Show Notes:
AC and Kyle chat with Tim Richards of Philosopher Foods. They talk about Tim’s nutritional awakening in college and how that inspired his company, the problem with conventional almonds and what can be done to make them more sustainable, and all the ins and outs of building a ReGen Brand in the nut butter category of CPG.
Links:
Additional Resources:
Philosopher’s WeFunder Campaign
Episode Recap:
ReGen Brands Recap #10 - Tim Richards @ Philosopher Foods
Episode Transcript:
Kyle Krull - 0:00:16
Welcome to The ReGen Brands Podcast. This is a place for consumers, operators and investors to learn about the consumer brand supporting regenerative agriculture and how they're changing the world. This is just Kyle joined with my cohost, AC. Let's dive in.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:00:33
On this episode we have Tim Richards who is the founder and CEO at Philosopher Foods. Philosopher foods is supporting regenerative agriculture through their regenerative organic nut butter products. In this episode we learn about philosophers Origin story, their mission to transform food production from degenerative monocultures to regenerative polycultures, and all the ins and outs of building a regen brand in the nut butter category of CPG. Tim did not name his company philosopher foods by accident. Y'all as he considers himself a philosopher after studying it in undergrad, and he showed up to our conversation with tons of great data that makes a compelling case for regenerative almond production over its conventional counterpart. We go deep in the show on these resources and also have them LinkedIn the show notes, so check them out. So without further ado, let's talk some almonds and get to the episode. Here we go.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:01:00
What's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Regen Brands podcasts. We are fired up to have Tim from philosopher foods here with us today. Philosopher foods is bringing the first regenerative organic nut butters and some other items to market. So pumped out Tim here to share with us. Welcome Tim.
Tim Richards - 0:01:46
Hey guys, thanks for doing this. I've been appreciating the podcast and thank you so much for having me on.
Kyle Krull - 0:01:51
Yeah, absolutely. You know? We're really excited to dive into nut Butters. We know there's a lot of misconceptions out there around, you know, how people produce nuts. So we're excited to hear from you and and understand that, you know, what philosopher foods is doing differently. But before we dive into sort of like the regenerative supply chain, like T is up like for those who are unfamiliar with the brand, what do you make and where can you be purchased today?
Tim Richards - 0:02:13
Totally, yeah. So philosopher foods, we make a line of craft nut butters and so we're basically doing small batch stone ground. Coconut butter, sprouted almond butter and different flavors and textures of each including chocolate almond butter and chocolate coconut butter. So I think our big differentiator that we, we really are trying to introduce to the category is this concept of craft, right. We're we're very familiar with like the difference between Wonder bread and your local artisanal sourdough or you know Coors Light in your local craft beer or Hershey's and your like Dick Taylor Kraft Chocolate bar, you know so. We're trying to introduce that same distinction to the nut butter category. And when you do the stone grinding that we're doing, it really creates an extreme like quantum leap difference like I just described in those other categories. So we're excited about bringing this innovation. It's really not innovation. It's really going back to the way we used to do things, but it's innovation within the current market context.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:03:15
Love that man. We've you know it's funny how much not just the growing processes but the processing is coming up in all these conversations. So we'll we'll dive more into that later but just you know share kind of origin story your story why nut butter why philosophy foods like what's what's the origin story Tim.
Tim Richards - 0:03:33
Totally. Well, let's see where to begin. Really. Where this started? I was, I was 25 years old. I was trying to figure out what am I here to do on this planet? How do I achieve a meaningful way of working in the world that actually allows me to achieve my mission and vision and my values and also make money. And so I'm I'm studying to be a holistic health coach. I'm thinking I might go in that path, kind of help people become healthier because my background, I grew up 25 years in the state of American diet or, sorry, 18 years and.
Tim Richards - 0:03:37
I got to college and kind of learned about how messed up that was, and on so many different levels. And I also had a bunch of health problems. I had acne, I was overweight, I was depressed. I had a lot of gut issues and had no idea what was going on. Got to college, learned about all that, changed my diet, and I felt fantastic. Cleared up the acne, lost a bunch of weight.
Kyle Krull - 0:04:24
Was it in college? Was it like a particular course or just a different group of peers? Like, when I think of going to college, I didn't learn a damn thing about food.
Tim Richards - 0:04:31
So.
Kyle Krull - 0:04:32
Curious to know, like what exposure in college led? So that some of those revelations.
Tim Richards - 0:04:38
Totally. Yeah. Well, I grew up in central Maryland, so it's very conservative area. There's actually a lot of racism. It was pretty rural. Like we had a local KKK chapter. I was very like anti all of that. And I was like Get Me Out of here. I want to change the world for the better. I'm sick of all this, you know, stuff. So I basically sought out the most progressive college I could go to. I went to Haverford College, Philly suburbs. And a small liberal arts school social justice focus found by Quiggers. And when I got there, yeah, it was like super. I was like all of a sudden I was at home. It was like, yeah, really intellectual, really thoughtful, kind hearted people all trying to make the world better. And so I basically just joined every single activist group that I could. I was like literally, I was in like animal rights group, Anti war Group, labor Group, environmental group, like you name it. I was like really testing the waters on activism.
Kyle Krull - 0:05:32
I'm imagining like a Letterman's jacket, just with all the acting passions on the side.
Tim Richards - 0:05:36
Like, such a cool concept. Totally. So that's awesome. Yeah, man, I just, I just, I just dove deep. And one of the things that got me was I watched some factory farm documentary and I was like, man, that's crazy. Messed up, this industrial food system isn't working for anybody and. Accidentally, during my freshman week of college, I accidentally was vegetarian for a week, and like it was a total accident, I didn't even think about it. But then I started feeling really good and I was like, man, I don't know what's going on here. And I started experimenting with it and I was just feeling like a lot better. Like a lot lighter, a lot clearer and. So I kind of experimented with the vegetarian diet a little bit. The vegan diet actually went down. The raw food diet rabbit hole for a little bit. Wow. And each because I had been so overloaded with chemicals, poisons, preservatives, sweeteners, additives, you name it. McDonald's, Pizza Hut, burgers, all of it.
Tim Richards - 0:06:19
Every, every change in diet that I made, it had an extreme change on my quality of consciousness. The way that I think felt, saw like literally it was like food was changing my whole consciousness and I was just, I couldn't believe it. Yes. And so yeah, learning and and in each each little shift that I would make I would notice differences in how I felt. And that was just so profound to me. So that's that's how I got super deep into changing my diet in college.
Tim Richards - 0:06:38
And also, I switched from conventional to organic foods, which was a whole leap in my health as well. Yeah. And I just kind of went down for rabbit hole from there. I got super environmental issues. I ended up focusing on, I majored in philosophy and I ended up doing a thesis on environmental ethics. And essentially, it's funny, my thesis was that humans basically need a second industrial revolution to be more ecological.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:07:33
And.
Tim Richards - 0:07:34
I studied out of Leopold. Yeah, yeah. I studied the land ethic of out of Leopold, which basically says a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community, and it's wrong when it tends otherwise. So I really interpreted that deeply. I was like, wait a second, I don't think this guy is actually talking about like morally right and wrong necessarily. I think he's actually talking about ecologically and biologically beneficial and detrimental. Yep. And so I got super tuned into all these concepts. So Fast forward about four years from, you know, three or four years. Graduated 25 years old, trying to figure out what to do all the stuff under my belt, studying the holistic health coach, doing organic food product demos for harmless harvest Ecotees, alive and radiant foods.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:08:19
Yay.
Tim Richards - 0:08:20
Just like, you know, drinking the cool aid in every way. Yeah, yeah.
Kyle Krull - 0:08:24
This is the induction into CPG.
Tim Richards - 0:08:27
Right. Exactly. Yeah. So. I was. I was studying to be a holistic health because I learned about sprouting. And basically they told me, hey, sprouting it. Actually, it helps you process grains, beans, nuts and seeds to make them sweeter, more digestible and more nutritious. I was like, cool. Actually, I remembered I did that back in college. Like, I was doing that with almonds, making my almond milk like buckwheat breads, like all kinds of stuff. Yeah. And I was like, oh, wait a second, I remember that. That was really good. I should should do that again. So I sprouted some almonds.
Tim Richards - 0:08:30
And man, was like, oh, it's just the best almonds I've ever had in my life. And I was like, wait a second, doesn't make it really good. Almond butter grounded into almond butter. Absolutely delicious. Crazy good almond butter. And I just started like making it for myself, my housemates. I live with seven other people. And it's like vegetarian solar power cooperative in Davis, CA.
Kyle Krull - 0:09:18
Wow, so awesome.
Tim Richards - 0:09:21
Yeah. And they were just like, dude, this is the best almond butter ever. Like, you gotta make this a business. Oh my God. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, yeah, we'll see. You know, I'm trying to be this health coach. Might be a natural path, you know? We'll see how long it goes. Yeah. One day my housemate came to me, literally shoves cash in my hand. And he's like, dude, I want to buy your almond butter.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:09:41
I.
Tim Richards - 0:09:42
Was like, oh, that.
Kyle Krull - 0:09:44
Was a liable moment and I was like, maybe I should turn this into a business, yeah.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:09:47
It's more sensitive.
Tim Richards - 0:09:49
Totally. And then he was like, do you want to see more clients or sell more jars of almond butter? And I was.
Kyle Krull - 0:09:56
Like interesting and what, what, what year is this? What? Like, where are we in the arc of like compared to today? Is this two years ago? Yeah, year ago.
Tim Richards - 0:10:05
This was a decade ago.
Kyle Krull - 0:10:07
Okay.
Tim Richards - 0:10:07
Yeah, this is 2012 in the fall. And so I was, yeah, come 2013, I, I went to this little talk at UC Davis about the cottage food law. And it was this new law that had passed in January of 2013 that made it legal for you to sell food that you make in your home kitchen. And I was like, wait a second, I could actually, I could actually start this business for like 150 bucks. And I already have. I have everything I need to do it. I could do it right here in my kitchen. And I talked to some of their housemates about it and they had different things that they wanted to try to 1 housemate wanted to do rice cakes, another wanted to do gluten free pancakes. We're like shoot, let's just get the certification and go for it. So we did. We like became the first certified cottage food operation in Yolo County and WOW. I love it. It's like these hippies and a coop and like he had like a four day extended work party to try to get this kitchen ready to be inspected by the county. Yeah, that's imagine it's like all these bulk bins and just craziness like years of dirt and grinds like.
Kyle Krull - 0:11:08
Yeah. You mentioned stone ground and I can't help but picture you with like a giant mortar and pestle with like almonds. You just like grinding this thing like in your home kitchen like you said. So like what did the actual production look like at that stage of the business?
Tim Richards - 0:11:23
In the very beginning I was doing it in a Vitamix because I didn't really know about stone grinding yet, and it was actually an almond farmer that I was purchasing from that first taught me about stone grinding. He's like, hey, try my almond butter. And I was like, whoa, this is crazy good texture, super silky smooth. You can actually pour it, you can drink it if you want to. It's just like unlike any other texture. It doesn't stick to the roof of your mouth. It's it's just like a world apart from conventionally mass produced almond butter. And I was like, oh man, that's how I want to process it for sure. That's so much better.
Kyle Krull - 0:11:55
I mean, it might be conventionally mass produced. Hold on. I'm sorry to keep interrupting, but how is mass produced almond butter made? I have no idea. And I consume almond butter all the time. I'd love to learn this.
Tim Richards - 0:12:05
Totally, yeah. So basically it's going the the almonds go in one end of the machine and it goes for this high-powered high speed like metal cutting machine. You got these blades chopping it and you're like just like. You know, literally pulverizing it, pushing it through one end, out the other thousands of pounds an hour and you know, it's a lot of processing. It can definitely heat up the almonds in that process. You know, some people say, yeah, anyways, I won't speculate, but. It's just, it doesn't give the almonds enough time to actually release all of their oils fully and properly. And so when you see that separation in the jar where it's like you got an engine of like almond oil on top and you have to like knife it for 30 minutes to try to integrate it and like it's.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:12:51
So annoying, you know?
Kyle Krull - 0:12:52
Spills all over the side and dense oil what gets everywhere.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:12:56
When I eat that, like literally when I eat that or I eat like a conventional almond and like a trail mix package, like versus a product like it was like. I will get a stomach ache every single time versus when I had your guys's products at Expo. WI had like 7 jars like stray almond butter and like no issues. It's crazy.
Tim Richards - 0:13:14
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's feedback. We get a lot, a lot of people, they can't do nuts for whatever reason, but they try ours and they can do it. Or some people are even allergic to almonds and they can't do almond butter. They try ours, they can. So you know the sprouting, it needs a lot more research to understand what exactly is going on there. We know for sure that it's increasing the polyphenol count when you sprout it. And so those are you know important phytochemicals that are antiinflammatory and a lot of them are anti cancer antidegenerative diseases of various sorts. So that's that's one big piece of it. Also by sprouting it, we're basically activating the life processes of the almonds. So some of the enzymes start to break down some of the antinutrients so.
Tim Richards - 0:13:26
For example, phytase is is activated. Phytase basically is designed to breakdown phytic acid, phytic acid. All it does is hold phosphorus inside the seed until the seed is ready to grow. So when you activate the phytase, it breaks down the phytic acid, it releases the phosphorus, the seed starts to grow, and so you're basically pressing dough on the life processes within the almond and it starts to chemically change the almond to make it sweeter, more digestible, and more nutritious.
Kyle Krull - 0:14:22
Wow. So I I just want to touch on the topic we just sort of mentioned and this has been one of those recurring themes that we keep having on the podcast. And it's the the difference between the way you were processing food and the way others processed food and the correlation between the proliferation of food allergies these days. Like is it really food allergies or is it the way that we're processing food that people are becoming allergic to. It's just an interesting. Concept and this is pure speculation. You mentioned before Tim, you weren't going to speculate. I'm going to go there. I have no.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:14:50
No.
Kyle Krull - 0:14:51
Data at all to support that. But it's just an interesting concept to think that, like maybe aren't actually allergic to almonds or peanuts or whatever else, dairy, for example. Maybe it's the way we're processing foods in mass industrial quantities, right? So.
Tim Richards - 0:15:04
There's a lot of research around that and wheat actually like when they moved from stone grinding the whole thing to like, you know, separating it and then, you know, metal grinding it. Some people think that that's that had to do with a lot of the allergy uptick and stuff and of course the other element is glyphosate which we can get into later. But I think I think that's definitely at play too. But yeah, as far as as far as stone grinding, we have a 30,000 plus year species history of processing food through stone grinding. They found that at archaeological sites, people were doing it with a donkey, just walking the donkey around a circle, pulling stones and crushing whatever crop it was. It's like that's a very time tested, tried and true method of food processing compared to all these newfangled things that we're doing that we may not know the effects of yet.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:15:53
Another theme that's coming up in every single conversation, it feels like and Kyle and I, you know, if you listen to Episode Zero, that's why we started the podcast was like this whole human health connection, right? And so it's so funny to hear you say the natural. Thing and the health journey. Kyle has his story with cancer. You know, I have my story with my autoimmune disease and working with naturopathic doctors. I thought about being a naturopath and like a health coach. That's just hilarious in itself. But so many people the the positive of of the current human health issues we're having is that so many people are turning it into a positive of trying to work in food and help make this connection of human health and food and then change the food system for the better. So I I just love that and wanted to pull that out. So you you start in the you start in the home kitchen and how do we get from, how do we get from there to today?
Tim Richards - 0:16:42
Well, yeah, basically it just, I got a bunch of orders that came in. I announced, I launched it formerly on Earth Day. And so I put out an e-mail to a bunch of local listers. I was like, hey, telling us about it, almond butter. Hey, it's organic. Hey, we're trying to become, you know, at the time. So my the last piece that I've forgotten the story was I basically one night after about nine months of meditating on how am I going to make this life work thing happen. The answer came through. I was just kind of laying on my yoga mat before bed, meditating, and all of a sudden I got this download and it was just like your life's purpose right now is to start a sprouted almond butter company to teach people about the importance of sprouted food, and then change the way that food is grown and made from being degenerative polycultures to regenerative polycultures.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:17:29
And.
Tim Richards - 0:17:30
I was just like, whoa. I just got like, tingles in my whole body. And it was like, that's it. This is how I tie all these things together. Being a thinker, a foodie, an activist, a health coach. This is like the way that I tie everything together into a cohesive hold. That's an offering that'll actually enable the needs to not only achieve my mission, but also make money doing it. So it all kind of coalesced in this moment and I just, boom, there it is. And I had this whole like 3 hour vision where I could pretty much see like the next five years of my life, everything unfolding, all these different pieces. I could feel it. I could see it. I could like, it was really awesome. Yeah. So I kind of, I got what I described as like the marching orders on how to do it all. And then the next day I just started doing it. And then that was over nine years ago.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:18:16
So direct to consumer farmers market.
Tim Richards - 0:18:18
And.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:18:18
I'm sure they started.
Tim Richards - 0:18:20
Yeah, exactly.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:18:20
How like, what was the first break into actual CPG getting into retail?
Tim Richards - 0:18:26
I believe the first store that we got into was actually Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco. They took a big gamble on us cuz we were still, it said, made in a certified solar powered home kitchen in Davis on.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:18:40
The.
Kyle Krull - 0:18:41
Label. Or was it distinct some?
Anthony Corsaro - 0:18:42
People probably loved that, actually.
Tim Richards - 0:18:46
We had our old tree label at that point. I don't know if you've guys seen our old branding, but we did get that in time luckily. But yeah, it still had like a an Avery like paper craft label on the on the lid with the QR code little tree talking about permaculture that was the reward for regenerative at the time was I was trying to create permaculture orchards for our supply chain. So yeah, yeah that was the first account. We got a Davis food coop, we got into the farmers markets in the region and there's started building it out from there. We actually didn't launch D2C on our website until 2016 unfortunately. It could have done better by launching sooner, but we just didn't get to it.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:19:25
Yeah.
Kyle Krull - 0:19:26
So Fast forward to today to today, what's the split look like in terms of business on DTC versus business and retail and you know where else are you sold today?
Tim Richards - 0:19:36
Yeah. Last year was about 22% D to C compared to all the other channels. We're also sold on Drive Market Online, sold on Patagonia provisions. We're sold on Amazon Prime. We're sold on good eggs. KP Organic Farm fresh to you on the West Coast. So that's that's pretty much the detail side of the business which is more or less 50% of the business. And then the rest of the business is brick and mortar. We do direct brick and mortar, we do fair brick and mortar, we do unify brick and mortar and we also do farmers markets. That was still about 7% of our revenue last year. So wow, yeah it's.
Tim Richards - 0:19:51
It's really important to us to diversify our income streams in the industry so we don't get a monoculture of sales channels. Yep, not to be.
Kyle Krull - 0:20:26
Regenerative on farm and regenerative in your business, I love.
Tim Richards - 0:20:28
That's right.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:20:30
Who have been some retailers that have really supported y'all that you really think I've got behind this whole regenerative, you know, movement to?
Tim Richards - 0:20:37
Jimbos, I put at the top. Jimbos they have this whole soil label now. And so they they had this intake form. We filled out what we did that was regenerative how blah blah blah and. You know, they came to our booth at Expo, they did a whole interview of us. They put it up on their website later, they're, they're putting the soil tag on our products on shelf in the store. Yeah, they're just super awesome. They get it. They're doing the right.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:21:01
Job to jimbo's man. It's come up, what, five or six times? And for sure so 10.
Kyle Krull - 0:21:06
At least half the episode that's come up, they're the first region coalition partner. Yeah, they they tell you.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:21:12
Yeah, love that. That's awesome. Let's let's talk regen organic almonds, right. I know you you might be expanding past that here soon, but we really want to give the listener a real understanding of how different these systems are from a pure production standpoint. We've talked a little bit about the processing side then conventional almonds and I think we want to tie in kind of the understanding for the consumer of. I don't know, you probably know the exact number. The vast, vast majority of almonds in the world are grown in California. And for us to sustain that, you know, we have to make this transition to more regenerative practices because we're having some really intense chemical and water issues with that crop that I know you're very bullish can be kind of prevented with with regional game practices. So I'll give the mic over to you with all that.
Tim Richards - 0:21:57
Totally, yeah. I wish we had a screen share on here. I would show you our parable of Three Orchard slide. And basically, you know, imagine instead of our three faces here, you see on your left you'll see a monoculture of almond trees with bare soil, nothing else growing in between it. Literally, that's all. You see middle slide, you see trees and green grass that's organic. And then on the right side you see trees, a variety of green species growing between those trees, and you see sheep grazing in between those trees and so. You know, this is kind of my 3 pictures tells 3000 words, slide progression. So basically the situation is conventional almonds are 99% of California's almond crop. It's it's the largest plant based agricultural commodity in California that's legal. It's a $5.6 billion industry.
Kyle Krull - 0:22:54
Which is there's something illegal that say.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:22:57
That lasted again cuz our laughter over overshot it, but that was hilarious.
Tim Richards - 0:23:02
Yeah, almonds are a $5.6 billion industry and so the only agriculture industry bigger than it in the state is dairy. So yeah, it's.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:23:12
It's a huge deal. I mean, this is a huge deal.
Tim Richards - 0:23:14
Yeah, it's over 1,000,000 acres that look like that picture on the left with the barren conventional. It's the most heavily sprayed crop in the state. There's over £40 million of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and fumigants sprayed on it every single year, according to the data publicly available by the state.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:23:35
So that means it's probably more in reality.
Tim Richards - 0:23:38
Yeah, and they only, they only give you the names of the top five most heavily sprayed ones. But there's all kinds of crazy cocktails that they're doing because they're finding that there's pest resistance to glyphosate, for example. So they need to add three other compounds in the glyphosate, right? And then it just creates this toxic compound that's killing the bees. And, you know, it's just sad. It's a lot of sad, sad, gloom and doom kind of data. And so, you know, the data also shows, scientifically speaking, that in the conventional system.
Tim Richards - 0:23:43
You're averaging 3.2 gallons of water per almond when you farm in this way, and it's in that.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:24:18
Is so much water for one almond.
Kyle Krull - 0:24:20
I'm just taking one almond 3.2 gallons. Yeah it is. It's a wild visual.
Tim Richards - 0:24:26
Yeah, that's an average too. It can be more, can be less and it kind of depends on where you are, what the soil's like, that kind of stuff, management practice details. But also the other thing to note is that those almonds, you know, they they're also, so a lot of the places that they're growing almonds, they're not, they're not necessarily having any natural rainfall that would be enough to support almonds and so when you're farming conventionally. You're basically disrupting the soil biology and then it's not able to form those soil organic matter aggregate structures that would store water and store carbon, etc. So my theory is that almonds, yes they currently have a water problem, but the source of the water problem is the chemical use. And if we stop using all those inputs, we could actually give the soil biology a chance to live, a chance to do its thing. And we know for a fact that for every 1% increase in soil organic matter, we can store an additional 20,000 gallons of water per acre. So the more soil life we have in soil, the less water that we need. And so that's, that's the argument to 1st moving to organic to start building, you know, stop the disruption and then moving to regenerative to start rebuilding and aggregating even faster than nature can do it.
Kyle Krull - 0:25:48
I want to hone in on this message real quick. Just to just to reiterate, it's a lot of information at one time, so for our listeners essentially incorrect me if I'm wrong, this is my interpretation of what you said is because of conventional farming practices, they've destroyed the living structures like the the soil biology that can help to maintain the water levels in the soil, which is part of what's driving the overuse of water in conventional almond agriculture. Is that correct?
Tim Richards - 0:26:13
Yes.
Kyle Krull - 0:26:15
OK. So you're saying that once we switch to organic and or regenerative, we can start to build that soil biology to increase the water retention rates in the soil and reduce the amount of water needed to grow that one element?
Tim Richards - 0:26:26
That's correct. So the ecdysis foundation, John Lundgren has been doing a lot of great work to quantify this in almonds particularly and he's, you know I. I can give you guys the links for the show. Notes to there please. Peer reviewed studies on the differences between conventional, organic, conventional and regenerative almond systems and it's just profound. I mean the the difference biologically, ecologically is insane. There's like 6X more insect diversity. There's like so much more soil organic matter, so much more soil carbon, so much. You know, it just goes on and on. Like the biological and ecological benefits are insane.
Tim Richards - 0:26:36
The nutrient density, so his, his methods of measuring it, I don't think are the most advanced. And I'm actually going to be partnering with the bio Nutrient Food Association as well as the Utah State University to start quantifying the differences between conventional, organic and regeneratively grown almonds to really dive deep on the nutrient density. Because most of what Jonathan was studying in that study was like more like macro nutrition stuff that you find in the nutritional facts panel. Yep. And so he did find that there was a lot more magnesium in the almonds that are regenerative compared to conventional. So that's super important because a ton of Americans, like 80% are magnesium deficient. Yeah, super important, you know, element that we're lacking. But yeah, so the fact is like those nutritional facts panels contain maybe like 12 different compounds. And like, you know, the USDA actually tracks like over 130 different compounds in food.
Tim Richards - 0:27:34
And there's been published scientific research on over 100,000 different compounds in food. And Dan from bio nutrient, he actually estimates that there's over 10 million different codes in food. Oh yeah. So science only knows about 1% of the compounds that are in foods. And so a big, a big part of our mission philosopher foods, our slogan is know thy foods because if you are what you eat. Which I think a good case can be made for that. I mean you might modify to say we are what we absorb or we are what we what your food ate. I don't know if you guys know this book but yeah big plug David Montgomery this book is epic. Everyone in regeneration needs to read it over 1000 peer reviewed studies that for those who are.
Kyle Krull - 0:28:46
Listening the book is called what your food ate.
Tim Richards - 0:28:49
By David Montgomery and Ana Bilk yeah over 1000 peer reviewed studies on all the ways in which. Regenerative is really the best way to grow food, yeah. Hands down. Yeah, there's.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:29:03
There's so many parallels, which is between how we grow the food and how we like, grow our bodies. And if you think about the three images of the orchards, like, it's like the First orchard is you're in the hospital, hooked up to Iv's, getting pumped with this, that and the other thing, and you're living off, you know, some sort of fake synthetic. Input right and it's the same thing with the with the growing operations and on the third one you know you have a multispecies of of grass is another green cover you have the animal integration you have you know the the less needs for water and the the greater water infiltration and the no chemicals and so I don't it's just you know it's just so profound to me and to to me that has been super important to try and bring more people into the conversation is one for them to understand the human health. Component of not just the chemical free but of the nutrient density and two you know how how people are actually doing it and getting people to the farms. Because once you see that like real live and in color like picture says 1000 words. But when you're standing there or when you can stand there and you can see the difference between the two, it it's just you can't Unsee that and that that's what was like the final. That was like the final click for me once I saw a handful of return of farms, I was like OK, I'm going to work on this till the day I died.
Tim Richards - 0:30:18
100%. Amen.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:30:20
Yeah, yeah.
Kyle Krull - 0:30:21
I'm really curious, you know, every time we talk to a brand is doing something regenerative. It's like, you know, why isn't everybody doing this, you know, why can't everybody just do this? So I'm curious from your perspective because you are way closer to the ground than this than we are. I assume economics are the primary barrier in your opinion, you know, so talk to us about why it's more difficult to do this regeneratively and what you think it would take to get the 99% of all in orchards in California to start to implement some of these practices.
Tim Richards - 0:30:50
Well, okay, so just to start with, yes, economics is #1, the most biggest barrier to scaling not only regenerative agriculture but also a craft product. You know, we're we're constantly getting the price point objection and we are one of the most expensive products per oz on the shelf. Not no doubt, but in my view it's like, yeah. And we got to figure out a way to get. I don't know if we're going to be able to change the economic system to value nutrient density or to value, you know, soil carbon sequestration or to value water conservation or to value insect biodiversity or health. You know, I don't, I don't know if we can get that. Like right now that it's just not measuring any of that. It's like no, right, this is cheaper, this is more expensive and whatever is cheaper is better and the markets going to choose that because it's better and it's like, well, if this is really a self interested market, I would think that. A consumer would want to choose the food that was the best for them. Like I was saying, if you are to eat, then to be your best self, you got to have your best food. So in order to get the best food, you got to do all these regenerative practices, you got to do all these craft processing techniques and that's all more expensive. And so instead of like decrying that as, oh, it's more expensive.
Tim Richards - 0:31:48
I would actually say the self interested consumer should want to spend the most money that they possibly can on their food and on their farm products because if they are not, they are not getting the best food and therefore they are not being their best selves. So it's just a minor flip of the paradigm to see it as an investment rather than a liability that it's more expensive. Personally I only spend money on the top dollar food because I know those differences and you know. For that reason, that's one of the only things I spend money on. So what we're trying to do with Dan at Bionutrient is, okay, this is the economic system we find ourselves in. How do we quantify not only the price per OZ, but also the nutrients per oz, the anti nutrients per oz?
Tim Richards - 0:32:34
The toxins per oz, the agricultural chemicals per oz, the carbon sequestered or emitted per oz, the water used per oz. And so I want to create what I'm calling the true nutrition facts, and I want a holistic sense of what's in my food. I want to know a lot more about my food because that's the most critical thing to life. So that's really what I'm trying to do with my brand and with my products is create a platform to scale or gender of agriculture on the back end and but also to scale craft processing in the manufacturing end and then on the consumer end to create an unparalleled platform for transparency, to quantify why all that is so much better for all of life on Earth. Yeah.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:33:44
When when you speak to that I I couldn't agree more with the consumer piece Tim. But when I think about the production the, the magic bullet there, the silver bullet there is how do we get producers to do all the things we just talked about cheap, right or in a cheaper way so that your supply is cheaper, so that you don't have to be as high price, right, because it just it just makes the product more accessible. And I think when you look at our our economy from a macro perspective it's built on consumption of mass produced cheap goods so. There will always be conscious consumers and that will continue to grow and there always be a place for premium markets and the things that you're doing. But I want to flip it back to you on, you've obviously talked to these producers, you've seen the practices that need to be implemented. How do we implement them cheaper? You know, how do we, is it government grants, is it technology? You know what, what is that do you think from an almond perspective?
Tim Richards - 0:34:31
Yeah. I think in almonds, well, a really important factor is the water, right? So when you're pumping the aquifers dry, which is what's happening what in a lot of these different growing regions. San Joaquin Valley in California, you know, the northern end has, you know, more water that naturally replenishes. But as you get into the central and southern ends, these farmers are drilling 2500 plus foot wells. I mean they're just poking straws deeper and deeper, millions of dollars in well drilling. They're buying their own rigs because there's so much demand for drilling and they can't wait. They got to get more dollar, they got to get more water, more quickly. So they're buying their own rigs to drill.
Tim Richards - 0:34:42
And I'm talking about the billionaire growers. I'm talking about the resnicks of the world. And if you want to hear a deep dive in all this, you've got to, got to, got to listen to Mark Arax's book, the Dreamt Land. He goes deep on the hydrology of California from indigenous times to present. And there's no better history that I've ever heard of water issues in California. And so one of the things that he points out is.
Tim Richards - 0:35:10
There's this issue of subsidence, which is the deeper that you poke your straw and the more water you suck out, the land actually drops like it. You can measure how much the land is dropping in these regions. And in some places, the land has dropped more than 60 feet in the past, like couple dozen years. Whoa. And so as the land is sinking, you're literally all this, like your telephone poles are starting to warp. You're like, well, heads are starting to get exposed, your roads are starting to crinkle and crack. Like the whole area is just getting destroyed and it's like millions of dollars in damage. But you know, this is an externality. This isn't, this isn't like, calculated in the cost of the conventional almond.
Tim Richards - 0:35:42
So, but my Long story short, when the water runs out, they can't do it this way in these places anymore. And so, you know, the water's getting more and more expensive. And so a they need to either figure out how to use less or they're not going to be able to do it, or it's going to run out. The other thing is like the chemical inputs, you know the what, your food, a book. A lot of the studies are showing that these are completely unnecessary and in fact counterproductive. So if we don't need to spend money on these chemical inputs because what they do is they wipe out the beneficials as well. And so when you wipe out the beneficial predators, then there's no natural competition. And so once you spray it once, you actually need to spray it more and more and more because you don't have the beneficials are slower to recover than the other problem species.
Tim Richards - 0:36:39
And so it's just a vicious cycle that if you just stop doing it and start introducing beneficials, you save a ton of money. You don't need to buy all these chemicals. And then I think the other piece for economics is the research that Jonathan Lungren did, he actually found that the regenerative orchards were 2X more profitable. And so when you're growing in this way, your products can basically fetch a premium of double in the marketplace. So you're saving money on inputs. You're saving expensive resources like water, needing less of them, and you're actually getting more money at the end because of all this.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:37:37
And 2X doesn't sound like a big number in agriculture. That is humongous profitability, 2 times more profitable that is humongous in agriculture.
Tim Richards - 0:37:46
Yeah, exactly.
Kyle Krull - 0:37:49
It's crazy what one of the things that really strikes me is the put a banded on a bruise. Situation, which it sounds like this what you're describing with the the desire to find more water in California. Like if they were to instead invest those dollars into incorporating some of these regenerative principles to make them less water dependent. Long term that's a huge investment. But I guess in the short term they're just trying to figure out how do I maintain the crop that I've already put in the ground this year. You know, how do I not lose what I have? So it's like the dichotomy between like the quick solution is going to create a much larger problem.
Kyle Krull - 0:37:54
3510 years out, 20. Forty 6000 years out versus like, if they could just bite the bullet. Now start to implement some of these practices, maybe have a tough, you know, harvester too, and then, you know, become more sustainable and more profitable. Like you mentioned, like it can work, but it's as somebody who's never formed. I really don't know what I'm talking about. I'm just taking these theories and trying to implement them into my own knowledge. Sounds really easy to do, but I can imagine that being like a tough decision for somebody to have to make.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:38:51
And that look what Tim just articulated about the land literally sinking and all the externalities that are affecting the larger like community. Like once again, consumer demand is huge, but individual actors are going to act selfishly because that's human nature and farmers are going to do what they need to do to make money. So no, no finger wagging, no finger pointing at them. So like it's got to be coordinated, it's got to be farmers, it's got to be governments, it's got to be individual Agri businesses. It's got to be people coming together and saying, OK, we know XY Z's happening and then it's causing this. So how do we build a suite of financial, you know, cultural, technical assistance, all these solutions together to kind of give to people, you know, as a unit. So Tim, we, we talked a lot about the region, supply chains, tons of great information. I learned a ton. That was awesome.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:39:11
How have you capitalized the Business Today? Let's go back kind of to your business, how it's grown. You know, how have you funded? It sounds like early on it wasn't a lot of money, but I'm sure that's changed as as you've grown and scaled. So just talk so about growth and fundraising history.
Tim Richards - 0:39:53
Totally, yeah. So back in 2013, got a little loan for my parents to kind of get the thing going by a stone grinder that was big enough. Started at the two pound level, literally £2.00 at a time. And just don't grind me. And I was like, all right, mom and Dad, can you help me buy one that'll grind 100 pounds? And they're like, sure.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:40:16
Love that.
Tim Richards - 0:40:16
So that yeah, a lot of the lot of family support is in the M way. You get going. I also in later years, I did, I did the first external fundraising was through Kiva zip. It's a 0% interest crowdfunded loan platform. Because I've done several 0% interest loans through them. In more recent history, I've gotten involved with the slow money community here in Northern California. They've done some low interest loans to me. So we've also gotten the SBA loan, eidl, the PPP during COVID. We got a loan from Pacific Community Ventures. So it's been a lot of debt, I'd say a lot of debt. It's been basically exclusively debt until literally the end of last year we started a convertible note raise. So that's we've been financing through that convertible note raise for the last 8 1/2 months or so. And currently we're about to launch a we funder campaign as well. Nice.
Tim Richards - 0:40:53
So, you know, by the time this goes live, hopefully it will be live. We're going to start testing the waters this Saturday. And yeah, we're going to announce it at the slow Money Farm fest on Sunday and just go off to the races and try to get as much convertible note raised as we can through the crowd to kind of supplement our private race.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:41:43
Love it. If you're listening and you care about any of the stuff we've been talking about, definitely check that out and we'll we'll try and include the link maybe in the shutouts as well.
Kyle Krull - 0:41:52
Absolutely. And I'm curious to know what are your plans with this, this upcoming race? What are you hoping to use that money for? Is that, you know, for a big production run? Are you hoping to invest in more equipment? Are you trying to make a big raw ingredient purchase, focus on marketing hires? What's what's the goal?
Tim Richards - 0:42:07
All the above.
Kyle Krull - 0:42:10
Gotcha.
Tim Richards - 0:42:12
Yeah, we're trying to, we're trying to really get the money that we need to scale it at this point. It's been pretty organic, pretty slow growth so far through time. And to really do it right, we just need more capital to play in this industry. As you guys know, it's super expensive. The people that are really crushing it in our category are people that have a ton of money to spend on marketing because believe me, what's in the side of the jar is not that good. But what you know, the way they wrap it, the way they talk about it, the way they digitally market, it's sleek, it's sexy, it's hitting all the buttons for what they think, what the consumers want, or at least what they think they want. And, you know, we just, we're, we have real substance, we've got real content inside the jar. There's all these holistic value ads, but we haven't had the budget to really do the marketing to tell people about everything that we talked about in this podcast.
Tim Richards - 0:42:41
So yeah, we need to get on a more of a loving. It's never going to be a level playing field in the food industry, but we need to have power up to, to play more strongly in the space and that's what the funding is really about.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:43:22
People, people that have a good business background, I think they understand, you know, it costs money to make money, but I don't think main, mainly people want to touch on it for a second. Just CPG is so capital intensive, right? So like you go celebrate a big retail win and you get into 100 new doors and you got to pay for that. You got to pay to open up the DC, you're probably going to pay KE and unified, then you might have to pay the retailer slotting fees. And then you got to make sure you can actually market Geo targeted in that area on shelf, socially, digitally, whatever, so that people actually buy the product once it's on the shelf, let alone make sure it gets on the product right in the right spot, looking good, tasting good, you know? If it's a refrigerator supply chain, you got all these things and so, you know, just kudos to you off from fighting that fight because I think that's the hardest thing from the early stage brands that I've worked with. It's just it's just a cash burn that is unavoidable. It's just the price of doing business in this space.
Tim Richards - 0:44:16
Exactly. Thank you so much for saying that because yeah, it's it's really hard to explain like. Luckily, before we really started burning, we, we got the loans before we really started burning to grow. But now if we try to go to London, they'd be like, no, are you kidding me? Like, like, it's like, well, we've been investing in the business and they're like, but you're losing money and it's like well territory, you know. So yeah, thank you for saying that.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:44:42
And I'd love to see maybe and maybe this is happening you guys, would you guys have a little more insight directly into this world, but like we talk about jimbo's and I think what they're doing awesome. I know thrive markets really doing great things to support air lawn, some others I would love to see retailers and distributors. Give some cash incentives for this stuff because what they want to do is they want to get the product, they want to market it and throw out some cool pamphlet about we support regarding a bag. But it's like if you really want to support the brands like you know, take the $5000 sliding fee away or give them a free, a free ad week, you know, or like something like that. And I think there's a huge opportunity for someone to really lead the charge from that standpoint.
Tim Richards - 0:45:18
Yeah. Or like the free fill case, like instead of making us, instead of us paying for you to take our product, which is that's actually what a free fill is. It's not just giving it away, it's actually paying the distributor to give it away for you. It's like, yeah, instead of doing that, what if you guys invested in. Yeah, region brands, yeah. Like I'd like to publicly invite like Sprouts, for example, to like they're talking a lot about region AG and we're region nut butter. But they recently declined us. I'm like, well, there's wait, there's no space on your shelf for the only regenerative nut butter, but you like regenerative bag.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:45:55
Come on, sprouts.
Tim Richards - 0:45:56
What am I missing? And same with natural grocers. It's like they just did this big initiative with starting to ban glyphosate. And I'm like, yes, you guys are awesome. Thank you so much for raising consumer consciousness about this massive issue, right. Lifestate carcinogenic herbicide that is in Roundup. It's the most heavily sprayed herbicide on the planet. It's antibiotics. So it's killing our gut biomes. It causes, you know, and it's nonhodgic lymphoma. It's just like, all these things. 81% of Americans don't even know what glyphosate is. And guess what? 80% of Americans are testing for it in their body, right? Like.
Tim Richards - 0:46:12
Okay, there's a lot wrong here. But so we got natural grocers coming out and being like, check it out. We're not taking any more oats or any more lentils that have glyphosate levels above 10 parts per billion. And I'm like, yes, you guys, thank you. And let's apply that to every single food product because that's why it's not just oats and lentils. I have data. I've done the testing on my brand versus other organic brands versus conventional brands.
Tim Richards - 0:46:35
Every single organic brand tested below that 10 part per billion threshold for glyphosate. Every single conventional brand tested above. And so let's apply it systematically to all categories and then select the brands that are glyphosate residue free to be the ones that we put on the shelves and take the other ones off because we shouldn't be eating them.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:47:20
And stop putting stuff on the shelf that has the oil separation the entire stirring my mouth bars.
Kyle Krull - 0:47:24
100%. I do want to, I want to, I don't want to say defend the retailers for a little bit but at least in my experience this is, these are the people I work with on a regular basis and what I think is happening right now is people are starting to catch point, OK, regenerative is a thing, it's not going anywhere. We want to figure out how to support it. But where you mentioned like the systematical like implementation of like how do we support region, the way buyers performance is measured doesn't take that into consideration. So they're not looking necessarily to fulfill attributes on the shelf they are focusing on. OK, like I need to hit my numbers. I need to have brands that are going to purchase X number of ads per year who are going to promote quarterly, who are going to make sure that they're filling these individual buckets. So I just wanted to kind of like share that perspective that the buyers are kind of stuff maybe they really want to support it, but they're mentally in a way that if they're going to take somebody else optional for maybe has deeper pockets, it is more you know capitally funded.
Kyle Krull - 0:47:55
And who can provide that level of support, that's a really difficult ask for them to do. So I'm not saying that an excuse for them. I think that we there's a way that they can be incentivized to.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:48:28
Bring an alignment and an incentives problem, right, just like we talked about with the production side.
Kyle Krull - 0:48:32
Right.
Tim Richards - 0:48:33
Yeah. So it's a really good.
Kyle Krull - 0:48:34
Issue and I do think that some of the retailers are making big progress like Sprouts that you mentioned is trying to focus on reja and natural groceries. Jimbo's Air One's really great at bringing in regen, though they do have some very significant. Asks of New Brands who get on shelf, but to to your point there there are ways that they can improve the system and I would love to see a regenerative brand in every category across the aisle. You know, I think that's like a future that will will likely be there in maybe five years. We're just starting to kind of scratch the surface and like get consumers to demand the products. That's another big key part of this is like if the customers don't know what it is yet. They they can't buy. And it's really confusing for customers right now, consumers who go into stores because like there's rock certification, there's savory EOV, there are brands who don't have either certification who are pushing regions. So some use of the DEM certification, it's just a lot of like different ways to look at it and it's relatively confusing. So as the movement starts to align and coalesce around a unified message and we can share that message with the retailers and get kind of a mass adoption, I think that's really going to help us to move the new.
Tim Richards - 0:49:42
Bravo.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:49:43
Drop the mic, brother. I love it. I mean, somebody should start a podcast at this guy. This guy's brilliant.
Kyle Krull - 0:49:50
I just own food for a long time. I'm lucky to work with a bunch of really great people and I get to understand how how that's out of the business operates.
Tim Richards - 0:49:58
Yeah, yeah. I think you hit it on the nose. Absolutely. And again, it's about, it's about how do we, how do we align all of the virtues of this movement. With the very real economic realities that we're all living within, you know, it's like, I was naive when I started it. I thought, oh dude, if I just make the best nut butter, me and my friends think it's the best. Like, everyone wants it. They're trying to buy it, it's gonna be the best selling almond butter in the world. And like, yeah, yeah, we maybe. I think arguably we did make the most delicious, nutritious, ethical and ecological nut butter that's currently out there on the market. But guess what?
Tim Richards - 0:50:07
It ain't the best selling and there's a ton of reasons why that's true. But the fact is that I am proud that we are in the top 12 best selling almond butters in the natural channel nationwide according to some of the data. Yeah, so that gives me hope. And the fact is of those top 12 almond butter brands, we're one of only two that's actually growing. So that gives me hope is like. That's huge. It's been a slog to do what we've done and especially without, you know, adequate funding, without adequate team, you know, blah, blah, blah. But we've made a lot of headway over 9 years and with with this funding coming in, getting the right team in place, getting the right infrastructure in place to actually do this thing well at scale, I think, I think it's going to just be a lot better moving forward for achieving scaling our regenerative mission. Yeah.
Kyle Krull - 0:51:32
That's awesome. I'm stoked for what you're doing. I'm also almost like in this, this is an arc that I feel anything might feel the same way. Tim, you probably feel the same way. Like you mentioned, I spend money on food and unfortunately, like if I find a regenerative option in a category, I won't buy anybody else. So like my my spend just continues to increase as my awareness of brands increases.
Tim Richards - 0:51:53
Yeah, yeah.
Kyle Krull - 0:51:55
So yeah, when I first tried philosopher food, I bought the sample pack online and I was like just trying everything. And then I just found out Newport marketing and Anthony and Ben sells philosopher foods. I bought my first jar there and like my go to afternoon snack like Apple and previously peanut butter, but I ate so much but I developed an allergy so or maybe it wasn't an allergy. Maybe it's a conventional way it's processed. So now I'm just crushing philosopher foods, and I must go bad for how much I'm eating. I'm like, this is, this is dollars, you know you cannot do it.
Tim Richards - 0:52:28
You know, there's a lot of reasons to feel good about your addiction, Kyle, and you're the perfect example of our consumer. Like once we convert someone, they literally never go back and we have the stickiest, most loyal cult following that I can possibly imagine. So I'm super grateful for the people that get it and support us and consume our products. Thank you so much for your support.
Kyle Krull - 0:52:49
Dude, thanks for making the best.
Tim Richards - 0:52:51
Dude, I wouldn't want to do it any other way. And yeah, there's a lot of reasons to feel good about it, right almonds? It's a super healthy crop. I have another peer reviewed study that did this crazy like network analysis of 1000 different variables and like 1000 different foods. And it actually put almonds as like the number one most nutritionally fit food on the planet they made according to this one study. And also almonds is a crop, it's one of the only nut based tree crops that's actually carbon negative. And this was like a study that was done by Yale and basically it's even with like all that degenerative stuff that we talked about from a carbon perspective. It still is carbon negative and that's largely because of the way that they well, first of all, it's the perennial crop, right, not getting filled and plowed under every year. But more than that, it's all the holes are used as dairy feed. So there's a lot of and a lot of them are actually some people use them for biochar as well. So there's a lot of other byproducts from the industry that contribute to making carbon negative.
Tim Richards - 0:53:34
And so I I just, I don't like people demonizing almonds because I don't think that they're looking at the whole picture. I think that it's like like any tool, that's how you wield it, right? It can be a planet destroying or a planet healing tool, depending on your management and your processing. Yeah. So yeah, the more that we can wield it in a way for the plant healing, you know, the better, the more powerful this tool's gonna be for all of us.
Kyle Krull - 0:54:25
Well, I mean we got to buy more flaws for food so you can take over more acreage in California. So to implement more of these practices and I mentioned Gary's a huge industry in California. If we start to use those by products to feed the California dairy industry. I mean there's just like this domino effect of positive outcomes if we can get more people to support these types of brands. And I'm, I am super pumped about it. I know if these to that's why we're doing this to talk about this stuff and to hopefully shed light and let people understand like the positive impact they can make. By supporting brands, we're doing the right thing.
Tim Richards - 0:54:56
The other thing I'll note briefly is that we are looking to get into some other categories. We're not exactly sure like what it's going to be yet. I kind of want to be data-driven about it because I just, I've been following my heart for 9 years and it's been really beautiful and it's gone really, it's gone well, but it's not like freshing it, right. We're not in 3000 retailers nationwide, we're not like, you know, $10 million brand yet. So I wanna be strategic about choosing my next product to make sure that a, it's a category that's hot, it's a category that's fast moving. It's a category that's growing cuz you know a little. A lot of the objections we get from CPG investors is around the nut butter category. They're like, sorry, the category's in decline, we're not interested. It's slow moving. It's a commodity category. We think you're too premium in a commodity category. I'm just like.
Tim Richards - 0:55:24
Well, shoot, what was all that for? You know, like building? Like investing?
Anthony Corsaro - 0:55:55
It's evolutions and stages though, bro. You know?
Kyle Krull - 0:55:58
Well, it's also, I mean, yeah, the pendulum swings and I think right now there's probably the backlash against almonds right now because of all the negative press water consumption. So you're fighting an extra uphill battle in that category, trying to say that, hey, almonds are different, you know, so there's a lot of educational pieces you got to try to tick. So yeah, I can. I can understand that. That's a that's a tough ask right now.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:56:19
We got to talk to Alec about some almond butter ice cream is what we need to do.
Tim Richards - 0:56:22
Totally.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:56:23
I think there are some ingredient and maybe even some food service place for you too, Jim.
Tim Richards - 0:56:27
Yeah, no, I need to get into that game as well, but that's just.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:56:31
Another thing for you to do with with you know all by yourself and just add it to your list, but.
Kyle Krull - 0:56:38
This conversation's been incredibly stimulating. We're coming up close to time. I appreciate you. I don't know if you've got our outline or not, Tim, but somehow you touched on future outlook before we could even get there, so going on, but but Anthony likes to ask this last question. So Anthony, you know, go ahead and kick us off.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:56:54
Yeah, I mean to to wrap us up, Tim, we asked everybody, you know what, what do we need to do to have reject brands have 50% market share by 2050?
Tim Richards - 0:57:04
I think in my in my mind what we have to do is we have to quantify the value adds not only on the farming ends but on the nutritional end. And in fact I think we've done a lot of good work on the farming end already. Groups like the Egg Dices Foundation, this what your due date book, there's thousands of studies literally that prove regenerative is the way. What we haven't done enough of, in my opinion, is the studying of the health benefits of regenerative farming on specifically nutrient density and even what the heck does nutrient density mean? There's actually there's no scientific definition of nutrient density, and in fact, the scientific term for nutrient density, or the study of nutrients in food and their compounds is called metabolomics. Look it up, it's studying the metabolic byproducts of food and the organisms that eat it. And so, you know. So when I look at the organic movement, I see what really moved the needle there was consumer health. They're like, I want to get cancer, I don't want to get cancer, I want to thrive. And so similarly, we need to start quantifying what it means to thrive and what are the nutrients that we need to thrive and how much more of those nutrients are there in our regenerative like ground food than the other types of food out there.
Tim Richards - 0:57:52
Because then, like I said, the Nutrition Facts label, it has what you need to survive, right? That's it. Only survive. It doesn't tell you any of the elements that need to thrive. There's all these phytochemicals that we absolutely need in our diet to make food truly medicine. And those elements are lacking because of conventional agriculture. Hands down, you can scientifically prove it. David Montgomery has done that. And so we but we need to tell the story.
Tim Richards - 0:58:15
Of of the end result like man this food is so much more delicious so much more nutritious and here is how quantify it scientifically right and and let people know that and the more that they realize that and can see that a B differences. So you can taste it right A/B and deliciousness but to actually quantify it nutritionally scientifically that that in my view is how we're going to get there. Otherwise there's just it's going to be really uphill battle. To make the economic argument to spend more for like this nicer looking nicer feel on farm you got to make it personal. You got to make it visceral right. How does it. And and also yeah getting people to understand that you know you are just you are more than this isolated entity when you eat food you're not eating just for your organs and your brain and you as this like like you know separate entity as an individual you're actually if you look it up you're a whole of ion.
Tim Richards - 0:59:08
Right. You're not. You're a community. You're a host of so many different communities of organisms. And so when you need, when you're eating, you need to think about what else you're feeding beside yourself. And it's trillions of microorganisms and they have needs for thriving like like like not eating glyphosate because that.
Kyle Krull - 0:59:54
Yeah, right.
Anthony Corsaro - 0:59:56
I love how much data you brought to this conversation then. So I think I think you taking that into the product expansion efforts is going to serve you well because this is the most. I think concrete quantifiable data and just references and things we've had in any in any conversation. So I commend you for that and I couldn't agree more that you know there's even some some really compelling misinformation data out there supporting fake meat, conventional AG, some other things that I think. The sayings like men. Why men lie. Women line numbers don't lie. Sometimes they do lie. But the more critical mass we get to them, the more validity and the more we prove them out. And the bigger the sample size you know that, the stronger those those quants all become.
Tim Richards - 1:00:35
Absolutely. And we got to be careful because, like Jonathan Lundgren, he got canned by the USDA for consistently telling the scientific truth about why conventional is not good and why regener is better. They canned them. They they silenced them. And so he's like, I'm out, dude. I'm going to go do my. He's the men, yeah. He's a real whistleblower hero. And yeah, so I think, you know, I'm a philosopher and so I don't, I don't know the science myself, but I know why we need to partner with the scientists to get this data. And it just blows my mind as a philosopher that we can know so much about distant galaxies, we can know so much about the subatomic particles. Why don't we know everything that there is to know about the thing that's allows us to thrive on this planet? Why aren't we being scientific about our food? Yep. So I want, I want nutrient labels in the future to actually tell you about what's inside your jar, right. Right now, this is telling me averages of like, Oh yeah, almonds across the US are typically having this much protein. This much. This is not an analysis of my product. So this label actually means nothing. It doesn't correspond to the sauce in here. So I'm going to start.
Tim Richards - 1:01:19
Paying the money that it takes once I get funded to quantify what's actually in here and how it affects what's in here.
Kyle Krull - 1:01:54
Well, and at the same time, not just what's in there, but what's not in there.
Tim Richards - 1:01:57
Exactly.
Kyle Krull - 1:01:58
I think that's it's an interesting concept to say this is what's not in my food, which I think we're getting to with non-GMO and glad to save, ready to do free. But I think that movement will continue to proliferate. But hey, we're officially overtime. I think we could all sit here and talk for hours. I can't wait for we're in the same room and we can just like go nuts and eat a ton of almond butter. But this has been supersingular conversation. Yeah. Really appreciate your time. Thanks for joining. And yeah, man, everybody check out philosopher foods when you get a chance.
Anthony Corsaro - 1:02:29
Thanks so much, Tim.
Tim Richards - 1:02:30
Yeah, keep up your great work, you regenerates.
Anthony Corsaro - 1:02:33
Appreciate it man. For show notes and more information on our guests and what we discussed on the show, check out our website regen-brands.com that is regen-brands.com. You can also check out our YouTube channel, Regen Brands Podcast for all of our episodes with both video and audio. The best way to support our work is to give us a 5 star rating on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe to future episodes. Thanks so much for tuning into The ReGen Brands Podcast, brought to you by the Regen Coalition and Outlaw Ventures. We hope you learned something new in this episode and it empowers you to use your voice, your time, and your dollars to help us build a better and more legitimate food system. Love you guys.