Rashid Ali

Rashid Ali is the co-founder and CEO of Chomps, the Chicago-based snack brand that makes grass-fed beef, antibiotic-free turkey, and venison meat sticks. Under his leadership, Chomps has grown from a Chicago condo side hustle into one of the fastest-growing food brands in America — now in over 30,000 retailers and on track to top $1 billion in annual revenue.

Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Rashid attended Iowa State University's College of Business and graduated in 2003. After college, he worked as a business operations consultant, advising clients on clean foods and nutrition — experience that would later shape Chomps' ingredient philosophy. He met his future co-founder Pete Maldonado at a poker game in Chicago, where Pete was running a personal training business and frustrated by the lack of clean, high-protein snack options for his clients.

In 2012, the pair launched Chomps as a side hustle out of Maldonado's Chicago condo, each contributing $6,500 of their own money. They originally started as Logic Meat Locker, a grass-fed beef mail-order service modeled after Omaha Steaks, but quickly realized the meat stick format had more potential. The breakthrough came when Trader Joe's called with a purchase order large enough to force them to choose: keep grinding or go all in. Pete went full-time roughly four years in; Rashid followed in 2018.