#17 - Tucker Garrison @ Imlak’esh Organics & CHi Foods

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #17 - Indigenous Wisdom & The Regenerative Plant-Based Meat - (RECAP LINK)

Episode Transcript:

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated with AI and is not 100% accurate.

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 brands supporting regenerative agriculture and how they're changing the world. This is your host, Kyle, joined by my co-host, AC who is going to take us into the episode. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:00:34
On this episode, we have drumroll please. Just Kyle and I, we have just Kyle and myself, to talk about two very important things to kick off this new year. Y'all's number one, what have we learned in our first 15 episodes? There's millions of takeaways, but we really tried to boil it down into our top four to share with you all, and we're really excited to do that and dive into that on the episode #2, what we've got cooking for you in 2023. It's a new year. We got new goals. We got new plans. We have new stuff to share. We have some awesome new additions to our game plan. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:00:39
We're excited to share those with you all, and we walk through them alive on the episode. So let's get this new year kicked off. Here we go. What's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Regen Brands Podcast. We are live for episode 16. You just getting Kyle and out today. So Kyle, how you feeling today buddy? 

Kyle Krull - 0:01:31
Feel great man. Sweet 16. You know, we took a little hiatus post holidays. It's nice to be back on the pod. Looking forward to chatting through some of you know, last year's highlights. But yeah, feeling really good. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:01:43
Yeah, if we're going to talk about natural systems, you know, we got to respect the laws of nature and and the fact that in Q4, you know, we should be resting, we should be eating a little more, we should be hibernating. So we took that personally for the first. 

Kyle Krull - 0:01:55
With the cover crop, you know, we don't want that land to follow, so you know we're not doing this wrong. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:02:01
Exactly. Well, y'all. We're really excited to bring to bring everybody more episodes, more content, all kinds of fun stuff. In 2023, we have a really cool game plan for all of y'all, but we first want to start off with just thanking everybody for their support. I mean anybody that listens, that watches on YouTube, that subscribes, that reviews, that rates the podcast, that shares it with with a friend that all is, is really the most important thing to to this thing having any sort of success. So we appreciate that if you haven't done any of that. We would really appreciate if you subscribed on your favorite podcast platform and you gave us a review. If you gave us a 5 star rating, we would really appreciate that, but we want to thank everybody for their support in 2022. 

Kyle Krull - 0:02:42
Totally agree. It's been so cool to see the type of engagement we've had. You know, I think a couple of people have posted organically only team, but like, hey, you know, I just got a job at XYZ Company and I got to listen to an episode on reaching Branch to learn more about the founder story and to know that the podcast is being utilized in that capacity to get people more connected with these brands and to hear their stories is just super, super cool. So yeah, we really appreciate the support everyone. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:03:04
Yeah, I mean, shout out to my guy, John, new new employee, new team member at SIMPLi to Kyle talking about found SIMPLi on the ReGen Brands podcast and then ended up getting a job with them last year. And that's just, that's why we do this. And I would say, you know, one of our biggest takeaways from last year was our hypothesis that these brands needed more support, they needed to be spotlighted more and that we could build a community around supporting them. We were very bullish on that as a hypothesis and it and it rang true and there's been a great you know, coalition of folks that have rallied around. You know, this podcast, but more importantly the brands that have been featured on it to to learn about them and support them and that's that's the whole goal at the end of the day. 

Kyle Krull - 0:03:44
Totally agree. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:03:46
So we're going to dive into really two things. That's going to be a quick podcast for everybody. We're going to talk about what we learned in these first 15 episodes. I'm going to talk about the fun stuff that's coming up in 2023. So excited to dive into both topics. We tried to pick out some key things that were takeaways from all 15 of the first episodes, which is crazy to think we're already 15 episodes in, so that's super awesome. And then we're going to talk about some things that are kind of upcoming in in the new year, right? So what have we learned in the 1st 15 episodes? Uh, there's definitely a lot to pick out from there, Colin. I kind of picked out the three to five biggest topics that that we saw. But buddy, I'm excited to share those. Give me your thoughts on, on kind of sharing those takeaways. 

Kyle Krull - 0:04:29
Yeah. You know, before we even dive into the specifics, let's just give a shout out to all the brands we've had. So we've got Christy Lewis at Queen, and we've had Jamie Ager from Hickory Nut Gap. We've had Heather, Terry from Good, Sam, Meghan and Keith from white leaf provisions, Alex from Alex ice Cream, Paul from Pastor Bird, Daniella from Big Picture Foods, David from Doctor Bronners, Carolyn, Ken from Lotus, Tim from philosopher food, Stephanie and Blake from Alexander, Justin from Kettle on fire, Joni from snack list. This is an incredibly long list. I did not expect it to take this long. It feels like it's a really long time. But we've also had cirilla map from simply and then photographs from wild ideas. So just shout out to all those awesome people and incredible brands for taking the time to do an episode with us. Like Anthony said, you know, we want to make sure that we kind of recap and highlight some of the most common themes and important things that we've learned as hosts doing this podcast, because we're learning just as much as the audience in many cases here. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:05:21
Absolutely. I'll go ahead and kick us off with the first take away and I'm I'm the Angel investor of the two of us that's invested in a handful of these brands and and continues to look at a lot of you know deals in this space and what was one of the clearest takeaways of every single episode. These brands need a different type of finance partner you know, no matter what stage they're at but we we we talked to a bunch that were kind of at that earlier stage. There's not enough fun enough funding. Out there in the ecosystem for them and then when you look about you know when you look at. How they're funded versus typical CPG, it's gonna be a little different. And so they need different partners, they need incredible high amounts of mission alignment, even greater than, you know, your typical natural organic CPG company. And that was one of the biggest takeaways that we had from from all 15 episodes for sure. 

Kyle Krull - 0:06:10
Totally. And I wanna riff on that a little bit. You know, anything you like. You mentioned you've got the investment shops between the two of us. I just know how to sell stuff, you know. I can't invest to save my life. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:06:18
So, you know, talk about some short a little bit there, bro. 

Kyle Krull - 0:06:22
Maybe a little bit, I don't know, humility key, talk about how the current economic situation is going to change the way brands have to fund next year because you know you just mentioned that in 2022 it was hard and in 2023 it's going to get harder. So just tell us a little bit about what you're seeing and how you think that maybe some ReGen Brands could you know, navigate these more challenging waters in the upcoming year? 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:06:46
Yeah, for sure. So we're seeing a huge shift from kind of growth at all cost to really focusing on profitable growth and really healthy unit economics. That's across you know all kind of fundraising right now, not just CPG but definitely in CPG. And you know there's an article that New Hope put out. I think yesterday it was all about basically how, you know funding is really just drying up across the space, which is accurate and when people can leave their money in the bank and make 4% risk free in the bank with the interest rates the way that they are right now. It's gonna be a challenge. It's gonna be a challenge for brands to raise money from, you know, Angel investors like myself that are really early stage. And it's gonna be a challenge to raise, you know, from those institutional investors, the venture capital firms, the private equity firms. They're sitting on a lot of cash, but they're going to scrutinize the investments way more and I think the valuations are going to be a lot less. You know, founder friendly evaluations have kind of gotten away from those fundamentals and gotten inflated a little bit, which, you know, everything cyclical, right, it's only natural. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:07:18
That we've kind of had this jump and then we'll have we'll kind of have this reset. You know I unfortunately think we'll lose some some some really great brands to this to this downturn. I hate to say that but that's kind of what the math just tells us. But I think with new creative ways like crowdfunding with continuing to lean on kind of Angel investors and building your networks there with all kinds of cool new distribution trial mechanisms to increase revenues and increase profitability. You know people have a fighting chance and. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:07:49
But that that's really what it's all going to be about. It's gonna be about really dragging, really digging into the hardcore, you know, economics and the fundamentals and and profitable growth. Not just grabbing a bunch of new doors, grabbing a bunch of new distribution, not making any money on it. It's going to be about paste profitable growth. 

Kyle Krull - 0:08:37
I couldn't agree more. And I think what's gonna be really interesting in 2023 is the intersection of everything. You just talked about how brands gonna be focusing more on profitability. But at the same time, retailers are asking brands for more than they ever had before because they're trying to combat inflation and instead of changing their margins, they want brands to fund that. So they're asking for more promotions, deeper promotions, DLP spends. So this is really interesting like. Combination of brands want to be more profitable, retailers are asking for more spend and it's going to create a tension point within the industry this year. And it's gonna be really interesting to see how it shakes out. And I think that the smaller brands in particular have less leverage. So it's going to be more difficult for them to deal with that environment. But as long as we can have these sort of open, honest candid conversations and we can talk about, hey, look, we're not trying to burn money here to to buy distribution like you mentioned, we're looking to maintain some level of profitability and sustainability. 

Kyle Krull - 0:08:59
For not just the land, but our business. So it's gonna be interesting to see how this all shakes out. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:09:35
Yeah, yeah. Couldn't agree more. And you know, to just make that really simple math for folks that aren't intimately familiar with the space, it's basically, let's say you have a manufacturer, you have the brand that's selling the product, you have a distributor and you have a retailer. And if the price on the shelf is staying the same or maybe it's only increasing a little bit, right, let's say 10%. But cost of goods across that whole supply chain have gone up 20%. Somebody's got to eat that, you know that 10% difference in their margin. And what Kyle is saying is the retailer is really pushing on that the upstream supply chain to eat that and the upstream. Black chains pushing on the retailer to eat that and so there's gonna be this tug of war of where is that, where is that gonna go in the supply chain. And I hope that you know the the other key stakeholders can support these brands and not having to harbor all that margin compression on on their businesses because especially if they're sub 5 billion, sub sub 10 million, you know they they need to build healthy margins so that they can continue to get funded, they can continue to grow and they continue to have those good fundamentals that you just mentioned. 

Kyle Krull - 0:10:35
Totally. Yeah. And it becomes all the more important for brands who are actually looking to do good for the land, right. You know, we're not looking to turn and burn and sell and selling commodity everything. So yeah, it's, it's going to be interesting and we didn't plan to talk about this. So it's just this is just a great organic conversation. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:10:51
It's a good segue into the next one too. 

Kyle Krull - 0:10:54
Let's jump into, you know one of the other things that we one of the recurring themes that we caught you know going through the 1st 15 episodes and that's we need to build more coalitions and increase the capacity through collective action and basically like the capacity to support ReGen is what we're trying to build. And. I think that through partnership and through unification we can make a lot more impact than we can as individuals and that needs to be seen throughout the entire movement. You know, right now ironically there is sort of a contentious space within certification and not certification within ReGen. And we've talked about this with a lot of our brands. And this is not to say that any certification is bad or good or better, but they're vying for the number one position instead of looking at, you know, biodiversity. It's in the regenerative segment of Regency CPG and saying these should all exist together and they all do different things and that's good. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:11:49
So hold on, hold on, I want, I want you to really drive that point home. So what you're saying is right now we have certifications competing to have a monocrop mindset of certifications instead of a biodiverse mindset of multiple certifications that all can represent different nuances and different, you know, maybe products or production practices in this space. 

Kyle Krull - 0:12:10
Exactly. I mean you couldn't have said it better. It's it's so it's like to have a single regenerative certification feels so backwards to what everything regenerative is about. It's about biodiversity and every different certification can serve a different need and that's OK. And then the what what I think there's an opportunity for is the unification in some form where all these different certifications can live and we can have a unified message to retailers and to consumers so that they can understand OK like ReGen or regenerative. Culture means this, all these different certifications fall under that umbrella because right now the consumers are super confused, OK, like what's the difference between organic and regenerative, organic and savory OE. And we gentrified and all these new certifications that are popping up and it's convoluting the message. Retailers are confused. They're not sure which ones to support and that is inhibiting the ability for consumers to really adopt that retail and that's where they that's where they learn. So it's, it's it's interesting cycle that we're in right now. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:13:12
Yeah. And we we want to be really clear that we love what the certification bodies are doing. We appreciate their work and we know that they're not sitting at the the strategic planning meeting at the White Board saying how can we put down the other certifications or how can we out compete the certification. What they're trying to do is boost their certification and support their growers and their brands to the best of their ability. So we're not saying that any, any of the activity is malicious, right. And we also know these people have spent time and money and you know they they are very convicted. And in their methodologies and that being truly regenerative. But I think we're going to have to see some coalescing of multiple bodies for this thing to really go go further. And you know, it makes me kind of think back to when I got really passionate about regenerative agriculture. I saw something that made so much sense that I had to take a good amount of time to learn. But I was so passionate about it because I almost felt like the whole thing just needed better marketing. You know, it needed better messaging and it just needed a louder voice or voices. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:13:42
And we just, we have to continue to fight that fight. You know we're not gonna, we're not gonna win that battle overnight, but we have to do that at every level of the supply chain like you just talked about. We have to do that with the retailers and the distributors and then we have to do that with the consumers. And I almost think that that's different a little bit. There's definitely some overlap there, but let's let's stick with more of that commercial side before we go to the consumer side, right. So like what kind of coalition building or coalescing or increasing capacity is available for, for ReGen Brands and like what other? 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:14:12
What other, what other folks can we look to in the space that have done similar things that we could learn from or maybe kind of copycat and and take some of those tactics? What do you see there? 

Kyle Krull - 0:14:52
I mean I certainly think that there are. I think the, the non-GMO project in particular has done a fantastic job of building retailer relationships. And I mean you see those tags up and that Insignia up on almost every package and every retail store these days. So I think that there's a lot we can take from that playbook and say, OK, this is how we would approach, but the step that needs to happen before that is OK. Like what is the unifying message and how do we get all these different vested interested parties to unify around that to feel like, OK, yeah, I want to be part of this even though I might feel a little bit different. They're like regenerative, has to be organic, which I think is a great thing. I certainly want to reduce glyphosate spray. Like I'm all about that. And I think you made a really good point of saying, like, nobody's being malicious here. Everybody's trying to do the right thing in their own way, right? But yeah, I really think the unification step has to happen first because without that, the playbook almost doesn't matter because you everybody's gonna be on different pages. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:15:47
So let's let, let's say, let's wave our magic wand and say that's happened, right? We've we've unified. Framework and a scorecard around the certification bodies have coalesced or you know, a large majority of the ReGen Brands have coalesced around. This is what regenerative agriculture is. We might have different monikers on pack, but this is what it is. You know, like I've been trying to think through what's the most important thing to do first. Is it to have a trade association that does a bunch of PR and works with the retailers to educate them and just increases like trial and distribution for brands? Is it for somebody to start like a sales brokerage that just hustles ReGen Brands into these retailers and gets really immediate? 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:15:53
Results in distribution and philosophies you know is it, I don't know what it is, right? Is it going, is it creating an influencer platform on social media that drives a bunch of direct to consumer business for these brands that doesn't involve traditional brick and mortar retail? You and I just had dinner last night and we were kind of riffing on on these things. But you've been in this space in in an operating capacity much longer than I have. So like what do you see as maybe the most important of those opportunities to kind of start with if we get that, if we get that definition or we get that agreement on the on the framework? 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:16:24
What's the first action we take? 

Kyle Krull - 0:16:56
Right. You know and I love the way we, we think about this. Like we mentioned yesterday, we have complementary skill sets, we work in different, we're experts in very different areas, right. So for me, I immediately think retail and I think that if we can get the top five retail chains in the natural channel to adopt whatever the unifying message is. So that's like Whole Foods, Sprouts, Natural grocers and CG, we get those five bodies say, OK, we're willing to support this, we're going to put up the signage in store. And then thrive from like an ECON perspective, we get those six retailers on board. I think the rest of the channel will follow suit and eventually MULO will adopt just like they have anyone say no, that's like conventional retailers will adopt the same system and it can just be a unification process across the board. I think that's what needs to happen first because as great as a PR strategy might be and I don't mean to say that like retail is king and nothing else matters. Yeah, people learn when they shop while they're while they're looking at the tags and I think that we should. Certainly follow that up with the marketing campaign and some other, you know, educational materials in some capacity, but it needs to happen where people make their purchases. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:18:04
And just as a just to put it out there in the universe, as soon as someone wants to pay someone to do that, I will happily sign up for that job. I mean I think Kyle and I do do a lot of that in our spare time for free as much as we can. I mean more so than you, you than me, bro. And I I really just, you know, salute you for that. And you've done, you've done some really incredible stuff for the space. But somebody's got to step up, right. Somebody's got to step up and lead that that has, you know some sort of an unbiased viewpoint and isn't super partisan to to. Certain pieces of the ecosystem. And then somebody gotta fund it because you gotta staff it, you gotta have those conversations, you gotta build those resources, you have to coalesce all these different people. Like let's just say, you know, we're, we're going to put out a resource this year that publishes every single brand that we've seen in America that's made some sort of regenerative claim. I'm working on it right now and I think when I looked at the, the sheet last night was right around 100 brands. So just think about the thing about the funding and the time needed to coalesce just that group, let alone. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:18:34
Would take that information to the broader ecosystem like we're talking about of retailers, of distributors, of consumers, etcetera. 

Kyle Krull - 0:19:11
It's a really great point and I want to kind of segue this into a current event and and the reason like the why why we're doing this why we care so much about this and think about the impact we could make and let's use the the California storms that just happened right 150 year Storm absolutely insane amount of water so much so that the state doesn't know what to do with it. They can't fill the reservoirs enough because that's going to cause potential flood harm. Like there are so many issues going on and I'm I'm reading a book that Tim recommended on his podcast episode and he talks about how for every 1%. Of soil organic matter that we increase in soil, the water retention rate increases by 20,000 gallons per acre. California is the world's fifth largest economy and is tons and tons and tons of agricultural land. Yeah, if we could build 1% of soil organic matter, which is entirely feasible with regenerative practices probably in I I would guess and I'm not a farmer, I'm not an expert. I would guess within one to three years think about the ability to absorb that water to reduce the amount of flooding mud slides like financial impact it and. It also stores more water, so we rely less on. 

Kyle Krull - 0:20:21
Aggregation systems in the future, you know it. It can just have such a humongous impact. And This is why unification is so important. If we can get more people on board to understand what this is, how to support it, like we can make a humongous difference for the future of this world. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:20:43
I couldn't agree more and we could come up with thousands of those examples maybe even just from the 1st 15 episodes, but for sure from all the brands that we know doing great work in the space. And I'm going to throw, I'm gonna throw a take away in that we didn't prep for which is when the brands really have the opportunity and the stage to show how vastly different their production practices and they're growing practices and their manufacturing practices are than their conventional counterparts. I mean it is insane like the the three episodes that come to mind when I think about that. Daniella with big picture in the olives, Tim with the almonds at philosopher and Phil that Wild idea Buffalo. I mean when you really sit there and you listen to those three people talk about how vastly different and and and all the brands not to not to just single them out but all the brands. You know when you really listen to them come on the show or or anywhere talk about how vastly different all that stuff is for them versus their counterparts. It's it's like how do we not how do we not do this 100% of the time. How do we not give these people all of our market share of baby food or bison meat or olives or almonds or, you know, rice baking mixes, right, rice, whatever. Like that. That to me was one of the biggest takeaways that we didn't even think about before the show is, you know, we have to increase the capacity and make more awesome content and tell more great stories about how vastly different these supply chains are than their conventional counterparts. 

Kyle Krull - 0:22:10
It's such a great point. I I distinctly remember listening to Ken and Carol talk about. I think it was how many people are involved in the creation of rice is like the number one employment in the world. And we, I think we both had like a massive wow, wow. It's just mind blowing and there's more agricultural, more and more arable land used for rice than anything else on the planet. And it's like if we can get that to shift and use less water on that specific crop alone, like we can make it an enormous impact. So I think you're spot on, man. Like giving these brands and people and individuals. 

Kyle Krull - 0:22:14
The opportunity to tell their stories and why and share their why, why it's different, why they care about it, what they're trying to accomplish, it can really move the need. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:22:53
Yeah. And it's, it's how we connect with other human beings through story, right. And when we talk about the fact that we need a certain level of commercial success to make this thing happen, we have to connect with consumers. We have to drive trial and purchase and repurchase at grocery stores, online, through whatever sort of channel we're talking about. And there's a ton of opportunities there. But I think one of the other takeaways that we that we noted was we have to coalesce around a really much more. Buttoned up, easy to understand marketing and messaging about what regenerative agriculture is, why does it matter and why you should buy these products or even why you should pay a premium for some for some of them. So riff on that, riff, riff on that. What were our thoughts on that? 

Kyle Krull - 0:23:40
Yeah, you know from like a for the, for the average consumer doesn't work in this space, right. Retailers historically have relied on 3rd party certifications to create their messaging for them and to help educate consumers. And right now because we're in this vying for number one position spot, there is not a single unified message. So retailers are having a difficult time messaging to consumers what ReGen is. So we need to build that cohesive message so that we can start with that retailer adoption. They get consumers on board because right now it's really confusing. Like does regenerative Pastor organic or does it not. Does regenerative mean that something just has cover crops or does it not do do consumers even need to know that much? I would guess that 75 to 90% don't even need to know that. What they really need to know is that supporting brands that are incorporating regenerative ingredients into their product offerings improves the planet and also has some other social benefits for the for the workers. And you know, I don't want to like dilute it to just one singular thing. That's just the one that's the most important to me. 

Kyle Krull - 0:24:09
It's not to diminish the level of anything else. But that's why we need to do this and to Anthony's point, like driving trial and repurchased like supporting these brands is the most important thing I think that we can do right now from a purchase perspective. You know, you can, you can buy an electric truck. I think we talked about this in another podcast, electric truck, electric car. That's a $50,000 plus $100,000 purchase that you do maybe once, twice in your life. But we all go to the store and buy groceries on a weekly basis and if you can trade up, pay 2015 20% more to support a form of. 

Kyle Krull - 0:24:43
Agriculture that is benefiting both like the nutritional density for yourself as a consumer and to benefit the planet like that's that's what we need to be trying to do. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:25:22
100% and I think I think about data and research and we need a massive amount of funding to fund a massive amount of research and data and education, right. So we need to do, we need to do research and gather data that tells us what the baseline is that we need to invest in education to continue to survey, gather more data and improve and improve basically the the efficacy of that work. So shout out to avid listener Lindsay Boyle up in Canada. I know she wants to do some of this work. She's working on doing some of this work, kind of this consumer research. These, right. How do we, how do we get multiple brands or how do we get one of the certifications or all the certifications to invest in real consumer research that helps us understand when they look at this monochrome pack, what are, what does that actually mean to them? Because it's going to be, it's going to be a 3 second instantaneous one to three bullet point thing. It's not going to be all 100 bullet points that got the person the certification, right. So what do they think about when they see the word regenerative unpack? Do they like it, abbreviate it, do they like it in full length? I mean there's a million questions that we could come up with. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:25:52
But what we really need to do systematically is someone has to come forward and pay for real research to set the baseline. And I know some people are working on this and doing this. Then we have to take that data and we have to say, OK, here's how we're going to increase the efficacy of that or increase, you know, change the narrative, make it more simple, you know, whatever we need to do that, we learn from that and then keep iterating on that process over and over and over again. And if you look at like the USDA organic seal, we know what that is. They're doing those surveys every year like it in a in a decent quantity, but we're not doing that for. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:26:23
Regenerative agriculture by itself, the individual certification by itself individual products because cookies are going to be different than beef and milk's going to be different than you know eggs, right. So what does that mean to people in those specific categories as well? Super important and that just takes a lot of money a lot of effort and a lot of time and you know I don't want to paint it as some daunting daunting thing because we're we're closer than than I guess you know it appears. But it is work that needs to be done that's going to propel all this forward and we have to figure out a way to. Do it together, because right now what I see is a lot of people, you know, running really fast and really hard and working their butts off. But how do we do that together? 

Kyle Krull - 0:27:33
I think it's a really good point. And what I immediately think of is like the power of that data and what it can be used for. And I think about it, really poor example of the power of data with the recent Harvard study about, you know, the healthiest food score and how box those Lucky Charms is somehow healthier than beef or an egg. And it's like that's the power of this type of research, right. And what's scary is like most people might see that and to and laugh about it and say, hey, like I'm not going to believe this, but that study is what's creating food policies and school districts. Hospitals. And so if we can actually create that data like you mentioned, I think that it has a ton of power that we can use and I think it's a great, great idea. So that we haven't discussed before and I, I would love to see that happen. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:28:18
Yeah. And I mean, I think about when I think about my life, I think about I've always worked really hard and gave me great effort to everything I've done. But the the great successes that I've seen were about the fact that that effort was exerted on really important leverage points, points of high leverage, right, which is why I love to see kiss the ground. Really focusing on policy now because that's probably the most important leverage point to get regenerative agriculture adoption in this country is is policy, right. So when we look at CBG, what is that? I think one of those leverage points is this whole messaging to consumers piece. It's it's going to be one of the highest leverage pieces that if we can really figure out how to do that in a simple but compelling way, we will solve a lot of problems on the trial and the repurchase side. 

Kyle Krull - 0:29:02
100% agreed. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:29:04
What's our last take away, bro? I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm spacing out about to pull up. 

Kyle Krull - 0:29:08
My, I mean, those are the three, man. Those are the. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:29:09
Three points we got. 

Kyle Krull - 0:29:11
Perhaps we threw another. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:29:11
One in there, you know one of the other. 

Kyle Krull - 0:29:13
Things that's popping up in my head is like, you know, maybe we talk about like the barriers, like why it's so hard to do this. And when you mentioned policy, this is what kind of sparked it for me right now. And again, I'm not a farmer. I'm only reiterating things that I've heard and said, speaking to farmers and those who are way smarter than me and and far more entrenched in this space, but based on my current. Understanding of how a lot of the agricultural systems work in the United States in order to qualify for farm insurance or crop insurance rather. Which is a government, you know, funded entity and government run entity. You often have to spray chemicals on your land. And if you're trying to adopt regenerative principles, you're trying to reduce the amount of chemicals you're spraying on your land and implement all these other different systems that are beneficial for the environment. So a huge barrier to entry, and this is where policy comes into play, is that it's a massive risk to any farmer who's trying to move away from the monocrop industrialized agricultural space because according to the government. 

Kyle Krull - 0:29:43
If you're not doing that, they will not insure. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:30:17
You. 

Kyle Krull - 0:30:18
So it's just a massive amount of risk and this comes back into play with the partnerships that we talked about earlier. We need a different type of funding method so that farmers can still be protected and take some of these risks to try to adopt these new principles and practices. So this is something that came up. We've already hit our three bullet points. I'm just spitball on at this stage. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:30:35
Yeah, we're so good. We've been through in a fourth and I think, I think we should acknowledge like look, we we set out with the mission of this podcast to be focused on CPG. And that was very intentional. We understand that regenerative agriculture is way bigger than that and increasing the adoption of regenerative agriculture. There's a ton of things we could talk about. I mean, somebody might listen this podcast and be like, you guys haven't talked about farmers enough, like at all. And like that's super important. Like, yes, but we're trying to be focused on how do we improve CPG businesses with regenerative supply chains. So that's a huge piece of it. But you know, we, we can only tackle so much and we know there's geopolitical, there's, you know, rural economy dynamics. There's all these things that we could mention. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:30:46
Right. But those are our main takeaways for the people that we've talked to about their businesses, which are CPG brands and mainstream retail distribution. That's that, that's our focus. 

Kyle Krull - 0:31:27
And, and for another reason, if you want to hear me talk about farming, you're going to hate it because I have no idea. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:31:33
What I'm. 

Kyle Krull - 0:31:33
Talking about. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:31:34
Or geopolitics. 

Kyle Krull - 0:31:35
Like, you're going to exactly like, there's no reason for me to try to be dangerous in that world, because I'm not. I'm not going to pretend to be. And I think we're both on the same page there. Anything I want to touch on a couple of other things. So you know, you mentioned some of the work that I'm doing and I really appreciate that call out. Anthony has done I would say 90% of the work behind the scenes to get this podcast going. So want to give him a huge shout out for all of his energy efforts in the the thought and the intention that he has put into this thing. And come 2023, like there's a lot more coming that Anthony's primarily focused on building that. So want to give you an opportunity to talk about like what's new in 2023 for those who want to engage in this type of content. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:32:15
Yeah. I really appreciate that, bro. Thank you. You're you're gonna make me, you gonna make me cry on camera? You know, you gotta be crying in the club. So. 

Kyle Krull - 0:32:22
Big. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:32:22
Things are coming. 

Kyle Krull - 0:32:23
22 like, I mean, I just want to reiterate. Like you really push this thing forward, dude. And it's like, it's it's just fun to be a part of it with you, man. No joke. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:32:32
Well, I appreciate that and having you as a copilot's been been awesome as well brother. So it's been it's been fun and we're going to keep the we're going to keep our foot on the gas pedal. 2023 plans, what is to come. So first and foremost, like I said, what's our focus, our focus is on spotlighting CPG brands, seeking mainstream distribution for products with regenerative supply chains. That's it. Period, end of story. So that's what our, that's what our interviews are going to be focused on. I mean like I said, we have 100 a 100 brands. We got to get through all those brands. We got to get all those people on the podcast. So we have quite a ways to go, but we're going to continue to spotlight those people because what I can tell you is having focused in the regenerative agriculture space. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:32:41
For two plus years now, I saw a real dearth of attention and funding and really support for those people, which is kind of counterintuitive because you think CPG is like the sexy thing. But you know, even in my role at RSI, really focused on the finance side of things. There's land fund set up to support farmers. There's all kinds of debt providers now supporting farmer transition to regenerative. There's people doing debt for infrastructure, building for processing, right. There's there's no dedicated entity that's put their flag in the ground and said we invested, we invested in regenerative. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:33:11
Like there is for others, right? We got VC agtech covered. We got private equity land funds covered. We got infrastructure covered. We got debt providers for farmers covered and they're still not nearly enough. It's still really, really small that we need to increase massively, but we have lagged in our support for these folks. And so I just want to be really clear like that is the focus of this podcast. That was what we will continue to do and we are excited to do that and support those folks because we just think they're doing really important work and you know why? 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:33:42
We feel like it's so important to support them is if we cannot create markets for these products, we we are screwed. And a lot of times what I see get lost in conversations that we have about regenerative is we are still growing food and selling food. So the ultimate guide to changing production practices is going to producer and saying can you do something differently, I will pay you a premium for it or I will pay you the same you're making. You know it's a business, right. And so we have to have more commercial conversations about building markets because. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:34:12
We can't change anything about production if there's no way to sell it into a market. 

Kyle Krull - 0:34:47
It's a really great point and I like the way you laid that out and it makes me think like we're we're essentially what we're trying to do is take the bottleneck and move it one step forward. So the the resources are are starting to come for the producers on the ground, the farmers who are making these changes. And the next step is like to Anthony's point we need to develop the market so that people can buy and continue to buy the products that are being manufactured and produced in the in the correct way. So I just really like I laid that out and then we'll have to push the the bottleneck forward one more step you know eventually. But yeah, I I completely agree. Obviously, you know, we're doing this podcast together, but I think it's the right next step. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:35:25
So, so so how are we going to do all that? Right? It's really nice to say that's the mission, that's the vision, that's the focus. But what are we actually gonna do? One way more podcast interviews like what we've done in the 1st 15 episodes, that's number one that's coming your way. Two, we understand people could not all spend an hour listening to a full podcast. We appreciate everyone that does. We hope that everyone does, but we know people sometimes need a little SparkNotes version of that. So we are going to be investing in producing A blog for every single episode that's a 5 minute or less. Read that covers all the key points of what we talk about in the episodes. And on top of that, Kyle and I aren't going to write it because we can find someone better. I named Kristina Tober, who's going to help us write all those blogs. Kristina's awesome, really looking forward to working with her on this project. But it's going to give us another piece of shareable content that the brands can leverage, that we can use to tell their story. And it's going to be a way to pull more people into learning about these brands if they don't have a full hour to listen to the podcast episode. 

Kyle Krull - 0:36:23
I think it's gonna do wonders for what we've done. You know, like I mentioned, Anthony's done the bulk of the marketing work in particular last night. He's twisting my arm is like how can you just post once a week on LinkedIn? And it's something I just don't really enjoy doing. But I'm gonna do because not because I I don't like self promotion. This is not my jam and I'm not seeing the Anthony does. It's just not. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:36:46
What I like to do? It's it's one of my great strengths. 

Kyle Krull - 0:36:51
I just didn't want to put words in your mouth, but if you say it, it's all good. Ohh. But for me it's about, you know, the mission is about building the audience, getting more people to buy these products so we can convert more acreage so that we can protect this planet and improve the nutritional density of the food that people are consuming. So mission alignment 100% there, but I. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:37:09
Think the rest of these. 

Kyle Krull - 0:37:10
Things the the rest of the newsletter, the recaps, the blog like it's going to push this, it's going to take us to the next level and all infinite idea Anthony's going to. Executive flawlessly. And I'm super pumped to see how this audience grows and to do my very, very, very meager job of 1 post a week. Which I will, I will have to do. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:37:30
So now, all the listeners, we gotta hold Kyle accountable for at least one LinkedIn post a week. He's he's got some social accountability in. 

Kyle Krull - 0:37:36
There. Exactly. That's why I brought it up. I need that. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:37:40
So you mentioned you mentioned the last point we want to cover of what's to come. This year we will be launching an e-mail newsletter. It will coincide with this episode debuting so as soon as this episode is out. People will have this e-mail newsletter in their inboxes, so little, little predicting of the future there and some social accountability for me to get that done. That work is very much in progress and that will be happening when this episode drops. We will obviously feature our episodes, we will feature the blog post, which we're going to call the ReGen Recaps, and then we will also post all kinds of cool stuff that's going on in ReGen CPG news, insights, jobs. So all of our founders and executives out there that listen to the podcast, if you have cool stuff that you want included in that. This letter, please send it my way. Please send it our way. We'll be kind of tracking the space and pulling that together ourselves, and we're going to let that be dynamic. I'm not going to be dogmatic about what we, you know, what we include. We will continue to publish and we'll just continue to iterate based on what we think the audience really wants. 

Kyle Krull - 0:38:35
To see. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:38:37
And we got some other big plans that I'm going to keep secret for now, but those are the main things. Awesome, awesome episodes coming with more brands, the ReGen Recaps to recap those episodes. And then we're going to get this e-mail newsletter launched and we're going to be rocking and rolling in 2023. 

Kyle Krull - 0:38:51
Ohh yeah. It's more than anything is keeping a secret, even from me. Because if he tells me I'll probably just blow it out in like the wrong order. So you know it's it's it's a good move and I'm excited to see what it is like. I love surprises. This would be great. Goal. This is super fun. Like, this is the first time we've done an episode like this. Obviously we did episode one kind of talking about our back stories, but this was a sort of riffing on what we've learned, kind of, I think, honing in our own message, like what is it that we're trying to do for 2020 and beyond? It's been great, longer than I expected, and in a good way. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:39:22
We got to wrap the way that we started it with look, we we felt very bullish about doing this. We thought it would be fun. We wanted to support these folks, but. We had no idea what we were doing. We had no idea what what happened. And you know, every listen, every share, every review, every five star rating, every nice e-mail, every comment on LinkedIn. I mean like it really does mean the world to us. And like as of right now, we don't get paid to do this. And so you know that that's the fuel to our fire and we just really appreciate it and we hope that it's making an impact. We think it's making an impact. And you know, I personally just can't thank everybody enough for all that support through these first 15 episodes. 

Kyle Krull - 0:40:02
I'm not going to try to say better than that. So I just totally agree and emphasize and reiterate everything. Anthony just said it. It really does mean the world. I love when I get like a text or somebody's like, Oh yeah, just in this episode, it's so cool that people want to listen and learn about this stuff and how they can improve their own health and the health of the planet. Like, and that's at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to do. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:40:24
Absolutely, man. We got dogs barking in the house. That means it's time to wrap the recording. But dude, really appreciate you. So really appreciate everybody out there that's listening and lots of fun stuff to come in 2023. So here we go. For show notes, episode transcripts, and more information on our guests and what we discuss on the show, check out our website regen-brands.com. That is regen-brands.com. You can also find our ReGen Recaps on the website. Regen Recaps take less than 5 minutes to read and cover all the key points of the full hour-long conversations. You can 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. Subscribe to future episodes and share the show with your friends. Thanks for tuning into the ReGen Brands Podcast brought to you by the ReGen Coalition and Outlaw Ventures. 

Anthony Corsaro - 0:40:53
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 regenerative food system. Love you, guys.