#22 - Paul Lightfoot @ Patagonia Provisions

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #22 - Architecting Regenerative Supply Chains - (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 cohost AC is going to take us into the episode.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:00:33
On this episode we have Paul Lightfoot, who is the General Manager of Patagonia Provisions. Patagonia Provisions is the food arm of Patagonia, where they are building regenerative supply chains and products with the goal of saving our home planet. In this episode, we learn about the origins of Provisions and their plans for the next evolution of the business. Plus, we talked to Paul about Provisions's role as a supply chain architect that can help scale regeneratively produced products. To commercial success. Paul is a true champion of regenerative agriculture, and it was so cool to get an update from him as he is closing in on one year in this new role. This is a good one folks. Let's dive in. What's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of The ReGen Brands Podcast. We slash I are fired up today to have Paul Lightfoot from Patagonia Provisions. My co-host Kyle is stranded at the San Francisco Airport, so I'm flying solo today, but no dampening the excitement to have Paul joining us. So welcome, Paul.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:01:34
Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:01:36
Absolutely, man. Really excited for this conversation. I think it's going to be great for those that that don't know what Patagonia Provisions is, just give us a brief high level description on what what the company does and you know all that jazz.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:01:50
Yeah, Patagonia Provisions is the food and beverage division of of Patagonia, the company best known for its outdoor gear and apparel. And you know the mission of Patagonia is a simple one. It's the save our home planet and and and Patagonia Provisions, we believe. I believe, I think everybody here believes is, is perhaps the most important lever Patagonia could pull to fulfill its mission, with the understanding that right now our food system sort of makes things worse. It's bad for health, it's bad for the planet. But food can be grown in a way that's actually quite good for all of those things. And our job is to create market opportunities to transform the food system for the better. Hmm. Wow. Beautiful.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:02:30
Beautiful stuff. And I can, I can see why that that large kind of audacious goal has gotten you involved. And we'll definitely get into that before we do, you know, talk, talk the audience through. You mentioned the mission of Patagonia Provisions, but why did Patagonia get into the food business? Like what's the, what's the origin of this thing? How long has it been around? What's the background story there?

Paul Lightfoot - 0:02:53
Yeah, like a lot of the big initiatives at Patagonia, I think it was conceived originally by. On Shenard, right, who understood before most people that regenerative agriculture is, is the key to, you know, creating harmony between humans and the earth really. I guess humans and the ability to keep having humans in the future, the Earth would be fine without us, just like it was fine without the dinosaurs, right? And so it's not just food, right? It's food and fiber because we make it parallel as well. But you know, I believe that Yvonne had this, this vision more than 10 years ago and with the.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:02:58
Our CEO really set up a division that initially spent a few years creating really innovative supply chains, right, like like building products from farms, from ingredients that hadn't really been done before with a really clear idea of solving problems to help fight the climate crisis. And you know, it's been probably in the market for six or seven years and has had some some really cool, fun successes. And my mandate now is to is to really make it. Commercially scalable. Hmm. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:04:02
Which that that's so exciting and I love. I love that you're you know stepping into the role that you haven't been in for for too long with the key phrase that I heard. And what you just said was really bringing innovative supply chains. Because if we're going to scale regenerative and really commercially scale like you said, we're building supply chains, we're not just building brands and that's such a common theme really that we've had on every episode, which is it's not just nailing the brand and the CPG side of this thing, it's nailing the entire supply chain and. You know, I think one thing that's really interesting about y'all is. We have a lot of people on this podcast that they kind of have maybe just have one hero product or maybe they have a suite of products, but there's way more complexity to what y'all do with all the different categories of of food and beverage that you touch. So would love to hear you kind of speak to that and maybe what is that, is that going to kind of stay the same? What are some challenges that bring? Just talk to me about that kind of the breadth of the portfolio right now and how that affects like strategy and execution.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:04:59
Complexity isn't isn't our friend right. So in general I think the business was a bit too complex when I got to it and and one of my jobs has been to making making it simpler and I'll just give you an example you know this is this is a pasta that we make and we sell that's made with the hero ingredient called Kernza right which is a perennial grain that builds soil makes for more resilient farmland you know sequesters carbon from emisphere it it was one item in you know. Whole Foods in North Carolina, in Northern California, and what we all know, you're a student of the CPG industry, is that one item can't succeed in in a store, right? A shopper will walk by and never notice it. And having one item with its own copacker, its own supply chains, its own sources of regenerative weeding currents, that is really expensive because of that complexity. So in this case, we actually love the product, we love the supply chain, we love the taste and the quality. So we've built a family around it. We now have a plan to launch five other pasta items. So we have a family and and and that family will be rolled out nationally where it could be a brand block where a shopper would walk down an aisle and say, boom, there's a Patagonia, Patagonia pasta company who knew? And here's a pasta with an interesting story that's both delicious and reasonably priced. So that's the kind of thing that we're doing to get rid of complexity. It also means that some of the products that we had we decided.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:05:59
You know, we didn't want to keep going with because they were adding complexity without adding that much chance to scale commercially and make it impact.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:06:38
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that it's beautifully said and that's another kind of tension point is like.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:06:43
How do we make?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:06:44
Holistic regenerative decisions right. And and work in full context and handle that complexity to the appropriate way, but in a way that can work right because if it doesn't work then it doesn't work and I think that's that's something we hear a lot of folks talk about is the is the pasta line all going to be kernza based or different wheats or I don't know if you can share that yet but curious there.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:07:06
Uh. I'll share it with you Anthony. It's it's not it hasn't been showing else yet. Deposit will be all regenerative, organic, certified and it will be both semolina wheat. And kernza in some of the products and just semolina we in other products so that we've got a variety for and in a different shapes for consumers to choose from. And but I'll go back to your, the premise of that more specific question, right, which is like how do you, how do you choose? That was one of the first challenges I decided to tackle when I got here.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:07:34
The business had been, you know, a little bit in an experimental phase before I arrived, which I think was appropriate and great and really served the business well. It's the foundation upon which I'm building. But we needed to have a rubric for making really solid choices quickly about what we shouldn't be in and and and what we should be in in the future. And so we created a rubric, right. And, and you know, rubric is a fancy word maybe for a Venn diagram that you used to make choices, but imagine the Venn diagram.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:07:45
Yeah, it's four circles. The top left circle is quality, which is how does it taste, what's the nutrition like, what's the safety? A few other things. The top right would be environmentally impact, which includes obviously carbon footprints or LCA stuff, but also biodiversity and other environmental attributes. The bottom left would be demand in the marketplace. Do people want this? How do we know they want it to be? See repeat purchasing, things like that. And then the bottom right is unity.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:08:15
Comics, right, of the gross margins of this product which enough that it will be able to scale because as you know you can't make up for, you can't make up the volume. What you lack in profits per, per, per unit, right. And by having that that we spent the first few months together sort of building that rubric and now it's a decentralized process. People on my team take this rubric and apply it to ideas and it makes us more effective and more efficient at making good choices. So that was really probably the first, you know three or four months that I got here was making sure we had a good tool for.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:08:45
Using what to be in?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:09:17
I love that and I think that could be a tool for the entire space, right? Because it takes that complexity, complexity and it gives you a tool to make it simple and to to increase the efficiency and the speed of those decisions. Like you mentioned. And you know you and I both come from a background in the fresh produce space where simplicity is king, simplicity and speed is king because everything spoils and everything goes bad. So you have no choice but to be efficient and quick and swift. But I think that's a really good dovetail into you know, share, share about your background and kind of how you came to Provisions and why that was so compelling to you. And really you know, you come from fresh produce and indoor ag and now you know you're, you're really stepping into a big role of regenerative agriculture.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:10:02
So how did all that come about? You know, looking backwards, it often makes sense, right? But if you went back in time and look forward, it wouldn't make sense. I mean, I'll go back and I just, I just turned 53, but I'm. But I'm super. I'm super immature, right? So I'm very young.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:10:06
In my 30s I was running a software company that that improved the operations of distribution centers of retailers. So I had this like retail supply chain, definitely understanding. But I didn't have the purpose I wanted in my career. And as I got to the end of my 30s, I was looking for a midlife crisis, perhaps. Although midlife, midlife seemed like 40 back then, it doesn't. Midlife seems like 53 right now. And I I decided that local produce was going to have a moment and this was, you know, this was like 2009, 2010. You know, local was big in, in fine dining table service restaurants. It wasn't in retail yet.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:10:30
And I can see that some of what had happened in organic would happen again in local. And I saw a chance to build out a business to disrupt the supply chain, which was the the sort of Salinas oligarchy of packed salads, right. And that that worked by the way. That's the short version of the story. Didn't feel like it was working the way, but of an 11 year.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:11:18
Journey was.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:11:20
A series of near death experiences. It turned out it turned out to work and. I was, you know, along the way of that 11 year journey, I would say at six or seven years in, I really started getting my head involved with regenerative agriculture's role in fighting the climate crisis in the future. And I knew that the climate crisis, as I was approaching 50, was so much more important and loomed large in my mind than it was when I was approaching 40 and so. I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my career. This wasn't a one time decision. It grew on me over the over the several years, the rest of my career thinking about food's role in the climate crisis, which turned out to be with regenerative agriculture. The business that eventually acquired Bright Farms is a terrific company called Cox Enterprises. You know, they're very careful and so they, and we agreed on a very careful exit strategy for me. I hired my successor with my board. Eventually they bought the company. I stuck around for a period, but that.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:11:50
That careful transition gave me time to start thinking outside of bright farm. And I even got some of my time back. And you might remember I was writing a newsletter called the newsletter and it was about the ascendancy of brands that would have regenerative agricultural supply chains. And you know, I did that because I wanted to become deep and and smart in regenerative agriculture particularly that had brains in the front of it so that it could capture the rising consumer demand for food that was better for the planet. And you know.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:12:20
The story, it's one of these funny stories, right? Like they didn't have any logic to it. But one day I just got a call from a hit. I hit her saying there's an opportunity to to build a food brand at Patagonia. And what they didn't know and you don't know maybe is that I was the number one most loyal Patagonia customer in the world. Like, like I was nuts about Patagonia. I'm a big snow sports guy, I'm a big outdoors guy, and I was really vulnerable to to their pitch. Like when they called me it was probably.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:12:50
October. It's like a year and a half ago, I had just written a manifesto about where I wanted to spend the rest of my career. We published it in my newsletter, publicly and like a month later, I got a call from a headhunter and Patagonia had created a document describing the business and the role. And it's so closely matched my own manifesto for how I.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:13:39
Wanted.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:13:40
My career that I just, you know, it was I couldn't, I couldn't admit that I was, you know, smitten so much so. After my first interview with the head and not even an internal person yet, I wrote an essay and sent it to them saying this is my vision for what I would do if I had this job. And then every every interview that I had and I had 1000, it went on for months. They're very careful hiring buddy. Every interview I had I would end by saying. I'll take it. I'm ready to go move my whole family. I'll change my whole life. Not wow negotiation school but but I was like I don't. I don't care. I'm authentic and you know I'm not going to I'm not going to hide the ball and eventually you know they eventually they they made the offer and and now I'm yeah moved to California after living in New York since since I was 23 and moving my family in batches selling the house you know. Yeah building a new life here. I'm loving it.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:14:36
It's beautiful. I'm sure there's so much. Position that came with that, but it's it shows the power of the power of manifestation or put it out there in the universe.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:14:44
I think that's, I believe it, yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:14:47
Yeah. You've obviously spent a lot of time selling food to people or working in companies that sell food to people. And you're clearly very, very bullish on the fact that you think consumers are demanding and will continue to increasingly demand carbon negative foods or socially conscious foods or sustainable foods, whatever we want to call them. You know I I go back and forth and we've had a lot of conversations on this show about how do we really get in touch with that consumer. Do we still have to lead with the traditional value drivers of taste, flavor, you know scent appearance and then we have to bring in regen on the back end. Do we do we lead with carbon, you know carbon footprint stickers or labels you know like so as you've kind of stepped into this more operating rule and out of the the more philosophy role that you were kind of doing to to kind of get there how, how has that changed and how are you approaching the business. How the hell did we get this consumer demand engine revving for regenerative agriculture?

Paul Lightfoot - 0:15:43
Well, it's important to remember that it's not the same for every segment of the market, right. So different different factors Dr. consumers in different places and different times, right in produce, in fresh produce, it was often appearance that was the first to generate trial and then after that it was you know the the taste and and eating experience, right. Patagonia has such a rich history of success. When it comes to the way that consumers or we, we actually generally use the word customers because we don't like to think about people consuming jackets and shirts. We want them to have one jacket seven years and they get repaired, right? But. Yvonne Chenard always said this, always says this. And it's one of these things that is very true. The quality has to be first, right. If you make a product with low quality but great environmental impact, it's not going to have much of an impact, right. And even worse, it's going to diminish the, the confidence that that the buyer has in you as a brand, right. And so we always keep that in mind. And if someone, if someone in my office said, hey, tomorrow, we're going to choose between the highest quality.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:16:27
And and most environmental impact I would say I'm that's a false choice. Like I'm I'm not gonna make it go back go back and and make the harder work completed so that you can have both. So the good news though and remember I define quality it's actually a complicated matrix but it starts with like the three pillars of like taste nutrition and food safety right. It turns out that and you know this but with regenerative you're not making some compromise between taste and environmental impact. Or taste and nutrition. But it turns out that regenerative agriculturally produced food is better for taste for nutrition and environmentally environmental impact, right. So we get to do all these things at once. The way that you tell the story to the consumer is, is really, really important, right. And I do think that that, you know most consumers that are thinking about buying food in the segments of the market that we're in do care about the environmental impact. Some people don't by the way and that that's just not.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:17:27
Part of the market that we're leading with but but the ones that we're talking to do and I'm lucky to be in a company that has a really long history and the machine that knows how to tell stories. You know, we have when I got here this business which is a pretty small business of a of a of a pretty big business, it has a storytelling machine. We have editors and photographers and graphic designers that tell stories beautifully and that's just part of part of the DNA of the business and part of how we intend to to win in the marketplace.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:18:28
Hmm yeah, I love that and I think it's super important cause I think. There's a lot of methodologies or or or folks kind of vying for that sustainable share of wallet with a with a customer, right. You got regen AG, you got food tech, you got CEA, you have all these kind of different players and there's probably room at the table for everybody. But I do think the best storytellers are going to win and I do think we have the most compelling story to tell when when we do it right. So I love that you are putting some some assets there. How, how are you weaving that into?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:18:32
The supply chain work and really the product development work and as you're thinking through kind of bringing these things to market with that storytelling marketing piece, how is that all coming together?

Paul Lightfoot - 0:19:12
Well, you know, storytelling, if it's not true, doesn't last very long. So we start by having like complete synchronicity among the different elements of the business, right. That rubric I talked about earlier, you know, with with quality, viable impact demand and unity economics that actually started on the product development side of things because we wanted to start off by thinking about what product should we be in, what products should we not be in, what product should we be in, in the future. But there's no disconnect between the product. The product part of the business and the the storytelling and the sales and and and marketing part of the business, right. So we just make sure that we're all on the same page and. You know it's I almost said I'm I'm lucky and I am lucky right. But it's not luck. We happen to be in a moment in history where consumers awareness of the role of food and and destroying the planet is pretty high and many consumers desire to be part of the solution is also pretty high that just I think it was two yeah Tuesday I was on a call with the buyer of one of our products categories at a major food retailer. You know she was really bullish on the Regenerative organic certification regime and she was.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:19:58
Pumped up about it and, you know, said yes to a pitch to carry more of our products and more of their stories, partly because she believed in that and it wasn't. She wasn't speaking from a position of altruism, although I think she did feel good to be doing the right thing. She understood, sure, that our customers care about this now, right? So, and this is the lucky part, but of course it's not luck. All of these things are happening at the same time. Retailers understand it, consumers are wanting it, and more farms are turning their attention toward.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:20:28
Meeting that market demand and that that's like that's the role of Patagonia Provisions, right. We're creating market demand that consumers are are are giving us a chance to meet so that we can buy from farms to help convince more farmers to convert their practices to regenerative. As you can tell, I'm like I'm a realist, but I'm also optimistic at the same time.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:21:20
Yeah, it's really funny you say that. I think that was, I was like on the phone with my mom the other day and I was like, you know, the our success as a movement will be largely determined by the ability to have such an intense passion about the amount of change and impact that needs to be created, but also build something that can exist enough in the present moment with all the with all the bad stuff going on and then kind of merge at this, at this precipice. So I couldn't agree more with that. Is RC a baseline like like a little like a little* somewhere on that Venn diagram page that is like we're not going to release any new products that aren't RC moving forward or or no?

Paul Lightfoot - 0:22:01
You know, this is one of my seafood items right here. I'm holding up, right. Yeah, you can't have organic certification for seafood. It it's, it's not available, right. It's just not the way that that seafood works. So no, we don't have a blanket restriction that it has to be RC, but for products that can be RC, our goal is to either have the BRC or be on the path toward RC. Yeah, we think that we think that the regenerative organic certification is a super important signal to consumers. And we think that, you know, not everyone agrees, but you know that I believe that consumer demand is going to be the lever that that changes the food system, right. And we, you know this has been said over and over again, but we run the risk of regenerative not having meaning if you let, if we let big food or even worse big sort of use it in ways that are meaningful. And so having a high standards label on the product is a signal that I think consumers are going to want and you can see the rise of OCD. The number of farms, number products is skyrocketing right now, which I think demonstrates that it is getting traction in the marketplace and the high standards that RC brings is what Patagonia really craves and needs, right. We are the, we are the business that wants to have the highest standards everywhere that that we operate, even if it's sometimes at the cost of commercial success. That's fine. We pay that price.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:23:25
And I think that it's a long play, one. And two, I think something that we could all improve upon as a space is. But we forget that we have to translate things for customers, right. So what I mean by that is mean you can have a very high level conversation around regenerative is a continuum and and there's like all these kind of different things that that there's practices versus like you are regenerative or certifications or whatever people's opinions are there. But at the end of the day on the customer side, we have to put a product on the whole food shelf that has a moniker that in three seconds they can make a purchasing decision based on. And so that's that's a those are different things and different conversations and sometimes we try to kind of talk about them in a monolith and they they. They need to be separated, or at least have that that nuance involved in the conversation.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:24:08
That's accurate, yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:24:09
Yeah, yeah. I'm curious in what's been a challenge or something that you didn't expect in the role that that you've kind of had to deal with at provision so far?

Paul Lightfoot - 0:24:20
When I so you know, when I got here, I was given a pretty clear mandate, right? Take a business that's done some great things and scale it in a way that's commercially successful, not by the way, for the sake of growth. Patagonia doesn't believe in chasing revenue growth for its own sake or for the economic reasons, but because we want to have impact and we can't have impact at A at A at a niche scale, right. In many ways, some of the strategic directions that we should go in and some of the strategic directions that we should not go in weren't that hard to see. What was difficult was just getting things changed at the rate that I that I thought was.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:25:03
That was right. The entrepreneurs dilemma.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:25:07
Fast. I mean, I mean I'm part of a, a much larger company than my last company had been, right. Right. Well, when my last company is pretty big now. But when I started it, it was, you know, it was me, right. It was very easy to make decisions, just me. So and this is, you know, this is an organization that had ways of doing things and in some ways had some slowness baked into it that I had to you know, I had to get around, I had to, I had to find ways to break and and push. That was harder than I expected.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:25:40
Hmm. Yeah, that's, that's not surprising. I think that with any with any large organization, right, you're going to have, you're gonna have that. One thing we like to do that I don't know if you're able to do right now is we have people compare maybe one of their products or their supply chain to what the the majority of that supply chain looks like in this country. Like what what is your, what is one of your products look like versus a conventional counterpart. So is there a current product or or an upcoming product where you could kind of give the audience something to tangibly associate with, hey, this is what our regenerative supply chain looks like versus our conventional counterparts.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:26:17
Yeah. I'd love to, right? So let's, I'll give you 2 and you can choose those two when you want to use, yeah? Muscles is a a product line of ours. We sell muscles. It's in tins, right. It's like it's a canned product that has a long shelf life and muscles are by bounce right and and bivalves done right Will will actually make the water cleaner right. Which is another way of saying regenerative for the ocean instead of instead of for the soil. It hasn't. Tin Fish has not had a lot of successful muscles in it in in the United States and we started sourcing from a place in Galicia, Spain.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:26:26
Years ago and the muscles right now are just really killing it in the marketplace partly because it's a great product that's done a good job. Partly also because we've we've you know we've had some luck and we went a little bit viral in the fall and TikTok within our muscles which was not something I'd ever experienced before I know even as I see it I'm not sure to leave myself but it's in the it's in the data right success on TikTok begot successful foods right which was mind blowing right and. That product is from a population that's healthy and rising. It's not just, you know, the muscles there. There's no fisheries problem. It's it's harvested in the way that's low impact. It makes the water cleaner. So sort of everything about that supply chain story is a winner and and it's successful. And I don't want to compare that to the muscles you asked me to compare it to. I want to compare it to seafood, right, seafood in the United States, although I should probably say seafood worldwide is an absolute catastrophe.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:27:26
We sometimes like to think of the big enemies that were out fighting against in the world and the the net pen salmon farming industry is one of those big enemies. It is the the the IT is the feed lot cattle industry of the sea. The biggest difference is that people don't see it because it's underwater, but it destroys marine ecosystems, it destroys coastal societies. It's truly an evil awful thing, as as bad as tobacco and oil companies and and so we're happy to be giving people a. A seafood program that they could feel good about, that's good for the health and it's good for the ocean. Another example, we just finished a set of tests brewing beer with three partners that are each given the geography. Tipitapa in Southern California, Russian River in the Bay Area and Hub Hopper Experiment Brewery in Portland. And this summer in late June, we're rolling out with a bunch of other Brewers and we're doing something super unusual. It's a licensing partnership that we're finding values aligned Brewers and partnering in a specific geography.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:28:33
And under our you know our consent and approval right. They're brewing beer under the Patagonia label and they're distributing it in marketing in in these markets. And what's awesome about it is that we're finding you know great 1% for the planet and B Corp craft Brewers and we're basically creating a reasonably low alcohol easy to drink beer that we think the Patagonia customers would love. You know the the surfers and snowboarders and and and rock climbers. And the test results were sort of astoundingly exciting. And we're as part of the partnership, the Brewers are required to use KERNZA for at least 15% of the Greenville in the beer. And together the Brewers and Patagonia will find local environmental nonprofits that will give grants to in that region where the beer is being sold and like this is this is going to be a beer product that is targeted to environmental outdoor.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:29:33
Enthusiasts that I've never had so much confidence. It's it is. We are shooting an arrow and it is hitting the bullseye and it's going to be a blockbuster and it's just so much fun and it's so exciting and there's lots of great craft beer out there. But really right now the craft beer industry is in a little bit of a funk because, you know, like ready to drink cocktails and white claws have taken over a lot of the young person's marketing. But there's a lot of growth for people who care about the impact of their food and beer. And we're going to, we're going to.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:30:03
We're gonna eat it up and pump up about it.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:30:36
Yeah, that mean both. Both amazing examples. The beer one my like I'm gonna getting chills about the beer one because what I mean the biggest thing that sticks out to me is. One thing where I feel like I'm a little contrarian in the space is we don't need to rebuild all the infrastructure in the food space, especially in the middle supply chain. We need to redirect it to better, to better use. And so, you know, some people might say, hey, we want to start a regenerative beer company, let's go build a bunch of breweries. It's like, not so fast, my friend, like.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:31:02
Let's.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:31:03
Let's use the existing infrastructure where we know that our values align consumer already frequent right, just like you're doing here and let's just partner with them right and like redirect some of that existing infrastructure to better use. And I think that's enough like we're we're not going to scale this thing fast enough without massively redirecting a bunch of current infrastructure because we just can't build brand new enough brand new infrastructure from the ground.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:31:26
Up to do it at the speed we need to do it. So I love that well and imagine if you decided to build a whole new brewery industry. All the wasted resources on their own brewing. I think you can say the same thing about distribution and restaurants and and even Co Packers. Right. I remember writing about this, my newsletter. You're absolutely right. We have to use the existing engineers and salespeople and infrastructure or else we're gonna just waste so much and expertise, so many resources. Yeah, we gotta, we gotta, yeah, we got to fit a pig through the same Python, but have it be done in a way that has a better impact.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:32:11
I think there's, you know I come from one of those food institutions that the average consumer would never know about but has a large effect on where many geographies.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:32:19
Eat and how they eat.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:32:20
And there's so much tribal knowledge and supply supply chain intimacy that if we totally recreated them, we would just lose so much value, right? And those people are willing to play ball, but they largely just do what the two ends of the supply chain tell them to do. And so we just need to give them better instructions and incentives, and they will do.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:32:41
What we need them to do, I completely agree. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:32:47
So you talked a little bit about high level, what does the future look like for patio in your Provisions? What else can you share there? What else can you share like what, what is Patagonia Provisions look like in five, you know, 710 years, bunch of new products, you know like what, what comes to mind with that question?

Paul Lightfoot - 0:33:06
We're gonna be always in product families in the future, right? And I described earlier how we in our more experimental early stages, we weren't always so. You know, a year from now, you'll see us Patagonia Pasta Company. Patagonia is a beer company. Patagonia is a seafood company. That's another category we're going to announce next week at Expo. So if you ask me again in a week, I would describe that category as well. Beyond that, we're probably, I would say, going to add a category a year and not certain, but I would say that right now, the subsequent 2 categories probably include trail foods, partly because we think some interesting things be done there, partly because we know that.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:33:18
Patagonia customers and loyalists or are on the trails right. And then beyond that we actually and this is going to sound a little bit boring but I don't, I don't mind being boring impacted impact is exciting right. And and and converting farmland as I said we're going to probably be in pantry staples like I'd like to see us in two or three years having regenerative organic certified rice and pulses and legumes and bringing people products that you know they use in their homes every day. They don't have a lot of packaging because we think that growing that sort of stable pantry items that people use a lot is an important part of the of of the impact story of people's diets, right? We we don't want to just be having occasion food. We don't want to just be having cute food, right? We want to be having the foods that people use to sustain their families.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:34:43
Yeah, I love that and I love the, the trail foods and and other kind of concepts that are already with that Patagonia hero consumer, right. Especially because it allows you to tap into so much existing distribution from a brick and mortar retail standpoint. Because you know REI is selling how many skews of food items now, which is like it's crazy just the evolution of where food is sold and I, I, I love the the kind of efficiencies or opportunities you can tap into with that one for sure.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:35:09
Yeah, RIA, great customer and a good friend of ours.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:35:13
Yeah. So let's, let's go little macro, right. So let's back out of Patty on your Provisions, you're obviously an amazing champion of the space even before you're in this role and now even more so. But let's kind of riff on how do we, how do we do this at a really big scale, right? What, what is that? What is that really going to take? And I'm kind of jumping around, but I want to go to the last question first, which is not going to be our last question today, but it's really just. To put a quantifiable on that, you know, how do we how do regen brands get to 50% market share by 2050? What do we really need?

Paul Lightfoot - 0:35:48
To do to accomplish.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:35:48
That, and I know it's gonna be a big answer, so feel free to let it sit for a second before you tackle it.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:35:54
You know it's not like, it's not no, I don't need to wait like, it's not like.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:35:59
You've thought.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:36:00
About this is not how it's always been, right? Like.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:36:03
Hmm.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:36:05
The way that we're growing food now is it's an ephemeral thing, like it's it's fucked, right? The idea that most of the food in that state is grown with. I mean most honestly it's it's almost entirely you know, coming from the Great Plains with chemical farming, right? Hybrid Bosch derived synthetic fertilizers, fossil fuel based. Herbicides and pesticides and. That's new like that wasn't like that in the 1950s and 60s, right. And if you think about the arc of humanity, that's like, that's like, that just happened and we had this moment where it seemed a little bit magical. Look, we can, we can use fossil fuels, we can create lots of yields and it would be great. But you know, the farmers got into these loops right, where they needed more and more inputs at higher and higher cost and it it, it hasn't been worth it because the value of their land and the and the amount of their topsoil has degraded, right.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:36:35
That's becoming more and more clear and obvious and lots of farmers that are still stuck in those loops where they're suppliers, they even the ones that are still in it recognize that it's it isn't the wholesome long-term place to be right and I I'm not one of these people that argues that you can get higher yields with regenerative practices. But I am one of these people that argue you can get better profits because you've got so many less input costs, right. So I do think that that the the capacity of. Farmland is there and you know whenever you know Anthony, I did some Angel investing in, in my interstitial period of my career before I got here, right? I used to get pitch decks that would have like the first page would be like we don't have enough food in the world to feed everyone in 20 years, right. And I, every time I saw that I thought that's a business that doesn't know what its business model is, right, because 40% of food produced in America is is wasted, right, almost all of the Great Plains, which was our most productive soil.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:37:35
It's used for going ethanol which is not necessary, it's energy wise and that negative or for growing grains for feed lines, right, which is a bad that conversion ratio doesn't make sense. If you grew food for humans, you have so much more food. So there's plenty of capacity, there's plenty of opportunities for farmers to make enough money growing food in these areas. What the farmers need is to understand that they have a market for growing through that way and that's that's my job, right, is to create the market demand and so I. I think like in these early days we have to sometimes go out and directly contract with the farmers which is not not how it is in a mature industry. I I should be able to go to my copacker and say this is my spec sheet this is the product make it for me today I have to go to them and then together we go to the mill and together we go to the farms and we work on these sort of complicated four we four way or three-way deals but.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:38:36
It's still the same. We have to create the market opportunity and that's not some like sacrifice. I'm not doing this because it's altruistic. Although I think it is good for the world, the demand is there right now, right? It's just hard to get organizations to change. This is the benefit I have from having a small organization. I'm not Nestle, which has to worry about cannibalizing its billions of dollars of products out there that aren't that aren't doing good for the world. I don't have to worry about any of that. I can go out and disrupt everybody else and start from scratch and that's.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:39:01
That's exactly what we're doing.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:39:32
Yeah. So back to that whole supply chain architecture, right. And it's like that's how we scale this thing is we we we architect these things from the ground up and that kind of clean slate or you know where you're at is is beautiful because it, it provides a lot of optionality. But it is so different from the incumbent process right now of take the spec sheet, take the ingredient list. You know they have that on the shelf, they make the product, they package the product, they they do all that, but we got to get there. Right, we gotta get.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:40:03
There. Yeah, you know the the person who said that concept best. Is Alice Waters right. And and and and I've heard her say like restaurants need to get away from this mentality that they designed the menu and then they call their suppliers. They should instead call their farms and say what's available next week and then they should design their menus. So in some ways you do have to flip the the logical sequence of how you think about things right. And and and it Patagonia we don't choose between impact and quality right. We don't choose the impact and demand we have to have it all. But we do think about the problems in the world.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:40:08
Mentioned that we the net pen salmon farms are an enemy. We also think about the feed lot beef industry as an enemy. We also think about the chemical farming of the Great Plains as an enemy. So sometimes we actually, you know, think about what products could we be in that have the impact, that have the demand, that have the quality that take market share away from these enemies because fuck them and we know that there's opportunities there. That's.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:41:04
Absolutely. Ohh, you mentioned you did some investing while you were kind of in between the the last rule and this one. I know you spent quite a bit of time learning a lot about that space. I think you you almost kind of thought you were going to be a professional investor in some capacity before this role showed up. You know one thing that I. I'm trying to like ring the alarm on that. I don't think it talks gets talked about nothing the spaces we have this kind of valley of death for a lot of emerging brands and regenerative that there's not enough well informed and useful funding kind of between precede seed and Series A right. There's all these brands that are maybe sub 5,000,000, sub 10 million that are really getting ready for that first institutional round. But they need some more money that they can't get past just these this great cohort of like regen AG, Angel investors. So it's kind of a.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:41:24
Africa, question, one, your thoughts on trying to solve that, right? And then two, as you're doing all the supply chain infrastructure and you look at how we're funding regenerative agriculture overall, what opportunities do you see, what hurdles do you see, you know how, how are you thinking through kind of how the money all works as you do this?

Paul Lightfoot - 0:42:11
Work. So I don't. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about like agtech. Anymore I don't, right? Like, so OK, whatever. I mean and and maybe there's a guy that's got some machine that.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:42:19
Makes cows birdless. Whatever. Like, that's all fine and interesting. I don't. I don't need that for what we're doing, right? Like, I'm in the business of creating food. And by the way, I'm not creating alternative foods or foods that that look like meat but aren't, right. Like we're creating wholesome foods that are just grown using regenerative practices, right? So in many ways, that's not very interesting for venture capitalists. And I could give a shit like it doesn't matter to me. I don't care.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:42:27
My job again is to create market opportunities to motivate farmers to convert their farmland. There are real problems with that, which is that farmers think in one year cycles they have to be risk averse, right? Because if you screw something up and it costs you a year, you're, you know, you're in a lot of trouble and that's being assist. That's been a, you know, a cultural learning that farmers have learned for generations, right, because when things go bad, it goes bad in a way that can feel existential for them. So they do need transitional.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:42:55
Support and they do need transitional financing in many cases, but I do think that the the capital markets are rising up to meet that right. I think of a of a firm like Iroquois Valley as an example whose main job it is is to provide financing for the conversion of farms to regenerative organic. And they do it in a way that that attempts to preserve the ability for the farmers to own the equity in the long run. And I think that's important, right? I look at many private equity funds that are like we we make money.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:43:25
Investing in farmland and I worry that they're they're chasing of carrion of returns is going to be at the expense of someone, most likely the farmers, right. So I'm not as excited about that but I do think that there are sources of capital rising up to meet the need for transition and. You know, yeah, I was gonna say I shouldn't say this, but I will say it out loud. Like if a farmer needs support, you know, we're willing to to give them an off take agreement. You know, to give them that motivation and offtake agreements. I learned this and I'll ask business where I operated farms or magical for securing financing. So I I think it's, I think it's quite doable. I don't think this is any amazingly complex problem to solve.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:44:39
Yeah, 22 big standouts to me there. One, you know I get a lot of pitch decks too and if it's, if it involves a supply chain disruption that where the business is based on food transactions and they're not starting with the demand side, they're they're doing the business wrong because we can't do anything until we create that market, change the current market, whatever. So like you have to start with demand and and work backwards kind of no matter what in my opinion. And I think the other big thing that stood out to me there is for my role at RSI, it's very clear, we have this amazing kind of cohort of emerging funders, right? And they're all, we have a great trumpeteer. We have a great saxophone person. We have a great keyboard person. But we haven't harmonized that group yet, right? And we need to continue to try and do that because we have to build like a real harmonious capital stack for these enterprises because some need debt, some need equity, some need philanthropic capital, some need all three. Some, you know, some need something else.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:45:34
Yeah. I mean, this is like you can hope for the rest of your life that there's a Symphony. But that's like, that's the beauty, that's the beauty and the ugliness of capitalism, right, is that when there's demand, when there's demand, you know, market solutions will arise to it. But of course the transition periods are messy, right? And there's winners and losers and there's, you know, this is going to have that as well, right? And and, you know, in some cases the people that don't want to change.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:45:35
May find themselves not feeling happy about the way things are changing. Which is a bummer, but that's, you know, that's the beauty of it. It's actually one of the reasons why America tends to make transitions in terms of of of industries and and technologies faster than other countries. I'm I'm not confident it will be a smooth, pretty sounding Symphony, but I am confident that it'll get done.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:46:34
Yeah, I love that. Man, wonderful conversation. I just really appreciate you joining us. I so appreciate kind of everything that you're bringing to the space. Is there anything else that you want to share with our audience today?

Paul Lightfoot - 0:46:49
Now it's just it's good to see you. It's fun.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:46:51
Awesome man.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:46:52
I'll see you next week, right?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:46:54
Yeah, we will be there in full force. We're going to be cooking up some cool stuff. So as a little cliffhanger for the audience, be on the lookout for some from exciting Expo W content and updates. But man, Paul, thank you so much for joining us today man. Really appreciate it.

Paul Lightfoot - 0:47:07
My pleasure.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:47:11
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Anthony Corsaro - 0:47:23
We hope you learned something new in this episode. In an 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.