#30 - Joe Carr @ Serenity Kids

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #30 - Bringing Regen Meat 2 The Baby Aisle - (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. Who Is going to take us into the episode.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:00:33
On this episode we have Joe Carr, who is a Co-Founder and the President at Serenity Kids. Serenity Kids is supporting regenerative agriculture with their various regenerative and organic baby and children's food products like their veggie and meat baby food pouches, dairy-free smoothies, grain-free puffs, and A2 formula. In this episode, we learn about Joe and his wife Serenity's personal health journey that led them to a paleo lifestyle and the idea to create the first paleo baby food. Joe educates us on how they've had regenerative sourcing in mind from the very beginning of the company and how it plays into their product innovation strategy. Plus, Joe shares his vision for the future of Serenity Kids and how we can catalyze the regenerative movement through more collective action. Joe is full of energy and information. This is a super fun and informative episode for Y'all. Let's go. What's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of The ReGen Brands Podcast. We are very excited today to have our friend Joe Carr from Serenity Kids. So welcome Joe.

Joe Carr - 0:01:36
Hello.

Kyle Krull - 0:01:37
Joe, This is one of the unique episodes where usually Anthony or I knows are the the podcast interviewee pretty well. And in this case we don't. So this is like a bunch of us new guys who like Regen all getting together for the first time. So this should be a lot of fun. For those who are unfamiliar with Serenity kids, give us a quick lay of the land. You know, what do you make? How many skews do you have? What are those flavors look like? Where can people buy your stuff today?

Joe Carr - 0:02:03
Yes, Serenity Kids makes baby and toddler foods that are the most nutrient dense as possible. So we utilize regenerative meats, organic vegetables, healthy fats in purees and little self stable squeeze pouches. We also have a vegetable and bone broth based puff snacks for for toddlers as well as formula.

Kyle Krull - 0:02:27
Nice. I know you mentioned there for toddlers and babies. I know A/C is a big baby food fan. I I've consumed some baby food in my life as an adult. Joe, I assume you probably eat the product sometimes. So I know this the target market is you know, child, infant, baby. But let's not let's not like pin the the target market only there. I mean anybody can eat this stuff.

Joe Carr - 0:02:47
Totally, yeah, yeah. Especially our new smoothies line, we have these Coconut Milk Vegetable Grass fed Collagen smoothies that are really good for any age.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:02:58
Wow. I need to give my hands on one of those. That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, Joe, this topics near and dear to my heart because I have 3 nephews under the age of three or four, no kids of my own. But you know those that that age groups our future, right? And historically we have fed them a lot of. Unhealthy, hyper processed foods. And I still think a lot of parents struggle with that. And we're not here to shame anybody. We're just here to to talk about things openly and try and educate some folks on maybe some of the other alternatives that are out there. And my guess is that, you know, you and your wife started this company based off of personal story, but just take us back to where this all started and how it came to be.

Joe Carr - 0:03:38
Sure. Yeah, you know, my wife and I, my wife's name is Serenity. It's where the, the brand name comes from. She was a very sick kid. She had a lot of health issues, way over antibiotic use. She had her, she got her first antibiotics at 2 weeks old and she was super colic over the first six months of her life. She cried constantly. Her parents reminded her of that regularly. So she was very sick. Mom actually in the 70s, you know, was trying to be healthy.

Joe Carr - 0:03:40
And went vegetarian when she was pregnant with her because she thought that was the healthiest thing, which now we know is, you know, led to some of these issues. She does not actually tolerate wheat or dairy, which are major staples of her mom's, you know, in utero diet. So she was basically born early, born sick, you know, had ear infections and all kinds of other infections too, antibiotics, antibiotics, constantly junk food of the 80s, you know, chicken and a biscuit, crackers for dinner. And cheese Whiz and you know all that stuff. And so she just had severe gut issues was all kinds of medications just to be able to eat. And she had this epiphany where she's like there's got to be something better than this. And she discovered the Paleo diet and really embraced changing her diet and.

Joe Carr - 0:04:39
Healed all her gut issues. I mean, she really.

Kyle Krull - 0:05:00
So give it. Give us a year. Like what? What year is this taking place in this story?

Joe Carr - 0:05:03
Good question. Yeah, I wanna it was like, I think she discovered Paleo and something like 2010, like really early. Right after Rob Wolf's bill could come out so very early, Paleo adopter changed her diet, realized that her work in corporate America wasn't fulfilling, and decided to leave and go help other people heal themselves with food. So she left her Fortune 500 jobs to to go be a Paleo coach and teach people how to heal themselves with food, which is how she and I met. Actually, which she was involved in that I'm autistic. I was not diagnosed as a child, so misdiagnosed. Really called me ADHD, which wasn't totally accurate. And I think my official diagnosis was obnoxious. I was just obnoxious kid. A lot of special challenges, a lot of physical challenges are very sensitive to to inflammatory foods, very sensitive to chemicals.

Joe Carr - 0:05:37
I had a very severe heavy metal poisoning, it turns out I found out later in life, you know, a lot of detox issues. So I had also was experimenting with diet as part of my, you know, mission to integrate autism When I met Serenity and then she introduced Paleo, that really changed everything for me as well that that that basic diet of really good meat. Really good veggies. You know, good fats, taking out the grains, taking out the legumes, taking out the processed foods, taking out the sugars. That was really huge for me. And then also.

Kyle Krull - 0:06:34
Alternatives. It sounds like it was love at first bite.

Joe Carr - 0:06:38
It will. I want to say I fell in love with paleo and ceridity at the same time. She was actually putting a lecture on the Paleo diet when I met her. So I was like, oh, this is amazing. And so is she. So for sure we, you know, we got together and then I've always wanted to have have children. I drew a few pictures of my future kids when I was five. So always wanted kids. I was. I've been on a mission to change the world for kids because of my difficult childhood, how I was treated by teachers. In society, you know, left me passionate, change the world. So I had a career in Youth Services. I was working in nonprofits. I'd started my own youth nonprofit that I was running. So she and I both had some entrepreneurial experience that hadn't gone very far. We both weren't very successful, Her and her coaching and me with my after school summer program, the very mission she was changing the world for food. I was changing the world for kids. We wanted to have kids. So we started talking about having a baby and we were at Paleo Effects in 2016.

Joe Carr - 0:07:08
Right when we sort of decide we're going to start trying to have a baby and she's like, let's go find the baby stuff, you know, it'll be cool. There'll be some great paleo baby stuff on this work. Let's go. Look. Nothing. Nothing for babies, nothing for kids. You know, we went up to the CEO of the conference, who we were friends with, like, where where's the baby stuff? And she's like, I ask myself that every year there's going to be some kind of paleo baby food or products and nobody ever does it. So we're like, whoa, this is a really big opportunity. And.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:08:05
She looked into.

Joe Carr - 0:08:06
She was the nutrition expert. So she looked into infant nutrition and was like, what do babies really need? Do they actually need to eat Paleo or, you know, maybe they need all this, this fruit and grain? Nope.

Kyle Krull - 0:08:17
I just want to pause you right there. I think that is such a cool thing to do because I think that there's in this world today, people feel the way they feel about food and they apply it to the pets, to the kids, to anybody else. And so the fact that you had that, like, this is what they think we should do. And instead of just like running with it validating that and like, let's check the facts like is this actually?

Joe Carr - 0:08:36
What we need to do?

Kyle Krull - 0:08:38
Yeah. And I just want to just say that really, really appreciate the level of intention and sort of the development of this product. That's really, really cool.

Joe Carr - 0:08:45
Thank you. I think that's a beautiful thing to come out of the paleo movement. It was very science based. The the gut, you know, the gut health and the functional medicine movements that that came out of Paleo really encouraged that scientific research. You know focus on on validating things, not just kind of making stuff up or going on in motion like some of the other diet movements. And so Sorenny came out of that, and she was very, very smart, very well educated, very, very good reason. She'd done it for her own self and her own health. And so she applied that to Baby. She read all kinds of blogs and papers. She read the USDA's Guide to infant Nutrition was a real page Turner that.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:09:24
Wow.

Joe Carr - 0:09:25
I believe it really a holistic idea and what was really interesting was how universal the science was. Everyone was very clear. You know, from the Paleo bloggers to the USDA's guided for nutrition. Everyone was clear that babies needed meat. Animal products were very important first foods for babies. Babies need fat. Breast milk is the calories for breast milk or half fat. You know, so an enormous amount of fat that babies need that that's the building blocks of the brain and the spine that are doubling in those first years of life. And the sugar was a real problem that babies and toddlers and kids don't need sugar, sugars, inflammatory and a real problem and should be limited. So she came away with like sugars should be limited. They need meat, they need fat. We went to the baby food aisle. What was on the baby food aisle? It was fruit and grain, Sugar, sugar, grain carbs, all carbs. Almost 100% carbs. Less than 4% of baby foods at the time had any kind of meat and almost none of the distribution couldn't. Organic meat baby food.

Kyle Krull - 0:10:26
Crazy.

Joe Carr - 0:10:28
And they tasted gross. They weren't well sourced meat like it was just organic feed lot meat. No sourcing disclosed. And no fat Less than 1% of baby foods had two grams or more fat, despite babies need babies need 30 grams of fat a day. That was like the standard 30 grams just.

Kyle Krull - 0:10:45
Made a statement that I think is really interesting. And for those consumers who maybe aren't as educated, you mentioned that the meat wasn't well sourced, it was organic, yes. And I think that that's a really interesting statement. So dive in a little bit more about, you know, why is organic bead not necessarily and I'm certainly not saying that all organic meat is bad. Yeah, but why from your purview, is that not necessarily well sourced meat?

Joe Carr - 0:11:08
Sure. So you know the USDA organic standards were created in the 70s for plant farmers. They're created for agriculture, for, you know, for plant agriculture and they work very well for that. They do prevent a lot of really nasty chemicals from being in the soil there. It's not perfect. They allow for a lot of other chemicals I wouldn't use in my garden, but you know, it's a much better than conventional agriculture, but it was designed for plants. You need to control the. Inputs. You get organic by what you don't use. Basically. That's like if you don't use chemicals, you can be organic and you have to prove that you don't use it. So with when it comes to trying to apply that to animals, it works if you control the inputs to the animal in the same way like a plant. If you treat your animals like plants, AKA feed lots, you control 100% of their food, you can feed them organic.

Joe Carr - 0:11:33
Grain basically feed lots are corn, soy, wheat, but it's organic corn, soy, wheat and they feed that to the animal. You can get organic certification for for animals. You start letting those animals roam out in nature and eat grass and eat plants. You know it starts to become a lot harder. You have to certify thousands of acres of grassland organic. You know you have to the supplemental feed. The supplemental organic feed is 3 times the price of regular feed. Organic processing facilities are much more expensive. So if you're already doing it right, if you're already using pasture based and grass fed and regenerative systems that are more expensive, more complicated to use, you know buying that organic grain, if you do supplement with a little grain and then using the organic processing facilities and certify.

Joe Carr - 0:12:15
Find thousands of acres of land, it just becomes very cost prohibitive, like they just can't charge anymore or the meat to justify both the USD organic certification and regenerative or grass fed certification. So there's pretty much no USD organic and grass fed meat or and regenerative meat like at this point. The way the system is set up and the way the cost structures work, it's really one or the other. If you're regenerative, it's very hard to be used to organic. If you're just organic, you're probably not regenerative, so ironically you can.

Joe Carr - 0:12:45
Bet that if the meat is organic, it's feed lot and it's regenerative, you know it's better than organic, right? Like they all they're they're regenerating the land. You can bet they're not using pesticides and. You know, nasty fertilizers and things like that, because that wouldn't regenerate the the, the, the land and the way that regenerative systems do. And so that's just a hard thing to understand for a lot of consumers, something we're working hard to educate people on. We, you know, we took all the organic baby foods, we put them in a spreadsheet, 246 organic baby food skews at the time, put them in a spreadsheet, looked at the macros, looked at the ingredient decks. Average 9 grams of sugar per pouch.

Joe Carr - 0:13:28
It was fruit sugar. It wasn't, it wasn't cane sugar, right? But it was highly processed sugar, basically the nutritional equivalent of jam. Very, very sugary. It's 9 grams per pouch for a 15 pound baby. You know, 9 grams of sugar is like 90 grams of sugar for £150 adult, right? So it's a lot of carved out. Babies do need carbs, but you give them just carbs and you have the same reaction you and I have. We just carbs, you know, all the things people complain about with babies.

Joe Carr - 0:13:56
Crying. You know, mood issues, issues with stools, issues with sleep, issues with immunity, getting sick, all these things that no parent wants to deal with. The baby that's crying, it doesn't. Sleep is getting sick all the time, which is common experience for people with babies. A lot of that.

Joe Carr - 0:14:26
This, this overly carb, you know, food that they're that they're getting, you know, less than 4% meat, less than than 1% fat. So it was, it was tragic, It was like a man, this Children's Health food crisis we have in this country, which is a really big crisis, you know, one in five are diabetic or prebiabetic. One in five children are diagnosed obese. You know, toddlers are 7 teaspoons of cane sugar a day. And you know, American Heart Association recommends only 9 teaspoons for an adult male. So toddlers are eating almost as much sugar as the Max for an adult, you know, And then then we've got all these mental and emotional health issues. You know, literally one in five is going to be diagnosed with a mental or emotional disorder by the age of 16. And all this stuff is diet related. And this crisis is starting in infancy. It's starting right at the baby food aisle, you know, because if we didn't know, we didn't do this research to find out what babies need. And we thought, oh, I'll just go to the baby food aisle and see.

Joe Carr - 0:15:06
See what's available for my baby. We would may think this is what babies need. Then maybe they they need a lot of fruit with you know, there's some vegetables in there too but certainly no protein or fat. Maybe meat and and fat is bad for babies, right like that was that was the the energy on the aisle. The snacks were all very well and the pediatric association still recommends fortified rice cereal as a first food for babies.

Joe Carr - 0:15:36
They they in the same sentence thing with meat is important for babies. But then they say, oh but the first food should be iron fortified rice cereal, which is full of arsenic and you know causes all kinds of Constipation issues. The the, the fake iron, the fortified iron they give babies is like really hard to absorb and can cause Constipation which of course then they have to give baby laxatives and it's like this mess like.

Kyle Krull - 0:16:23
Cheese, yeah.

Joe Carr - 0:16:25
They should.

Kyle Krull - 0:16:25
Just and to your point, starting starting that cycle that young, like literally.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:16:29
Right.

Kyle Krull - 0:16:29
Old months old. That's just yeah, it's crazy like I'm I'm not surprised by any of this information. But as somebody who has never had kids and not been very close to like child by, it's like it is mind blowing the status that you were spewing off right now because it makes so much sense and it's such a huge issue like it it's it's blowing my mind.

Joe Carr - 0:16:49
Yeah, she. So we got really mad. You know, we were sick kids. We were going to have a we're planning to have a baby. We didn't want her to get. She grew up sick. We didn't want to have to make every piece of food she ever made. You know, we were we like all busy parents, we're going to want to use some packaged food sometimes. And so we got really mad and got passionate about changing this. You know, we had this idea of of creating a baby food based on nature's perfect baby food, which is breast milk. You know breast milk is about harbs, half fat with protein and surprise is an animal product. It's, I like to say it's a pre range animal product, you know, hopefully regenerate.

Kyle Krull - 0:17:29
Depends on the mom's behavior, but you know.

Joe Carr - 0:17:32
But you know, it's dangerous for baby food. And so we're like, can we mimic this with real food ingredients? Like what would it be if we used vegetables, high quality organic vegetables for the carb source. Quality meat for the protein and fat source and then if we need more fat we add olive oil as a as another healthy other healthy fat source and then make it taste good. Like let's make these blends that taste great. These meat and veggie blends you know we have like grass fed beef with sweet potato and kale, free range chicken or organic peas and carrots. Very simple ingredient, very delicious combinations like they taste quite good. Sort of what you'd get if you ordered food at a fancy restaurant like this is what we should be feeding our babies. The best of the best. The sourcing was important for all of it to us and we went in the kitchen. We made all these. We still make all our products ourselves and in a in a kitchen and testing them and testing them on babies. We didn't have a baby. All our friends babies. We test everything on babies. We have lots of lots of baby face tests.

Joe Carr - 0:18:04
You know, getting them to fill out the survey is a little tricky, but you know, like.

Kyle Krull - 0:18:36
Handprint.

Joe Carr - 0:18:39
You know.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:18:39
There's some great marketing content coming out of that out of those. Oh yeah, for.

Kyle Krull - 0:18:42
Sure.

Joe Carr - 0:18:43
You know but that's like you know baby open mouth to eat it tried it open mouth for second bite like that's like OK they'll they'll take more you know baby threw pouch on the floor but then picked it up and ate the rest. You know it's like that kind of thing. So we've so we landed on flavor profiles that we liked that the babies liked that were super nutrient dense and then went to sourcing. We're like we need the best the best meat and you know we knew that from a nutrition perspective that grass fed and pasturees meats were superior nutritionally. But I also have an environmental background. I was very passionate about the environment. I used to sit in trees in college, you know, as part of Earth for changing myself to bulldozers. And and I was vegetarian and vegan during that time because I thought it was the best thing for the planet. That was the that that this is better for the planet to. To be vegetarian, vegan. It was terrible for my health.

Joe Carr - 0:19:13
, O negative type. So like meat, meat and fat is really important for me. So I was really bad. I was actually eating meat out of trash cans because I was so desperate for it. And I believe that was like okay for the Planet to like eat wasted meat. And I was like so desperate for it that I was like literally digging in trash cans. So, you know, it was so I I was grateful when I realized that that didn't have to be the way that there was really good meat for the planet and that there are lots of other ways to to change the world. So we knew.

Joe Carr - 0:19:35
That and we met with Taylor and Katie from Epic Bar. They had just sold a Epic bar to General Mills. They were six months pregnant. They're in with us. They were part of the Paleo community. We got introduced to them. We sat down with them. We told them our little idea and they said this is huge. You've got to, you've got to really go big with this. You've, you know, we were actually thinking of doing this if Epic, you know, if we didn't stay with Epic, we were thinking of starting baby food. Like, you know, really you got to do this. It's going to be big. The plan for it to be big. And they helped us.

Joe Carr - 0:20:05
Set up our they became our first advisors and they helped us set up all of our our business structure regenerative agriculture. You know we had known about pasture rays and grass fed but we didn't know about this generate the planet thing. It was still very new at the time. It was you know 2016 and so they helped us set up our regenerative and pasture ray supply chain. And you know, really, Oh yeah, very difficult. There was not a lot of B2B, you know, it was a lot of the, yeah, all the meat was, yeah, set up for selling directly and stores to a consumer, not to a factory to process into a product. So we had to work really hard to get the right sheets in the right, you know, uniform packaging methods and.

Joe Carr - 0:20:57
It was a lot of work, but was one of those barriers to entry that we overcame and and now makes it harder to copy us. But we're talking about our general from there. You know when we launched we were you know regenerative grass fed.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:21:31
So Joe, you said 2016, how many skews is the initial set and then how like what's your first retailer, how do you, how do you go to market from that?

Joe Carr - 0:21:40
So we had developed our first three products. It was our our beef, our chicken and we had a uncured bacon. With butternut squash and can, that was nice. Very pelio. It didn't make it in the long run. It was a delicious skew. And yeah, very very high in fats. Our highest fats. 8 grams of fat per couch. Very nutrient that our daughter slept through the night regular when she would eat that one before bed. Bacon skew didn't really work out, but that was our first. We had this beef, chicken and bacon. Took us two years to get the factory to be able to make it the way we want it.

Joe Carr - 0:21:47
We were using equipment that's been used for fruit purees. They'd only ever made fruit purees and we're using a high fat meat puree. And so it's a very different, there were a lot of different challenges. Plus we were new to the you have to.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:22:25
Cook the meat, Joe. We cook it a.

Joe Carr - 0:22:28
Little bit. It's mostly cooked in the pouch, so we use a processing method called retort, which is like canning. It's pressurized canning. So mostly we we bring it to about a hundred 110 degrees to get it uniform and through the blender and then it's put in the pouches and and retorted so it's never boiled which is a benefit to its nutritional. You know you know it's cooked in the pouch so the nutrition is is kept inside and pressure cooking is actually one of the ways to to to cook foods or to make food shelf stable in a in a nutrient protective way much better than our fruit and competitors that are using hot fill where they're they're pasteurizing they're. Boiling these fruit purees for hours and the vitamins are just, you know, boiling off of them essentially. So it's more expensive, more complicated. Very few factories do it. So it took us a while to find the right factory, took us a while to get the help filling equipment to work with our high fat meat puree. So it took two years, but in that time we were brand building and we were raising money and we were like 3 months from launch for about a year and a half. So it was like constant like.

Joe Carr - 0:23:06
We get marketing as we about to launch. So by the time we did launch, you know we had a lot, we had a solid team. We had a good investor group. We had learned the business a lot more. We had built a brand and our products launched the same day our baby was born.

Joe Carr - 0:23:33
Literally.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:23:50
Wow.

Kyle Krull - 0:23:51
Completely. I mean, you had to feed that baby something, you know, there was, that was the date. It was always intended to.

Joe Carr - 0:23:56
Be Yeah. It was always meant to be that day, right? So that two years of frustration was like, oh, it was always meant to be this day. So that's a lesson I learned. Now, when things take longer than I want them to, I'm like, oh, no, it's. It's all in the right time. It's all going to be right when it's supposed to be. And we launched that day was huge success. We launched on our website. So it's first just launched online, big success, a lot of paleo influencers. We were the only paleo baby food. So basically every paleo influencer was.

Joe Carr - 0:24:05
Talking about us and and supporting us and we'd been sending products to Whole Foods and a couple other retailers because like I said we were, I believe that was three months from launch. So we'd been to, we had met, we'd met with Target. You know we'd met with some retailers. We had a broker. We'd been sending product to Whole Foods but hadn't gotten a meeting. But a couple of months after we launched Whole Foods calls my cell phone, I get a call on my cell phone. I was good. I thought it was a spam caller. I was going to answer it.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:24:46
Tell him to stop telling me telemarketer.

Kyle Krull - 0:24:49
Spam Whole Foods going.

Joe Carr - 0:24:51
Yeah, right. He's like, I'm the new baby buyer at Whole Foods and we're like, oh, really? Somebody pranking me. Like what? And then he's like, I've got, you know, the Gap. And I said I've got three spots. They're actually. Yeah. He said at 5, three to five spots I need to fill at every store in. Let's go. This was November. Let's go. It's like, I need five. Wow. Nationwide, November. I have yours on my desk. These look the best. I want them. Can you do it? And I was like, let me think about it. Oh, yeah. Let's do it. And no idea. We'd already begun developing our wild caught salmon product and our veggie products. We'd started a veggie plus fat line that was just a lot easier than the meat. That was still good car fat, macro balance, good savory flavors, but we could get them to market faster. And and Target had told us we needed a lot more excuse because if you go to the baby aisle, it's like hundreds of pouches. So our three little pouches were just disappeared. So we'd already begun developing those. So we fast tracked those and you know, launched at Whole Foods and.

Joe Carr - 0:25:17
February of of 2019 with the the beef, the chicken, the salmon, and then two of our veggies, our roots and our squashes. And they went and we went from one little baby store in Austin to 450 Whole Foods stores overnight. And it was. Immediate. I mean the the the sales were just out of the gate. We were the top baby food. We became their fastest selling baby food within that first couple of months and have maintained our spot. We have 28 products and Whole Foods now and all of these wow, wow, you know and damn under five years. We've continued to launch. They launch everything we make.

Joe Carr - 0:26:06
They basically say if you make it, we'll launch it like they're like everything you make sells like crazy. So they're our launch partner. They launch everything we make and that gives us immediate national distribution and sales numbers, which helps us get into other stores which we've had rapid adoption we have over. We're in over 15,000 stores total now, including most Targets and Walmarts. You know, we have regenerative bison, baby food and Target, which just blow, yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:26:56
Joe, I want, I want you to elaborate for the audience on a couple of things, right, because I think there's a couple topics that we'd like to talk about on the show is 1 is how do we commercialize these products in a scalable manner, one, And then really two, how do we make them accessible. So it's not always a hyper premium product that only, you know, high net worth individuals can really purchase. So the fact that Y'all are in Target and Walmart, I think it's amazing and. The fact that you have found a way to really stand out, I think in an aisle that's extremely crowded. Can you just speak to those topics and what that journey's been like and what's been, you know, successful?

Joe Carr - 0:27:29
Yeah, the product differentiation it what's inside being really different and better was key, but also the package aside was really important. We chose this really. Package design that was emphasized to animal. And if you look at the other baby foods, they're very busy, they're very cartoony, they're very like, lots of different colors, but.

Kyle Krull - 0:27:54
The baby is going to be shopping instead of the the adult.

Joe Carr - 0:27:57
Yes, exactly. Like they're trying to the kids going to like it. Yeah. So we're like, Nope, we're going to make it like very simple, wide, very clear what's in it. Like all the ingredients are on the front, very beautiful, very classy. So we, you know, the Packers had an epic. Are and it led the way in that their packaging is we used Epic's brand or that that was the thing they said to do was like using this very awesome but expensive branding person. So really good branding, really good. You got to tell the story well, right people first purchases what gets them to pick it up. You know is all about that package aside and then they flip it over and they look at the back and they you need to have you need. That's the second step before purchase. They're going to read the ingredients. They're going to look at the nutrition facts.

Joe Carr - 0:28:11
And it better a line up with the front so that you're not, they're not feeling bait and switched. But also that's got to be good. Oh, it's actually true. It's got the right amount of protein. It's got the right, you know, sugar amount or we're always looking grams of sugar. We're always looking protein and fat amounts. When we're shopping for products for us or our daughter, it's always straight to the NFP for us, like how many grams of sugar, you know, what's the balance of carbs to fat to protein.

Kyle Krull - 0:29:02
And and for the for the lay shopper who's not in the industry, NFP stands for.

Joe Carr - 0:29:06
Nutrition, not yet, sorry. The Nutrition Facts panel, yeah, this little Nutrition facts panel is very important. A lot of at least for us that's we go there first. A lot of people go to ingredients first to make sure what's in it. So both of those are really important and you know, we, we didn't call it Paleo. Right, So we didn't niche ourselves. The young kid told us not to do that. Like if you noticed, Epic Bar was never called Paleo. We never used the word Paleo anywhere. And that was when Paleo was big. Now everybody knew Paleo was going to you know, the whole caveman stereotype, you know, wasn't going to sustain as a as a trend because it was just too niche in that way. Cool. Though all the stuff from Paleo did stay gut health, carb consciousness.

Joe Carr - 0:29:25
Good fats, functional medicine or generative agriculture, keto, biohacking. I mean, name the list of all the cool trends. They all started paleo, but we didn't identify that active. We said no, we're we're nutrient dense, we're nutritious and we focused on great taste that tastes good. Like that was a big thing that we intuitively knew. It really tastes good. And it's the thing that our customers say is one of the major reasons they buy us a get. They buy us the first time because of what's in it.

Joe Carr - 0:29:49
But then they buy it again because the kid really liked it and or if for adult products, the adult liked it and they're like, oh, I actually love that. Or the baby's like I want more and they're like you want more grass fed beef and kale. Hell yeah, I'm gonna give you more grass fed beef for kale, you know, so make it easier to feed that. And ultimately they'll pay whatever for that. So you know the price was not being low, price wasn't our goal, our goal was to be a reasonable price but but the best product that you know what I like to say is the real cost of food are are the the fruit purees were $1.99, ours came out at 399. So we doubled the price of baby food on the aisle but we had to read the knowledge. We're nervous about that. But I'm like if you compare the price of a grass fed steak to a conventional steak to an apple.

Joe Carr - 0:30:36
You know, obviously the meat and veggies are more expensive than fruit, and the benefits are greater than nutrient density. You know, they're right. Rogers were the first that were a full meal. The others, if they're just give a fruit puree, you've got to give them other foods to balance that out. Otherwise, they have the sugar crash, you know, which they probably a lot of kids did.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:31:25
You you would think it's going to be easier to get a parent to trade up to buy something for their kid than like maybe for like an indulgence or like something that's you know some other kind of category in the store. Yeah, curious like is it really just that packaging design that has driven trial because you can't sample this product really especially to the real end consumer. So like like what has really worked from a trial perspective? I'm so curious.

Joe Carr - 0:31:52
Yeah, I mean you know being on the aisle super important because it's it's a very busy aisle. A lot of moms that's where they go is to grocery aisle to when they're first looking for baby foods, they go see what's out there. So having packaged on that stands out, we have to have a big enough set size. So that's been a struggle. We have an average of 6 products per store and our competitors have more like 40, you know Whole Foods leaned in has 28 and that's where we have the really the strong sales because we have this block and it's easy to find us. But Walmart has 11 and so that's been good. Target hat now has seven, which is about about our rows that they can find us. So you know, having the package designed gets the attention, you know the right ingredients, the right nutrition facts is important for that first time purchase. Taste is really important for a repeat purchase. You know, no matter how good it is, if they won't eat it, they're not going to buy it, or at least not very much. So it's been really important. The premium price point, Yeah, you've got to prove why it's better. We've we had that advantage of being meat to fruit, which is a very obvious advantage.

Joe Carr - 0:32:33
In other sections is a little harder being regenerative meat next to organic meat. Yeah, that's a tougher sell. So that's where we need a lot more education with influencers like folks like you, you know, and we've done a lot of work with influencers to tell the story. You know, we have this whole Bobby Blogger scene. That we've been able to tap into. You know look at how we tell the story of regenerative and and meat and fat and you know every people are more aware of the dangers of sugar. They may not realize that fruit sugar is pretty much the same as cane sugar in the body. You know like if you're grandma sugar is a grandma sugar. So telling that story to moms has been important for us but the but the influencer space has been key for spreading the work.

Kyle Krull - 0:33:40
Cool. Yeah. I think it's interesting. You mentioned the price point being high. And another thing that really stands out is that the first meat that was really intentionally introduced or with the same level of intention that you all had into the baby food, said was regenerative. So you've already established this like baseline for the whole set and like, hey, we're only doing the best. So that that's number one, really interesting and unique #2, you mentioned the price point was double the average. And I think that there's a conception that we all have as humans in, in North America, in the United States. We are willing to pay more for me. You can buy a salad and if you have a restaurant, you you can pay an extra $4 add chicken breast or whatever it is, you know? So we are conditioned to pay more for me. So as I'm thinking about your product entering a category that I, let's say I previously shopped baby food and I suddenly see, whoa, this one's 4 bucks when everything else is 2 bucks. Why is that? To your point? You pick up the package, you all automatically understand there's meat in here. Oh cool. I already know that I'm willing to pay more for me.

Kyle Krull - 0:34:09
Boom. Like, Sale converted. And then, to your point, you get that followup sale with the delicious slavery profiles and the nutritional benefits and everything else. Like, it's just it's such a slam dunk. Like, retrospectively, it's easy. Easy to see why it was so successful, yeah.

Joe Carr - 0:34:50
And then the mom takes a sip and they like it. And so now they're eating it as a snack and like, dad's picking it up, you know, or whatever. So it's because people feed to their pets, you know? So we're like lots of applications for it. But for sure, you know, meat. Meat is worth more. And, you know, meat's being demonized. In the health, food and environmental sectors and you know what some people feel like kind of guilty about eating meat. Everybody loves meat. It's not actually working. The vegan movements, they're about 1% and stayed about 1%. So there's this idea that plant based is on the rise. And so there's a lot of propaganda that that movement tries to say everybody's adopting this, you need to also, it's not actually true. People love meat. People's bodies need meat. They know it. They like, they just sometimes feel guilty about it. So what I think the cool thing that we're taking.

Joe Carr - 0:35:07
You know what regenerative does, you know, takes away the guilt. One of the things they're buying is I can eat this food that I know is good for me and I think tastes good and I crave, but I don't have to feel guilty about it because, right?

Kyle Krull - 0:35:51
I go, I go one step further. Not only does it take away the guilt, you can feel really good about it. Yeah, you can understand that you it's not just doing. You're not doing any harm. You're doing a tremendous amount of good by supporting this.

Joe Carr - 0:36:03
Voting of my.

Kyle Krull - 0:36:04
Dollar and Joe. I'd love to get your your if you're OK with sharing your kind of personal journey going from vegetarian to vegan to realizing the importance of meat and regenerative. So if you could walk us through that time period in your life and why you first made the decision to go plant based and like the educational processing and bringing you back towards me.

Joe Carr - 0:36:21
Totally, yeah. Well, it all, it really starts with this, this moment in middle school. When I was had no friends I you know, really obnoxious kid. I was annoying this semi popular girl in my English class and she turned around and she said you know what, I'm going to teach you how to be cool. I was like. I will do whatever you say. And so her her friend, she went to, her friends say, hey, this guy's got something up, we're gonna work with him. We're gonna teach him how to be cool. And it worked. I, you know, I became part of their group and learned the most important lesson of my life, which is that I could take feedback and become better. I could change myself. I wouldn't fuck being in a certain way. I was at age, right. I'm like personal growth journey. So that's.

Kyle Krull - 0:37:10
This feels like a movie, like a teen movie, you know what I mean?

Joe Carr - 0:37:15
Kelly Beckett. Yeah, but I can't find her now. She got married, changed her name. I've been looking for her. But Kelly Beckett, if you're out there, thank you. Change my life. And so, you know, I was on this personal growth track. I was always looking for ways to be better. I had a spiritual awakening at 16 in high school, which a lot of teenagers have actually been able to talk about the spiritual awakenings in high school. But there's a lot of teenagers have this moment where the world changes for them. And I realized that I couldn't, didn't just need to change myself, but I could change the world that I had could have an impact. On the world and that actively changing the world would make me happier. I'd be a better. I'd enjoy life better if I was doing the right thing standing up for what's right. So I started looking at ways to change the world and environment and animal rights were very loud. You know there was a lot of if you go to to the activist space, that's a common thing to talk about is environmentalism and and as well as animal rights kind of built into that. I had some friends that were into that.

Joe Carr - 0:37:44
So I ended up going vegetarian, thinking that that was better for the planet and better for animals and you know, did a lot of other activist stuff in high school, started an environmental club and. Received Kansas City's major environmental war my senior year for all the work I've done. Wow. Citywide. So, you know, got really, really involved. And then went to college and found out that if you're vegetarian, you better be vegan because it's not any better. So I had to become vegan. And, you know, and like I said, my health was just going down, down, like I was, you know, gaining weight. I was, my anxiety was much worse. You know, I was hungry all the time. Like I said, I was craving food, digging in trash cans.

Joe Carr - 0:38:21
So you know, exposures, all that, God knows what. And ultimately I had this moment, I ended up going over to Palestine, doing some work with human rights Palestine and I was with the Palestinians and these other white activists who'd come, they were vegan like me. You know, Palestinians, they like to, to, to. They want to give you the best of the best. Like they're a service oriented culture, like you're judged by how much you give away. So they love to treat guests. They want to give. They didn't have much meat.

Joe Carr - 0:38:51
What little meat they had, they were raising themselves and what they had meat they want to share with us and these vegan snobby activists were like, I don't hate that meat and I could just sense that that would be like such an insult. Plus I was freaking craving meat all the time and I knew that they were raising it. So I like intuitive was like this is the best meat and I'm going to eat this and and connect with these humans. I just realized that the that the way these diet, these diet cultures especially vegan and vegetarianism was disconnecting people. And we're going to change the world. It's not going to be by just changing what we do or eat. We're going to have to change the world together. We're going to have to unite as organized. Even if we want to change the world for cows, it's not going to be by not eating cows. It's going to be by like meeting, you know, getting together with other humans who care about cows and making change to systems. And if, if, if now you know that following that example, now the people change the world for cows or regenerative farmers. You know, I can do that as a vegan. I won't even eat the food that they make.

Joe Carr - 0:39:49
That's a non starter, right. So it's like how I can't have to change it. So I was like life. So this is kind of the death of lifestyle activism for me. I'm like, I can't just change my lifestyle and think that's going to change the world. I need to actually unite with people and anything that disconnects me from another person is what I would call counter revolutionary, right. It's it's it's delaying. And so I said that's not about me. So I'm going to, I'm going to start, I'm going to eat whatever I need to eat. I'm going to support local food wherever I can because I know that's the thing That was the time was the local food movement now, now it's.

Joe Carr - 0:40:19
Regenerative, regenerative movement. Most importantly, I'm going to create systems, I'm going to work with other people and many years later that led to starting this company which if you had told, you know vegan radical activists me that I'd be the president of food Corporation. You know, like I would have been like you're crazy, you know, but that that ultimately we're having a lot more impact, you know on the world. We've sold 30 million regenerative pouches at this point.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:41:16
You know.

Joe Carr - 0:41:17
And wow.

Kyle Krull - 0:41:17
Incredible, man.

Joe Carr - 0:41:18
You know it's the amount of.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:41:19
Congratulations.

Joe Carr - 0:41:20
Vland we've restored the amount of babies we've touched, the amount of parents who write us in, the amount of health issues we've solved for so many parents tell us my baby was on the eighth, they weren't eating. I couldn't get calories in them, You know, Finally I found your products and now they're thriving. And you know a lot of stories like that that are, you know, really heartwarming for us and are making that change. But I but I had to get over this lifestyle thing. I had to be like, it's not about what I eat. Fairly it's about who I work with, how I organize, what I do. And now we know the absolute best food for the planet is regenerative meat. There's nothing better than regenerative meat's the only food you can buy that actively makes the planet better. As far as you know, there's some regenerative there's, you know, different levels of regenerative plants, biodynamic and the regenerative organic agriculture. I think the jury's still out on a lot of that stuff.

Joe Carr - 0:41:46
You know, at this point the land to market verified meat is the only meat that is proven to make the planet better. It's the only land to markets, the only place that's measuring outcomes. That's saying we don't give you a certification unless you prove the land has improved. If you show us soil microbial growth has improved, you get regenerative. It doesn't actually matter how you got there. We don't care about your practices, we care about the outcome. And every other certification is based on practices, if you do the XY&Z or like your steering and if you don't do XY&Z.

Joe Carr - 0:42:12
Then you get our certification. So you know regenerative organics certainly better than just regular organic because the practices that are certified are better practices systems are obviously better than conventional systems whether they're verified regenerative or not. So you know it's all a continuum but ultimately I've not seen any environmental movement have the opportunity to actually undo the harm that we've done like regenerative we can.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:43:10
Yeah man. So, so much wisdom there and beauty and the personal journey, appreciate you sharing that with us. I think land based, agriculture wise you're absolutely spot on in terms of well managed animal impact and the ability for livestock to be regenerative. Bree Warner from Atlantic Sea Farms gave us a pretty compelling case for kelp on the previous episode from an from an aquaculture perspective which which was really, really cool. And I see them as like the, you know, that's like the keystone species maybe or or the most regenerative food from that ecosystem. But Joe you mentioned the certification piece, would love to get your thoughts on as you guys have expanded the product portfolio and thought about innovation. You know, I can see there being multiple Venn diagrams kind of up on the whiteboard for you, right? It's like, OK, what do mothers want to buy their kids? What do babies actually need to eat? How can we get more of that block in the store? You know, how can we get stuff that's certified? Like, just take us through how?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:43:51
That has been thought through how regenerative played a role and how you've added these different like product portfolios. Yeah, used to the lineup.

Joe Carr - 0:44:13
You know, our first thing was deciding not to be certified USDA organic, which was very weird. Or the baby aisle. We were the section we were in because all of them were organic. And that was like, that's like Whole Foods is sort of like standard in general. And because we couldn't get regenerative and grass fed meat that was also organic, we opted for nutrition over certification. We're like we're going to go for what we know is better rather than get this arbitrary what we felt was an arbitrary certification, you know, we'd have to use essentially, you know. Conventional We'd have to use a cafe. You know, meats. These confined confinement.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:44:51
But you were still using, you were still using USDA organic vegetables?

Joe Carr - 0:44:54
In you were able to get really good quality organic vegetables that was easy because like I said the USDA standards really good for veggies. It just doesn't work for animals. So we were organic veggies, 100% organic oils as well. We're able to get organic olive oil which is great but then the meat you know is is is was grass fed regenerative and so you know we've never been USDA organic on our on our meat pouches. The veggie pouches are the smoothies are we were. Able to get USD organic collagen so we're able to have organic on the smoothies. So we get it where we can because customers really do identify with that as as as a standard but nobody almost nobody notices that these aren't organic like it's one of the weird things it's like they read the ingredients they they feel it you know they they see the the you know we have some non-GMO claims and that we save the word organic a bunch around the you know the claims on the vegetables and so you know they it's really like better than organic So people ask us why are. We're actually better than organic was the regenerative is career but I explained you know blog on why it's difficult to be to be both So we decided to go for nutrition over over over certifications first and foremost land. So then you know land to market came out with their regenerative verification along with a couple others. So we looked at the different ones and determine the lines of markets in our opinion was that was the best one that they were certifying outcomes and they're really the first verifier of anything ever to verify outcomes, you know even or UST or manic, it's not like they're testing the vegetables.

Joe Carr - 0:46:08
And proving there's nosticides in there, actually, if you test vegetables, they do have, you know, there is pesticide residue from blowing from other farms or in the soil from the past or whatever. So the outcome isn't necessarily ever verified. In this case, it is. And it's all about soil microbial growth. It's demonstrating and this is.

Kyle Krull - 0:46:41
I just want to take this as an opportunity to explain something really important to consumers about the difference between a certification and a verification. To your point, certifications are about inputs and what's, you know, being put into whatever it is that's being grown or raised and the verification is about measuring the impact that's taking place. So that's something that's really confusing for a lot of people. I just think it's important to kind of call that out and let give people a real world example like you you are right now of those two differences.

Joe Carr - 0:47:07
Yep, we work on non-GMO Project where we can. They're also very. Challenging to work with. It's also a certification, so it's all about practices and inputs. So you know where we can be non-GMO verified. That helps a lot of people equate that with organic, which of course is not true. Organic is always non-GMO. So it's another thing a lot of people don't know that you don't need to be both USD organic and non-GMO, but a lot of people have both because they people don't know the difference. So we have both on our veggies. So those are kind of early verifications. A very important one for us now is the Clean Label project.

Joe Carr - 0:47:11
And the Clean Link Project tests foods. It's also outcomes, right? It looks at the actual food. They go to the shelf, They buy the product off the shelf. They test it for over 200 different contaminants, including heavy metals, pesticide residues, pharmaceuticals, plasticizers, you know, things that leach from plastic packaging.

Joe Carr - 0:47:40
So they test for all that and then and they create essentially a standard compared to the to the industry itself. So they test all of the different baby foods and then they you know compare, they grade it on a curve. So they say who is the lowest levels and where it is. Wow, do they.

Kyle Krull - 0:48:21
Test for glyphosate on there.

Joe Carr - 0:48:23
Yeah. Glyphosates a good one, right? Big one they test for. And then heavy metals has been increasingly a problem in our food supply. It's been increasingly public about its presence in baby foods, which is especially problematic given, you know how how vulnerable they are at that stage. But that's not unique to baby food. The heavy metals are in all of our foods. You know, any, you know, root vegetables, a lot of fruits, any all, you know, a lot of grains, especially rice.

Joe Carr - 0:48:24
Very high and heavy metal. So it wasn't a surprise to us when the studies came out about baby food because we'd already been testing for that and you know, knew that it was a problem. We'd already stayed away from rice and grains and you know, things that we knew were high and heavy metals, you know, but so we started testing early, early on and we started working with the clean label project. And so then by the time those the news stories broke that there's toxic levels of heavy metals and all these mainstream organic baby foods, we already were ahead of that. We're like Nope, not us. You know, we've been testing, we test all our inputs, we test our finished product and then clean label also tests it. So we're like triple tested making sure that everything is tested before it goes into the ingredients we know before we even make it and then we test it again afterwards to make sure nothing happened in in production. And then clean Label independently verifies it year over year and it gives us that that little badge of approval, it's called their purity award.

Joe Carr - 0:49:24
Clean label project purity award. So include encourage any brand for babies and kids to work with them because if you don't pass they'll tell you like this is what you're high in. They'll look at look at your ingredients, you can test it. They'll do an investigation with you, hey, where is that lead coming from like this is that looking at your deck, it's usually in in this ingredient. So let's test that lot and then let's see if that supplier can give you a different lot. So you know they're they're you know, trying they'll help work with you to to get it lower. But we test before we even launch products.

Joe Carr - 0:49:50
Because we won't watch it if we can't get a low enough heavy metal supply, which was especially problematic for our puff. Let me show you our puff. We created a puff snack. This is, these are these little melt in your mouth. It's like a Cheerio. It's like a kid can pick it up and eat it, but you don't need teeth. Like it kind of dissolves if you wanted to. All these were made from rice and wheat before us. They were all grapes, very cheap, very easy to make these products with grains. We made the first grainfree. Still still the only grainfree.

Joe Carr - 0:50:21
We're not the only there. Lesser Evil has a grainfree one as well, So we so we we are the first grainfree, and we add fat to it, so it's got olive oil. It's got vegetable flavors. They're all sweet. Lesser evils are also sweet, unfortunately, So we're the only nonsweet one. Or there's no sugar in ours. It's just vegetable flavor. So they taste good, but savory.

Joe Carr - 0:50:51
We got olive oil, some of them have bone broth. We have this proprietary dehydrated bone broth. We were the first one to snack a bone broth. We brought bone broth into a into a crunchy snack which was very hard to do but adds really good protein and flavor to our puff snack. But we use cassava, You know cassava root is a really good green alternative that puffs well and and you know you, you know it's like the CFD tortillas and chips, those are cassava based.

Joe Carr - 0:51:10
But it's a root vegetable and anything grown in the soil is, is is vulnerable to heavy metal contamination because they're in the soil from decades of of of soil and water pollution and so you know, and so some naturally occurring as well. So it took us a while to find a cassava source that was low enough in heavy metals for us and we found it. We found this amazing outfit out of Nicaragua this, this fair trade. Certified group that is, you know, bringing people back to the land after all the turmoil caused by imperialism in the 80s. So bringing people back to the back to farms, helping them have a sustainable agricultural life, restabilizing villages and so forth. And they're growing this amazing cassava that's.

Joe Carr - 0:52:02
Really clean and and repackaged for us and you know we're able to use that to use that cassava source rise and flies as a cereal using their cassava as well. Also clean label project grain free nutrient dense breakfast cereal rise and flies great products. That you can get from them using similar, they use our same factory and everything. We have a strong partnership. So heavy metal testing is, is a new thing that in 10 years is going to be required like there's so many contamination. The FDA has begun you know implementing some discussing standards for baby food. They're much higher than we'd like, like the standard they have is pretty bad. They say it's going to take them five years, which we're like why are you scared? It should not take you five years. Babies are getting heavy metal right now. So we're we're pressuring the FDA to regulate us more.

Joe Carr - 0:52:38
Which is pretty weird for a company to ask them, but very just the beginning. And it's there's going to be a ripple effect if people realizing how bad heavy metals are, if you're suffering from any kind of chronic health condition, get heavy metal tested. I mean it's one of those things that is not often thought of mainstream medicine does not think about and can really dramatically. Help your health. You know we use the Quicksilver is the leaders in testing and in chelation products to remove the heavy metals. And I was able to remove all my heavy metals like I had 99% lead toxicity. I was like you know 85 mercury toxicity like I was like off the charts heavy metal toxic and within about six months I was able to get all that down through Quicksilver's chelation protocol which was.

Joe Carr - 0:53:32
Very safe and very intentional and it was very important for my health, reduced to my migraines and my anxiety and so forth.

Kyle Krull - 0:54:09
Super interesting. I'm learning a ton on this episode.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:54:12
Which I really.

Kyle Krull - 0:54:12
Appreciate and I appreciate you sharing this with all of our listeners. You've mentioned the future a couple times recently about, you know, in the next 5-10 years heavy metal testing is going to be standardized. It sounds like you're well positioned to integrate into that future already. But talk to us a little bit more about what the future looks like for Serenity Kids. Yeah, you know, is there new innovation coming down the pipeline of the new categories you're trying to enter into? What does that look like?

Joe Carr - 0:54:37
Yes, so we and choosing the name Serenity Kids rather than Serenity Baby. We've always intended to be a children's food company. The gap in baby with big. The gap in children's is massive. So we need to decide to start with baby because they were so vulnerable. There was such a big gap there and we were about to have a baby. So it's like we want food for our own. But we've continued to age the products up with our with our our child. She's 4 1/2 now she'll tell you she's passed 4 1/2. So she's she realized today is 99 days to her birthday. She realized today it's 99 days to five you know so, so we're already aging up in in the pouches. We've launched these smoothies that are more.

Joe Carr - 0:54:49
Appropriate for an older kid and that she really likes. We have added more complex flavors to our pouches so those initial meat and veggies are are better for babies. We have these meat and herbs line that adds herbs. We have meat, herbs and bone broth. Line with the first ones to bring bone broth to baby food in a significant way. And so we did. Those taste really good for older kids, actually. Our turmeric chicken is my personal favorite. If you're an adult, you want to eat a pouch. It's chicken bone broth pastures, chicken with turmeric and other other veggies and aromatics. Really delicious. So we've aged up in pouches, we've got the puffs, We launched our formula, which kind of goes the other direction younger, but we're looking at older and older, older kid products we we want to be.

Joe Carr - 0:55:35
We intend to be the nation's leading natural children's food brand. We're on track to be. We are on track to be the nation's leading natural baby brand. We're already the fastest selling in all channels or the fastest selling baby food. Shelf stable baby food in the natural channel as well as in all conventional and mass like Target and Walmart where throwing baby food in the country. You know we're the number one baby food by dollars at Whole Foods. Which is impressive because Happy Baby has, you know, 50 products and we're selling more by dollars with our 28 products than they are with half the number of skews.

Joe Carr - 0:56:18
You know where, where. So if we can do it Whole Foods, we believe we'll do that everywhere. So we're we're going to be at nation's leading baby food that's that's in process. The next phase for us is really becoming the leading children's food bread and going off the baby island. I think utilizing the same thing we did in baby, which is taking a format that is popular. They already know the format. It's already convenient, kids already like it and you know moms and families are familiar with it, but then upgrading nutrition to be genuinely nutrient dense.

Joe Carr - 0:56:44
Focusing on regenerative meat wherever possible because it's the most nutrient dense food on the planet and for the planet, and then also having great taste, and then in these convenient formats. I call that the Serenity Trinity of nutrient density, great taste and convenience. Then we make it easier, healthy. People pay anything for that. So there will be premium points, the real cost of foods going to come out here, you know, but like, you get what you pay for, You know, it comes back in healthcare savings and social emotional disorder savings. And eventually, you know, we've got climate change, enormous cost associated with climate change, natural disasters.

Joe Carr - 0:57:34
So for us, paying more for food on the front end is a a a good investment. And we believe that parents, you know, really want to feed their kids healthier. It's very, very hard to do. Kids are very picky. They're bombarded with sugary carving, hyperpalatable foods that you know are easy to get them to eat but are not nutritious or their health. Foods that don't taste good, the kids don't like. So we're like, Nope, it's tastes great, it's easy to use and it's full of nutrition.

Joe Carr - 0:57:56
Particularly using the generative meat to justify you know a little bit higher price point plus it's heavy metal tested and the highest standards you can get. We believe that's going to be the future of of of children's food in this country. And regenerative is organic like regenerative has is is gaining popularity faster than organic did And already land to market alone has more land to market verified acres in the world than USD or than than organic acreage in the world. So when to markets? Oh.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:58:54
I didn't know that.

Joe Carr - 0:58:55
Oh yeah. You know, it's a it's a little unfair because you know, a lot of that acres are your hands, right. So, but. But.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:59:04
Yeah, but I mean.

Joe Carr - 0:59:05
You actually clean up more land with the regenerative model than you do organic, because organic you're only focusing on not putting these bad inputs into the certain small tracts of agricultural land. Versus regenerative millions of acres in Africa that Alan Savory's been able to regenerate. You know turning desert into forests you know that this happening. So this is the inorganic the truth's on our side. People are starting to understand it. The nobody, nobody likes the anti meat people you know like everybody likes me they don't like me like you know you know vegan judgmental people that are like they're in themselves any favors with the way they go about that so so you know.

Joe Carr - 0:59:19
Regenerative is in organic. It's going to be, it's going to be the future. So like I said heavy metals testing is key and how we we've got to change where we feed our kids. Everybody knows we've got to change kids. So we're going to help be a part of that change to help make it easier from a convenience factor, you know but there's lots of other you know, recipes and and practices and great.

Joe Carr - 0:59:48
Meat companies like force of nature making it really easy to find an order regenerative meat and grocery or online. We we work with force of nature a lot we source our grass fed bison we're the we're the first and only bison baby food so we have regenerative bison. Yeah it's in target which is just blows my mind that the target has that's awesome bison baby food but it shows you the the future target doesn't do anything that doesn't have a lot of data around it So clearly target says parents want. Sort of buy some baby food, right? You could bet people do and then they're right of selling super well. So we don't have much competitors right now in the meat safe. We hope more we would love more baby food, more children's food to come out with meat and you know, change the change the face.

Anthony Corsaro - 1:00:59
Yeah, man, that's awesome. My, my reaction early on when you're going through that was all about most walk in the store in my head and I was thinking about all the formats that you could do that with and it's just, I mean the yeah, it's limitless. Yeah. Joe, excited to get your thoughts on kind of our final question that we asked everybody, which is. How do we scale regenerative brands at 50% market share by 2050?

Joe Carr - 1:01:23
How do we do that? I love that. Well, setting a concrete numbers, you know, write it down. There's a lot of data. It's like you write down a goal. Yeah, much more likely to achieve the goal. So I love that. I love that goal. We've you gotta cook. Coordinate our marketing resources. You know we need to be marketing together.

Anthony Corsaro - 1:01:42
Yes, Yeah. You know, we.

Joe Carr - 1:01:44
Need to yeah. Markets actually about to release another market study they just did of you know. Words and and actually I'm going to be putting together, we're going to look at that one and see what's missing and probably try to do another one that's even more in depth or more mainstream to really understand what is the term regenerative mean to the mainstream population. What words are are regenerate, you know are resonating with them. How do we tell the story? How do we tell it together? How do we shout it from the rooftops constantly? How do we combat the anti meat narrative?

Joe Carr - 1:01:51
Really. Or how do we use it for for our benefit? Like I said, they people hate that stuff. Like it gets in their head because it's repeated over and over again. And the the climate movement has got to embrace your generative agriculture. Like we need people on the inside of the climate. That's got to like get away from this Meatless Monday.

Joe Carr - 1:02:17
You know, let's meet better meat. You know, stuff like to be like, no, this is just counterproductive. We're hurting the people doing it right. When you boycott a whole industry, you essentially guarantee that the people doing it right will lose. And the people continue doing it wrong will always win because it's the cheapest and there's a lot. So many people can't afford anything more. It's artificially cheap. So we've got to get the people who are willing to pay more, which are these environmentally conscious, food conscious people that are right now being inundated with vegetarian, vegan bullshit.

Joe Carr - 1:02:50
And we've got to capitalize on that. The advantages, the truths on our side, we're actually the evidence is there, the research is there, the the examples are there, you know, and we don't have to make that shit up. Similar to the climate movement, like, it's very clear, you know, the climate deniers are loud but full of shit. So the same thing with the vegans. So you know.

Kyle Krull - 1:03:29
It's generally the people who are loudest are both bullets generally.

Joe Carr - 1:03:34
So we got to be louder. You know we can't be sensational or we can't do the same you know kind of things they do because because the truths on our side, it is coming that. So I have to believe that people want this. People will pay more. Studies repeatedly show people will pay more for better sourcing, particularly for environment. And people love meat. And that's the advantage we have. They love me, them as countries, you know, It really, really likes meat and rightfully so. It tastes great. It's great for our health. It's most nutrient dense food. It's our ancestral food. It's why we it's why our brain developed the way they did. You know why humans have come to this stage in our evolution is because of our access to meat.

Joe Carr - 1:03:52
You know, and so, you know, we got to, we got to tell that story, we got to tell it together, got to support each other. I think the verifications are important. I think that you know it really, you know, land to market being the best one they're inundated with. They're like overwhelmed with how many people are trying to get verified by them. So that's a that's great. Let's keep inundating that like they need to. We want to see a standard for regenerative because there's still some greenwashing.

Joe Carr - 1:04:12
I'm not nearly as worried about the greenwashing of regenerative as other people are. To me, just using the word over and over is great. Like just get the word out there, even if it's bullshit right now. We'll prove that down the line that they're bullshit. For now. We need to like make sure it's it's it's actually really well utilized and not going to criticize people for that. I think that this the this the, the answer to that is to get verified is to say Nope, third party. You know, we're actually regenerative. We're soil testing. We're proving it.

Joe Carr - 1:04:38
If you're not soil testing, you're, you know, you can't prove that you're regenerative. So you know we need to tell that story, the outcomes story, over and over. But but it's happening. We're going to do it and you know, we just got to band together.

Kyle Krull - 1:05:22
Joe Love, love that spirit. I know that Anthony and I both feel very similarly. That, you know, doing this together is the key. So really appreciate you sharing everything you've shared. I also, I just want to highlight one of the other statements you made that I didn't get just to talk about before. And I think it was that anything that disconnects you from another human being is D revolutionary. Yes. And I think that transcends far beyond CPG and regenerative brands and in this world that we live in today that is so hyper polarized where you know, Republicans do everything they can to like stalwart Democrats and vice versa just because they're on opposing sides. It's like they have to hate each other and.

Kyle Krull - 1:05:29
I just feel like if more people had that mentality, we could live in a very different world. So I want to give you, I mean, kudos to #1. Just making a statement really resonated with me. I really appreciate your passion and your education for, you know, everything you've shared about the baby food category, general nutrition, heavy metal testing, the whole 9, so.

Joe Carr - 1:06:14
Yeah, super awesome. I really, really appreciate you. You know, do changing things, doing things that are right and better. It's easier to get holier than thou. It's very easy. We feel all this built and shame for all the harm we've caused. We have this awakening. We want to do things better. It's very easy to want to believe we're superior. We're better than these people that are, you know, eating shit or whatever better than these other parents.

Joe Carr - 1:06:23
Really that's just our own insecurity and will will be harmful. Like there's no superiority. Like we're going to those people who are doing it who don't know yet, you know, maybe need some information, need some education, but they are not going to hear us if we're judging them, they're not going to hear us if we act like we're better than them. And this is where vegans live, is there. This is like the the crux of that. But it is be the better one like us and we're like nowhere, you know work together, mainstream America farmers.

Joe Carr - 1:06:39
You know meat meat suppliers like this is where it's like, no, we're the the mainstream loves meat. They love farmers and on both sides you know our our pro environment, pro farmers ultimately And so that's where regenerative I think we can win is not by going to the left necessarily we do need to convert the climate movement but also mainstream America loves meat, loves farmers and I think that's one of the reasons our products well Walmart. Is like they were ready they don't have Walmart chopper isn't afraid of meat likes to see that we support small farmers right their mission and and I think we can we can benefit a lot from from being across the aisle that both you know the the the right and the left have both have reasons to really embrace regenerative agriculture. So we need to kind of depoliticize it and really like make it about the people and ultimately build regenerative movements regenerative organizations. Are all.

Kyle Krull - 1:08:04
I couldn't agree more. Yeah, I was just on a road trip. I was driving from Central Oregon Bend OR up to the Hood River in Northern Oregon. And you drive through all of this land. And so it's like, man, why aren't we repopulating Bison on all of this land? It's their indigenous area. They belong here. Like it's beneficial for everybody. It's just this land sitting there doing nothing. And to me, like, like you mentioned, regenerative is like the purple bridge, you know, between the blue and the red. And because you know, to your point, we want to support. Farmers we want to support, Rangers, we want to do good for the environment like we can.

Joe Carr - 1:08:35
Do all those things together and.

Kyle Krull - 1:08:36
It'd be so cool if we did so, like, spot on, man, right?

Joe Carr - 1:08:39
Our bite some packages. Purple actually. So that's funny. I don't have it to show you, but it's the.

Kyle Krull - 1:08:44
Yeah.

Joe Carr - 1:08:45
I thought of that, but no, I'm going to think of that when I see it. So but great, you know, telling the story, spread the information is most important. So really appreciate you guys doing that. I love this. I love this goal. What's the goal? 50% market share.

Anthony Corsaro - 1:08:59
By 2050.

Joe Carr - 1:08:59
2050 by 50, all right.

Anthony Corsaro - 1:09:03
There we go, man.

Joe Carr - 1:09:03
Let's do it.

Anthony Corsaro - 1:09:05
Yeah, Joe, thank you so much man. This is awesome. Really enjoyed it.

Joe Carr - 1:09:08
Yeah. Great. Thanks you guys.

Anthony Corsaro - 1:09:13
For show notes, episode transcripts, and more information on our guests and what we discussed on the show, check out our website regen-brands.com. That is regen-brands.com. You can also 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 five 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 - 1:09:26
We hope you learned something new in this episode and it empowers you to use your voice, your time, and your dollars to hel us build a better and more regenerative food system. Love you guys.