchen. She'd been cooking Korean food his whole childhood, and her marinade was the bar he'd grown up measuring everything against. They formulated the first blend together. No fillers, no shortcut sugars. Gochugaru, garlic, ginger, sesame, Korean kelp, beetroot, shiitake. She tried it on short rib that Sunday and nodded once.
That nod was the green light. That blend is Korean Barbecue. The other three followed the same rule.
The science we won't bury
Here's why we kept ripping maltodextrin out of every formula. Glycemic index of 110. Pure glucose is 100. A teaspoon at dinner spikes blood sugar harder than table sugar would, and the insulin response shuts down fat oxidation for hours. If you're cutting, prepping for a race, or just trying to lean out, the seasoning is fighting the cut. Most of the bodybuilders we've talked to don't know this is happening on their plate.
What's left in our jars is real seasoning, plus functional ingredients we picked because they work with the training, not against it. Beetroot for nitric oxide. Korean kelp. Shiitake. Turmeric. Hemp seed. Nutritional yeast that delivers over 100% daily B12 in Spartan Gold.
Josh and Dan
We met when we were eleven. Same middle school, both skinny ADHD kids with too much energy and a shared obsession with getting stronger. Josh played competitive tennis, plus a single season of hockey that ended in a New York State championship. Dan played volleyball. We ended up on the same volleyball team for one year in high school. Somewhere in there we sketched a clothing brand in 10th grade that never shipped. Fifteen years of friendship later, we're still chasing the next idea together. Eventually that idea was Shred.
Josh's quick story.
I dropped out of Syracuse senior year to found a crypto and tech company. Raised $1.5M led by one of the top pre-seed funds in the space and eight other backers, ran it five years, made every founder mistake on record before the product failed. In parallel I got obsessed with nutrition. Dirty-bulked from 155 to 207 pounds, joined the 1000-pound club, then realized I couldn't run a mile and a half and was showing pre-diabetes symptoms from the maltodextrin in my mass gainer. Cut 50 pounds back to 155 over eight months on clean food and 25,000 steps a day. The week I moved to New York I bought 20 gel packs and ran an untrained marathon in four and a half hours on grit. I go through a jar of Shred a week.
Dan's quick story.
I was lifting and counting macros before most kids my age cared about either. Hit 7% body fat in high school and pulled Josh into the gym alongside me. From there I studied marketing at CU Boulder and went into sales at an influencer and creator marketing platform. My day-to-day is brand research and outreach: campaign data, consumer psychology, and tearing down the landing pages of every premium consumer brand worth studying. By the time the H Mart moment hit, I already had the playbook for how a brand like Shred should look, sound, and feel.
I'm Korean-American. My mom hosted dinner parties through my entire childhood, taught me which ingredients did what, and made the marinade every Korean BBQ blend I ever formulated would be measured against. The flavor instincts are hers. The willingness to put them in a clean bottle is ours.
Built for the work
Shred isn't a supplement. It's seasoning that earns its place on your counter, in your gym bag, in your travel kit, three times a day, because the work compounds when you don't sabotage it.
We built it for the overachiever. The person who reads labels. The hybrid athlete, the HYROX competitor, the marathoner, the bodybuilder cutting for stage, the cook who treats meal prep like training. Your body is the marble and the chisel. We just make the work taste like something.
Real ingredients. Real flavor. Approved by the only critic that mattered.
Josh & Dan
Founders, Shred Seasoning