#60 - Rafaela Gontijo Lenz @ NUU

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #60 - Brazilian Cheese Bread Goes Regenerative - (RECAP LINK)

Episode Transcript:

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

Kyle Krull - 00:00:15
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 about my co host, AC, is going to take us into the episode.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:00:34
On this episode, we have Rafaela Gontijo Lenz, who is the founder and CEO at NUU. NUU is supporting regenerative agriculture with its lineup of regenerative cassava based foods that includes cheese bread, cheese bread pizza, tapioca sticks, and more. Items are sold at over 1500 retail and food service points of sale in Brazil. In this episode, we learn how Rafaela was inspired to leave her job at Johnson and Johnson, to start a cheese bread company supporting smaller farmers, her regenerative awakening and NUU's regenerative journey, and their recent $4,000,000 fundraise that is set to power their future vision. NUU is a certified B Corp certified carbon neutral, led by an entirely female C suite and has been recognized by the United Nations as 1 of 50 global companies to help lead the regenerative food movement. This was an amazing episode with Rafaela y'all, and we were honored to have her join us as our second guest in our international series. Let's go. What's up, everybody?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:01:24
Welcome back to another episode of the ReGen Brands Podcast. Super excited today to have episode 2 of our international series with Rafaela from NUU. So welcome, Rafaela.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:01:48
Thank you. Thank you guys for the invitation.

Kyle Krull - 00:01:52
Absolutely. We're super excited to have you to learn about the Brazilian food systems and how they are similar or different from the United States. So super pumped about that. I'm on the website right now. The packaging looks phenomenal, really fun approachable brands. So we're really excited to learn more about this. Before we dive too deep into, like, the origin story, give our listeners a quick lay of the land, like, what SKUs do you produce, where could people fund your products today?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:02:19
So we are, a 100% Euka based product. They are in the frozen category. You can find them on National Regional Retail And Food Service. On retail, we have 12 SKUs, and on food service, we have 16 SKUs, in the middle of Brazil to the south, mostly. Big seats.

Kyle Krull - 00:02:42
Okay. And did you say Euka based?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:02:45
Yeah. A 100% of the products are Euka based. Yeah. Menyak. That's

Anthony Corsaro - 00:02:50
that's the same thing as Kasama. It's usually the most typical term here

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:02:53
in America. Okay.

Kyle Krull - 00:02:56
No. We'll say Yuka for the rest of the episode. We wanna be context specific. So I just wanna make sure that I understand what we're talking about and our listeners understand what we're talking about. So Casava based, Yuka based, Those are interchangeable terms.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:03:08
Exactly.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:10
Yeah. And we can dive a lot more into that. I think that's a really interesting piece. I know I've had a lot of you go Kasava based products, you know, in my, like, paleo diet journey, when I was, you know, explicitly really not eating grains. And that's, It's either native to Brazil or native to that area. Right, Rafaela?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:03:26
Yeah. It's originally from Amazon, rainforest, and it's all over Brazil. It was the base of indigenous cuisine in Brazil was colonized by Portugal. So it's very inherent in our, gastronomic culture in Brazil. And you can find it everywhere. But, it's the first time that a company really takes it at a as a hero ingredient to produce all the products. So very excited with that.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:50
Yeah. Super cool. Well, we're we're talking history already. So take us back to where this all started and kinda how how you created the brand and what's the origin story.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:03:59
Okay. So before I talk about the bread, I think it's good to disclaim how, cheese bread was created because she reached that number 1, make it good, consume to Brazil. Anthony, I think you've tried already, right, No?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:04:16
No. But I remember in the in the one time we talked, you said this is like a croissant in France. Right? It's like the equivalent in terms of

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:04:24
Or if they go in US or muffin US, it's all over.

Kyle Krull - 00:04:29
Yeah. So I've had Brazi Bites which I believe are similar, probably not necessarily as high quality and or regenerative, but that's me is like the, The the security product firm market. Yeah. Okay.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:04:43
Yes. Exactly. It's the same thing. It's, it's cheese. Well, it's what we call phone education in Brazil. And it's extremely popular. It's a 2,000,000,000, a market. You can find it everywhere from schools to restaurants, to coffee shops, It's really popular. And, so I was working actually at Johnson and Johnson when I started, NUU. I was train you there, you know, normal multinational path of career. And I used to bring cheese bread from the farmers that my parents live. To my friends in Rio. I live in Rio de Janeiro. Wow. And everyone was super impressive to taste.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:05:16
And to me, it was very normal because it was the cheese bread that I used to eat when I was a kid, and I always brought this, cheese breads to, to Rio. So I wasn't eating a lot of tree's bed from supermarkets, and I, wondered why people thought it was so different. And I went to the supermarket and saw that what happened to cheese bread is that over the decades, companies started ultra industrializing the products and really changing the key ingredients to make it cheaper. And I decided to quit, Johnson and Johnson in start. I started in the kitchen of my house, actually, with a mixer Yeah. Powered by my mother-in-law, you know, like, stayed, 2 years in the farmer's market. But really staying true to the original recipe of cheese bread.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:06:02
Cheese bread was created in the 18th century in the farms of Minas which is the con the states that I was, born and raised. And it was it's so interesting because we don't know who created it, but given the history of time, mostly probably was a slave to woman, because there were a lot of slave women, in the kitchen of in the golden cycle, in the culture cycle. I mean, So she used to bake, breads with wheat coming from Portugal. And those sweets were coming with a fair, poor quality. So in one day, she decided to change this week to you cup powder. That was the base of indigenous cuisine.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:06:51
So there is a hand of a slave woman a heritage of indigenous cuisine with Yuca and a heritage of milk, raw milk, cheese, that was from Portugal. So she mixed it all in, pot or something and created the little balls that eat today. So, the beginning with that was just to go back to Minas Gerais. I think that we tasted nearly 200 different recipes to know what's the secret sauce and, you know, there's no secret sauce. It's just good.

Kyle Krull - 00:07:30
Well, how tired of cheese bread were you at this point time? Or you just, like, can't taste another one of these, or was it, like, bring it on? Like, I need to try every single one.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:07:38
I need to try every I it's my favorite, dude. I love it. It's so it's so good. And I don't know. It was never enough.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:07:46
Yeah. And do most do most people in the country still, like, produce it at home if they're more, like, in a rural area, and then it's mainly the urbanites that are eating the the the the process products that are at, like, the grocery stores, or what's the what's the current state of the the eating of the product?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:08:03
Yeah. It's a good question. If you go to Minas Gerais, everyone has a better, and we always say that we don't make the best cheese bread off the world, but the best cheese bread for the world because the cheese bread off the world is still made by, you know, my grandmother, the grandmother of my friends, you know, like, all these people that are in the in the kitchen. But in Minas, people still make it, because it's where the rescue was born. It's very, related to the state, culture. But in the other, states, people buy it frozen in the market. So huge opportunity to, deliver, high quality, you know, good for you and the body product to the other states.

Kyle Krull - 00:08:47
I really love that statement, you know, not necessarily the best in the world, but the best for the world because it it provides a level of, like, honor for those who are in the kitchen doing it every day. But it also very clearly states the intention of what your brand is trying to accomplish. And there's always this give and take between scale and purpose, right, so that that shows us like what you're leading with is leading with that purpose, which is fantastic. And I'm sure it's probably still the best cheese bread at scale. No doubt. So that that's still a win. I'm curious.

Kyle Krull - 00:09:09
So, like, walk us through some of the journey. Like, you're starting you're eating 200 different recipes. Cheese bread. We're starting to commercialize this product. You know, we we don't know much about the Brazilian market. Like, how do you start?

Kyle Krull - 00:09:25
Once you have, like, a brand in a package, like, does that initial, like, go to retail look like, or does it go to food service, or or what did that whole journey look like?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:09:38
Yeah. So we started in 2000 and a few team. Back then, you could find only 2 or 3 cool, better for your brands in the supermarkets. It was very massive with, legacy brands?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:09:53
Not a cheese bread of everything is what you're saying.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:09:56
Of everything. No. Of everything. Today, you have all the categories like, you know, coke, coffee, chocolate, breads. You can see, like, this small brands, like, NUU is doing but this is very new. It's something from 5 years, to now. So when we started, it was only us and 2 other brands. We started in the farmers market selling to friends and, you know, a few small cafeterias coffee shops, And then the biggest, retail in Rio called us to start selling to them. And then they got the thing got a little bit serious because now we're talking 60 points of sales in the biggest, retail in video. We had to move from the kitchen. I was off week, she was co packer. And, you know, co packers and this structure of scale is not something.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:10:37
It's more new now, but white label, private label, co packers, distributors. It wasn't something very popular in Brazil. You couldn't find those. So I had to literally go to the industries, knock on the doors, and say, hey, Do you wanna produce my cheese bread? Unfortunately, yeah, and it was something like they were doing, how do you call that charity? They were maybe doing some charity because the the volume was very low in the beginning and, you know, it was a bet that we would grow with them, and that's what happened.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:11:12
And we found, industry factory near our farms in Minajarais, which was great because back then, my dad was producing the cheese, the the cheese, the raw milk cheese that we were using. So we could find the manufacturing there that used my dad's farmer, my dad's cheese, and then we started growing. And then, we were doubling digit. We were going to different states only with cheese bread. And then COVID hit. In 2020. When COVID hit, I was with my twins. I have twins, 2 two girls.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:11:49
They are 6 months old. And I was in Rio and had to go back to my fair my parents' farm to, you know, move away from all this craziness and be in provide, you know, early, moment in life in nature for them.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:12:18
Yeah.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:12:19
And that's when we re thought all of the business, and tried to create a nature positive, company that could lead to a better world for the kids. So, like, before COVID, before the twins was like, okay, raw milk cheese, smallholder farmers, local suppliers, but only with cheese bread and everything changed after 2020.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:12:47
What What was the moment? Just the, you know, going back to that more rural landscape and seeing that these people needed support or just falling in love with what you're seeing there or, you know, the children or this confluence of all those things. Like, what what was the moment and was regenerative, like, the attached to it at the time or has regenerative become, like, what what you've called it or, like, what's the regenerative piece?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:13:09
Such a good question because imagine me with my twin girls, in the farm. You know, my dad has a a cow, so we would eat the cheese from the the, how do you call that, like, where people How do you call that in English where you make the cheese a barn?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:13:26
How do you call it? Yeah. Like artisan cheese making. I I don't know what you would call the the specific,

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:13:32
the filet. Or you can go and you take the cheese. They

Kyle Krull - 00:13:35
Yeah.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:13:36
You know? So, you you

Kyle Krull - 00:13:37
know, it's it's it's it's it's it's it's the cruzery.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:13:41
You know? I have no idea. Yeah. Cheesery.

Kyle Krull - 00:13:43
Cheesery's Cheesery's fine for today's purposes.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:13:46
Yes. Cheesery.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:13:48
So we would go there in the morning and then go in the in the chicken place where you get the eggs and, you know, like living very close to nature and animals as a source of, food And I saw, document from Fau, published in 2014 saying that if we produced the way that we produce, we won't would only have 60 harvests left. I bet you guys all saw this, report. Obviously, there's a lot of controversy on it, but, you know, 60 harvest left. My kids would have 55 or something. And then I was like, okay. I need to to investigate the impact of, my company in the future of the kids, and I was using milk, cheese, and butter. So a lot of dairy, products. And back then, 2020 was all about plant based, right?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:14:35
So everyone you talk was, okay, so the future is plant based, and I was living in the farm, saw seeing animals with that agriculture and everything working as a purpose, you know, like the, how do you call is when you make the cheese, there is a water that has a lot of protein that is a leftover, and then you put to the pork. And the pork, you eat, and then you change for kitchen, for chicken, you know, like, everything is all combined and working together as a whole and as a topic. Way. And to me, it was not it didn't make sense to plan based movement. So that's I think that was pretty much when we talked because I started searching for alternatives because I didn't want it to be a plant based cheese bread. I mean, cheese bread was born with milk cheese and and butter.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:15:29
And then I saw he's the ground documentary, and then I saw regenerative, food systems and agriculture, and then I saw, okay, there's a way to keep using milk cheese and so on. So we decided that we were part of the problem, but we would fight to be part of the solution. And that's when, we started investigating the impact and doing the carbon life cycle. That's the first thing that we did understand the impact and to start our generative journey to minimize the impacts throughout our value chain.

Kyle Krull - 00:16:07
That's an amazing story, and there's a lot that I love about it and a lot I wanna unpack there. And I definitely wanna dive into what the transition looked like after the fact. But, it was one of the questions I was going to ask, like, what was the plant based movement like in Brazil versus, you know, and they're obviously very aware of what it looks like in the US and it sounds relatively similar. Like, plant based was really booming. You know, in in the United States, there's generally this association with, like, oh, plant based is naturally inherently better for the environment. Sounds like that was also the case in Brazil. And what I love about your story is, like, you're hearing this while living on a farm, working with animals, seeing the positive impacts every day, and then, like, the regenerative thing happens, like, you get that exposure and you're like, this feels right.

Kyle Krull - 00:16:38
That's one of the things I wanna touch on is to me, just about anybody I've spoken to who understands what regenerative is, there's, like, an inherent wisdom and all is like, yes. This makes sense. Animals do belong on the land. We should be working with animals in this, like, ecosystem loop of positive feedback. So super super appreciate that story. Wanna give you credit for the humility to, like, candidly look at your business to determine its potential impact.

Kyle Krull - 00:17:11
Realizing, like you said, you were quote part of the problem, and then transitioning to want to be better. So walk us through, like, what that looked like. Was it ingredient by ingredient? Was it, like, a full shift at one time. How did you start to shift your supply chain for more of a positive impact?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:17:34
Okay. So, in the carbon life cycle of the product, and this was only cheese bread in the beginning. Now we have a wider portfolio, but in the beginning, it was only cheese bread. We saw that 70% of our gas emission was in the supply chain. And I feel back then, and it's still now, a lot of the entrepreneurs lack the ancestral knowledge of how make food, you know, like this dialogue with the farmers because a lot of this people, there are fundraising, there are in the big cities, you know, Ivy leads and coming from big tech companies, and then they come in the food business, And a lot of them has great plans and great companies that I admire, but I feel that we should be dialoguing more with the you know, farmers that are farmers for 4 generation, 5 generation, and understand what they have been doing in terms of really regeneration, in the soil, in, in the crops because they need to function. When you think about as novel, the farmer, he needs to make the best out of his land. Right? So if he can have a bio digester to provide energy, he's gonna do that, not because He's worried with climate change because that will provide him more money to, you know, drink his beer in the weekend.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:18:46
So I do sometimes fantasize. No. Really, like, sometimes I do that we criticize these farmers. I don't know the the reality in in the world, but Brazil, you know, it's that it has the biggest land of agriculture in the world. It has the biggest biodiversity in the world. Is the 3rd, biggest meat supplier. So we we feed 800 medium people in the world, throughout the year.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:19:16
So We are very, agriculture, food intensive, and 77% of the lands in Brazil are with family, family, agriculture, family farmers. So when you talk to them, they are not worried about climate change. They are not most of them. Okay. I'm not putting on the same basket, but Most of them are not worried about climate, and they don't even know that that exists. So when we started and we looked at 70% of our problem was in agriculture, because we were using a lot of dairy products, and we started talking to these farmers.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:19:52
They saw that they already did grass fed, crop. House. They already had biodigesters. They already, used the route process where they didn't use a lot of, chemicals in it because it's a methodology to do it where the time, how do you call that curate curate the cheese

Anthony Corsaro - 00:20:26
Yeah.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:20:26
So this was all set, and we said, okay. So there's a huge opportunity here. 80% of our farmers are within 40 kilometers of our factory today. So it's very local. We localize the the producers, which gives us a lot of, dialogue with them, but it was a huge process to pivot any way they produce the crowd like, from monoculture to regenerative agriculture, this would take 4 to 5 years. A lot of cash intense intense. We were bootstrapping till now that we fundraise. So the thing that we did to the 70% issue was, having government institutions collaborating with us, even international institutions for the food system summit that we had with Rockefeller Foundation, IDEO, and all of those institutions who really provide knowledge of of, agroforest and regenerative coaches to the farmers. So this today, we are in a locally sourcing smallholder farmers using grass fed, farmers that some of them has bio digesters. Some of them are, how to call that?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:21:28
They are moving the crops. How to call that? Rotating crops. Yeah. But we still have a lot to do now mostly in the UK sourcing that I can talk a little bit further that we are sourcing Ukraine and Amazon from smallholder farmers now. So this was the 70%.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:21:58
And then we saw that if we build our factory from scratch, we would decrease in 15% our gas emissions if we had clean energy, treating influence and so on. So we decided to start with that. Because this was on our hands. It would increase our capacity. It would increase our gross margin, contribution margin, and it was in our hands. So we, build a factory from scratch with the Circular Economy team and the architecture team And we built the first, carbon 0 factory in Brazil.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:22:23
When we launched, it was all over the news, yeah, it was really Yeah. It was it was impressive how media loved this NUU's and how we got. You know, a lot of attention on it because if you think, and I just saw a commercial, last year of, a beer saying a hon a 100 percent, green energy beer. And I said, okay. But it's cheaper to do green energy. You know, like, People do this greenwashing with things that are cheaper.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:23:02
You need to understand that people are doing that, not because they want to save the world, but cheaper. And, yeah, you can save the world. So I feel during the many the construction of the factory, we saw how if we mimic nature and if we use the natural resources that we have, we would decrease, normal expenses and also increase the positive impact. So, this was what we did, and then we had the carbon footprint of the products to communicate with consumers about carbon emissions. 4 years, we have been offsetting carbon emissions for 4 years in the world, and we were one of the first companies to put the carbon emission in the package, which is something people didn't know much what was the number in the package, and we have been dialoguing with consumers the importance of it. And, a lot of different things. We certified as a big company. We compensated a 100% of the package.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:23:59
Know, like, all this journey, we we we don't say that we are a regenerative company. We say that we are in a regenerative journey. And every time that we step, there is more to to, to end this path.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:24:23
So That's amazing. I mean, B Corp carbon carbon neutral or, pro facility, smaller localized, you know, supply chain. I mean, I missed a couple in there, but just amazing, amazing work. What was coming to mind for me when you're talking to that, Rafaela, was just in with regenerative brands, we kinda have to do two things. Right? And some brands do one or the other and some brands kind of do a through line through the middle, which is we have to, like, honor and uphold and reward the people that have been doing this stuff for a long time and make sure they get that credit as, like, regenerative and they're supported in that way, like, mainly those farmers. Right? And then we have to take maybe the farmers that aren't as much on the continuum. And we have to help them, right, go in the right direction.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:25:01
And it seems like you're kind of doing both of those, and it seems like maybe you started with first one, and that's the basis. And you're kinda bridging into the second one. And, I think in the last conversation, and I don't wanna I don't wanna mis misquote so you can correct whatever I say wrong here, but there was a development on the the Yuka side with kind of trying to re perennialize and reagroforestry you know, some of those systems. And then also, I believe at the manufacturing facility, y'all are doing some sort of technical assistance providing for some of the farmers on the dairy side. So talk to us about, like, those specific initiatives that y'all are leaning on the the raw material consortium.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:25:43
Okay. I'm gonna start with you coach the complicated one. Is UK is the only ingredient that we don't source from the year the factory resource for Farana, which states in the south, but it's originally from Amazon Linkhorse. So it makes sense to source directly. After refund rates, you started in a accelerating product program called Amazon Jeanada, Amazonia, Amazonian Journey, and I went to Belaine to Amazon to source and to understand why can't we find Yuka powder in the middle of Brazil in the south and why are we buying from a big company in Parana? And there is, lack in Brazil, even though we are so developed in agriculture and food and so on, we are massive in commodity, right, and we are the biggest commodity exported in the world. So it's it's, it's a, way that it it only provides the commodity suppliers. So when you go to Amazon and you talk to smallholder farmers that are doing Yuca.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:26:37
They're producing Ukraine in their backyard. They're, doing the powder in their own land. And they're selling to their neighbors or to the local village. You know, they can find, association to tribute this. So we're building supply chain. And to build supply chain, you have a lot of companies in Brazil.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:27:01
They are doing amazing job on that. You have dango for a coconut, for cacao, for chocolate, you have vet shoes. I don't know if you guys saw or heard of them. Beija from friends. They're amazing doing also, lattics in Amazon, and they've built they've created a supply chain. So that's what we're doing now with some technical assistance from Eco Enterprises Fund, which is the fund that led the round to do this to build the supply chain and source locally from Amazon, collaborating with Farfetch, which which is an institution that develops supply chain.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:27:33
So this is something that are, I believe, in the next 3 to 4 months, we will have some news on that. On the dairy suppliers, we are in the 2nd biggest of dairy or milk bay in Brazil, the the factories based on the biggest, milk in Brazil. And we have 2500 smallholder farmers producing raw milk cheese bread, raw milk cheese, raw milk cheese, raw milk cheese was, honored as, immaterial patrimonion. How do you call that? Patrimonion.

Kyle Krull - 00:28:30
While you're looking that up, I I got a question about this, the 2nd largest dairy. Is are all of the cows that are a part of this dairy 100% grass fed?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:28:39
Yeah, 100% of them aggress had, but more mostly because this is how people do it. You know what I mean? It's not because it's just how they do it because

Kyle Krull - 00:28:53
What why would you pay for grain if you don't have to if you can just graze your cow on the land? Like, why wouldn't you do that? You know? So, yeah, it totally makes sense, and it's amazing to hear that the 2nd largest area in Brazil is 100% grass fed. Like, safe to say that's not

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:29:07
the case. 100% of the suppliers, but 100% of letters that we, emolligated and visited. They are animals. Some of them, you eat, corn, in the dry season or that they produce in their own land. But, it's all, free, you know, a free cage, cows. And in in the chicken, which is something that we have been talking a lot, the the eggs, which is a huge problem, and when you talk of CPG brands, there is a limit of price you can, put on in the retail. Otherwise, people don't buy it. So if we change the chicken, for instance, the the eggs, for free range eggs. I don't know how to call it, but organic or free range, it would increase in 18% our price points.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:29:57
And then we saw that would decrease in 25 percent of our sales. So, you know, there are some battles that we choose to do now, and there are some battles that we need to have suppliers near a farm, near a factory to have more competitive price, to then use them. So really this path and this journey, it's not only a matter of us developing, but finding, and sourcing government institutions or money that we could have from technical assistance or providing credit to this pharmacy. So it's a lot of art articulation or, you know, like, a networking,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:30:44
Architecture. Yeah. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Kyle Krull - 00:30:48
For sure. I'm super impressed by the resourcefulness, of you and your organization and figuring out how to tap into all these different mechanisms to help to catalyze this transition. Number 1. So kudos to you for navigating that what I assume is a relatively complex landscape and taking advantage of those funds to try to, like, spur this transition forward. And then part 2, what I really appreciate about is the progress of perfection. And I think the egg, example you provided is a perfect highlight. Like, you can make the perfect product today. But your price point will become so high that you're gonna actually reduce the amount of potential impact you could have as an organization.

Kyle Krull - 00:31:21
So I thought that was a really great highlight. And maybe even Lee, enough consumers become aware of the the egg problem in Brazil, and they're willing to pay that premium, and you can start to incorporate that when the timing is right, when the market is ready. But I think that's a really great learning because that there are some amazing brands we've had on the podcast that sometimes their premiums are just too high. You know? So I I really like the strategy you have of, okay, like, this this we're gonna back burner this initiative for now to remain competitive to continue to to grow at the right pace. So just really appreciate that.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:31:58
Yeah. Because people want to eat sustainable products, but they don't wanna pay a premium price That's the reality.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:32:04
You know, we're in a developing library.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:32:06
People don't have a lot of money to pay for carbon offset in your product. So you'd really need to make and that's what we did, which I feel it's a it was an intuitive decision back then and was really good one. All of our package are smaller from the main competitors. So when you go to the retail, you buy our product pretty much with the same price or a 10 or 15 percent premium price, but you're, receiving lower grams. That's the way that we could have clean label, you know, all of these certifications that we have, all this compensation that we have, but and then the consumers can and can taste it without realizing that it's more expensive than the other, competitors.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:32:51
Yeah. That that's a really smart question to ask you about Yeah. I was gonna ask about price architecture. And I think that's that's really wise. And I I just wanna add a little bit of feedback onto what Casa just to know, summarize some of the things you said, Rafaela, which is just hearing so much about aggregation, right, and market access that previously didn't exist. And that's power of these enterprises and the power of, really, the multi stakeholder collaborations you're trying to set up between NGOs, between government funding, between private enterprises like yours, and then those things can collectively raise the bar and enable the practice adoption or the practice continuation. And that is really, I think the main narrative that we're trying to tell with all this work is, like, that all is happening. Right? But we need to all we need to we need to look at all the systems and say, cool. How can we do more of that?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:33:32
What can we learn from those? So just I think that's beautiful and wanted to to pull those those out.

Kyle Krull - 00:33:42
That's a great sales point. And I I don't wanna ask a question that I meant to ask you but I totally forgot. You're in food service and you're in retail. You have some very unique value propositions versus your competition. How and and we talked about this a little bit with the, the carbon, call out on the package, but how are you communicating, you know, regenerative and or good for the planet at retail, and how are you doing in that at food in food service with those food service partners, and how do those strategies differ?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:34:12
Okay. So, it's it's tough because everyone wants to talk about ESG nowadays but they don't know where to start. Right? And when you go to retail, they want to be carbon neutral. They want to communicate the they want to, say this is locally sourced, but it's so it's something so new. You know, someone told them they should do that 2 years ago. I don't know how it was in US, but in Brazil, it was, like, 2 years ago. People started talking about Yashin Brazil. And what we are talking to retailers is that we are not selling products.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:34:40
We are a source of, of this transformation, in the food system, and we can collaborate with them educating their, team and their consumers about why this is better for them. So not only communicating the certifications that we have, explaining what a big company is, explaining, you know, why we should neutralize the carbon and do the carbon offsetting but also helping them make better choices for, for their retails, actually, and really better exposure of these brands that maybe don't have the same volumes as legacy brands, but in 2 or 3 years or 5 years that I believe in Brazil, if they don't put this spotlight in these companies, they would the, you know, like just this big supermarkets that you just don't go because you can't find a product. So we dialogue a lot with retailers, in this more knowledge spectrum in the food service. We come with differentiations in terms of how they can re utilize the products, not, you know, 30% of all, everything that we produce goes to waste. And in the food service, this is a lot of money. So if they bake the cheese bread and they throw it away in the afternoon, you know, they're losing money.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:36:06
So we are educating them how they can upcycle these products and maybe sell to a higher price if they put, like, ham and cheese and you know, make the this delicious, sandwich. So we're talking of all these principles, not only in terms of, you know, the normal ways of doing it, but really providing services and ideas for them to increase their volumes and their sales and their margins. Which I believe this is the way that we could do today to talk of ESG because, again, I don't feel that people are prepared to make hard choices. You know, if this is gonna impact on their margin. So we are we just created, impact tribe in the And one of the goals for q 1 is to have the the first product of the impact. Right?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:36:50
And we are hiring a people, person in near the factory to plants, the trees. I don't know how to call it in US, but here in Brazil is Viverista Viverista is someone that works in, There is a place where you go where you have all the seed the seedlings, and then you go Yeah. So we are hiring someone to do that. And then we when we talk to retailers, we say, okay. So you have a 5% contract. Right? Yeah. Okay.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:37:21
How about we have 3% contract and this 2% we plan trees in Brazil and savannah's and then you can communicate that with your consumers. And then we can have, you know, them with a shirt, with your logo, and then your planting trees. So really adding value on their communication to sell more and impacting also, you know, the the deforestation that we have in the Brazilian Savannah So all of these ideas that we are bringing to retail are really having a good, acceptance because it's in the right moment. They're looking for solutions, you know, and not the legacy brands can provide that to them because they are also with a 2000 30, 2000 and 40, goals, without a lot of, solutions now. So

Anthony Corsaro - 00:38:19
The the amount of multi stakeholder engagement and creativity is just so so wild. I Rafaela, I can't even imagine how many calls you've been on and just trying to, like, you know, herd cats is the term here in the US of just a lot of different people with a lot of different goals, but finding through line solutions that work for everyone and really being, you know, the person that probably takes a lot of that risk is the activator of those as evidenced by y'all being the ones that just lead kind of the tree plantings itself. Right?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:38:48
Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:38:49
So just commend you for that. And I'm I'm kind of curious to hear you talk about how the product line has developed specifically on the retail side. Like, I'm looking at the website now and you have Yuka Fries is what I'm seeing. I don't I can't I don't speak Portuguese, and I can't read the labels, but, like, it looks like Yuka Fries, you have some pizza. You obviously have the cheese bread SKU. So how How did you evolve into this 12 SKU lineup and what was, you know, what was really the process there?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:39:15
Okay. So, obviously, I look a lot of, what is has been released in the American market and the European market. I feel you guys are amazing in creating products and brands and just, you know, developing new solutions for consumers. And So the pizza line was, developed after looking a lot of cauliflower, obviously, in the growth of gluten free at pizzas in US, at some point, cauliflower was the best growing company in US, and we saw a huge opportunity, to have a gluten free pizza in Brazil. And then we created the the pizza line and with a twist because all of our products are air fryer friendly. We saw a huge increase of use of air fryer in Brazil. I'm a mom. I don't have time. I have an air fryer that saves my lives.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:40:05
So the size of the pizza fits in the air fryer and all of our products fits in air fryer, which was something really interesting

Anthony Corsaro - 00:40:20
though. For smart.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:40:21
Yeah. Yeah. Is it, like,

Kyle Krull - 00:40:22
a huge, like, there's a a ton of people in Brazil who are, like, just switching the air fryer instead of ovens? That's that's thing? Mhmm. Okay.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:40:29
Wow. It's a

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:40:29
big thing. It's a big thing. The the air fryer companies came with huge advertising and really it takes you know, saves a lot of time. So we started with after cheese bread. We started with, tapioca sticks, which is saying looked like a typical fries. It has only 3 ingredients, which is yuca cheese and milk. It was created for kids to hold because we know that kids when they're starting, to eat food, they hold a lot for a long time and also to dip in sauces without having your hands dirty. So this was a product. Today, it represents nearly 20% of our sales. That's a Joka, stakes, which was a huge success, and we only have one skew.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:41:04
So we're probably launching 3 more in, this year. And then we did the pizza line because of this success of the gluten free pizza in the US, and then the dices, the tapioca dices, were actually a a fun story because a huge, chef in Brazil went very renowned chef in Brazil created this diocese and it's a phenomenon. He created this 15 years ago. You can find them everywhere too, and no one knows that he was the one that created it. So we went to Sao Paulo to visit him in his restaurant, and I said, hey. You know that you created a category in retail and people are, you know, feeding in retail and so service and all over. And he's, like, massive chef.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:41:49
He's very, like, this top chef chef celebrity. And I was very, like, anxious, and I was, meeting Yeah. And then, obviously, the the the talk was very good. And I talked to him how kids at ground changed my mind, and then he showed me the kiss the ground book and, gave it to me. And then the story was so good. And I said, do you want to create your you know, your recipe and launching retail and he said, yeah, why not?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:42:18
So we launched this product last October And with 2 versions, the original version that comes with the sauce inside, which we also was we always saw that people would buy these products and then buy a huge sauce should go with it, and then we said it doesn't make sense. You maybe buy a huge sauce and you throw it away. And then we when you open the box, I don't know if I have the box here. But you have the the little sauce inside. And then we launched the vegan version, which is our first vegan product after 20 5 releases, that is with fermented, cereals, which was something that was growing a lot in you as the fermentation precise fermentation. And then we wanted to understand how that tasted, and that's how we created the portfolio.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:43:08
And this year, we are gonna have some releases in tapioca as, sort of like a rep, you know, when you have, like, burritos or rep, It's a huge, product that a lot of people eat that at home in Brazil and it's hard to make. You need to pour and then, you know, So that's gonna be the release. I just saw that. I don't know if I could, but

Anthony Corsaro - 00:43:39
It's all frozen. Right. Rafaela, it's all frozen. And All frozen. I think you told me in her previous call that not only was there such a little better for you when you started this brand, but like frozen was absolutely dominated by all the big the big players.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:43:53
Correct? It's still it's still. It's still yesterday. I was visiting, retailers in Sao Paulo with our team, our sales team, And when you go to Poncesucar, which is the number one supermarket in Brazil and Kahifu, I bet you guys know also. You see, like, this frozen, this fridges and massive, like, the superintendreal, like, you know, they're trying to make a point to prove a point. Oh, we're there. We don't have huge presence, but we are in the biggest one. It's,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:44:28
it's cool.

Kyle Krull - 00:44:30
Yeah. That's huge. What what I I wanna pivot back to some of the your seniority about how you're partnering with retailers one thing that I was struck by was it feels like you're not necessarily talking about what with your partners, but you're talking about why. And in just hearing throughout the course of this conversation, you are so focused on solving problems and using this brand to solve different problems both from an ESG perspective, from a consumer usability perspective. And I think it's really cool. I don't think we've ever talked to somebody who is so focused on problem solving with the exception of maybe Zach from Zach's money because he just wants the best guacamole chip, and then he's fixated on solving that one problem. But your your ability to take that mindset and apply it in a variety of different ways is just fascinating. So super appreciate that.

Kyle Krull - 00:45:11
You talked a little bit about the future and some new product lines that are coming out. Is there anything else you can tell us about, like, what's on the horizon for NUU? Is it, you know, new categories that you wanna get into? Is it continuing to market expansion? What else is on the horizon for you all?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:45:36
Is it US products? I know.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:45:41
You know, some universities are doing a study of, go to mark it in Nuance, and we have been collaborating with them, students from, graduation and and NPAs, and it amazing to see the opportunity that we have in US, but we have so much opportunity in Brazil, and we need to focus and But, yeah, I just want to go back a little bit, Kyle, on your thought of how we are solving problems. And I want to acknowledge the team that I have. And I believe that being a female led company, it's really what brings this spectrum and this idea of, thinking of how we can do in a better way. You know, like, we're not only doing cheese bread. We're doing cheese bread better for the people, for and as as actually growing a company as well, you know, 70% of our leadership is female, 100% of the C suite's female, We have 40% 47% of moms working at NUU's. So this is really moms trying to understand how they can create, you know, better world for their kids, but also have a better quality time, you know, so we're not working when you think of a company that just fundraise and I talk to some people saying, oh, I work 14 hours a day. I was like, that's the thing. It was not something that you should be proud of. You know?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:47:02
Like, you should be proud of working 8 hours a day and spending time with your kids and connecting with you know, spirituality and being around nature and, like, doing your hobbies or so on. So I just want to acknowledge that we have amazing teams of woman. And also of men that has a female side, very developed to have all of this solution. Okay. So we just fundraise it was the 1st round that we did during the craziness of, fundraising. And we started when the whole world was like, okay.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:47:26
We're not investing in a longer, you know, in a year and a half ago or something. And then it started pitching. And when I started pitching in Brazil, we saw that were very focused on plan based. We couldn't find any fit with the pieces of VCs. And then we went to US and Europe to find this you know, nature, positive, funds that are looking for this type of companies. And then we just completed the the round. And our goals for this year to grow three times in sales.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:48:05
So we need to move from 1500 points of sales to 3500. 5, 100 points of sales, launch new products, yuca based, and we have an amazing, growth director that comes from Big Tech, and we're implementing a data driven methodology to grow. The business. Really looking at data. And and we have a data scientist now, which is something so unique for Nuke, because everything we did was it was, you know, more connected to intuition and maybe, you know, how we thought things should be done. And now we have data to provide our, to provide us the answers we need, or, you know, at least the past we to grow and use wisely the money because we don't want to be those crazy companies that fundraise every year and just

Anthony Corsaro - 00:49:11
This

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:49:11
is not how we grew. So, yeah, I guess that's a challenge for this year.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:49:17
Yeah. And a big congrats to you. I mean, you raised $4,000,000, at least in US dollars, which I believe is even more in Brazilian currency.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:49:25
So in in in poof. So

Anthony Corsaro - 00:49:27
Yeah. So What can make

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:49:29
it sound great? Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:49:30
Yeah. And I loved your comments on the the feminine piece. We have to re feminized, the food system, and we really need to bring any femininity into the financial system. And so I'm kinda happy we're bridging that seg into the financial piece because I think with what we see with food and agriculture is we lost all the feminine spirit. We lost so much of it. And we have to bring that back. And if you look at Indigenous peoples and ancient cultures. Like, the women were always the custodians of the food and agriculture systems, really.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:49:55
And, you know, we just don't have any of that in the financial system, it seems like, is at least in the mainstream. And there's so many questions I'm I'm trying to avoid asking, like, an team part question, but there's so many things I'd love for you to unpack, Rafaela, about the financial journey, which is like the bootstrapping piece you know, how you finally did the fundraising and how successful that has been. And you kinda just touched on those, but also touch on what we have seen and everyone we've talked to is that it's really, really hard to build a supply chain that's regenerative or on this regenerative journey that you can totally capitalize through the price of the end product to the consumer because there's just not enough price elasticity on shelf. And so having these stakeholders, whether it be you know, a retailer or a foundation or the NGOs, like, come in and help out with parts of that or developing unique corporate structure that allows for legal entities that can do different financial things. So I ended up asking a super long winded question, but what has that journey been like for you? And, you know, what have the lessons been and what do you see for that in the future of, like, capitalizing this end and capitalizing these changes that we need to make.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:51:07
Okay.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:51:12
That was all all two shots of espresso I had this morning. We're loading. Oh my gosh.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:51:17
Okay, man. Yeah. I believe that you need to be extremely committed with change no matter what it takes. Obviously, all this networking that we have been doing, even with you, you know, like, you were one of the people that I've talk to throughout this process, you, NGOs, government institutions, big legacy brands that are supporting us in some projects as well. Like, the number one beef producing in the world is supporting us in one of the products that the the projects that we have of LucasArts in Amazon. So all of this, effort to collaborate with other institutions to me maybe you can find the solution quickly as, you know, you could find in your own company, but really gives you more power to influence and to make change. And, we didn't talk about that, but for a long time, we bought raw milk she's under the how to call that? Like, not, attested by the government because they didn't have the certification because it's so hard to have it. So we had to fight for laws for them to be certified side without having busy standards that they couldn't cope with because they're a smallholder farmers.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:52:29
You know, they don't have, you know, they can some of the the laws were in the language that they couldn't even says most of these people don't even know. They only don't have a graduation or something. So we had to articulate a lot throughout process. And I believe this is something that grew on us and as in the team as well to have a open source. And, you know, to collaborate and to really make change. If we want to and that's one of the things that's why we fundraise.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:52:57
If we want to bring positive impact to Brazil, we need to scale because otherwise, we are buying for, you know, 10 smallholder farmers. This is not a lot of impact when you think that you have 2500 smallholder farmers. So in terms of articulating and networking, I believe is the way for us to bring massive solutions. In terms of the ingredients and how we can use them in the products, even though not having a premium price. I believe having smaller packages, having high quality ingredients. So then you don't use need to use a lot of this ingredient, just, you know, a portion of it.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:53:35
If you have a 21 day, raw milk cheese, it tastes so good, sort of like a parmesan. But you don't need to use a lot because it gives you an amazing taste. You know, if you have egg, normal egg, not powder, it gives you just smoothness, and you don't need to put another ingredient. So really just having good high quality ingredients, And what is your 3rd question? In one question, you had.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:54:11
I I think that if

Kyle Krull - 00:54:12
you can't ask it again, there's no reason she should have to answer it.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:54:14
I'm just gonna throw that out there.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:54:16
I believe we can kill again. They are my English.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:54:22
I mean, I'm I've been so impressed in all the communications with you, Rafaela, and just in this FICO's interview, like, this is not your your native language. For you to be able to discuss these topics in this depth with this clarity, like, it's just so impressive in shows the massive amount of work that you've done. So just kudos to you for that, especially.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:54:39
Lot of work. And a lot of work to be done as well. I believe that we have a huge challenge, and I I say that to my team a lot. We have been talking a lot about impact and SDGs and ESG. And so, and, you know, all of these things that we fight for and we need to prove a point. No. We need to sell a lot. We need to grow three times, you know, because in the end, people fundraise us, and we're not we're an enterprise We're not an NGO.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:54:57
So we need to have good gross margins, good contribution margins, you know, positive EBITDA. And I believe this is the challenge because if you just go in the normal sales, fast, you're good to go. I mean, you have a lot, and then you're just scaling up. And it's so tough to scale up and scale deep in the same time. And if you're scaling deep in Brazil, you're needing to fix a lot of things. Manufacturing logistics, supply chain, you know, gender equality. Yeah.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:55:24
Legislations, you know, tons of things and purchasing one battle a day and and just blowing. I don't know.

Kyle Krull - 00:55:43
I'm curious. I wanna kinda, like, double click on this growth piece you've talked about a couple times. 1000 to 3000, you know, kind of 3x in there. What's, like, the total size of the prize in Brazil in terms of doors? You know, is it 5000 potential points of distributions at 10,000. And how is that broken up? Like, in in the US, there's the natural channel, there's the Moodle, like conventional channel, there's mass, there's club, you know, how does that and that's typical like the that that's like the arc. You start a natural. You go to conventional. You go to match. You go to club.

Kyle Krull - 00:56:10
You know, what does that journey look like in the standard playbook for a Brazilian brand? And and is that the same that you're kinda going after?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:56:22
Yeah. But in Brazil, you don't have, like, a Whole Foods or a Tradeages.

Kyle Krull - 00:56:26
You

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:56:26
don't have that type of chain. You have premium chains that sell legacy brands and natural but there is no path as NUU as where you start in small nature. There is some stores, but big, small ones. So, in terms of size, in food service, we have 35,008 slash b, points of sales where in in the south and southeast of Brazil where we can sell. In the center, Southern Police of Brazil, 35,000. And in retail, we have nearly 8000 of sales of, I'm I'm saying supermarkets and retails that fit our category, not

Anthony Corsaro - 00:57:08
all

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:57:09
of the big ones. So you have the regional ones, which are, you know, retails in Rio, Sao Paulo, Minas, and a lot. You have the national ones. The national ones, we're already on the on them in some states, and now we are growing to be in every state in in Brazil, and we are in the food service just launching a line in the next So we don't have a line of food service launched, which is something that we're very excited for because we believe that no one's doing what we want to do in food service in Brazil. So Really, the growth of points of sales are gonna be in food service, but retail plays a huge role in terms of, revenue for us as well. Because when you enter a supermarket that has a hundred point of sales, you know, like that. It's just a massive volume. So and something that's growing a lot here. I don't know how is in US is the digital market the digital retail and the The dollars.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:57:57
Quick, you know, like, the ones that you ordered in 15 minutes during your in your house, and we are in some of them. And also in the condominiums condominium condominiums condominiums condominiums

Anthony Corsaro - 00:58:15
condominiums condominiums. Yeah.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:58:18
Retails. Like, this is small ones that you go and you grab and you pay, and this is growing a lot in Brazil, and we're also in this, category.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:58:27
Yeah. Online grocery and convenience, kind of those specialized convenience.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:58:30
Exactly.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:58:32
I I that Kyle's question one in mind, which is another kind of comparison question. We talk so much about velocity over here, Rafaela, and how do you get the product off the shelf once it's on the shelf with demos, sampling, digital ads, you know, promotions. Is it a similar playbook in Brazil? Like, what what have you all done for trial and, you know, customer discovery to actually start getting people to see these products, try these products, and repurchase them.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:58:58
Yeah. We we didn't have money, so we've never had money for marketing.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:59:04
That's how you know you got good products.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:59:06
Yeah. Yeah. We do have good products, but we didn't have money for marketing. We never had a marketing campaign or, you know, the design that you guys saw is my husband. He was the one that designed the brands, the packaging. So it was very in house the whole creative process, and now we have. So now it's a different, time. But what we're doing is sampling through events since we were born in events, and I did events for 2 years. And I'm talking big concerts.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:59:25
We're gonna do Lola Palusa. Lola Palusa is a concert.

Kyle Krull - 00:59:37
Yeah. Yeah.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:59:38
We're doing Lola Palooza. And then every, like, all of this

Anthony Corsaro - 00:59:42
In America or in Brazil?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 00:59:44
Not in Brazil. Awesome. Otherwise, if I can buy a ticket, that's true. Right. No. In Brazil. But, So what we're trying to understand is how we can keep growing the presence on events that has our public and the people that, you know, our consumers are navigating and Yeah. How we can sell the products at the same time we're doing sampling. So we already have a franchise in video, someone that does this event and we sell her at her at the minimum price that we can have. We don't have any gain when she participates in the event. And when she sells, she receives the money and she has the the, how do you call that, the profitability of it, But in the same time, our brand is being exposure. So what we are creating in this first quarter is a way to scale this model, in other cities.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:00:31
So then we can grow, and that's the methodology that we're doing of data driven is we're creating biomes. Right? So when you think of a tree, a tree, a tree in the middle of a landscape that has no other trees, it's the same parallel of a point sale in a city that no one knows the company. So we start in the point of selling a city. No one start knows the company or in the frozen sector. You know, it's not very diverse.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:00:55
You know, people don't have experienced the company in different, places. And that's how we created a platform where we see in the map of Brazil, the bubbles. I can show it to you later, but you see all the all the dots are points of sales that we are in. And then we created this consumer bubbles, and that's how we are gonna grow, cross with, the how to call PB, the, how much money these people have, you know, the, how to call that?

Kyle Krull - 01:01:36
Like, the demographics, like, the buying power, the buying power of

Anthony Corsaro - 01:01:39
the individual. Power?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:01:41
Yes. Yeah. GDP. GDP the GDP of the region, cross with the points of sales that we are in the maturity of the point sales that we are. And then we know exactly when we should do an event when we should open a cafeteria, when we should start on a retail. Because otherwise, if I go to a retail and there's no public, there's no consumer for me, I'm, like, paying up a lot of money to do the sellout and increase velocity, but we want to start to stop selling so then people start buying. You know, it's a different it's a shift of how we grow here, based on this, data analysis that we are start doing here. In the company after the fund after fundraising.

Kyle Krull - 01:02:26
I really like the, ambassador, franchise e model you outlined before sort of this breakeven. You're not gonna make any money on it. It's a pure exposure play, and it sounds like the system you developed for that individual is, like, they are incentivized to perform the best because they make more money when they do that. Exactly. Yeah. That's a really, really cool model. You know, the closest thing I can think of, like, in the US is, like, a a a really good demo person, like, in store. I don't think that same model exists in, like, an event that I'm aware of, but I think it's really cool and something that any US brand listening to can, like, try to figure out, like, how do you adopt that in the US?

Kyle Krull - 01:02:54
Because to me, that's a no brainer. If you can breakeven, and just get a ton of exposure and trial. Like, that's a huge win, especially in a NUU market as you're looking to expand into NUU geographies.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:03:14
Exactly. And, like, when you think of a win win situation where we win brand exposure and the person that is the franchisee, that award, the the franchise woman, she, wins the profitability. It's so amazing because We bake products in the in the event. You know? It's it's tough. It's it's time consuming. It's a lot of energy put, you need to bake and you need to, put the stops on it.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:03:38
And if something breaks and someone that I'm hiring, they're gonna say, oh, okay. The stove is broke. I mean, I don't, you know, like,

Anthony Corsaro - 01:03:53
that

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:03:53
that's bad. But if you have someone that needs to sell a lot, to, you know, in the end of the day, have a good possibility. She's gonna do her best. She's gonna be enthusiastic to talk about the brand. She's gonna be her best performance. And for us, that's what really matters. In the end of the day, we want to have a good consumer experience in our, booth. So And we don't have time or team to do this little event.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:04:10
They are creating brand exposure and brand awareness. So I'm very fond of this model, and we have 1 franchisee franchise in in Rio, and now we're scaling each other to the other cities.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:04:34
It's really cool. And it's actually super aligned with what, Doctor James Richardson recommends in his book, ramping your brain, which I really believe a great resource for emerging brands in the US. I think events, people forget about it a lot because we get so fixated on retail. I'm like trying to drive velocity right at the point of sale, but there's this really interesting thing that happens when you go to an event where people are already having this really positive experience and they taste a really good product while they're having this positive experience versus, like, trying to shove a sample down their throat when it's 6 PM and they're trying to rush home to, like, get,

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:05:04
you know,

Anthony Corsaro - 01:05:05
food made for their kids. So I love that. It's really cool and really unique. Ralphie, I'm gonna take us on with the the final question, which is how do we get regen brands at 50% market share by 2050? I know it's an easy one.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:05:29
I don't believe we could have 50 percent of regen companies without having the legacy brands. With us. I believe. And I always say that when people get too, like, oh, I don't talk Coca Cola. I don't talk to JBF. I don't talk to Nisley. I'm like, if you if these guys don't come, nothing's gonna You know? If you think of the land, then Esclay has the size of France, you know, if you want to have Regenative Agriculture and regenerative process inherent in the whole process. You have to have the legacy brands coming in acquiring, having M and As, having CBCs, investing. And I believe that's the path.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:06:02
I believe at some point, you're gonna see this shift, and I hope to see it in the velocity that we need to not in the world, but, to end in one major shift, I would say we we need to have, like, a Superance coming to support this cause.

Kyle Krull - 01:06:33
Yeah. I love, and I hate your answer because I'm one of those people who's like, no, I wanna talk to these guys. Like, I Like, let's focus on the little guys. Like, let's have them do the job, but you're right. Like, in order, like, if you look at it to your point, like, sheer impact, the amounts of land managed by their supply chain, that's really where you're gonna make an impact. You know? And I think you'd if you look at organic, for example, you know, there's private label organic in all of the major market in the United States now. That would not have happened if the organic movement did not succeed to begin with.

Kyle Krull - 01:06:59
So I think to your point, you know, the the small brands right now, the startups who are doing it right with the right missions need to prove success. Need to show that these models are viable need to prove market validation. And once that happens, I think it will garner more attention from some of these huge multinational organizations and they will start to hopefully make some of those supply chain transitions as well. So, as much as I don't like your answer, I think it's the right one.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:07:31
I know you don't like it, but, I mean, I just don't see another way, especially in Brazil, that they are so present, you know, like, they're so they have so much power in the government, particularly. I feel that, you know, if we want to see changes and when you think about, regeneration and and today, we are paying premium prices for the farmers, but if you could pay for natural, you know, the natural resources they are providing with increase in biodiversity, you know, sequestration carbon, or, you know, different landscapes and so on. I believe farmers also would do the ship. So I believe that there's this parallel of legacy brands coming in this movement and farmers seeing, a way to increase their profitability through these changes. So shifting from monoculture to agroforestry, you know, for them, it's very risky So they should know that they're gonna have a premium price that they will be paid for different, source of revenues, not only the food that they're selling, And these 2 forces are, I believe, that come together, and that will be initiated by the legacy brands, but Hopefully, we see another way. I don't know.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:08:49
Mhmm. Yeah. And I feel like you're such a great example of, like, worked at Johnson and Johnson, but was raised by smallholder farmers and, like, this beautiful confluence of those human experiences. And so much, you know, we've in in the previous episode Ed at Wild Farmy talked about about a lot about human relationships, and that's how we create these changes. And we sometimes forget that at all those big companies, there's human beings working there. And we can say whatever we want about how we feel about that. But at the end of the day, we're not gonna change any of this until we change, like, human beings. Right?

Anthony Corsaro - 01:09:16
And so if everyone's not at the table, it's really hard to do that. And if we're always, like, pointing fingers and it's always super divisive, it's it's gonna be really hard to do

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:09:31
Exactly. I heard a term yesterday that I loved is when you move from egocentric to egocentric and to move from that it's a lot of, thought I I I don't know. You need to be a to see a lot of documentaries and read a lot of books and hear a lot of podcasts and It takes a year or 2 to understand the size of the problem and to really have the guts to make solutions where wherever they are. Even, you know, small companies are big ones.

Kyle Krull - 01:10:01
Rafaela, this is a question I mean to ask them a lot of podcasts that I often forget to, but what we're you mentioned Kista Ground earlier, over, like, maybe your top 3 other, either favorite podcast episodes, favorite books, or documentaries that have really, like, helped you to change that ego to eco mindset.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:10:22
I well, to the ground, obviously. I love, regeneration and in the cry in the climate crisis in one generation. I feel it's a ease, in book that you see in different sectors, how you can deliver change. There is a book called Many Hot from Alex Atala's six hundred pages that he studies, Eucah. Oh my god. There's so many.

Kyle Krull - 01:10:47
Are you looking at your bookshelf right now?

Anthony Corsaro - 01:10:49
Ma'am, I have I have 20 I have 20 things written down for the show notes that I've no idea how to spell that I'm gonna have to send to Rafaela and get her to spell for me.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:11:00
Okay. Oh, there's 3rd place from Dan Barber. Whole order love, which I love. Also, there is a there is a book from Brazilian that called owners of the market that talks about the big retails and how they shift. This is the the thing about, you know, how they shift everything. And also a lot of ancestral knowledge. I read a lot of crewneckx and, the how plants dialogue, how do you call that? Lives Secret life of plants.

Kyle Krull - 01:11:30
Oh, yeah. Secret life of trees.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:11:32
Yes. Secret life of tree trees. We study a lot of a lot of these books, when we think not only to understand the impact, but to structure how the company grows. We mimic a lot of these processes.

Kyle Krull - 01:11:47
Super appreciate that. That's something I'm gonna try to make a note to do in more episodes. So I think it's so interesting to hear, like, how all these founders doing this this this amazing work. Like, what is influencing them And something I wanna know personally, and I think our audience would also really appreciate.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:12:00
Yeah. And Kyle just likes to create more work for me to make for Shona. So that's my goal.

Kyle Krull - 01:12:06
How do

Anthony Corsaro - 01:12:06
how do

Kyle Krull - 01:12:07
I make this hover for AC?

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:12:12
Guys. Thank you so much. I love what you guys are doing. I love to be part of this episode. I love to see that you guys are going international and Hope you can have more Brazilian companies. We have amazing companies here in Brazil, and I believe that we're having COP, 25 in Berlin. Which I believe we're gonna have a spotlight in Brazil and to see these amazing founders that are creating amazing products from this huge biodiversity that we have. And collaborating with your American way of growing business and really, you know, like this strategic focus of growing. I I just love this combination. I feel that we have a lot to share and and you know, collaborate.

Kyle Krull - 01:12:55
Mhmm. Agreed. Totally. So thank you for sharing the inspiring work that NUU is doing. One of the most only opening stats shared. And I know that Brazil's massive, but 800,000,000 people versus the US is 330 ish. You know, it just highlights the the potential impact.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:13:10
Around the world. Around the world. We have 200,000,000, citizens, but we have 800,000,000 people around the world.

Kyle Krull - 01:13:19
Mhmm. Amazing. Wow. Well, yeah, thank you for sharing the story and teaching us about the Brazilian marketplace, you know, something that, you know, I personally don't know anything about. So appreciate the time.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:13:29
Thanks, Rafaela.

Rafaela Gontijo Lenz - 01:13:30
Thank you so much. See you guys soon. For

Anthony Corsaro - 01:13:36
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