#61 - Jay Albany @ Wide Open Agriculture

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #61 - Regenerating The Western Australian Wheat Belt - (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 Podacst. 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 Jay Albany, who is the CEO of Wide Open Agriculture. Wide Open Agriculture is Troy is a leading regenerative food and agriculture company and operates 3 distinct enterprises. Under the name Dirty Clean Food, they operate a direct to consumer e commerce platform that sells 300 different regenerative and artisan products directly to wholesale and individual consumers. They've also launched a line of branded oatmilk based CPG products under the Dirty Clean Food name as well. And currently, WOA is focusing its future growth on its 3rd enterprise, producing and supplying butteene protein created by processing Australian Sweet Lupin. Sweet lupin serves as a rotational crop in regenerative systems of the Western Australian wheat belt, but currently does not have a large profitable market as a human food ingredient. Wide Open Ag's business is a beautiful blend of targeting both local and global impact while operating under their 4 returns mandate. Which includes financial, natural, social, and inspirational returns.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:01:26
Jay was a joy to have on as a great storyteller, and we certainly covered a lot of ground in this one, folks. Let's dive in. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to The ReGen Brands Podacst. Very excited today to have my friend Jay from White Open Agriculture with us. So welcome, Jay.

Jay Albany - 00:01:56
Thanks, Anthony. Super excited to be here.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:01:59
Yeah, man. It's good. I think this is the first podcast interview 12 hours apart. So, you know, greetings from Thursday, and you're in Friday. You know?

Jay Albany - 00:02:08
Yes. Well, it's, Friday is going really well so far. You should be excited to see what happens.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:02:14
Yeah. I'm excited. I'm excited for it to come around over here. For those of you not picking up on it yet, Jay is in Australia, and WOA is a publicly traded regenerative food business. In Australia that really in my mind consists of 3 kind of distinct enterprises. But, Jay, for those that are unfamiliar, can you give you know, the listeners just a little bit of background on on those 3 things.

Jay Albany - 00:02:38
Yeah. Thanks, Anthony. So the company wide open agriculture ran We're focused in Western Australia. 3 units, primarily 3 initiatives. The first is a regen food brand. Called dirty clean food. Done a great job, building that brand. It's direct to consumer and, in retail. Second is a, sort of really ambitious and exciting B2B initiative that, is uses, Lupins, Australian suite loopins, which I'll Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:14
Sure I'll get a

Jay Albany - 00:03:14
chance to tell you about later. And the third is we we really WOAnna make a, a homegrown grown processed pope, made here at WOA, Oakville. We have an oat milk brand. It's like a consumer package good, and, it's been quite a interesting story of how we've done there, but, it's still still going. So we got 3.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:39
Yeah. And and we're live with a man who's from Alabama and now in Australian. And he's gonna he's gonna tell us all about it. So, we love that.

Jay Albany - 00:03:48
That's right. That's right. I, yeah, I I got lost playing Oregon Trail with my my wife.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:56
Well, super, super helpful framing and excited to dive into all three of those things. Can you share, Jay, a little bit around the origin story, and and also kind of your story and how you got involved with the the business as well?

Jay Albany - 00:04:09
Yeah. Thanks, Anthony. I I'm gonna start with the, my story is so long and twisted. God. I'll have to I'll answer you quickly with the the company, which is really, I mean, is really why I'm here. I I didn't found light up an agriculture to gentlemen, Ben Cole and Doctor Bengel, and Anthony Maslyn founded this, and It was really early. I think it's in 2017. Actually, you know, a little bit before that, but we'll just say 2017 when everything started moving, in with a vision to, regenerate the, the wheat belt, which is an area in Western Australia that, you know, it's probably not dissimilar to a lot of various. Everyone can relate to in terms of, it it has had a lot. It was a very high you know, very diverse, lush place at some point and, you know, 100 years of really intense farming practices and and sort of clearing, has has impacted that land.

Jay Albany - 00:05:06
And, there was a a community of lots of people there, who sort of slowly over the last 40, 40 or 50 years, you know, everyone knows someone who had to sell their farm or or got sort of, you know, acquired into the big in the big corporate farming thing and, and moved away or the the towns sort of lost their. They're amazing towns. I'm not saying it's an amazing town. I'm just saying, like, there's been a a long term change and they were and they found this business to, like, Hey, what, how can we apply regenerative farming to improve the soil, sort of, create a little bit of, value from and and and commercialize, and create fair value from from farming in a different way. If anyone has seen like a picture of, sort of red dirt Australia. Like, it's not quite like that, but it's like that with, like, you know, a bunch of, you know, this this huge industrial farming zones where there's a lot of grains and and and wheat growing.

Jay Albany - 00:06:21
And then and then the dirt, though, you can you can literally see the top soil, you know, not not bearing.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:06:41
From from this conversation and others, it seems like it's just very similar to like the Corn Belt in the US. Right? So it's like 2 guys. It's the Australian equivalent of of a couple guys saying, Hey, we wanna regen eye, you know, the corn belt, but for in this context, it's the Western Australian wheat belt.

Jay Albany - 00:06:56
Yeah. Thank you for saying it so much. It's much tighter than me. That is exactly what I meant because, I think what appealed to me was, when I I drove down to this place called Williams, when when I okay. I did remember that it was 2015 2017 was their IPO or something like that. So Okay. But I drove down to, Williams and which is, you know, right in the middle of the rebuild. It's you know, 2 a half hours or 2 hours drive from Perth into the middle of it's not the outback. I don't wanna give that impression, but it's in the middle of, like, red dark scrubby vegetation along the highway, and you're kinda like, wow. And it's so hot.

Jay Albany - 00:07:28
At least it was on the day before Christmas when I drove down there to meet Penn. And, he did, like, he, I, he had talked to him about his business, and it really did remind me of, mean, I grew up in Alabama as a as, he mentioned that I'm not gonna pretend I grew up on a farm doing all the farming things, but I definitely was around this kind a lot of people of this kind of story. I know someone who had, a family farm, but had to sell it, or I that used to be done this way, but now it's not. And, so I just feel like, it just really struck a cord in me, like, and and something I could relate to. So it did really hearing their story, and he lives in William Spindoz. And, and sort of hearing that story of, hey, we're gonna try to build this business, and it's not just about profit. It's about, and and it's actually 4 returns.

Jay Albany - 00:08:24
Is so I'm just gonna it's regenerated the wheat belt. We're gonna use regenerative farming to Mhmm. To create a business that hopefully improves the value crops and improves, you know, family farmers' lives. It gives them, like, a way to a way to trust that they're gonna they can make the investments to go to the region and someone's gonna buy it and pay a fair price for all that work. That's kind of like what we tried to do. And when I met them, they just finished a really big, really big innovative project that it wasn't that it didn't end up being commercial, which is a shame, but I was just, like, crazy.

Jay Albany - 00:09:02
Long haired American. And, I was on my background and I just finished doing it, like, working for a long time on a, online grocery business in New York. And, like, the last thing I had done, like, literally before I was like, you know what? I'm gonna pursue this Australian dream we've always had was was take the prospect park, Farmers Market in Brooklyn, I put it online for a half hour delivery, in Manhattan, because Wow. Obviously. I really, it was, like, my personal weekend farmers market, and I walked through that. And I was like, hey, can I buy a bunch of your stuff?

Jay Albany - 00:09:47
Because you guys, I'm sure don't like driving here every Saturday, and I'll make it available for half for our delivery during the week. Like, we we probably won't mess with your sales because we don't deliver to Brooklyn. And, it was, like, my favorite thing I ever did because I got because of the personal relationship suck because of, yeah, These are people I've I've been shopping with since for my entire children's lives. And, anyways, I was like, oh, great. Well, I I thought a lot about how to commercial commercialize this. Like, let's let's go. You know, I'll build it in Perth.

Jay Albany - 00:10:21
And, so it was really like a a great sort of meeting story. I I didn't know as much about the science of region farming, but I I do have some. And I really, really connected with the the story of and the and the situation from, you know, from things that I put from my own personal experience and also, loving, being in Australia and the excitement of it. And I really love building businesses from scratch. I was like, let's let's go. You have their network. This could be sold. I promise. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:11:06
I mean, the fact that they just happened to be in a in a spot where they were, like, evaluating the whole business and they stumble upon a guy who had built an American online grocery platform, and they needed to create, you know, some sort of market access vehicle with proper economics to, you know, a financially reward regenerative stewardship, and and this all happens. And so I guess take us take us through some of the journey since then building the e commerce platform.

Jay Albany - 00:11:34
Yeah. First of all, I'm sure they read some background checks on me, but I am. Yeah. Because it must have seemed weird, but yeah. So, so getting going, it was really it was really bare bones. The the company is publicly listed, but it's a little bit different here, in Australia versus the United States. There there is a there's a more natural. Yeah. I guess it's like it is it is okay and not looked down upon or not felt shady to, like, do your initial funding on on the Australian Docs as opposed to, I think. Yeah.

Jay Albany - 00:12:18
United States, like, you do, you do, you know, sort of family martens, like, like a net worth funding to get you going or you venture capital or whatever you're gonna do. I mean, you don't go to the Nasdaq unless You've already made a big time and you're gonna cash out. I think I think, I think it's it's just a little bit different. It's I think it's because of all these mining operations where it's, like, sort of think you found something. People anyways, or it's just different.

Kyle Krull - 00:12:48
It's not You

Anthony Corsaro - 00:12:49
can go public earlier down under Grand table.

Jay Albany - 00:12:51
That's right. I don't know. I love how you said that. I this gotta be a t shirt or something. I mean, you gotta work on that. Anyways, so that aside, but even though we were pub the point I was trying to make is even though we were company. Like, it's, it was, it's small. Like, there was, like, five people. And, they were basically, you know, not a lot of money and they are basically integrate, you know, incubating a couple ideas. A a consumer packaged good product that someone else is working on, trying to grow hemp in the wheat belt. And and me. So I think that, Like, day 1?

Kyle Krull - 00:13:44
Like, so what

Jay Albany - 00:13:44
are you gonna do? You gotta write this paper? And I'm like, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna go drive to all the people like, every grocery store and restaurant I can think of with, our first farmer that you've given me, who is a cattle farmer, Warren, Penn City, Blackwood Valley beef, amazing, so good. You know, really well well connected and well, very intelligent and thoughtful regenerative farmer. I'm a drive around thirty people over a week. Meet them and see if they'll see what

Anthony Corsaro - 00:14:13
how much

Jay Albany - 00:14:17
before I write you a paper because I wanna actually, like, talk to the people I'm gonna need and make sure that they, That's a good idea. So I think I think, like, basically, that is that sounds really simple. But it can be really scary to, ask people who are not your friends and family, about an idea. And, and be ready to, you know, get told as stupid. And so I I did get some incredibly done things in that first 2 weeks of foreign. And, you know, I talked to him, and I was like, hey, why do you think people are gonna buy your meat? And your beef and why is it good?

Jay Albany - 00:14:55
And, like, you know, and I talked to the white open folks and said, well, you know, if you had to describe regenerative agriculture in, like, you know, 10 seconds and in a way to sum it. Obviously, we all know if you're listening to your podcast, that is extremely difficult to do. Yeah. So I kinda came in and to the first couple of restaurants, and I was like, oh, hey. We got the we've we've got to, like, here food's really good, but, hey. You know, it'd be even better if you had had some environmental spin on on region, and, it was just like, not I just made for this podcast.

Jay Albany - 00:15:29
I just made a, you know, it's moving.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:15:42
Yeah. But,

Jay Albany - 00:15:43
yes, there's nothing. No love at all.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:15:46
No react.

Jay Albany - 00:15:47
And I was like, okay. Well, that's not a good sewn pitch. And then I walked back to her, and I was like, hey, no one should buy that. And he's like, try. Yeah. Try that it tastes really good. Okay. Good idea.

Kyle Krull - 00:16:00
So the

Jay Albany - 00:16:00
next one

Kyle Krull - 00:16:01
is, like,

Jay Albany - 00:16:01
the flavor. You can taste the difference of how this guy makes it, you know, and And then, you know, sort of how you figure out how to how to pitch your idea with actual conversations. And even though it's presales, like, I couldn't have sold them anything. Like, those are gonna be your highest conversion people later when you're actually ready to do it because they have helped you that you're asking for advice telling what you're doing. They have given you help and just the fact that they've given you some advice or told you your idea is no good. Like, it kind of commits them emotionally to help you out later when you're actually going. I I know it's weird, but it's like, gives you a a base of people to go hit up.

Jay Albany - 00:16:43
So anyways, yeah, we went I literally started me and him in a truck, I had his truck. I one car driving around Perth, with different kinds of potential customers walking in trying to get their attention. And then and then we went back and we sort of came out with a game plan to to balance the way we were gonna sell a cow to make money based on

Kyle Krull - 00:17:16
based on

Jay Albany - 00:17:17
what the feedback was. The digital thing, I obviously do how to do, but I was worried that digital thinking, the website.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:17:26
Right. Right.

Jay Albany - 00:17:27
I was worried that it would take too long with our resources to scale it up. So I really, especially for something really big, like a cow. Right. I, I wanted to make sure we had, like, the other two channels of up demand to to balance the animal to make it work

Anthony Corsaro - 00:17:49
So, basically, starting with food service to create the base level demand and then to build the DTC e commerce. Platform on top of it.

Jay Albany - 00:17:57
Yeah. That's right. I, I mean, we had the we had the website, but that it was, like, set up for, you know, because I always had cows set up for beat boxes. But, but I, you know, it was the kind of thing where you had to, like, make your phone chime when you got an order. So I didn't miss it. Yeah. Because I always like saying this. To people in the in the Perth or not or in cities, but probably for your probably for your customer base, it won't it won't, be that surprising, but cows are really big.

Jay Albany - 00:18:23
And most people in, like, a normal suburban or urban life only think about what they eat. So they're like steaks a burger every once in a while or whatever.

Kyle Krull - 00:18:47
Right.

Jay Albany - 00:18:47
You know, it's like 70% not that. And you have to find it's like burgers is lifeblood or or whatever sort of other leg and process the meds is like how you survive. So, it was really critical once I talked to Warren and figured out how he made money as a cattle former, selling directly that we got a hamburger restaurant, and I will just give props. There's one guy in Perth who is responsible for dirty clean food existing at all. Same as Simon County, and he is a chef of short order burger speaks great. American style burgers in Perth. I can vouch for that that you can hear me.

Jay Albany - 00:19:25
And he was like, yeah, I'll take a shot on you, and it was a You know, he just promised straight up, yes. I will do it because your beef tastes good, and I like not me. He liked Warren. And, and I like you, Warren. And once I had sort of, okay, great. I have these 2 pretty popular hamburger yeah, 2 restaurants. I had these 2 pretty popular hamburger restaurants as a starting point.

Jay Albany - 00:19:47
Like, I can then actually self, like, start this business. So Simon County. Thank you forever.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:20:09
Okay. And then today, to give an audience a feel for, like, the scale, how many farmers are there? How many products? Sales. If you can share that and kind of how did you how did you bridge that gap? Like, what was the growth?

Jay Albany - 00:20:20
The growth? Yeah. So what we So sales, we it grew really fast. So that that story about me and Warren, the truck is in kind of, mid 2019. We The COVID bomb. Yeah. Yeah. We did. We, us, We were in total denial. Sorry. I didn't answer your question first. Talk about COVID.

Jay Albany - 00:20:33
Just remember to ask me that later. So we we do about $12,000,000 annualized in sales. So it was a pretty it was a very like, I think it grew at, like, a 100% CAGR or something. I'm writing up probably, but 90, whatever, high 90s for the 1st 3 years. And, And then this year has been sort of a more of a digesting, trying to stay positive on the growth kind of a year. The the overall brand, has, I think it's, I think, it's 15 regen farmers in our network. We do own 1 regen farm.

Jay Albany - 00:21:15
But in general, we're we're a business that's about creating and securing a, commercial offtake to help people, like, confidently invest in switching to region or, or, or just telling people who already reach in, you know, get a fair price for what they're doing. So about 15, the overall sort of land Australia is big. Like, You know?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:22:00
Right.

Jay Albany - 00:22:01
A few texts is. I forgot how many. So, you know, this is a lot. Sorry. It's 30,000 hectares of of land under influence from dirty clean food or networks. So it's a it's a fair amount of land. I guess, just stating that there's a lot of land here. So my ambition is that it's some 100,000 multiple, not 30,000, but I'm still proud of 30,000. And, and so and we sell, you know, we have, like, a couple of core products that we can scale, like, I mentioned cattle to start with, but beeflammed pork chicken eggs, sort of staples in a you know, in in less that you'll go that you'll work through a region, property, where we have pretty good, pretty good supply and pretty and enough product to take in the grocery stores as well. And then and then we have the website works with about 50, what I call friends of dirty clean food. So they're sort of they're either smaller region farmers who we just don't have enough supply to take it into the wholesale channels, or or they're, what I like to call, sort of values aligned, small, small addressable food businesses who I just wanna help because they try really hard.

Jay Albany - 00:23:01
Their values align to us, meaning, you know, they're they're trying really hard to use the the ethical ingredients, and they're trying to make an authentic real prog, a highly processed product And, you know, they're trying to make good food, and I wanna be a part of helping Perth helping part helping those person have that food culture. And so, you know, that could range from, like, a a really a really special kind of salt with herbs mixed in, you know, to, all kinds of stuff you might see at a farmer's market or something. So we have about 50 of those and about 300 total skews on the digital platform across across everything. So it's really it's really built to be a digital farmers market that you can have bring to you tomorrow. In, you know, in grocery, it's more, it's more like 50 or 60 SKUs total. That that sounds like a lot.

Jay Albany - 00:24:18
It's mainly because there's so many options on meat if you next time you next time you go to shopping in Australia, they still have butchers, you know, like,

Kyle Krull - 00:24:32
it's like,

Jay Albany - 00:24:33
it hasn't quite been totally, changed over. And, so there's just a lot of options and people want that variety. So it's it's probably the fact that we have beeflam and pork means that we have a lot of skews there, but, you know, there's probably a dozen other skews.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:24:52
Yeah. It seems like you've built that deal kind of off the livestock. Products. So I'm also kinda curious where did the where did the oat milk come in and and how did that how did that start happening?

Jay Albany - 00:25:03
Yeah. That that's a good question. So I I definitely have I think I've definitely covered the livestock. But, so basically, the the wheat build is this area. I'm sure you can tell from its name that,

Kyle Krull - 00:25:15
a

Jay Albany - 00:25:15
lot of a lot of grains grown, there. So there's there's Australia is a big exporter of, you know, wheat oats Barley. We'll we drink a lot of beer, so I don't know if it gets exported, but, yeah, we we in looping. So, our first sort of idea was, we I often hear, like, Australia has the best totes in the world. You know? And, you know, alright. So they're all discomfort for this region. So I think I think the idea basically came from, hey, let's it's really cool.

Jay Albany - 00:25:47
We built this this region platform, you know, in Perth and and it's going great and and it's sort of covering a lot of Australia's, Southwest because of the it's easier to get a high quality meat year round. There's more rain to yeah. Everyone wants to know southwest gets us a little bit more rain than the middle. But so how can we, like, make sure we're in this wheat belt area? So, we really felt we like, well, oh, no, at the time we did this, Oatly obviously was a thing, and everyone heard of it. But, it wasn't like it is now where there's, like, oh, got everywhere. Yeah. And, we were like, oh, well, we have the best dose in the world.

Jay Albany - 00:26:30
So, obviously, we'll have the best dose in the world. Which is a little naive. But, so we got these oats and, and their regen oats and we're like, well, we could sort of lead frog. What's going on here? But and I think there was a whole bunch of news about, like, Otley had some kind of big corporate nasty investor or something. So the people who were, like, super left on the Sustainability focus. Sustainability thing. We're like, yeah, they sold out. Or whatever whatever happened.

Jay Albany - 00:27:10
I don't I don't wanna get into that. But, So we're like, oh, there's an opportunity here to have a re have the world's 1st region in Oakville. Make a big deal of it and you know, really, we got as many notes that we could possibly imagine. So we could really make some impact. And, and so we, we didn't count this plan. We went in didn't have any idea how to make out milk.

Jay Albany - 00:27:38
So we we, spent some time, not myself, actually then did the We've spent some time, go, like, interviewing, or whatever, reaching out to people who make O'Rourke. Or this was in Europe and, found a really great family business, that had been made plant based milks for, like, 25 years in Italy. Wow. And we're like, okay. Can we do this? You know, because we We have we have great oats. We have milling. We can prepare them any way you want.

Jay Albany - 00:28:14
Australia is totally set up to send you oats however you want in containers. We have a brand that's in, you know, a 100 grocery stores and we'll be growing fast and about time. Anyways, so we did it. We launched it up. It was we figured out how to do the carbon neutral stuff. I know I don't even wanna get into carbon neutral, but we followed the rules that one would do to get the stamp on carbon neutral, packaging in Australia.

Jay Albany - 00:28:38
And, So whatever. We had the war we thought we had the world's first carbon neutral o milk plus the world's first regen at o milk, but then like, a week before, takes a really long time to ship oats to Italy on the by sea. Right. And then have it come back. And, like, a a couple weeks before we launched, minor figures had announced the world's 1st carbon neutral mill. So we were a little bit bummed about that, but we just changed the 1st region and carbon neutral.

Jay Albany - 00:29:22
Was it

Anthony Corsaro - 00:29:29
were they selling that in Australia?

Jay Albany - 00:29:32
They I don't they weren't selling in Australia, but

Anthony Corsaro - 00:29:35
I was gonna say they're American brand, aren't they? That's like the guy in the bird costume. Is that their logo?

Jay Albany - 00:29:41
Yes. They're very big. Yeah. That's in. They have those strange draw. I don't I don't know if they they have the strange drawings of, like, yeah, looking in a goose or I I don't I don't know. Yeah. I actually really like their their marketing. It it At first, I thought it was silly that's grown on me, over the years of watching them kick my butt. So we launched this and I think it was a really good product. But we Sorry. I think it was a really good product, period.

Jay Albany - 00:30:03
It's still available, and we make money on it. So great. But our sort of global ambitions for this, you know, we're a little over overstated and overexcited for what we could actually follow through on. And I'm trying to remember the dates. Sorry, Anthony. I think it's been a product for, like, 18 or maybe 2 years. Mhmm. And, you can just yeah. Go ahead.

Jay Albany - 00:30:27
Sorry.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:30:44
Yeah. Did it get to the point where

Jay Albany - 00:30:45
I'm from stumbling on whatever I'm saying?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:30:48
Well, no. I mean, it sounds like maybe just the business case didn't after it was in market for a little while, it became clear that the business case wasn't gonna meet the full returns model, right, from a profitability and maybe a farmer impact and a scalability perspective. It sounds like that maybe it was the case.

Jay Albany - 00:31:03
Yeah. I mean, yeah. Absolutely. So what I thought was that I had just disrupted the meat industry in this state. You don't you got there there's no one, like, shadier than people who trade, meat in terms of, like, competition and cheating and underhanded stuff. Like, this would be a piece of cake because people, like, oat milk is so friendly and,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:31:34
like Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Albany - 00:31:37
I was I could not have been more wrong, like, by the time because we're a listed company, we sort of had to say, well, I I would redo this now. But we said, hey, we're gonna do this. Like, it's gonna be a big deal. Like, we're gonna know, we're gonna start in WOA, Western Australia, and then we're gonna take it global and blah blah blah. By the time that boat arrived, look, there was a couple more brands who had moved a lot faster than shipping oats over back and forth the the year that I see. And, like, it was it was, like, they were totally ready for us. And, the sort of thing you would any normal person would do would be to, like, walk around to the cafes and say, hey.

Jay Albany - 00:32:14
You know, explain why your own milk is local and better and give it a shot and all this stuff. I mean, the it was like an iron lock on every place to get coffee, in town with this other company that I'm not gonna bag on your show. And, because Yeah. I don't like to bag other companies, but Yeah. But they were, like, so ready for us and so much bigger and had so much more marketing, and we're so ready to squash us, by giving away pallets of product and Like, it was it, like, it was a iron lock on cafes. Only people who would take the product were people who purchased our it was a good product. It worked.

Jay Albany - 00:33:00
It made a little, you know, cool cappuccino and all the stuff. Yeah. It was not a product issue. It was a we were just outmaneuvered. Only people we could get in the cafe business where people who purchased our meat and, like, liked me personally, and I could talk them into it over beer. Like,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:33:25
I was like, you know, that We needed the premier coffee shops, and sounds like that. That wasn't it.

Jay Albany - 00:33:32
So it was it was like, we had to sort of rethink that. And, we ended up, like, we ended up being able to build a pretty fast growing business. Like, we got into Woolworths, which is the the biggest grocery store over here, and we've got, you know, we got it into all of our grocery stores, but we it we probably lost 6 to 9 months of just sort of, like, figuring out what to do. And We had done all the same presales like I told you, but by the time we were ready to go, like, it was just we got totally beaten, which was was just frustrating. So that ended up being I don't think we've disclosed how much it is, but, so I don't wanna say ex Republic company, but, you know, it's it's say, less than 15% of our revenue is more than 5.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:34:22
Yeah.

Jay Albany - 00:34:23
And, you know, we had ambitions for it to be, you know, half. So, it was a pretty tough, pill to swallow, but, and then along the way, lots of things had but we haven't given up on it because, we wanted to finish the job here and make it. And part of the so many competitors have emerged and so many big companies have way more money than us marketing that actually, the secret sauce for making oat milk is no longer secret sauce. So there's just I don't have to go to Italy to

Kyle Krull - 00:35:02
to

Jay Albany - 00:35:02
make it. Like, now I now I have options locally. So, we can we can be a lot more competitive finishing on that story. So and we gotta grant. We're really lucky to get a grant from, WOA State government sort of help us, finance part of that. So we we should be making a local product in a few months and we're we basically after that whole story I told you, we decided to just give up on Cafes for a little while and focus on grocery and just build a predictable sell through, and and focus on Australian Asia, Southeast Asia, where they are used to buying Australian exported goods and just waste Yeah. That we had our own we had the full value proposition we wanted. And, so I am gonna have round 2 coming. I don't mind saying this publicly. You guys get ready. Gonna have round 2 coming in a few months, so get ready.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:36:00
Well, I feel I I wanna kinda recap what you just said. There's some good takeaways there. And it also is a good segue into really the the loop and and the B2B and the bunting protein play. Right? Because you have this mixed bag of results from the 2 different, CPG slash D2C. And now you're trying to build this this B2B thing as well, but what I heard there was, like, speed to market and manufacturing, right, as key critical factors, distribution, and and kind of different games based on channel and then also like marketing war chest specifically around just market timing. Right? So I feel like those are all good takeaways that we've definitely talked about with so many brands, and there's been positives and negatives in in in difference, along the way underneath all of those.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:36:33
But all super, you know, critical factors there. But I think the especially the old milk work really landed itself to what y'all are doing on the loop inside with the bun team protein, if I remember correctly. So talk us through kinda how that came to be and and what the focus is there.

Jay Albany - 00:36:58
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Anthony. You're right. So, I I retrenched That's because we have what we think is a killer app product that uses lubbon, protein with our oat milk and, obviously, you know, no one likes the fact that there are food miles with shipping containers. So it sort of finishes our our overall, environmental value proposition. I don't I don't like being carbon neutral because it offsets. I like being carbon neutral because we're actually doing the right thing. Yeah. So so we have all of this lined up.

Jay Albany - 00:37:27
And the key, I think, but I was still gonna probably, abandon this product until the loop in, until we tested the loop in protein in in the oatmeal.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:37:51
Hey, dude. Let's pause and just tell people what is sweet looping? Like, how has it grown and the fact that, like, it's, like, in the grain rotation in Australia? Because people, especially over here, probably wouldn't wouldn't even have that background. So I should flag first.

Jay Albany - 00:38:03
Very good point. Probably no one knows what lupin is. So I And

Anthony Corsaro - 00:38:06
it's it's not the same as lupini beans. They're related, but it's not the same because we do have some lupini beans that you can buy. In stores here in the US.

Jay Albany - 00:38:14
That's right. So Levin is is a, Lupin is part of a grain rotation. It's a it's a flower legume, like a flowering legume that is at is work through a grain rotation over here. And and and also in Europe and also in Canada, but most of the world's lubans grow in Australia. Like, I think I think probably a little over 50%

Kyle Krull - 00:38:43
of the world's, output

Jay Albany - 00:38:43
and a it can range between 5070 depending on the year come out of Australia. Like, 90% of Australia's loop ins come out of region where we're trying to regenerate called Western Australia. Wow. And sort of the next the next biggest area is is Canada you know, which is sort of high teens, of global production in Germany, which is single digits, so I'm not gonna go pass that. But, The, what's really cool about Louvens is you they're like, They're amazing for a regenerative system, in a dry, in a relatively dry soil and they do fine in wet soils too, but in a relatively dry soil, system, So they they they buy they they're one of the few things, you know, that, you know, create biological nitrogen and put it in the So we we did a study. Like, we had a loop in farmer, and he was gonna tell you if I got him on your show, maybe it will sometime if you want.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:39:56
Yeah.

Jay Albany - 00:39:58
If we got him on your show, he would say, I usually have been in the areas after I've used lupin, I don't have to use any fertilizer, like, with a really high percentage, like,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:40:06
you know,

Jay Albany - 00:40:07
of any kind, organic, whatever, nothing of, you know, he'll tell you, like, 90% or something there. Yeah. You know, like, conventional system, people who are not trying to be regenerative

Kyle Krull - 00:40:20
we

Jay Albany - 00:40:20
did a study with one of the big grain companies here, and and we basically found that you can reduce the the nitrogen fertilizer need on that on that land by, you know, between 30 50% depending on Wow. The farm and whatever, which is a huge number. Yeah. Huge part of the country. And these are people who are just like their businesses, you know, improved yields, improved cash flow per, you know, so it's like, this is a a pretty big thing. The problem with.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:40:52
Is it a cash crop? A cover crop or what what's the model?

Jay Albany - 00:40:55
No. So it's used as a sorry. I should say. No. The the price is terrible. So I know I'm aggressive. So everyone who is excited to play lupin's and make a lot of money know Not yet.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:41:11
Well, you're working you're working on it. That's the point. So, yeah.

Jay Albany - 00:41:13
But we're working on trying to fix that. So our whole thing is like, how do we help commercialize? We are trying to elevate it, like, sort of the way that kinda has been elevated in a price. A price. You said

Anthony Corsaro - 00:41:28
canola?

Jay Albany - 00:41:29
I said canola. Because I think in I don't know if that's true in the United States. There are, but in Australia, that's, like, been a really great. The increase in canola prices has been really great for a lot of farmers in the region in terms of having a something else to rotate in their in their system that, that pay that actually they can make money on, because they just you know, they just keep hammering it with the same things. And, rotating looping, they really only do to it's it's used for sheet feed. Premier. And it is great for sheep feed because it's it's really high in protein naturally and has all kinds of other attributes that are good for studying, but but it's it's it's great for a lot of healthy protein and protein related things, but they it's the human It's not really sold for human food other than, you know, the pretty small amount. Like, you can if you go shopping, you'll you'll definitely see if it look hard, but you'll definitely see loop in and you know, an ingredient list on some things, but it's really it's kind of like a flower that gets mixed in sometimes. But what we've done is because this is such a so we grow so much, the universities have been doing work and lots of on how to make loop in, you know, more valuable globally, because it's a strategic resource in Western Australia.

Jay Albany - 00:42:34
Mhmm. And we bought a as a the technology that came out of this university called curtin a couple years ago that basically, unfolds the protein structure. So if you're not, this is a podcast. So I've taken it. It's sort of like, there's a church, there's a steep hole. And, like, shot my fingers up in the air. So there's, you know, there's more receptors in the pro.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:43:16
You have to watch on YouTube to get these killer visuals. So that's a plug for our YouTube channel.

Jay Albany - 00:43:22
These so a hard sort of bitter a hard protein structure unfolds. There's more receptors, and it increases the solubility and dilation, the this, protein once you've isolated it. And then also by incredible luck, I don't know if Curt would agree with this, but in my view, this was a very fortunate, very fortunate lucky by product of, yeah, the process, the taste, which is normally pretty bitter, That's no one eats it. Is, like, once you've gone through this process, like, it just, like, pulls back the taste a lot. So it's, like, easier to blend, easier to mix in because of the solubility and dilation, and it doesn't and it tastes like nothing, which is like, the goal of any ingredient. So we're super thrilled with this. And we've spent the you know, the majority of our resources over the last 18 months trying to bring this from lab scale, like, and theoretical at the university to, like, commercial scale. And we just finished it, which is I'm super excited.

Jay Albany - 00:44:36
Like, we we had built a pilot plant a pilot plant in R&D sooner last year, which is a really big bet for us, to make that kind of CapEx and sort of built an ecosystem of, you know, presales And then we we were able to purchase a a factory, you know, especially in German So I kinda get away from the painters to Europe thing. But built, bought a factory out of administration that was, like, purpose built for, looping, which is the most random thing, but this was the other looping company.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:45:18
So, okay, Just to I wanna recap it

Jay Albany - 00:45:21
because there's there's so much.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:45:23
No. It's it's good though. And I and there's there's commonalities in kind of, analogies I wanna make for the audience because I feel like, especially for the American context, it would be helpful. We've had some episodes on the show where we talk about wheat and how it's a really good rotational crop in in the in the grain rotations. And so there's kind of a similar play to that. I'm also hearing like a similar play to soy of like, hey, this used to be in grid rotations. It's mainly been in livestock feed. How do we make it more, you know, edible or usable in human products.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:45:47
And we see the the plant based boom and that's happening a lot with soy and people will argue about whether that's good or bad and kind of how it's being done in in certain ways. But it's also making me think a little bit of Kurza over here. So, you know, similar kind of regenerative attributes, but it needs commercial support to basically become market accessible and make the economics make sense. Whereas, you know, over here, the land institute hasn't been an actual enterprise know, that they're trying to do that, but they're really a scientific organization. So it's really cool to hear kind of this public private and institutional partnership where it's like, hey, This university did food science and R and D that figured out how we could turn this into something edible. And now it's our job to go, you know, turn that into stuff that people eat. You I think you mentioned you're already blending with oat milk.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:46:33
Is this like plant based meat? Are we talking plant based milks, or are we just talking it's a protein additive to whatever? Like, what what is the application spectrum?

Jay Albany - 00:46:50
Well, Anthony, I'm gonna tell you. It it is the best plant based protein is, like, it should be a 100% of sort of the next generation of plant based foods after the ones that don't taste good or or delisted from every grocery store.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:47:05
Yeah. I like it.

Jay Albany - 00:47:07
Also also it does especially it's really it's really especially good in a dairy analog category. So, we put it we also think it can make a really good noodle, but I'll we're focused on dairy analog at the moment because, so that's like milks, yogurts, cheeses, spreads, mayonnaise, that kind of stuff.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:47:34
Because of consistency or nutritional value, or what what property lends itself to that?

Jay Albany - 00:47:39
I think it's because everyone likes the it's kinda similar to me selling the meat a few years ago, which is hilarious, but, like, everyone likes the fact that it's you know, there's most of the the sort of customer is a big, you know, a global or whatever, someone who's making a consumer packaged goods. They don't

Anthony Corsaro - 00:47:58
have

Kyle Krull - 00:47:58
a

Jay Albany - 00:47:58
global, but trying to get some of the global ones to do it. They want to be more sustainable and they want head evidence. So, so they all like that, but it's kind of a nice to have Like, the main reason they, you know, how they operate their businesses, is, like, you know, it's still pretty normal in terms of like profit. So they're using, soy and or and or key for most of as ingredient for most of these things. And, most of these products that, you know, you see on stores and and I agree there's a bunch of new things, including us, which is very clearly the best. But, what we compete on is the is the performance of those, like, attributes of, emulsification, solubility, and dilation. Like, if you're trying to make

Kyle Krull - 00:48:50
a

Jay Albany - 00:48:50
product, and it's like a sausage. You can kinda get away like, I'm I'm not gonna I'm sure there's the art to vegan sausage making that I'll

Kyle Krull - 00:49:00
Yeah.

Jay Albany - 00:49:01
Anyway, if you're listening, I'm

Anthony Corsaro - 00:49:04
this is not a vegan sausage making podcast, so you're good. We don't need that now.

Jay Albany - 00:49:08
Alright. The people I've been selling my product to, like, they're like, nah, I don't pay more for, vegan protein for that because I can mask any of the problems with, like, a meaty flavor of of soy and tea with other stuff I do in sausage making, and it won't change the overall taste of the product. Whereas in milk and yogurt and cheese, it's just there's a complex picture, and sort of way it should feel in your mouth, whether it's like trying to be a copycat or just sort of a a new variant in this category like that. There's a lot of stuff they have to add in to get the effects. And and I think there is, I think there is honestly, I don't know what the right word is, but a rethinking of the category from the producers that the food producers that they have to make this stuff taste better. And not just, like, to to get past the to to to reach the, like, average person, the mid the big middle end of the adapter curve And so what we pitch our product on is these performance attributes of sialylation, solubility, dilation, and multiplication, for this application because we know that it actually performs better in that than when we've made all kinds of stuff with it. But we know that it performs better in that, like, you can taste that versus stuff made of other. Yeah.

Jay Albany - 00:50:29
Other proteins and you can you can see that it's gonna have a better, effect in terms of taste and texture without having to add other things, on the ingredient list. And I and I and then I obviously say, go to your grocery store and look at some of the stuff I don't know if this is true in America. I haven't been back in a while. But

Anthony Corsaro - 00:50:56
No. It's very true.

Jay Albany - 00:50:57
Last time I checked, it's it was, the you flip him over and it's like, it's got stuff you think and then it's got, you know, a couple of numbers. It's got maybe some flavors that are, you know, it just has a sense of, oh, this is like supposed to be all natural, but it's really highly processed and there's a bunch of unreal things in here. And I think, you know, the the big companies know that. They're not so they're looking for ways to, ways to solve that problem. So I'm pitching the loop in protein as, hey, this is this is good for your sustainability. It works really well in these applications. Will help you, achieve your, a better taste with less other junk added in so you can actually, market effectively without you know, thought of being weird.

Jay Albany - 00:51:36
And, and then now we have the factory, we can get closer to you know, a competitive price. It's it's obviously something we we say, this is a premium product because it achieves all this performance, but I'm aware that if I want to really compete with soil on a grand scale. Gonna have to get the price down. The good news is that raw lupin are cheaper than soda in a commodity. Wow. So, I actually have chance.

Jay Albany - 00:52:03
But, obviously, a long way to go, but that that that's how we're coming to market, and we're we're really think we're really good. It's a good chance to give it a go because there's a little bit of a unlike when I went into oat milk when it was like right before everyone else did or It's what the same time everyone else did. This is sort of there's a moment of sort of pausing its eye of the storm. In the sector and there is a chance to break in because, there's a lot of people sort of rethinking what they're doing right now.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:52:49
Yeah. That makes sense. And I've I've it really resonates. I feel like with what's going on with the plant based category over here. I mean, it's a really rough year for plant based over here in the States, and that's because flavor function over processing, you know, too long of ingredient list. All the things that you just mentioned that they should have advantages on are becoming problematic for the consumer. And so a lot of these brands and products have been propped up by a lot of investment money. And, you know, the writing's kind of now on the wall. And not not all of them, there are definitely some some some people doing it the right way. And, you know, I think it's a really interesting conversation to have about the regen piece too, which is we spend so much time talking about how do we do, like, more regen b, which, to me, is a lot simpler than this.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:53:17
Right? It's cows. You virtually grazed them. You grass fed. You know, you grass fed. Grass finish them. And that's awesome.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:53:29
But, like, we still are gonna have processed multi ingredient products. And so we also need to find a way to, you know, clean those up and build return of systems around those, especially ones that economically incentivize the farmers. Like, as much as I would love, all those grain rotation, grain farmers to start grazing cattle. Like, the reality is they're not going to tomorrow. Right? So how do we get them to continue to move up the reserve and it seems like if this works, from a commercial perspective, it has the potential to really do that in a meaningful way.

Jay Albany - 00:54:05
Thanks. Yeah. No. I I totally agree. If Stewart's listening is my prime loop in partner. I just I'll need to just tell you. He does rotationally great. He does He does run beef and and, cattle and and cheap as far.

Kyle Krull - 00:54:21
Nice. Nice.

Jay Albany - 00:54:22
Oh, we need to get that everywhere. Right. Yeah. I think it's really, you know, I know we've been talking for a while. So, I'll try to say as quickly but I really hope that if they're I really hope that overall as an industry of people who, or as a group of people who care about where food comes from, how we can be healthier and be more respectful to the planet that we kind of bridge this divide between, animals are bad to, like, period versus, plants are good. Plants are good. And, I think both both categories have real challenges and problems just like any any other thing. I mean, when I and people tell me that. I'm like, yeah. I get it. Like, you you don't want more beef. Like, that's that's been.

Jay Albany - 00:55:13
But also the reason I sleep well at night is because I know that every time I sell more cows, that's fewer cows going into grain lots and, like, people are getting healthier, better tasting meat that is, yep, actually doing something good the planet, and I'm willing to, you know, I feel good about that. Yeah. And with the lip ins, I feel like, You know, yeah, a lot of these a lot of these products are are highly engineered and highly processed, but, I think I I know for a fact that the folks who are developing new products at many of these companies are you know, don't like that. Also, and they're trying to fix it. They just don't live with the place we do, and I'm hoping I have a product that helps them do that. And and also helps, turn red sole into black, healthy loan.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:56:10
Yeah. It's like it goes it goes into the whole ethos of regenerative to me, which is continuous improvement. How do we just create tools that can provide that? And it seems like this should be absolutely one of those. I'm I'm curious if you can share I saw the the acquisition of the the manufacturing facility in Europe. You just talked about it a a minute ago. Is that also strategically because you feel like the strongest initial market a B2B perspective might be there or what what are y'all thinking about from a commercialization perspective? You talked about it a little bit.

Kyle Krull - 00:56:40
But,

Jay Albany - 00:56:40
yeah, Anthony, that's a good question. So for me that that was really I I've been trying all year. Well, it's now 2024. In the beginning of the year, last year.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:56:53
Is is this just Jay's secret ploy to live in Europe? Right? He's done the US. He's done Australia. Does he just wanna live in Europe? I'm I'm on to you, Jay.

Jay Albany - 00:57:00
You're watching me. If that were true, it would have been on the, like, on a Greek island. I'm pretty

Anthony Corsaro - 00:57:09
happy with it.

Jay Albany - 00:57:13
Now, listen, the this was really We were we announced the VA last year, and I sort of said, okay, look, we don't have enough money. The market has changed. As you reference, like, it's a lot harder for plan based themes to get, growth money. Like, we're gonna have to just make do what we have. Yeah. And figure out how to produce larger amounts because we have to be able to produce more product in order to actually win these big accounts.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:57:46
Or

Jay Albany - 00:57:46
what would just be stuck with,

Kyle Krull - 00:57:48
you know, sort of.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:57:48
Just from like an economies of scale, price ingredient price point perspective?

Jay Albany - 00:57:52
Yeah. I will just be stuck in the niche zone, and we won't be able to get in it. You know, we won't work. So we we we said this, publicly because we're public company and I said, look, I'm gonna look for partnerships, and I'm gonna look where they have big assets. And I'm gonna look for, you know, other opportunities to get a factory on the cheap. I'm sure I didn't say it that way, but, you know, cost, I think capital light ways to We

Anthony Corsaro - 00:58:17
we all understand business 1 on 1. You're good.

Jay Albany - 00:58:21
Yeah. We did we did both. We We made a partnership with a really big dairy company over here. Yeah. So then in any plant based, Sorry, just as a background. Any sort of plant based protein model, you most of the, you know, most there's a big expenditure for, like, a place where you can, have enough power and water to, you know, extract the protein and, and dry and drying is expensive. And so we're so, like, all greenfield sort of approaches to this, and I'm sure people have read about them again, I don't want to call anyone out, but there's been several pretty public, like so and so partners of so and so, and they're gonna build a $400,000,000 blah blah blah, you know, plant to produce kind of protein or whatever. And, like, those have we can't do that. And those have actually turned out to be pretty capital destroying. So, what we did was like, okay.

Jay Albany - 00:59:09
Well, what do we do well? We have this one step that we bought from university. Extraction is what everyone else does. So, like, we don't need to be, like, we wanna know how to do it loop ins, but we don't need to be perfect in extraction. So we we found folks who know how to do everything and drying is like pretty standard in

Kyle Krull - 00:59:40
a

Jay Albany - 00:59:40
lot of industries. I'm sure it's very nuanced, but, like, there are a bunch of big expensive dryers and dairy everywhere. So we focused on how do we get that? And then just pop in our boxes in our in our know how. So you got a big dairy company over here, with a lot of extra trying capacity to to help us ramp up to really big, production volumes, secluded area Australia. And that'll come online and kinda, you know, 18 18 months ish depending assuming we go on schedule, and it'll enable us to do, kind of you know, at least five times what the German factory can do. So we could we could win it, but, you know, only if we has sort of optionality in the sense that, like, you know, we have to build a pipeline to deserve that, but, this a bunch of work to do, but it gives us the ability to chase whales and to build a pipeline without worrying that we can make it. Then in Germany, it was great because this is this was kind of the only other company in making a loop in protein commercially we were aware of. Or at least we saw in competitive bidding. Yeah. They actually did that sad story. You know, they spent almost 80,000,000 Australian barriers. So €50,000,000 ish. Yeah.

Jay Albany - 01:00:50
You know, building a investing and loop in with a huge suite factory. They didn't spend all 50 on the factory, but sort of overall, you know, they they had kind of 50,000,000 US dollars worth of sort of big investment trying to build a loop in business and, you know, and they went into, the bankruptcy. So, we were able to we were the natural bidders since no one else, really fair few people were aware of it. And, like, any other buyer who didn't care about loop ends is gonna have to redo the whole factory anyways. So Right. So it was really Fortuitous.

Jay Albany - 01:01:30
So that is why we're in Europe. Also, yeah, it made I mean, we still it's still a big risk for us. I think we had to spend $4,000,000 on Australian. So 2a half 1000000 or US, but, it's a stretch for us. That's a lot of money. And, even though it was obviously such a good deal, but, it just made sense.

Jay Albany - 01:01:56
I mean, the the customer prospects in Europe mean, the market in Europe is obviously much bigger economy than Australia. Right. And, but most of the major food brands, but they're mint US would be the only other place I could think of that would be better, but like it's it's almost at the US. They're so advanced as a consumer base. In terms of, plant based food adoption, and it was perfect for us. Yeah, so I I I think that is why we did it. I have been to your a few times, all the way and since.

Jay Albany - 01:02:30
And I will tell you, Anthony, the first few times, I was absolutely like a kid in a candy store like, you know, we got a sales meeting in London, and I'm just, like, looking around and all that, oh my god. That's a thing. That's, you know, that's what I learned about in school and volleyball. But then, in Germany, the first time I went, I was like, this like Hansel and Gretel and my imagination, you know, the houses had these like really steep, I don't know what you've been calling them. And, you know, just like you'd imagine, and so, yes, absolutely. I had a lot of fun in the beginning, for several trips.

Jay Albany - 01:03:07
Yeah, obviously, I'm working really hard as well, but, like, I was happy to where it's at. But I do like Australia the best. Can't bring

Anthony Corsaro - 01:03:26
me there.

Jay Albany - 01:03:26
It's not going anywhere, anytime soon.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:03:31
That's cool, man. That makes that makes a good sense. My assumption to this question is that it's a short one, and it's like, hey, we're really head down focused on everything we've been talking about for the last 15 minutes, but is there anything else in the future vision that we haven't talked about that's we're sharing that is on the roadmap for the next three five 10 years?

Jay Albany - 01:03:51
Yeah. No. I think I think we probably took on so, yeah, the answer is head down focus on what we've been talking about. Yeah. The answer

Anthony Corsaro - 01:03:59
is sell some protein protein.

Jay Albany - 01:04:01
Yeah. This, you know, we we took on maybe a few too many things. With, inverted green food, oat milk, and bunting, but, we're still in the game, Anthony. And, we're head down focus. We have the, you know, the factories, the sales team, the you know, everything to just execute. So we're just let's grow this thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, execution.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:04:28
Yeah. Sell some product, maybe. That's what it that's what it's all about. I love it. Makes me think of my produce days. That's my favorite thing to do is sell sell stuff.

Jay Albany - 01:04:37
Indeed.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:04:37
Cool. Well, I will I'll take us home with our final question then, Jay, which is what we ask everyone, which will be interesting to get your your vantage point, because we're usually asking a CPG brand operator in the US, this question, but someone that's operated, you know, a D2C e commerce platform now, a CPG Oak brand and now this B2B play, how do we get regen brands to a 50% market share by 2050?

Jay Albany - 01:05:04
Oh, man. What was the date? 2050.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:05:08
So you got some time. You got just over 25 years.

Jay Albany - 01:05:12
Yeah. I I I think that this might sound a little idealistic, but I I think that kind of in any any major shift. It's the consumer who dictates it. And, and the companies follow because they wanna make money. So I think that Perth is a pretty small place. It's extremely isolated, most isolated city in the world. I know because of the last 3 years that you can get people to pay a fair price for regenerative produce, and they want to. And it's a pretty analogous city to an American city in the

Kyle Krull - 01:05:51
terms of, like, you know,

Jay Albany - 01:05:57
graphics economics, you know, it's it's a pretty good Yeah. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's in Australia, but it's a pretty good, like, throw a tomato against the wall and see what happened these I don't know if that's the expression, but it's a pretty good test. I think

Anthony Corsaro - 01:06:09
it's I think it's spaghetti against it well, but you're close. Spaghetti.

Kyle Krull - 01:06:12
Yeah. So let's

Jay Albany - 01:06:13
see what happens. Just try it in parts. No one'll know. Like, they're literally advertising companies who will try campaigns on birth.

Kyle Krull - 01:06:21
Measure it and but they're like, oh, it's so fine. No one will

Jay Albany - 01:06:22
know the outside of So, it worked. Like, it really did. We did. We had a lot of marketing money. Like, it was a true people wanna do this. Man, it's not like it was it's not what I thought it would be, which is that just the sort of, like, upper class people have spending money, did it. It was it's, you know, we we sell across every suburb in town. So I I really think that it's gonna be one of these things where we all have to do what we're doing. And we have to, support each other and not make not sort of tear each other down. And that's I I think that, as long as we keep doing this and working together, at some point, it'll be like what happened for us over here, which is not 50%. I don't have 50% market share, but there was, like, a noticeable change from you know, people who were sort of in all of our social networks, French circle, whatever, friends and friends to the city adoption and, like, true disruption.

Jay Albany - 01:07:15
So I we have to get cons I think we just go straight to the consumer and not worry about not worry too much about the infrastructure that exists because The only way the existing infrastructure is gonna change is if they can make money doing it or they feel a threat of losing money from it. So, I I think we just go straight to consumer, everyone, and we do really, thoughtful about tearing each other down. You know, we don't I don't need to be better than someone doing something similar. Like, let's work together. The enemy the enemy is clear. Yeah.

Jay Albany - 01:08:05
They're way bigger than us.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:08:15
I I love that, man. I think we can't say that enough in the regenerative space because a lot of times we get into the holier than thou and the, the fight for regenerative supremacy. And, yeah, we need people that are making the claims in the market to have. To be above a certain baseline and to really be validated that what they're doing is legit and it is regenerative 100% agree, but it's still so small that if we don't really work together, for for the common good. It's it's not gonna work and it's not gonna scale. And I feel like what y'all built such a cool model because you're attacking that localized, regionalized piece, right, with the direct to consumer model where you're really creating better markets for those farmers right in your backyard. And then you're also taking a commodity that you're trying to globalize in a way in a regenerative way so that the large multinationals can use it to you know, have a more regenerative ingredient for things that they already make or things they make in the future.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:08:51
And that's that's awesome. Is that like local, global balance? And if we can do both, then I think it's definitely audacious that y'all are trying to do both, but clearly you're on the path.

Jay Albany - 01:09:14
Yeah, it's a big swing. But I think, you know, Now we're fortunate to have the resources to try to take the big swing. So, like, I understand that not everyone can raise my name on the Australian Stock Exchange and then try to develop a a new plant protein. But, and I feel really fortunate to have the opportunity to do that. I just feel like and I think I'll just assist with my last sort of, you know, stitch to everyone. Yeah. We're we're in a moment where there's gonna be a lot opportunity to say so and so is greenwashing and so and so is not good enough and blah blah blah. I just think that, yeah, it's true. It's true. It's true. It's true. Fine.

Jay Albany - 01:09:50
But, like, I think we should all think about who the re like, keep eyes on the prize. What are we actually trying to do? What is the actual you know, totally dominant food industrial complex. We're trying to change that. And so we need to work together, help each other too. If you think someone's not as good as they say they are, instead of tearing them down, like, go hold them out.

Jay Albany - 01:10:12
And and because I I I have rarely met anyone who is actually just full of shit. Yeah. You know? So, you know, in terms of, like, local people who are trying to do the right thing, like, it. Yeah. You know, I'm sure there's an example, but I haven't met anyone. It's, like, not actually trying as hard as they can and can use your help.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:10:41
Yeah. I love that, man. That's I think that's the spirit of all the work that we're doing. So couldn't be more aligned there and appreciate you closing us out with that because I think it's the right call to action because no matter what you're doing, you can do that in our space. So just appreciate you being with us, brother. This is this is awesome, super informative. We'll, we'll share a bunch of links in the show notes for people to learn more. But just thanks for spending time with us.

Jay Albany - 01:11:05
Thanks, Anthony. I love what you do, and I really appreciate the opportunity to chat, and be on your platform.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:11:11
Absolutely, brother. For show notes, episode transcripts, and more information on our guests and what we discuss on the show, check out our website regen-brands.com. That is regen-brands.com. You can also find our regen recaps on the website Regen recaps take less than 5 minutes to read and cover all the key points of the full hour long conversations. You can check out our YouTube channel, ReGen Brands Podacst, for all of our episodes with both video and audio. The best way to support our work is to give us a 5 star rating on your favorite podcast platform, subscribe to future episodes, and share the show with your friends. Thanks for tuning in to The ReGen Brands Podacst. Brought to you by the Regen Coalition and Outlaw Ventures. We hope you learned something new in this episode, and it empowers you to use your voice, your time, and your dollars.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:11:58
To help us build a better and more regenerative food system. Love you guys.