Kyle Krull & Anthony Corsaro
ReGen Brands Launches Unprecedented Support Ecosystem For CPG Brands Supporting Regenerative Agriculture
Episode Overview Section
This week, ReGen Brands launched a new unprecedented, multifaceted support ecosystem for CPG brands supporting regenerative agriculture including two new non-profit organizations and one future for-profit organization.
The three entities are called: ReGen Brands Institute, ReGen Brands Coalition, and ReGen Brands Capital. In this episode, Anthony and Kyle give listeners a peek behind the curtain on what shaped this vision, each entity's purpose, and where ReGen Brands goes from here.
You can also check out the updated website and read the press release for a quick overview of all that is new.
Our New Ecosystem
Over the past few years, Anthony and Kyle created three separate initiatives to support regenerative CPG brands:
ReGen Brands: What this audience is most familiar with – the podcast, blog, newsletter and social media providing news, insights, and education on regenerative CPG
Regen Coalition: Kyle’s initiative which gathered over 20 brands to collaborate and take collective action, including retail activations and other regenerative awareness-raising partnerships.
Outlaw Ventures: Anthony’s investment portfolio of more than 20 investments supporting regenerative agriculture including brands such Alec’s Ice Cream, GoodSAM and Lil Bucks. The firm also connected regenerative brands with other values-aligned funders.
The work to date has confirmed that regenerative brands need these resources. But why bring them all under one roof? The new ReGen Brands ecosystem unifies, formalizes, and restructures these support initiatives in a way that enables them to better serve regenerative CPG brands. Anthony explains the details of how the entities have been formalized:
ReGen Brands Institute is now a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit producing research and education resources sharing data, insights, news, and perspectives for all regenerative industry stakeholders.
ReGen Brands Coalition is the same 501(c)(6) trade organization, now formalized with 31 inaugural brand members and staffed with a team of experts to catalyze more collective action.
ReGen Brands Capital will launch in 2025 and be a specialized finance and strategy firm providing advisory services and funding brands via innovative financial products and fund models.
The journey to develop this new ecosystem was filled with trial and error, but through experimentation and listening, Anthony and Kyle were able to clearly identify the challenges that regenerative brands face and design a new support infrastructure that will more effectively provide support and generate solutions.
“No one knows the problems and needs explicitly facing regenerative brands better than us. We are the experts on that categorically. What we did was we got good at articulating those [challenges] and then asked: what are the potential entities and strategies that could create solutions here? And that has really led the development of the new ecosystem.” - Anthony
ReGen Brands Institute
The Institute provides news, perspectives, and education on the world of regenerative CPG to brands, retailers, investors, and other food system stakeholders. The Institute will continue the short-form media like this blog, the podcast, and the newsletter, and publish more in-depth industry information through reports, databases, and other long-form content.
The Institute is structured as a non-profit so that it can publish helpful insights and resources for free to all industry stakeholders. It’s the arm of ReGen Brands that follows the belief that rising tides will lift all regenerative boats. It supports the regenerative movement as a whole and all regenerative brands.
The Institute's first official resource is the State of Regenerative CPG Report authored by Katey Finnegan, copyedited by Kristina Tober, and designed by Jellyshot. The report distills key learnings from ReGen Brands’ first 80 episodes and articulates:
Nine ways in which regenerative brands are succeeding today and
Six sticky challenges regenerative brands face and ReGen Brands’ thoughts on how industry stakeholders can take action and drive forward solutions
Kyle and Anthony already have a long list of resources the Institute will develop and are looking for additional philanthropic funding and donations to support this exciting work!
ReGen Brands Coalition
The Coalition collectively identifies brands’ shared challenges and catalyzes collaborative solutions. Member brands participate in monthly forums that address challenges in sales, marketing, operations, and finance. They receive direct connections to resources and professionals specialized in regenerative CPG.
This 2.0 version of the Coalition is structured more intentionally to facilitate challenging conversations and actionable meetings. The Coalition is led by Executive Director, Arron Mansika who helped start Naturally Boulder and the Naturally Network. The Coalition holds monthly meetings for members’ marketing and sales representatives facilitated by Kyle Krull and Hannah Robbins, and an operations and finance meeting facilitated by Anthony Corsaro and Connor McMorrow. Daniela Jensen of Big Picture Foods and Hayley Painter from Painterland Sisters sit on the Coalition board.
The Coalition is currently the only space in the industry that facilitates peer-to-peer learning and collaboration for brands with different regenerative claims. In order to become a member, brands must have at least one SKU that is third-party validated by Land to Market™, A Greener World, Regenerative Organic Certified®, Regenified™, Soil and Climate Initiative Verified™, Ethos Regenerative Outcome Verification™, Demeter Biodynamic Certified® or via the Whole Foods Market’s Regenerative Assessment. In the Coalition, brands across these certifications connect over shared challenges and work together to build tangible solutions and activations that advance the collective.
“The brands who represent these different certifications and verifications so desperately want to work together. And this is really the theory we had, that these brands want to work together… And this is what we have built. This ecosystem that we have developed allows for that collaboration to take place” - Kyle Krull
The Coalition launched with an inaugural cohort of 31 brands spanning a variety of categories and company sizes. Applications for a second cohort will open in 2025. For now, the Coalition is looking for sponsorship from industry service providers who are excited to develop win-win solutions with these exciting regenerative brands.
ReGen Brands Capital
Capital will be launched in 2025. It will advise, fund and connect regenerative brands with funding that aligns with their growth strategy and mission. Brands will receive one-on-one advisory sessions to plan their funding strategies. Capital will deploy its own funds to invest directly in brands while also helping brands access capital from aligned financial institutions.
Through Outlaw Ventures, Anthony learned that existing financial products and fund models don’t align with what regenerative brands need. Another traditional venture fund simply identifying regenerative brands to invest in wouldn’t be transformational. What the regenerative brands need are new financial products and models. ReGen Brands Capital will take on that financial R&D while also providing bespoke advisory services to brands.
“Typical financing of a business is just trying to solve for growing the business and profitability. We're still going to solve for that, but we're also trying to solve for other things that these brands are doing around their mission and supporting regenerative agriculture systems. The tools to facilitate those transactions are either unknown or underutilized, and the capital pools flowing into those don't exist or don’t exist at a significant enough scale…and we need to solve for that for our group of stakeholders.” - Anthony Corsaro
Gratitude & Calls To Action
Anthony and Kyle are absolutely pumped for this new iteration of ReGen Brands and hope the community shares their excitement. Lots of hard work has gone on behind the scenes from individuals already mentioned, stellar interns like Alexi Raglin and Michelle Edid, the 80+ regen leaders interviewed for the podcast, and many other industry stakeholders along the way. They thank everyone who has helped to date and invite everyone to plug into the new ReGen Brands ecosystem.
Here’s how you can help:
This ReGen Recap was written by Katey Finnegan
You can check out the full episode with Kyle and AC HERE
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