#13 - Joni Kindwall-Moore @ Snacktivist

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #13 - Joni Kindwall-Moore @ Snacktivist

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 your host, Kyle, joined with my cohost, AC. Let's dive in.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:00:32
On this episode we have Joni Kindwall-Moore who is the founder and CEO at Snacktivist Foods. Snacktivist is supporting regenerative agriculture through their regenerative and ancient grain based baking mixes and ingredients. In this episode we learn about Joni's journey from ethnobotany and nursing to being a CPG entrepreneur. Her vision to scale, ancient return of grain production and the unique challenges of both running a CPG startup and raising capital. As a female entrepreneur, Joni is so full of energy and bringing a ton of ingenuity and grit to a really complex piece of our agricultural system. We really enjoyed having her on the show. Let's go. What's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Regen Brands Podcast. We are pumped to have Joni from snacktivist foods with us here today. So welcome, Joni. Thanks for joining us.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:01:24
Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you guys today.

Kyle Krull - 0:01:28
We're super pumped to have you and as somebody I'm not super familiar with snacktivist, I did some research ahead of the podcast. But for those who don't know your company, give us like a quick lay of the land, what do you make, where can you be bought today and just kind of give us a general overview.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:01:44
Okay. Well our goal at Snackivist is to make delicious grain based foods from regenerative ingredients that are allergy friendly, soil, water and carbon focused, all while radically impacting human nutrition. So it's like a big goal play and we we look at that as like a process of peeling like an onion, like there's layers to that. And so we've started with a line of baking mixes and a frozen line of finished products for food service. To grow our supply chains in a way that we can still, you know, manage all the different layers of what it takes to get a product from field to consumer. So right now you can buy our baking mix line, places like thrive, market, great partner, the usual suspects like Amazon in our own website, santosfoods.com. But you can also find our products soon at like Harmon's. We are growing in retail slowly but surely and have a passion for chefs. We think chefs are amazing evangelizers for new foods and new food experiences. So we do sell into.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:02:10
Food service as well, but it's often not as much of like a brand present to play. So sometimes you eat it and you don't. You don't know.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:02:49
Makes sense. Nice. Love it.

Kyle Krull - 0:02:51
Yeah, nothing better than like sneaky regenerative food. It's uh, that's pretty rare. Doesn't. Usually when you don't know what your food is, it's probably not very good. So like a sneaky regen brownie is like, man, that's really awesome.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:03:03
Yeah, yeah. And that's definitely happening, which is kind of exciting. And what's even cooler about that is not only is it sneaky regenerative, but a lot of our chefs don't say it's allergy inclusive, vegan, gluten free or anything. They're like that's just the best damn brownie I've ever had. They just put it on the menu and people love it and then when the customer. Who needs that special type of dietary accommodation? Asks. They're like, oh, we didn't realize that the brownies on the menu are totally appropriate for us. That's fantastic. So we think that's the future. It's not a free from future, it's a full of future. We need to get that straight from the beginning.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:03:39
And the data on like the food service versus retail and the offerings available on like the natural organic side like it's so. Compressed in food service versus retail, yeah. So we need more of those offerings at food service for sure.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:03:52
Yeah, we we absolutely do. And then from a business model like when you're really trying to build you know Farmer connected supply chains and you look at like the cash management cycle versus the operations cycle like to have a more diversified sales channel approach gives you more stability and more security like working with your farmers that. You know, you're not like, well, we're waiting to hear back from, you know, like all these retail players, we don't know how long that's gonna take. We don't know how soon they're gonna pay us. There's a there's a real strength to looking at both channels as a.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:04:23
Tim from philosopher of foods is like you can't have a monoculture revenue stream. You know, you gotta have diversified, you have biodiversity in the supply chain, you gotta biodiversity in the revenue.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:04:32
Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. That's super cool.

Kyle Krull - 0:04:35
We're kind of going a little off topic, but with the food service question or the food service topics coming up, I'm really interested like. What does transparency look like from the food service play? Are there any of your food service partners who are revealing, like, hey, we do use an activist or can you reveal any of those partners with us that we know we want to support those outlets?

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:04:51
Yeah, that's a really good question. Um, right now most of our food service people. Some of them do like they'll tag us in social media. Those tend to be smaller players, but we're now starting to launch into larger, you know, partnerships that are food service focused and we're working on how we leverage that marketing and that brand communication. And most of them so far are like proud of doing business with us, like one of the motivators with larger food service customers too is they're like. You're we bank certified and we want to support women led enterprises and so there's like this growing momentum to want to talk about pride in partnership and I think that that's a that's like an ever evolving thing and it's it's accelerating like. Three years ago nobody really wanted to go there and this year I'm finding more and more people want to tell that story. So I can't really talk about the big ones yet because they're like in the process of closing. But we're really hoping by Q1Q2 next year, we do have some larger food service partners that are proudly saying like we're powered by snacktivists. Like our green supply chain is not just commodity garbage anymore. We're we're innovating there and we're trying to rebuild the the foundation and staples of American food system.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:06:02
Love it. Super exciting. You. You've obviously have some very audacious goals from what you've said to us, Joni and you.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:06:09
Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:06:10
You're a very dynamic person and personality and background that's kind of converging from these different areas of human health and CPG and all these things to kind of be who you are and create this company. So take us through how all that has happened, because I think it's really interesting.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:06:23
Yeah, I mean, it is a strange process. And for the longest time I was like, why is my career path of doing this so, like, nonlinear, but. And now in hindsight, it's kind of fitting together. And I guess it's that whole, like, you know, you know, loving your fate thing. And at the time you're like, what the Hell's going on? Like, I don't freaking get this at all. And then you're like, OK, Amor fotty, we got this. Like it's fine. So I started out in farming. Like little town in rural Oregon, which really our economy there was driven by fishing, timber and farming. So very resource extraction type upbringing. We had animals, but we were a teeny farm. Both my parents had jobs off the farm. So it wasn't like our primary source of income, but you know, so we had to like go tend to to the critters in the morning before school. And you know, I was, I was just always one of those kids like I could.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:06:51
You know, I could feel dressed a deer by the time I was in high school. Like, just that kind of like rural redneck upbringing. But, but in hindsight, I was kind of embarrassed about it. Like, I was like, I was a vegan in college. I was like, oh God, I'm not gonna admit that to my friends here at UFO. And but, like, because I just was like, if I'm not willing to kill it, I'm not willing to eat it because I I know what that entails. Like, we.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:07:16
We'd have cattle and we'd make friends with them, we'd take care of them, and then off they'd go to the butcher. So it's just that really real raw sense of where food comes from and what sacrifices are made to get it to your plate has always been very real to me. And so when I went off to college, I loved the hard sciences, so. I went into like ethnobotany as a profession was really my focus. So I did get a degree in botany and my my whole focus there was like I did pre Med because I thought maybe I'd go into the Medical Sciences but I have pharmaceutical chemistry and botany and where they came together when that rub spot was really like my sweet spot like ethnopharmacology. So I did have some really cool experiences and like.

Kyle Krull - 0:08:19
You just pause real quick. I have no idea what ethnopharmacology means. Like a quick like I'm so happy layman's version of what it is that means, yeah, I want to be able to like, really appreciate that.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:08:33
Yeah, it's it because it is really important like especially when you think about what we're trying to accomplish with an activist now like at the pharmacology is purely the the study of like what people have used for medicinal like you know application historically. So it's a combination of anthropology, pharmacology and botany. Because frequently these were botanically extracted things, although we did do a fair amount of research on animal extracted things like these really exotic. Snails from Borneo that we were exploring for like pharmaceutical, you know, curare is a really good example from frogs in the Amazon, but they first noticed that they should study the frogs from the Amazon because of how the ethno pharmacological practice was used on prey during hunting in the Amazonian basin. So like, it's it's like the study of people and how they use plants and how they use animals. And then taking it down to the molecular level to see if there's some molecular application that we could really isolate and use in therapeutic application like in Cancer Research or novel therapeutics or even in the nutraceutical application. And I did work in the nutraceutical like herbal extract industry for a while as well. So it but you know really at the core of it.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:09:31
You know it's trying to take all those those empirical observations of hey these you know people have historically used X for health and what does that mean from a like chemical standpoint, let's really research it, let's see and what was really important about that is during that time we were collecting samples from all over the world actually and but we would we would do initial evaluation just using like what we call thinly or chromatography which is like. You extract them and you run it across the plate. It's like a little Electro freezes type of plate like from the movies. That's what it looks like. It's a little different than that. But as it moves it, it, it like lays down a little track of the different chemicals. And I'd be like, this is really weird because I collected this in this part of Montana and this one was from Western Washington and this one got flown in from California and they were all grown in different situations and this chromatography plate is slightly different.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:10:21
Same species, same exact part, all of that should be the same and that that's when I started really looking at like community driven chemistry when it comes to ecosystem as a driver. So nerdville we can back up, but that's really what pharmacology is all about.

Kyle Krull - 0:11:05
My brain's trying to comprehend everything you just said and it sounds to me like potentially like the different bioavailable nutrients in the soil from those different geographies could be impacting the chromatography results.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:11:17
Absolutely. Yeah. What we started to realize is that it was the, it was the ecosystem drivers like, hey, companion planting or you know, different gradients of a hillside that create different heat and water stress, all these things actually created a different chemical profile in these plants. And in some cases actually it made for presence and absence of different chemicals. So we're like OK, these are genetically identical plants, but there are environmental stressors that are producing them or that are causing them to produce completely different chemical like you know chemical profiles, which is really fascinating. So that really has laid the ground with a lot of what our thinking is today. You know when you look at polyculture and you look at like aggressive crop rotations and how that. You know, really like dramatically affects the rise of sphere and how the rise of sphere dramatically affects the actual end health of the plant that we end up eating or our livestock ends up eating. And I think that there's a lot of magic there that's overlooked in the food, in the food system.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:12:25
Wow.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:12:26
Yeah, so nerdy. I mean, that is nerdy, nerdy, nerdy. But that's the world my brain lives in.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:12:32
Yeah, but take us, so take us from ethnobotany to CPG founder, entrepreneur, what? What was?

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:12:37
The right. So I was doing, you know, just kind of lackey science work because I was, I was like. You know, just field, field work and bench work. And my husband was an RN and we had a chance to move up to Alaska. And he was working at really remote Bush hospitals and working for the Indian health, the, the health system, Indian health system. And he'd come home and have these amazing stories about like, you know, like, what'd you do today? Well, this woman came in and. She had a baby and the doctor didn't get there in time, so we just did it. And I was like, my gosh, that's like so cool. I kind of wanna have that immediate gratification when I go to work of like someone tried to die and I saved him the day. So yeah, so I went and got. I already have pre meds, so I went and got an RN as the second bachelor's and then I spent.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:13:05
Gosh, over a decade as an RN, mostly in ICUER and diabetic education and again, you know really looking at like diet as a fundamental driver to disease. And and it really opened my eyes to a lot of the wheeze that we think about diet and our modern healthcare system are so wrong. Even even from a perspective of people who are health conscious, there's still like a real disconnect about like microbiome and digestive health and. Things that go beyond just selecting good quality like good food choices because a lot of you know, attempts to eat well in our country are still grossly undernourished or grossly, you know, under quality because of farming methods. And I think that that creates a lot of frustration for people like managing weight, managing diet related disease because they're like, I feel like I'm following the rule books. My doctor's telling me to eat this way. I'm confused because I get on the Internet and I I don't know what to do. One place does this, another place does this and and I think that, you know, that's a that's a huge place. So as a medical person, you know, I'm sitting in the ICU one day and and that's cardiovascular ICU in that particular unit. It's so it's all like post, you know, vascular disease, like heart attack, stroke, etcetera. And I was like okay?

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:14:16
Literally 80% of the people in this unit are here for diet related disease. And when they finally wake up and we start feeding them, we're like giving them like a Otis spud maker muffin, like something that is like the most epitome of toxic food in my life, right? But the other thing I noticed is like, no one wakes up after like anesthesia when they're like feeling as shitty as they've ever felt in their entire life and asked for freaking kale chips and raw almonds, like no, that does not happen. Like and little kids too, like. And so I was like, OK. Where's this rub spot what do people want to eat what is like the the cultural significance of food and food types that are very meaningful to people and have historical deep roots in their like cultural identity and grains and and and comfort foods are there's a reason they called they're called comfort foods are like so significant in like the diet ethos globally everywhere you go in the world it's the same and I have been on every continent.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:15:15
Except to Antarctica and always studying people and what drives them with food and and it's like I was like we have got to completely take back our grain sector because people love it. It plays a vital role in nourishing the microbiome. But the grains that are available today make it to where I can see why everybody shuns them because they're they're not. They're like they pale in in what they used to be like they've been like totally driven through genetic selection and agricultural. You know, processes and manufacturing processes to just be refined starch sources.

Kyle Krull - 0:16:19
How much arable land is used to grow grains? You know, so.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:16:22
Oh my gosh.

Kyle Krull - 0:16:23
Talking about taking back a sector of of usable land and like improving the soil there, I mean the huge potential impact.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:16:29
Oh gosh. And then you think about, like, not only is that a huge. Footprint, just like acreage wise, a huge driver for pollution. You talk to farmers and farmers who are growing grains are under intense financial strain. You know, they are looking at their monocrop systems and they feel trapped. And so immediately when I started studying ancient grains and I started really doing like more the ethnopharmacological, ethnobotanical evaluation of ancient grains globally around the world. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, like not only do these provide that cereal type. Connection of like, oh, it's comfort food. It's a grain. It can be floured, it can be made into things. They're very healthy. I mean, they have superior nutritional profiles to many of our typical commodity grains that we're eating today. And then see a lot of our farmers are like, Oh my gosh, we want to grow this for you because we need diversity in our feet, in our farming system. Like it's one of the things that's holding us back from progression.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:17:03
Is that we're kind of stuck on this, you know, treadmill, where we're only growing 2 crops because nothing else has a value stream. And so, you know, in talking to farmers, they were like, please create value streams for these other crops because, you know, every farming system is different when you go around the world. And, you know, they all have different needs. And no, food companies are driving product development based on that need. They're for, they're, they're forcing farmers to fit their needs. And that, you know, I mean that's just the way it works and I I really think we need to change that paradigm. We need to talk to farmers and go, OK, so if you grow more cow peas in your farming system, you're going to reduce your need for exogenous or like input nitrogen synthetics or or organic just input nitrogen. If we can eliminate inputs, that's great, right. But they're like there's very little market for cow peas. I'm like what the hell are cow peas? I'm like, they're Black Eyed Peas like this was a few years back. I'm like.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:17:53
Why are the farmers calling them cow peas and the people in the market are calling them Black Eyed Peas? No wonder there's no market connector.

Kyle Krull - 0:18:27
Like.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:18:28
You know, we don't know. So yeah, so those we're, we're piloting things with cow peas by the way. So we can like be that driver in the marketplace someday that's.

Kyle Krull - 0:18:36
Really interesting. And one of the things that strikes me that I find particularly interesting and compelling about your story so far is you started in, I'm going to butcher it, ethnobotanical pharmacology. Is that right?

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:18:48
That'll work. Hey, yeah, that's yeah. Pharmacology, yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:18:50
You started that there, Kyle?

Kyle Krull - 0:18:52
Yeah, good. Just to say no word in my head this whole time. Just try not to forget.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:18:57
Ethnopharmacology or ethnobotany that's a little simpler.

Kyle Krull - 0:19:00
Ethnobotany. OK, perfect.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:19:02
So we start and it's like timber and stuff too.

Kyle Krull - 0:19:05
Right. But so we started in that sector and you had mentioned you know, orthing in like pharmaceutical development. So basically treating like post illness is where your career started and then it's sort of like right as you went down the rabbit hole you started getting into like preventative. Illness and that led you to like the health of, you know, the, the food that people are consuming, the, the nutrient density and that food, the bioavailability of nutrients, soil health and all these other things. So I just think that's really interesting like routes like to go and.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:19:31
Trajectory.

Kyle Krull - 0:19:33
Yeah. So continue, continue down the origin story of you're in this place where you're talking to farmers about what they can grow to improve, you know, reduce the amount of inputs they have. How does that lead to snack to this?

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:19:44
Yeah. So the final, like piece of the puzzle there was like, I've always had a lot of food allergies and like, go figure, we always had chickens my entire life. I am so allergic to eggs. Like, weird, right?

Kyle Krull - 0:19:57
I always have, yeah, from like from the get go.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:20:00
Yeah, even as a kid, like they just, they made me really sick when I was kid, so I always avoided them and then as I entered adulthood. There was something I was reacting to and we couldn't figure it out. So we finally did like blood work. And they're like, Oh my gosh, you know, you're like blood antigen. Like reactivity to egg whites is like off the charts. So you need to really be like reading every label. Like even in small quantities like you really excited, like have to take an antihistamine because my eyes would get all like puffy and I itchy and then.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:20:09
Systemic, too, like stomach ache, like upset stomach, like it's just not even worth it. Poultry in general. And so, you know, we've long tried to figure out what happened there. And you know, I got very, very ill as a child. I was hospitalized for quite some time and had a lot of aggressive antibiotics. And I think at that. You know, I came home and my microbiome was like sterilized essentially. And I probably went out and like cleaned the chicken coop.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:20:32
Or something. And at that time I had it. I had a sensitization event. I don't remember that, of course, because I was a kid. I was like, sex, who pays attention? But, you know, in talking to different doctors and scientists, they're like, oh, that's probably where that happened. And it was a gut microbiome thing. So again, you know, so I'm sitting there in the ICU. My kids also have food allergies. Like, weird. Like, even though we've always tried to eat healthy, always ate as much organic as we could. Like, I'm that mom that my kids are really embarrassed of their school lunches.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:20:59
Now that really like very that my mom like my son came home one day. He's like why do you assist on just sending hippie food to school? Like I want I just trade it with all the other kids for Doritos. Anyhow, Mom like why is stop give it up. So I was like yeah but they have food allergies too. And so I was like we really just need to start a food brand that can that can like.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:21:27
Provide this stuff and what I found about very unique about my science background is that in formulating foods from novel whole grain flowers that have never been really used in. A sophisticated culinary application like on a European bakery level, right? Like it's different. I mean, and I'm not meaning that in any way like Ted where they're in use in it in the traditional sense that is sophisticated as well. But no one had done that fusion movement really of like, can we force sorghum to make an amazing. European style bread, like a sourdough. Like, very few people had really dabbled with that and there were some problems, but luckily, you know, just having that nutraceutical training, I was like, oh, we can fix this. Like, I know there's ways we can create molecular scaffolding to create awesome loft with, you know, like sourdoughs using natural things, not using like as many creepy additives. Like you get in a lot of glutenfree foods. Like you look at the label, you're like, what the hell is this stuff? Like I'm not eating that. That's gross.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:22:22
And so people loved our products. And so early on, we had chefs that were like, Oh my gosh, I don't know what you're doing, but keep it up because this is fantastic food. I would serve this. Regardless of allergy status. And so we knew we were on to something from like a brand perspective like maybe we should just start selling this. And of course through naivety having no idea what it would, what it would take to create a CPG brand, but it'll be easy. They say no, well, they don't say we'll just start, we'll just start a company and we'll do this. And I was working full time in the at the hospital and my husband was two and we had three kids like under the age of third grade. So it's been a slow.

Kyle Krull - 0:23:30
Just a quick little side hustle project of building a CPG brand you know on.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:23:34
The side a disruptive 1.

Kyle Krull - 0:23:35
Jobs and raising.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:23:37
Kids I know, yeah. So it's not been as fast as I would have liked it to just cuz like life, you know and and not having money to start like we were like we're nurses we don't have like we didn't have any pool of money to. To get this off the ground, so funny, I earned very early on. I was like, okay, we have issues with supply chain. We need to like, we need to do some disruptive technologies and supply chain and all the stuff. And I pitched it to an accelerator and they were like. We appreciate that you're really enthusiastic about disrupting agriculture as we know it and commodities as we know it. But you're a mom from Idaho and you're a nurse. Like no one is going to believe you. Like, like, what the hell are you do that? You make brownies. That's believable. If you pitch to investors that you make a great brownie and you can take it to market, people will believe you. But all this other stuff, like, they're going to think you're insane. Yeah. So.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:24:08
Yeah. So I kind of move slowly.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:24:35
I gotta interject. So my sister's a nurse. So shout out to my sister Maggie, who's an avid, an avid Regen brands podcast listener. Appreciate you. Mags and nurses are so important. So love that you have that background as well, Joni. And you know, we've heard this from so many people now. Yeah, absolutely. We, we've heard this from so many people now and Kyle and I can relate from our own personal health stuff like. Dr. Zach Bush talks about he got everyone on on kale and spinach and that they were still having issues because of their drenching glyphosate right? Or you see all the gluten, the gluten issues now and there's there's a link to all the agrochemicals like for sure, instead of just the grains. Maybe the grains are problematic themselves but.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:25:13
Yes, you know exactly. It's a system thing. We're not going to fix it with a free from thing. Or like a rat like radical eliminations. Not going to fix the problem. It might. It might help with minimizing the symptoms, you know, like, oh, I cut out wheat and I feel better, but it's still not getting to the root of it because for most people has nothing to do with gluten. You know, it's a very dynamic picture as to why they can't tolerate wheat. If they're not celiac, sorry celiacs that are listening but you know like that's a very specific physiological condition. But I nurses are in a position of really interesting observation and I think historically nurses have been really overlooked in that capacity. Like you know follow out the orders. That's your job. You're not supposed to think too hard about it just do what you're told and but The thing is is like.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:25:38
Like that's so, it's so sad because the nurses are the ones that are at the bedside and actually hear the full picture and see the full picture and record the data and we see things that the physicians don't see because we have the luxury of time with the patient and and unfortunately the medical system is not leveraging that.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:26:23
And I think the thing to drive all the way home for the consumer on the region side is. If you want to change how you feel or if you want to change your human health outcomes, it's not just about changing what you eat, it's about figuring out how what you eat is actually grown because it's just as important. And I think that's something that all of us on this call are very passionate about and we have to continue to tie region to that to scale it.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:26:46
Right. And that it's it's not. I wish I could make it super simple, like it'd be so much easier, but it's it's like this macro system picture. And there's so many layers of like, where do you start to unravel this? Like, I mean, I think God, there's a huge movement in regenerative beef and that that's creating a market drive. That will allow us to bring more livestock back onto the farm because there's a financial incentive that will help pay for that to happen and and so we need that to happen and across all the verticals of our of our farming system and food system so that the whole engine comes to life and I feel like grains are often kind of row croppings kind of overlooked. It's not as pretty to photograph as like you know some cattle out grazing or you know other things like that so but when I talk to row croppers and. Of a footprint that they make on the on the land, it's we. That's a for me that's an immediate first place to really push hard.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:27:47
Take us there, right. Like take, take us, take us Regent grains like what is that? Because I think it's way more hard to understand than than maybe we had beef or some of the animal stuff and.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:27:57
Yeah, yeah, it is. It's, it's a, it's a much tougher picture I think to take on because. With beef, it's a single ingredient. It's usually consumed as a single single ingredient. So that alone makes it much simpler. When you're looking at things that are grown in a in a row cropping system or like a large agricultural footprint, you know you're because of the way that like modern mechanized farming works, we do have to have a degree of like hey this, this big strip at the very least is all one species or there's multiple strips of species that can be harvested at different times to. Make it economically viable cuz we do still have to feed a lot of people and also a lot of livestock. We're not ready for everyone to go to grass Fed Pastor, raised animals like the infrastructure needed to go there is going to take time and so the vast majority of people who are eating.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:28:34
Animal products today globally are eating ones that came from some sort of CAFO operation of varying sizes. Even if they're organic, they're really still kind of CAFO style like confined animal feeding organs like units like that's what they are. And what are those animals eating like? It's important that ancient greens as like as a driver for biodiversity, for nutrition and farming is also played to animal feed because like. Our friends over at Dryland Genetics, they're working on proso Millet as a focus and they did some really interesting studies in that they found that if just by switching chicken feed from 100% corn to proso Millet, and I can't remember the exact like ratio it was, but it saved 16 gallons of water per egg in a CAFO situation. And so like those are those things where I feel like there's a much bigger conversation that needs to be had.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:29:19
And I talked to like Nebraska sorghum board and about the politics of like why cattle and feedlots are just eating corn, GMO corn, when there's so many reasons to diversify the corn belt. And a lot of it has to do with politics. Like they used to actually predominantly eat sorghum. And in the 80s, the lobbying bodies were basically able to get them to say commit to just the corn and and they that switch has driven a whole agricultural. System that is really depleting the the soils of the Great Plains and not that, you know, mono crop sorghum is going to save anything. But the more that we can put in diversity, like millets, sorghums, tafts, broadleaf cereals like quinoa, they're not grains, they're seeds. Amaranths like all these different things.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:30:35
Let me pause you their.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:30:36
Conditions, yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:30:37
Let me pause you there, Joni, because I think the average consumer listening to this out of every word you've said of all the different brands, they probably recognize quinoa and maybe none of the others right foodies like so camera, you know, sort of Millet like Milo cow peas, like I guess just give a little color on like what the hell is that? Why does that matter?

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:30:59
Yeah, and and that's like such a fascinating topic too, because. Like we used to eat like 203 hundred years ago, the diversity of our of our food staples from a genetic perspective was like very, very rich. And in the last 100 years we've eliminated 90% of the genetic diversity and 75% of all varieties and now.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:31:24
Say that again. Yeah, say it again.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:31:26
We've eliminated 90% of the genetic diversity and 75% of the varieties. A food that we subsist on every day. And we've narrowed that down to the world's global calories, mainly consisting of corn, wheat and soy, whether you're eating grains or eating like chicken or beef or whatever, because they're also eating corn, wheat and soy. And when you think about that like, the gravity is insane, like. That's insane. And so there's a race to bring back these crops that humans used to live on because we used to have very diverse diets. And the millets are one huge family because they are considered global commodities. In Africa and India and China, the Millet family is considered a very significant staple. So that includes sorghum, which is a large, huge cereal. It kind of looks like corn. They make sorghum syrup out of it.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:31:55
And in the South and it's also got my left.

Kyle Krull - 0:32:30
You can buy puffed sorghum cereals. Yeah, you can't. Those one. There's a few others. So yeah, you can find in a couple different aisles.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:32:37
Yeah, and pop sorghum is fantastic. In fact, like back in 2015 when we were toying with just launching snack to us, we thought about launching pop sorghum as a first, as a first play. But we couldn't afford the minimums at the Co Packer to make yeah and we didn't have a sorghum popping facility, so we couldn't do it but there.

Kyle Krull - 0:32:56
Are some other I popped my own sorghum recently because I'm a big popcorn fan and I like to support small varieties of different grants. And what I found really interesting in the popping process is I thought I did it wrong, but only about half of the currents don't even know if that's the right term. Only about half of them actually popped, and this is, and they're also tiny. Yeah, they are tiny. I was like, OK, so now I'm going to go through these tiny little pop guys to figure out what things have or haven't popped. So Long story short, if somebody could actually do a pop story so I don't have to do that on myself, it would be fantastic because I would love to make them do that ever again.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:33:31
It's such a lazy millennial. It's unreal.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:33:34
And you know, honestly the ones that come from a commercial popper, they I think that they hydrate it before they pop it or something so that you get like a bigger pop like I just find that it's. A little less infuriating to eat because it's like got better texture and it sticks together a little bit more, but there are some issues. I still think that to popped sorghum that need to be navigated through to make it American friendly and. And we've been playing around with that like we have a really cool R&D kitchen here in northern Idaho where when we have time right now, I haven't had as much time as I'd like, but we do some really cool product development experiments and sorghum is one of our focuses. Sorghum and prosomillet are are kind of neglected cereal crops of focus for the next year. We are passionate about some legumes as well, like I mentioned before because they're drivers in those regenerative systems and what they need a value add that is profitable to help drive that system. And so we're looking at developing products that integrate all those crops that are needed, that all need some love and all need some, you know, pull economically to make them more viable for farmers to plant. So sorghum is definitely important.

Kyle Krull - 0:34:48
I just want to touch on that point real quick, just to make sure that all listeners can understand you're saying that. Grow crops. Grains and cereals often need to be planted with a different type of crop, and legumes generally complement that very well because of how it fixes the soil. And the important thing about legumes is it adds another cash crop that the farmers can sell because there is an actual market for most of.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:35:09
The. Yeah. And then you're growing protein in you know and so it's that's an interesting thing. So like most for most farmers over the last like few decades from what I understand, the only legume that's had a real pull economically has been soy because it's been heavily lobbied. There's a lot of, there's a lot of incentivization from the government from the subsidy programs to switch to that where when you look at the diversity in the legume sector like not all the games fix nitrogen at the same rate and. Not all of them treat the soil the same. They have different root development. And there's a real reason why. Like, you know, farmers in Nebraska like to plant mung beans. You know, like, like, there's there. There's a lot more to legumes than just the ones that most are commonly grown. And right now there's like a real, like a spike in demand for garbanzo beans. So a lot of farmers are like, oh, I want to grow garbanzos. And that's cool too, but we need diversity. I mean, that's the thing that we often forget. It's like to help.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:35:40
Revitalize our agricultural sector. That's focused on grains and we need to bring diversity back to the equation. We need to get back to that picture where our food system was not reliant on three major crops, it's reliant on a multitude of crops. And you know, we're trying to develop a tool that helps to measure like what our farmers diversity indexes on their particular farms like. Each year, are they able to add in a new layer of diversity? Are they bringing in additional crops that they're rotating? Are they experimenting with a cover crop that's new? Are they experimenting with a polyculture approach or, you know, perennial stands that don't get plowed and act as reservoirs for both microbiome in the soil and for, you know, above ground critters too, like insects, et cetera, pollinators.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:36:32
You know, like and are they bringing in livestock? Like where are they at on that biological journey of like creating an ecosystem instead of a desert that grows a couple of items?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:37:04
Joni and.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:37:04
That is a fundamental shift.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:37:06
For the audience, let's do this. This would be a fun exercise, I think. The standard what? We won't give it a name or say, a brand. The standard pancake mix on a Walmart shelf. What's in it? And how is it grown? Like, what is the, what is the growing condition looks like? And then the snacktivist pancake waffle mix, what's in it? How is it grown? Just draw that contrast.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:37:25
You know, I'm glad you asked these questions because I get lost in nerdland all the time as you can tell. And so I'm, it's like that's just where I live, it's kind of scary. But so like you look at like our snacktivist ivory teff pancake mix and then you look at like one of our primary competitors that is based on non organic wheat. And it probably is just wheat flour. It probably has a leavening agent. It might have powdered eggs and it might have powdered buttermilk in it. God knows where any of that came from. It's probably heavily glyphosated. There's no testing. It's probably at a better price point than ours is. It probably tastes great. I mean, people love them. I mean, my kids love them too. However, they're usually lower. Even the whole wheat ones, they they tend to be kind of in the league of their own. But if you look at like just the regular, bleached enriched white.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:37:44
Flour ones, even if they're another gluten free one, and they're really reliant on white rice flour, tapioca starch, like really things that are void of nutrition fundamentally, like essential nutrients. Things you see on the profile, which is a very small snapshot of what's actually in the plant. But then you look at like the lack of phytochemical vitality too, like minerals, trace minerals, antioxidants that are naturally present. They're usually very void of all of that stuff and they've drive that mono crop concept that we see in the commodity system where you know all of our food diversity on the shelf is still based on the the same couple of crops. And so I'm always kind of like in the regenerative CPG movement, I don't understand why like I'm, I feel sometimes like I'm one of the few that is heavily advocating for biodiversity in our crop rotations. Because that is a driver of all regenerative systems. The 3B's, biodiversity, bio, mimicry and biologicals, those are the drivers of regenerative systems. And I call it the 3B's of regenerative because like all the tools that everyone fights about, well, they all fit under those umbrellas and it's like and it gives you a little more flexibility like as long as you're always driving what those 3B's intentionally you're working towards regeneration. And so I would like to see more CPG brands out there like.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:39:09
You know bringing in more of that diversity like Bob Zor Mill has led the way. They're an amazing brand. I have so much respect for them. People are like they're a competitor of yours and like they're amazing. Like they kind of laid the foundation for re exploration of diversity in our serial and impulse sector and. To my and to my knowledge, they treat their farmers well, although I don't know if they're taking regenerative on as an intentionality. So maybe that's one place where we could be differentiated from them because we are working with farmers of like hey farmers, what do we need to do to make your practice better? How can we make products that are going to directly impact your practice and directly impact human health?

Kyle Krull - 0:40:20
So I just want to give bobs a quick shout out. I represented Bob's Red Mill back in 2012. And I think at that time they had just introduced their line of ancient grains protecting the sorghums, the tests of the world Amarin. I think there are a few others in there that I can't remember anymore and that was really in the aisle. I remember resetting the aisles like different Whole Foods and they were the only ones who had that stuff impact so it could.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:40:46
Be the only ones.

Kyle Krull - 0:40:48
Yeah, there was nobody else. You couldn't buy that at a Whole Foods anywhere else. There's no other brand doing anything like that. So yeah.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:40:54
And the bottom.

Kyle Krull - 0:40:55
Green early and a whole for supporting them and bringing it in.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:40:58
Yeah, absolutely. And I have so much respect for the work that they've done because it's really laid the foundation from all of for all of us that are coming behind to leverage that they are the spear tip of that. And so you know for us like drought resistant crops are a huge focus for our brand. And so you know back to this differentiation you know Bob Ser Mill I, I never actually. Critique them because I have so much healthy respect for them. I feel like I've always wanted to collaborate with them in some way. I don't know how that would ever look. But I Better Together when you're trying to make the world better, right? And so, um, you know, but like I look at our pancake mix it like the first two ingredients are I whole grain ivory Taff and whole grain prosomillet flour. And those are like, you know, really important crops for driving that diversification and also for farmers who are under extreme drought conditions that are like, like.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:41:23
Like our Californian farmers that, you know, they used to grow wheat and it's just a year after year failing. And and there are some fantastic small farmers that we've worked with that have now shifted to all Taff and Millet and sorghums because they only get just enough irrigation in the spring to get things started. And then they're cut off and they they're wheat they found either didn't meet spec or just didn't even survive. Without the additional irrigation, which again brings us back to the second be of regenerative, which is bio mimicry, we should be growing crops that are suited for the environments in which they're grown rather than relying on artificial irrigation or artificial things to make them, to coax them to grow against the the force of nature. And so in California, I'm a huge advocate and I you know. Claudia Carter, the director of the California Wheat Commission and I have so many amazing conversations about how do we diversify California in the in the grain sector like California wheat is getting more and more difficult because of the pressure of climate change. How do we make a like economic case for non commodity crops for those farming systems because they can't grow spec wheat anymore. Even if they're growing wheat, it's not meeting spec, so it's not going into like the value channels that.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:42:38
Make the profit margins work, if that makes sense.

Kyle Krull - 0:43:12
Why aren't they making spec? Is it because the water cut off?

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:43:14
Yeah. Yeah. So the, the spec sheets that drive a lot of the commodity purchasing system are based on very specific nuances in like the actual spec sheets of that crop. Like they harvest it, they send it off for testing. Barley, same thing. If it doesn't meet these exact specifications, they're like, well, that's animal feed. I mean I do that too with our sorcum and our. Proso and what not, but what what what? The California Wheat Commission has also shown that you can still make fantastic human Gray products from non spec wheat or wheats that are super resilient or wheat hybrids like triticali which is like a wheat and rye hybrid and it's a modern grain. It's not an ancient grain but it's a grain that has significance when it comes to climate resilient agriculture because you can beat the crap out of it and it still produces yield but these big food companies are like. We don't know what to do with this. It doesn't meet spec, but their lab has shown, look at these amazing crackers. Look at these amazing breads. Like we can make food out of them, but they they're reliant on little scrappy partship companies like mine to say we can do this. Like we can make an awesome cracker out of shoulda Kaylee. Like let's take it to market. I mean, and we we're working on, you know, how that could look down the road as we really honor that neglected crops of philosophy.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:44:32
Let's. Let's switch gears for a second because I do want to make sure we cover one thing, which is, and I'm matita stuff, so give me a little bit of time fundraising, fundraising at with someone with your background and fundraising as a woman. Because look, we've been intentional with having as many female entrepreneurs of regen brands, I think in the first. 11-12 I think this 13th episode like that's that's on purpose yeah and you've you just closed and over script oversubscribed round so clearly you're still getting done but I know it's been a slugfest so.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:45:02
It's been hard, yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:45:03
About that.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:45:04
It has been hard. I mean, I have to say, like I came into the world of being an entrepreneur and a CEO, you know, from the operating view of like academics. In medical system, which both academics and medical system have a longstanding ethos of women being in powers, power like positions of power. They're in management they're I mean you look at CEO's of hospitals they're largely men. But you know in in hospitals and in academics like it's not unusual to have a very high percentage of women in positions of decision making. I boom Fast forward into fundraising business venture. Food and AG especially. Wow, I was not prepared and I just kind of you know, me and my golden retriever. You know attitude came in like OK it's no problem we can get past this right let's make friends and the but the power of that bias and it's often an unconscious bias that people aren't aware of even the best intention most lovely people that are wonderful it's still there where they're like do I trust a mom of three?

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:45:44
With a bunch of money to do something. That's a big idea. And I have to say, I think the biggest thing that's stifling women entrepreneurs who are not just making another great brand. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's fantastic. There's a lot more permission to give capital to a woman CEO who's like, hey, I'm creating this awesome brand, get it that, OK, that's, that's, that's safe.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:46:11
Women who are trying to be disruptive. Women who are trying to rethink the way we do business. Women are that are trying to advocate for like something that's truly revolutionizing to existing categories. That is something that you get into trouble with, and there's a lack of permission to where it's you're you're no longer a visionary, you're a risk taker. Where if I were a guy pitching the big idea of snacktivist, they would have given me money a long time ago. But we did finally close our convertible note round. We did oversubscribe a little bit, which was.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:47:03
Fantastic. It's a.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:47:05
Hard, thank you. It was a very hard time to raise money. We opened the tranche during COVID which was again horrible time to raise money and then now because we have some fantastic opportunities, we've we we've dedicated the entirety of our convertible note round to developing our brand. We're totally rebranding stack to us. It's going to have 100% brand new logo, brand new everything very soon. Yeah, because we're branding for like what we've always wanted to do, which is we are region for the next Gen. and and we that's an investment. You can't do that on a shoestring. You can't do like Cuttingedge branding. Bootstrapped at home, like at 2:00 in the morning. Typical entrepreneur, like YouTube, you know, it just doesn't work like that. Unless she was going to. Brandon. No, in our branding right now sucks. I I mean, I think we did a good job. Like, I have a dear friend named Renee who's a brilliant marketing person. She's got a real flair for design, and she knows how to do it. But she's not a designer. She's not a brand maker like.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:47:40
We just put our heads together and another friend, Heidi, who has the flair and the Cam who's another dear friend and family member who is a genius with marketing. We're like how do we tell this story on a shoestring because we have 500 bucks to get this done and then that that's not to be understated. And I think that's largely reflective of like bias in capital deployment that you know, I think it had we've been able to raise money and a bigger amount of money earlier like I think about what effect we could be having. Regenerative food systems now. And I get kind of pissed off because I I feel like we've been held back intentionally and I think with women led companies there's more of an inclination to go well let's give you just a little bit we'll write you a tiny check not enough to really be sad about if we don't get it back because we really like what happens if your kids get COVID or school never goes back into session. You know I feel like if I were a guy they'd be like oh you'll you'll see this through regardless and I find that to be frustrating and I wonder if they've.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:48:34
And let down by other women founders and that maybe they were soured. I don't know, but my guess is probably not.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:49:11
Yeah, this.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:49:12
Is just like their wife is wonderful and she's at home and she's worried about the doilies. Like that's what she does like, especially when you look at these older VC guys. I mean their their view of me is is literally through the lens of what their wife and their wife's friends do. Guaranteed. Their wife and their wife's friends are not talking about assay labs, you know, on the bench and agricultural systems. They're probably talking about why their couch covers didn't come in matching last time they ordered them. And I'm not meaning to be rude. That's just, I mean, and I love these women. They're they're fantastic and they're lovely and but they're we're different breeds.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:49:26
And that's often gets lost in translation. And that might sound rude. I don't want that to sound rude. It with all due respect to what these women do, it's just it's a totally different playbook for my, my CEO friends, me and my pitches. You know that they're out there.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:50:05
On.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:50:07
This one and it's like we're a different breed and we often don't. We just get kind of pushed in the diminutive box. My race is over. Sorry.

Kyle Krull - 0:50:18
No, it's OK. I I've never had to be in this situation. All I can do is listen and and do my best to understand and empathize and and you know just just just hear you. I could imagine how frustrating that might be. But it's only my imagination like I've I I have no idea what that would actually be like but I hear the I don't use the term anger. But when you say like you feel like you could have be you could have made a bigger impact had you not had to overcome those barriers and like totally. Yeah, I I almost wish. What's that horrible reality TV show the blind blind singer or something like that?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:50:50
The massive I mean, I.

Kyle Krull - 0:50:51
Obviously don't watch any TV. The masked singer, if they had like pitches like that where there's like, there is no gender, there is no vision, it's just like somebody in a costume pitching CPG. Obviously that, yeah, not really ever take off would be a real thing, but it sounds like, you know, it could.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:51:05
Interesting concept, yeah. Interesting concept because. There is. It's a blind bias. And I I don't ever want to be like, oh, whining about that because it is a it's not intentional. Usually, like the people who are sometimes the worst about it. They're dear, lovely humans, and I love them as people. I don't think they realize they're doing it. And it's made me much more sympathetic to founders of color, founders from other.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:51:09
Applicant you know, like the the boxes we put humans in that don't match like the norm. So whether you're you know like from a community that's not typically represented in the C-Suite, like no matter what that community is and there's many different labels that go into it. There is an unconscious bias that is perceived as risky. Like you just get put in a riskier category even if you have a sounder business plan or a higher ROI than the guy next to you.

Kyle Krull - 0:52:00
Yeah. Such department has started that look like that disadvantage. But you mentioned the rebrand on the horizon, you've just closed this round. Tell us what else is coming for the future of snacks? What's what else do you have plan?

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:52:12
Well, we are in conversations with some fantastic retailers and we've we've been trying to get their attention for so long and and frequently they'd be like but you're not Jim non-GMO verified I'm like. We would be except we just don't have the money to buy the seal. We're bootstrapped. Like I either don't pay my mortgage or my car payment or like feed my kids or I get the non-GMO project verification. Like yeah. And then also if you've never done that it's we have invested as a team. We weren't on GMO verified before and then we switched Co Packers and we lost it. So frustrating. So now we're redoing it again and I think we're like well over 50 hours of just one-on-one administrative time just in.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:52:23
Jumping through the hoops and for us, because we're trying to kick off Farmer connect to supply chains, like all these verification programs are static. They're designed for a linear world where there's no variability in your supply chain. So if you're like, hey, here's our pro, so Millet today, but we're harvesting this pro. So in North Dakota with our farmer Martin and you know he's going to get it milled and we're going to, you know, the spec sheets from the mill and the Hasset plans for the mill are here. It's like. Now there's a whole nother burden that could make it hard for us to keep non-GMO verification just because we can't handle the administrative burden. But then we hear from wonderful retailers. We love what you're doing.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:53:19
But we're not going to have you unless you're non-GMO project verified. So it puts brands like us in a really hard position. So I think we're finally having meaningful, meaningful conversations with retailers there that they're like finally believing us. I mean we were the only food brand at fancy food 2020 that talked about regenerative front and center. The only one, it was like our entire booth was all about biodiversity in the Ag landscape, regenerative farmer, you know processes and how do we regenerate our farm lands, we're the only ones. And it, but even still we don't have any major retailer wins because they're like Regina what? Like what? Right, like is there even a consumer demand for that? Like I don't think anybody cares.

Kyle Krull - 0:54:12
I just want to touch on something. This is the third time you've you've said something that made me think of like how the system is so designed to not support biodiversity. You know, it is a really good job of frequently talking about how the system, the we need to have a whole systems approach in the system shift. But when we talk about how, you know, the whole world wants, you know, spec wheat, corn and soy, you can get all those certified immediately and then you don't have to worry about where you're sourcing what from and everything's going to be certified. You don't have to work wrong like a new slotting process, new new product submissions with your distributors, with your retailers, with everybody, new upcs, new loi's, new Ingredients, new nfps. There's just so much work that goes into making a subtle change in one ingredient on a label and it's just like for those who want to support biodiversity and the.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:55:03
System's not set up for it.

Kyle Krull - 0:55:05
Right. Especially right now because we don't have enough demand because consumers don't know what region is. But it's hard to build that demand without the products. It's just such a difficult thing. Meaningful. Yeah, I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:55:18
I so much work to be done. That again, you know, going back to the investor thing, like, even really amazing supportive investors are like, you can't be serious. You're going to actually take this on. And I'm like, well, honestly, that part, it's, it's infuriating as it can be. It's it's like an amazing Riddle with like the best prize at the end you could ever have. But being up against the retail system has been very frustrating to me because I feel like we've figured out how to kind of crack the nut on a lot of the other things. But still retailers, distributors, they're all check box driven, so like for us.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:55:50
No matter.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:55:51
What we're pitching like, we thought we were really smart like and and I don't tolerate wheat it myself. Like I generally avoid it. I love a good beer. So if I'm going to have barley or wheat type plant it's going to be in the form of an IPA. That's just how I am and so it's like, but for us like we bring this brand and I'm like hey you know we're doing all this amazing stuff by the way we're gluten free, we're vegan. You know, we have these other things we're topping allergen free and they're like, Oh well, we don't need another gluten free granny mix. I'm like, did you just miss the 99% of what I just told you? Gluten free is just an attribute that makes this acceptable to anybody. It's not our driving value. They don't care. You're a gluten free brand. That's all you are. And so that's been the biggest struggle with penetrating the market in the retail sector is that.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:56:14
They literally, no matter how often we tell them we're just another gluten free brand, which there's a lot of crappy gluten free stuff out there. We don't need more and most of it's just the same same, you know, nothing really innovative.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:56:51
Most of it's not actually good for you.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:56:53
No, it's not. And so I mean we're like 60% whole grain on all our flour blends like. All this stuff. And so that has been a really big struggle for us with communication like how do we get this across to them, because at the end of the day, retailers are really focused and in all fairness to them, they're running a business, their business is based on turns and it's, it's real estate. And so real estate, you can't, there's only so much you can convey in that little 4 inch by 6 inch piece of real estate. And so that's why like for the, you know, we've really been more focused on online to where people could learn about what we're doing in a different setting. So and we're just now really trying to ramp up retail. So we'll see. I mean we'll see.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:57:41
Well, Speaking of ramping up, you know, I think. It'll be super interesting to get your take on this last question and I'd love for you to answer it from a macro regen perspective and then from a grains perspective, right. So kind of two, two pronged answer. We asked everybody this question and really it's just how do we scale this thing. So the question is how to regen brands have 50% market share by by 2050, what needs to happen?

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:58:06
I really think this is a very strong argument for retailers. Like stepping up in a way that they've never stepped up before because of the gravity in which we're like this. The global situation we're up against. Like this is one situation where I feel like retailers that care need to really put their money where their mouth is and say we're going to invest in making sure consumers understand what this is about, but we also need to be really careful that. It's not just like the biggest of the big brands that are all like jumping onto regenerative and now they just got like $80 million from the USDA to make their corn syrup regenerative. Like that's kind of not going to help guys just saying like. So there's going to be an interesting tension point here, but I think this is where retailers and chefs and food service places because that's often really overlooked. Chefs who are evangelizers and chefs that are influencers that can say, hey, let's, let's honor this biodiversity as part of this regenerative.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:58:36
Goal and let's help educate people.

Kyle Krull - 0:59:12
Yeah. I think the retail piece is a really interesting point. And also you mentioned the certification quote requirement beforehand. And to me it feels like the retailers are waiting for a predominant regenerative certification to, yeah, kind of own the real estate marketing for them.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 0:59:28
Yeah. Just that's the way that system's driven.

Kyle Krull - 0:59:31
Exactly. And somebody posted something on LinkedIn yesterday. I can't remember who it was, but it talked about the eight different regenerative certifications that are available today, which to me is not a good thing. There's a lot of people praising that and talking about it, but when there are 8 certifications for the same thing, that to me is it's it's going to be really difficult for any one of them to pick up enough steam. It's like the the regenerative certifications are competing for regenerative market share. You know, and it's it's like it's describing the issue further from where we need to be.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 1:00:00
That's part of the same dysfunctional paradigm that's gotten us to this place. And I think that there's room for diversity and regenerative certification because regenerative is it's not as black and white as like organic. Like you either used organic inputs or you didn't. Like it's nuanced. There's multiple drivers from me. What would fix this would be if our really dominant regenerative certification players could get together and say, look are we are aligned in our goal that we want to make 50% of all grocery shelves regenerative by X date. We know we need to have a broader toolkit than anyone certification mark can accomplish. How can we work together? In a radical collaboration model where we educate the public about what regenerative is like at a more broad brush stroke and say the reason there are some different certifications is because different farming systems have different needs and those consumers who care and want to take a deeper dive will. But I feel like if they could come together and get along instead of have this competitive.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 1:00:44
Like we're going to be the mark. I don't think that's that's going to be problematic. I think that they need to step out of their comfort zone and work together and go at the end of the day, we need to get people clear on the big goals of regenerative and how we need to work together to make that happen. Not not collaborate versus compete. Like that's going to have to happen to get over that.

Kyle Krull - 1:01:29
Couldn't agree more.

Anthony Corsaro - 1:01:30
We we need as a space to tell a way more concise and compelling story. Like you guys know me, I'm a content guy, and so I'm. I I guess I'm, I think highly of the content that I produce, but I think not so highly of a lot of the content in the space because it's way too verbose, it's way too hard to understand. It's not fetchy, it's not compelling and it doesn't now. It doesn't have the desired effect on people that we we need to tell.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 1:01:53
Yeah, we need you on our team, Anthony, because like we literally have, we have literally not produced content for that very recent like we've just. Pulled back and like I share content personally on LinkedIn but it's because we've not cracked the net on how to do it and not snow people like we don't have that superpower yet. I am looking for people who have that superpower that can help us break that down and make it bite sized pieces. I know we can't do it yet and that's why people are like you don't do a whole lot of marketing. I'm like it's because we haven't cracked the nut and I think if we. Trudge forward aggressively right now will confuse people and it will backfire. It almost rather just let it drift organically right now then, like for something that is not well executed, does that make?

Anthony Corsaro - 1:02:39
Sense, no, it doesn't make a lot of sense for sure. And the system that you're dealing in is way more complex than a lot of the other crops and and products that we're seeing. Yeah, in the region space, but.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 1:02:49
It is, yeah. Which is is frustrating. I'm. I wish that weren't the case, but it's kind of what needs to happen, so.

Anthony Corsaro - 1:02:57
But look you're doing it you're you're I mean you're working your ass off and you're making you're make it's it's incremental improvement and that's what we're all about as a space and that's we're all about as a show. So good to you for that.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 1:03:08
Thanks. Yeah. And this fall is going to be exciting. I mean we're going to have robot weeded regenerative sorghum that we're taking to market and you know again we're buying and then we've got biodynamic rock certified PROSA millage. We've got regenerative garbanzo beans that are and sorghum that we can pull from as well that are not. They're conventional still, but they're regenerative and they've they're hitting our 3B marks. So we've kind of got a spectrum going there and you know it's we're a small company, we can't purchase a ton. So we're going to make a purchase, we're going to use it and then you know if we have to pull back from commodity because we run out, that's what we have to do. But that's literally part of the process like there's no other way to do it. We just had to take the plunge and go you know what, I'm going to have this farmer plant this much Millet. They may not get us through the year, but at least we're doing it like we'll know next year how to do this better and that's a process that also retailers are completely naive to.

Anthony Corsaro - 1:04:01
Yeah. Well, look, we're excited for you. We're in your corner. We believe in you, and we'll continue to support you. Yeah.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 1:04:08
Thanks.

Anthony Corsaro - 1:04:09
Where can folks find more information or follow along like where?

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 1:04:12
Yeah. So I always tell people like if they're interested in the more nerdy side they can always follow me as a person on LinkedIn. We're going to start doing a lot more robust and activists on LinkedIn and that's really for like the Ag region side. Obviously like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok is getting an infusion of love and from a brand side and then stacked of students calm we're. We haven't been doing any changes to it because we're rebranding and it seemed kind of silly to invest in that until the rebranding is done. But very exciting things are going to be coming through the next 3-4 months and so people should follow a sign up for our newsletter where you can keep you posted on on what's going on. We don't have enough energy to spam you, so if you sign up for the newsletter, I swear there won't be a whole lot, yeah. Awesome. Yeah, cool. Yeah. So, yeah. And if, you know, my biggest ask to people who are listening is like, if you're a consumer, request our products at retail or request our products at your favorite place that you love to have breakfast, that you want a regenerative teff waffle. Like that moves the needle more than anything. And if you're in retail, be an advocate for brands so that that your companies understand.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 1:05:00
Who the regenerative people who are really trying to do the work are and that they get on shelf cuz that's gonna be a game changer for all of us that are trying to create this category.

Anthony Corsaro - 1:05:34
Great place to end. You're amazing. We appreciate you.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 1:05:37
Hey thanks, super fun to talk to you both. You're both inspirations as well, so keep up the amazing work.

Anthony Corsaro - 1:05:43
Thanks, Johnny. Thanks for joining us.

Joni Kindwall-Moore - 1:05:44
Take care. Thank you. Bye.

Anthony Corsaro - 1:05:51
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.