#67 - Blaine & Brooks Hitzfield @ Seven Sons

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #67 - Scaling Regen Meat To 75,000 DTC Orders A Year - (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 by my co-host, AC, who's gonna take us into the episode.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:00:34
On this episode, we have Blaine and Brooks Hitzfield, from Seven Sons with Blaine serving as the CEO, while Brooks serves as the COO. Seven Sons is supporting regenerative agriculture with this direct to consumer meat business that sells regeneratively raised beef, bison, pork, and chicken, as well as seafood and other snack items. Seven Sons sources their originally raised meat products from their own 550 acre farm in Roanoke, Indiana and from other regenerative farmers around the Midwest. In this episode, we hear how the family farm transitioned from a conventional hog operation to a multi species pastured livestock operation. Plus, Blaine and Brooks take us behind the scenes on all things direct to consumer e Commerce and how they've grown that business to 75,000 orders a year. This was an absolute master class in operating a D2C brand, connecting with consumers authentically, and making returner products accessible through convenience. We're pumped to share it with y'all.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:01:22
Let's go. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of The ReGen Brands Podcast. Very excited today because I got some fellow Indiana people. I got some fellow Hoosiers with me. We got the Hitzfield brothers from Seven Sons. So welcome, Brooks and Blaine.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:01:50
Sai, glad to be here.

Kyle Krull - 00:01:53
I'm stoked getting to hang out with a bunch of Midwestern folk. Yeah. I'm a coastal cat myself, but that's okay. But I'm really sad to have you guys. You know, I just did a a a screen of common ground. And prior to the screening, there was a couple of people in the audience be like, oh, yeah. We just need to eat less meat. And I'm like, no. Like, you're gonna learn what eating eating the right meat is really important. And it's just, you know, when you spend so much time in this regenerative world, you forget that the the massive narrative is, like, still sort of anti meat.

Kyle Krull - 00:02:14
So I'm excited to continue to have that conversation with you too. So before we get too deep into the origin story, give us, like, the quick lay of the land. What sort of products do you produce what animals do you work with, and where can people find your stuff today?

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:02:35
Yeah. I can jump in there, Brooks. Our our staple product has always been grass fed beef. That's what we transitioned to regenerative with on our farm. It's it's been the grass fed beef. We've expanded into pastured pork, laying hens and and pasture poultry as well. So we're we are we started as a farm and got into e commerce. Now we're an e commerce brand. We have 50 about 40 to 50 other producers in our supply chain, and we're 90% completely e commerce now home delivery to we have about 14,000 active customers. Wow.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:02:56
We ship we ship about 75,000 orders per year right now, two homes. So that is our core business. And like I say, it's weird. We've kinda had to change our mindset. From going from a farm to an e commerce brand, but e commerce brand still has a 5.50 acre farm.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:03:14
So we've got a a team of about 40 to 50 people here. All across the spectrum of working on the farm to the digital marketing. So

Kyle Krull - 00:03:30
But I just did some quick math. That's 200 plus orders a day. That is That is not small time. This is this is big stuff. Really cool. Yeah.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:03:38
Yeah. And it's evolved a lot over the years, but, you know, we feel like we've had some pretty big throughs by just focusing on that e commerce piece. Because, you know, we started off going to farmers markets. There is still an on farm store component of what we do. We we have a few wholesale clients left, but that's really kinda just died out over the years just as we've tried to focus our efforts and it's it's it's really been helpful for us because, you know, we've been able now to just build a team who's completely dedicated to the direct to consumer piece and the digital marketing piece, which, you know, is is reduce some complexity for us, and it's just helped us be able to focus our our hiring efforts and get the right talent. You know, the person that you hired to build out, you know, your digital marketing efforts is a different person who you're gonna hire to, you know, beat down the doors of Whole Foods and, you know, get involved in a B2B sale process. Right? So, yeah, we're we're happy.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:04:27
We might diversify again one one day, but we're we're pretty happy with the direct to consumer business and focus on ecommerce and what that's done for us over the years.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:04:37
Yeah. Don't lose one wholesale customer because I need to get my eggs, my 7 son's eggs at Whole Foods when I'm home in Indianapolis. So you're not allowed to to turn that one off. But, yeah, it's been it's been really fun to follow y'all's evolution. I think I've only been kind of on the marketing emails and following along for the last 2 or 3 years, but just in that time, It's so evident the entrepreneurial spirit that kind of runs through the whole family. It's so cool that there's like legit Seven Sons, like working on the farm and on the various business. Businesses, and also that y'all are starting to kind of aggregate and pool other other farmers and farm families into this thing as well. But I think, you know, Brooks, when we touch base, it was actually used to be a conventional farm, you know, so give us the origin story of just This is multi generational.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:05:12
There's been a transition. You know, how how did this all get started from a farm perspective? And then maybe also kind of on the business side, what was the evolution there?

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:05:30
Yeah. I'm gonna let Blaine go ahead and take off. Blaine, I think, you know, we just recently were doing, we finally are doing team orientations now because is hassle. It's so much. It's like people join. They think they're working just for a farm, but then once they get involved, they realize there's a lot more going on. And, we had our first one last week and blamed it job on the origin story there. So, well, I'll let you kick it off and just kinda get back into maybe how mom and dad started it and where he described that today.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:05:55
Yeah. There's kind of the origin story of the brand and business, but really going back, the the the true origin story goes back 40 years when my parents, got married. They purchased our 20 acre farm. We're now 5.50 acres, but originally a 20 acre farm that had about, a thousand acres of row crops that that they could lease as well. So they purchased the farm from an existing conventional farmer. So that time, my parents were into conventional pogs selling to, IBP, which is got bought by by Tyson.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:06:14
And, and then we had the row crop business. And, you know, it was it was a tough business, for them. The economics, they were swinging it, but it wasn't great economically. For them, but then, so they purchased in the early eighties when they purchased the the farm. And so we kinda went along for a a decade, decade and a half. And I would say on early nineties when my mom actually was diagnosed with a pretty severe autoimmune, condition.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:06:49
And and so, I mean, and you hear this you hear this in people's origin stories a lot. Is is it takes some major life, you know, life struggle to get your mind to think differently about what you're doing. So and that's in you know, fortunately, my mom was able to, was able to treat her condition and get a a lot of improvement and relief through health and nutrition, and we were working with soil agronomist at that time that really helped open my parents' eyes to,

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:07:27
Wow.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:07:27
You know, just improvements that can be made in the food system and, you know, connecting it to the soil. And they just they just got excited about, changing our entire farm. And, and they they will say too, maybe a little too excited because They kind of in the in the mid nineties. I think I think around 1995, they had a burn the ships, moment where they sold all all the conventional hogs. And so that was hard to do because we had a lot of confinement infrastructure. I mean, you know, the faring houses, the finishing barns, the concrete, you know, slatted pits. I mean, it's everything's automated.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:07:57
So that was a big deal for them to they had invested all their life savings, in that, you know, they purchased that operation from an existing farmer. And, so that was that was really hard for them. So then that triggered, you know, this transition into regenerative, practices, And, we started taking our row crop ground. They converted it to perennial pastures, building fence fencing infrastructure. I think we have twenty miles fencing close to four or five miles of underground water line now. But so so not only did we lose the cash flow?

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:08:37
Of the hog business, which was the main cash flow for the farm, then we're reinvesting in, in cattle and infrastructure And there was about a decade, about a decade of the transition that was very hard economically, for us. So, I remember as a kid, we were distracted not to ans to not answer the phone because we have so many creditors and bills. Yeah. If you work for John, your credit, you might remember the the history of story. But, yeah, and then so it was really our backs rub against the wall economically because, you know, my parents were were speaking this transition to focus on quality and the first thing they discovered is the commodity system doesn't reward quality. It re rewards quantity.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:09:25
They made that connection realized If we're in, will Harris does a good job talking about this, but he talks about you you can't put more into a product than what you can get out of it. And that's the commander of that My parents were so excited, and we were following, you know, production models like Joe Souleton, has promoted for a long time. We still follow what he does. But, I mean, those those models are labor intensive. And you, you know, stacking your enterprises, putting more labor into your product and more time I think we get convinced that that the value will automatically translate and it doesn't. Matter of fact, it's it's almost adds a liability to your operation until you're able to convert that product to, you know, to a $22 at the right price.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:10:02
So that's so in 2000 is when we started the Seven Sons brand. So we threw around a bunch of different names, and my mom came up with My mom doesn't get into any of the branding or marketing, but she's like, I think after a couple of months of mulling around a brand name, she's like, I think it should be Seven Sons, right? Is go with it. And it's and and that that has really that name has really worked well with how we market and tell our story. There's kind of a building story and question mark, is there really Seven Sons? You know, are they really involved?

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:10:37
And so we've just really I had a lot of fun, playing with that over time with with the marketing business. So the so 2000 is when the brand initially launched when did we start to go direct to the consumer?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:10:54
Blaine, when y'all were witnessing all of that as siblings, were y'all like, we are not getting into farming what Yes. Absolutely. We gotta do this. We gotta help him. Like, what was what was the vibe?

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:11:06
Yeah. My my older brother Blake, and he he he's always handled the farm operations, and now he's full time in the, of the procurement procurement side, working with our producers. But he he loved the farm. So he was always like, I I gotta wanna try to make this work. I was like, I don't I don't want anything to do with this. This is this is I it it was a rough deck. It was a rough deck.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:11:29
Yeah.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:11:30
During that transition, but it was inspiring to see the passion that my parents had and really you know, that was we wouldn't be where we are if they hadn't made those sacrifices, but I don't know, Brooks, you watching.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:11:43
Yeah. You know, it's like, it was interesting because you know, during that time period, as dad was losing the cash flow from, you know, they can find Mahog operation. He did a lot of different things to try to subsidize and replace that you know, he got into snow plow removal developed a hay straw business. And so he was doing absolutely everything for a while. And Wow. You know, for us, his kids you know, the farm, you saw how tough it was for them financially. There really wasn't a big, you know, for a lot of the things he was doing, there wasn't really a you know, it was hard for you as a kid to connect the impact, of, you know, what my parents were doing until really the direct marketing side of things started to take off, which, you know, you know, they were going to some farmer's markets early on, and I don't know what it was like for you, Blaine, but, you know, as as you and Blake eventually got involved kinda taking over some of the direct marketing. I know for me, that's kind of what I mean, I made a promise to myself. Farmers's not for me. It's just that it is what it is.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:12:30
It's just good for my parents. I'm just I I'm not built for it. And, but, you know, you know, seeing the direct marketing take off and actually be able to dialogue with your consumers who are supporting what we're doing seeing the, you know, the transformation that they had and how that was similar to the transformation that, you know, my mom had with her health. And just the gratitude that they had for what we were doing, you know, that was really neat to see. And, you know, that built a motivation to to try and help more people, we knew we could do that by, you know, scaling the business out, which eventually as we started to do that, we had no clue we're doing, you know, I don't think any of us had an MBA or anything like that. But, eventually, we kind of developed a love for entrepreneurship because we're, you know, we're building business at the end of the day, and the business had to, you know, contribute profit the bottom line to, you know, be able to grow and do what we're doing.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:13:13
So now it's a blast. I mean, I do I do what I love every single day because the the impact is really neat and cool to see. You know, this is obviously an impact industry that we're in, but also just being able to you know, flex the muscle of of entrepreneurship and being a business and being able to, you know, grow out and build a team has been has been really fun as well. So, it's been interesting to see it come full circle because now, Blaine and I, I do tell people when they ask me what I do that I do say I'm a farmer, but I'm a farmer that's chained to a desk, which is probably a sad life for a farmer that we love it. So

Kyle Krull - 00:14:00
Man, there's so much I wanna talk about already. Number 1, like, the entrepreneurial spirit from you 2, I really feel like it's emblematic of what your data was doing, like, trying to generate those diversified revenue streams. So maybe that's like a a family bone of entrepreneurship. Right? And I also wanna, like, just commend your parents, like, We talk a lot about how hard it is to be a regen brand today and to communicate the value propositions and to and to tell the story. I can't imagine in the mid nineties, early 2000s, trying to communicate that effectively in a completely different, like, awareness environment where, like, the health like, FAD hasn't really kicked in. So, yeah, I can't even imagine.

Kyle Krull - 00:14:35
So I wanna kinda take that stage, that context, and talk about when the actual branch started in 2000, like, what did it look like to launch DTC? Is that like mailers in farmers markets? Like, what was the strategy back there? Because I it's almost like going back in time.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:14:52
The the strategy at that point was just throw anything at the wall and see obviously see what sticks. And we started we started with, Farmers markets was was the first thing that we started with. And, I gotta, I guess, back up. I guess we did sell eggs out of the front door of the farmhouse. So that's that's where

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:15:09
the egg business started. The front door

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:15:11
of the farmhouse We then we then, took a step at Farmers Markets. Never really found success, but we did it for 4 or 5 years. It was just It's just kinda the first step that everyone does cutting their teeth. It is great to be able to interact face to face with consumers. So it's it was a good experience. From there, we really focused on. We we live, you know, we're the farm here is 15, 20 minutes from Fort Wayne, Indiana, 2nd largest city in Indiana. To 300,000 people here.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:15:29
So we did develop a strategy with, migrating customers from farmers markets to our on farm store. So we kinda had that strategy going for a little bit, but, it wasn't long. I would say within our 1st 5 years, we realized we were gonna get burnout just doing farmers markets. And, you know, around 2006, I think is when my brother and I we were we got married. We're starting families, and and it became evident that if we were going to stick around, we needed to find a way to scale. The the business.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:16:02
So that's when we really started transitioning towards how can we leverage,

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:16:14
you

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:16:15
know, moving online and and at first it was just how can people more people find out about us and come to our store. And then it became evident that that we needed to get into buying clubs because we've launched our website think it was in 2000, 2005 or 6, it it became evident. I mean, back then, so you know, Kyle, you were saying how hard it was back then. It was hard, but also the competition was very low. So that became the internet was a perfect place. To capture that niche because, someone did a Google search in Chicago, and we were one of the first websites that came up. I mean, you didn't have You didn't even have the retail stores that were, you know, that were trying to get those keywords.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:16:52
And so we had we had a lot of our people driving from Chicago, Indianapolis, Anthony, driving up to the farm, bringing their coolers and and coming to our on farm store. And so then then we started, those customers, you know, said, can you can you get a pickup location of some kind in our city? We'll help you out with that. We'll we'll provide a pickup and then that launched our our pickup location business.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:17:23
And I honestly feel like that kind of, I think, gave us enough of the motivation to actually you know, take a swing at this thing, in a bigger way because you're right. It was super frustrating at the farmers market to you felt like you were on an education tour, with everyone who came by the table, you know, there, I thought all beef was grass fed or the ones who knew you know, that there was such thing as grain fed. You know, they didn't know any benefits of grass fed. So, that was tough, and it was almost you know, it was you you could lose a lot of momentum and get demoralized from it. But once we went online and had, you know, we saw there were people who were willing to drive 3 hours, you know, that's what helped us understand that there is actually a market here and that it's way easier to go out there and get your brand and business in front of a customer who already is interested and wants what you have to offer, they're they're presold. Right? They're just looking to to get access to the product versus, you know, going to farmers markets.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:18:13
And, you know, we encourage farms even today, new people who are getting into direct marketing, to really not get lost on that education piece. You know, I think it's it's great if we can help connect dots for consumers, but things get a lot easier when you can just get in front of a customer who's already convinced of what, you know, what they wanna support what you're doing.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:18:37
We think, yeah, we do think that because when we're coaching other farms and we've through through Grace Cart have had the chance to coach a lot of farms, we are very, very careful to to warn, people trying to build farmers trying to build a direct to consumer brand that consumer education is a great thing to do, and it's something we're gonna do because we're passionate about it, but it's not a marketing strategy at all, because it it won't It won't build your market. It it it can distract you, take you down rabbit trails. You know, we we educate our customers that come to us. It's just It's just part of our DNA to do that. But I think you can get lost trying to go out there and convert and create this awareness through education. For us, we just don't believe it's an effective marketing strategy. So

Anthony Corsaro - 00:19:25
Super interesting to think about how that applies to, like, regen globally, right, and how we heighten the awareness of it and the customer appreciation or value of it and the actual purchasing of of the products. I mean, we we've gone around and around talking about that and it's like, Customer education actually isn't effective for driving purchase, but we also need to do it. So, like, which one? You're like, what's, like, chicken and egg there? You know?

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:19:47
We need

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:19:47
we need to do it, but just we can't just rely on that strategy.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:19:51
You know, we we need to get into it. You can't get into this business thinking that that's gonna be a a marketing strategy. You know, you gotta do something else to go get in front of a customer who's gonna, you know, support, pay the price that you need because you can also get, you know, stock I think with the wrong mindset trying to, you know, educate a consumer to buy from you and attract almost the wrong consumer people who are really really price sensitive, and that makes it harder for, I think, folks in this business to charge what they need to in order to sustainably be able to reinvest something back into some growth to get in front of more, you know, customers to be able to further the impact.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:20:28
Yeah. I think that was the key distinction, Brooks. So you were pointing out is that's what it felt like we were doing at Farmers Marcus is just trying to to educate, consumers, versus getting online. Now we're just we're just positioning ourselves to be found by those already looking for what we offer already, as Brooks mentioned, presold. That was a pretty big We a pretty big turning point for us in our business. We like to make that distinction just for others that that maybe fall on our our path. So don't don't stop educating. That's what we need to be doing, but, don't don't stop short of pursuing other strategies to us. Growing scale and get in front of more people.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:21:07
Yeah. Right.

Kyle Krull - 00:21:09
Don't don't make education your primary marketing lender.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:21:12
Right.

Kyle Krull - 00:21:12
Exactly.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:21:13
Yeah. Right.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:21:15
So that the the big e commerce breakthrough then came sometime 2005 to 2010, if I'm if I'm following correctly from a timeline perspective than mine?

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:21:24
Yeah. I would say it really was kind of brewing between 20052010. And we weren't doing any shipping at that point at all. We were just doing those pickup locations. So we had close to by 2010, don't know, Brooks. We probably had 20 pickup locations, within a 3 to 4 hour radius of our farm. And it I think at the Heights Brooks before we close pickup locations down during COVID,

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:21:49
we have

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:21:51
353. Members.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:21:53
Yep.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:21:53
Brooks are members.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:21:54
Yeah. 53. Yeah. Anywhere we could get to, you know, have a driver get out, in a day, make three stops, meet meet customers at your location for, you know, an hour to 30 minutes and then get back home the same day. They're long days, you know, 12 or 16 hour days. We're getting the places like 3 a half hours to or 4 hours to the north side of Chicago, you know, down in Cincinnati, Louisville. But, yeah, 53 locations. And that really did. It gave our our business winks from an accessibility standpoint. Mhmm.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:22:18
But, you know, and we really hesitate to get into you know, shipping and, there's, you know, logistics world is intimidating to us to figure out how to get a frozen product delivered to a customer store safe and sound. But we made that step, I think, in 2018, and that's where things it was just another, you know, we had initial growth phase with the buying clubs. But then slowly gross started to flatline with that. And I think it was just, you know, there was a turning point around 2014, 2015. That's when you saw you know, private equities and venture capital get into this whole direct to consumer thing, brands like ButcherBox and crowd cow start to enter market. And then you've increased retail, you know, started tearing product from overseas, grass fed beef was in a lot of grocery stores. So it started getting noisier at that point.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:23:01
So a consumer to take time out of you know, their Saturday to go meet our driver at a pickup location. Now it became a very it used to be a convenient way to get access to a farm product.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:23:18
Right.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:23:19
But then that became very inconvenient. So that's what kinda pushed us. We're probably a little late to it, but that's what eventually pushed us to figure out. Okay. How do we product delivered to the customer's door. We, you know, we did have a strong belief that convenience was a major driving factor to, know, where our business had gotten, to that point. So, you know, just following that, you know, that belief, we decided to figure it out figure out how to get a a product alert to the customer store. And, that's been really good for us. And within a 2 year period, know, we had more customers who were buying through that program across the Midwest that we eventually just, once COVID hit, shut down the buying clips completely because we were reaching some economies of scale where we could really get it delivered to the customer's door for about the same cost as we had in trying to create our own logistics company, and we freed up a ton of focus, which was awesome. And it's actually really neat to see, you know, today that, you know, the logistics infrastructure that we have in this country with carriers like UPS and FedEx and regional carriers has come a long way that you know, any farm pretty much at whatever scale you're at, you can tap into, you know, that infrastructure that's there and get product delivered to your customer's door and create an Amazon like experience from a very, very small scale.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:24:12
You know, it's not it's not hard to get into. Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:24:40
That that's really cool. The the the big takeaway for me there was actually on the buying clubs. Like, that is such a sticky customer acquisition vehicle. It probably is a higher hurdle than maybe ecom, but Yes. I I feel like taking a shot in the dark here, that must have set up some crazy kind of evangelist pockets of customers that you even still take advantage of today because it's like once you commit to showing up to that on a weekly basis, you're not gonna stop. Like, you're not Yeah. You're going with your friends, you know, this other mom in the neighborhood got you to go.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:25:11
They be they became community events. For people to show up at. And I'm I mean, I it was it was hard to shut them down. I mean, we back when I was doing deliveries, there were certain customers that gave you a hug every time you were there. So those face to face interactions were pretty cool, to to see. And this is, you know, this is like the buying club business getting up to 53 pickup locations was was my baby. Like, that was a big part of what I, you know, my brother and I had spent, older brother and I spent 8 8 years building that. So but it was it was great to have Brooks, enter the business kind of at a later point because he wasn't as attached to those pickup locations and We joke about this all the time. The Brooks was really a champion for.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:25:50
It's time for us

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:25:52
to Shut them down. But, it wasn't Tim Day. It's a good point, Anthony, though. I mean, those are loyal customers, which, you know, we didn't know it at the time because we weren't dig in deep into data or anything like that. But, you know, really, a loyal customer, you know, creates a a lot of a lot of margin at the end of the day for your unique economics when you're in the e commerce business to be able to spend more to go acquire the next customer. Right? So, it was good for us. And it was intimidating to close that down. But, you know, something we had done a good job at, was just communicating our story virtually.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:26:24
You know, I think our YouTube channel, a lot of them are consumers, but I can't remember how many subscribers were up to now at this point, Blaine. You know, we really leaned into video of trying to get the customers as close to, you know, what we're doing at the farm. Because at the end of the day, yes, they could come and pick up and and meet our you know, us or our driver at a location, but, you know, if you're in Chicago, you're most likely not gonna take the time to drive 3 hours and come out to the farm. So you know, we were leaning that pretty deep, which I think helped us, in a really big way when it came to just fully embracing, you know, a shipping you know, direct to the customer's door and outsourcing that to carriers. You know, our tests to know if we're doing a good job to maintain this relationship virtually with the customers that when they do finally come out to the farm, if they're in the area, they see Blaine's face or my face and they say, look, hey, guys. I feel like I'm I must know you because I watch the videos. I get the newsletter every day.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:27:19
So we do a lot to try to make you know, at the end of the day, our customers, we always say, are coming to us with one common reason. There's different avatars and different things that people care about most, but One common thing is that they've lost trust in where they were buying their food. Right? So we really feel like our differentiator when it comes to separating us from you know, some people who've got much larger marketing teams out there, like ButcherBox and other folks that, you know, are obviously in the same market as we have to be able to connect, customers to, you know, where their food's coming from and what's actually happening on the farm, what's happening on our partner farms. You know, it's like the time to value. The we're trying to that's the value thereafter.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:27:58
So as quickly as possible, as they land on the website, they join our email list. We wanna get them connected to what's happening actually on the farm level. And, that's made a big difference to create a loyal customer base and and gives us the ability at the end of the day to put more into you know, going out there to capture a new customer.

Kyle Krull - 00:28:22
Yeah. I really I really appreciate that sentiment. And there's so much we can unpack here, but I wanna go back to, you know, Anthony shared his key takeaway from the evolution of the pickups to online, my key takeaway there was the continued evolution of the company. And I really liked that focusing on convenience. No. I think it was Expo West last year. Not the one that just happened, but Nielsen IKE, he came up and talked about what are and this is on Climate Day. What are the reasons consumers person purchased product? Like, there were 8 attributes. And number 1 was convenience. Number 2 was price. And I think number 3 was health.

Kyle Krull - 00:28:47
And, like, number 8 was, you know, climate mitigate mitigation or environmental reasons. So that focus, like laser focused on convenience, I think, obviously, is serving the business really well. And I think that's something that may be a lot of other brands aren't focusing on enough, so it's a great takeaway. But I wanna talk more about how you all ended up going from beef to pork to chicken? Like, what did that evolution look like? Was that customer saying like, hey, can you do this, or was that, like, looking at the pharmacy? We we feel like this is a good revenue stream.

Kyle Krull - 00:29:20
Like, how did that diversification come about?

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:29:30
Yeah. I I know early on, it was encouraged by I mean, we were reading a lot of Alan tools out and the and the mantra there was it's always easier to sell more products to your existing customer than go out and find a new customer.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:29:42
Most profitable sale.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:29:43
It is. It is. So that's really what drove, the expansion back into, you know, when we got out of hogs, we thought we're done with that forever. But I would say, I I can't I can't remember what year is we we got it back into that. But as soon as we started developing that direct market, it became very that to, again, to to, you know, expand revenue and to scale, which is what we really needed to do. We had to expand our product base. So we I mean, it was it was it became pretty overwhelming now. That's the other side of that is when you start diversifying, especially all the way through the supply chain from production and production, you can go so deep on, whether you're gonna be the Calcap operator, the stock or operation, the finish shirt. I mean, there's, like, 3 business just in producing beef. Same thing goes for the other proteins. When we got back into it, we really went deep.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:30:28
We wanted to to be, again, controlled the entire supply chain. And, and what, you know, Kyle, we bay we we quickly within 3 years of raising poultry, eggs, pork and beef. Within three years, we became very overwhelmed and and we've actually when we talk to other clients, we talk about the idea of of a death from diversity. So diversity is a great thing, and we talk about diversity on the on the farm side of things. I always make a try to make an important distinction on talking to other farms that follow what we do. There's a big difference between ecological diversity, which is always good. And business diversity, which isn't always good.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:31:19
So there's Right.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:31:20
Their ecological diversity is is you know, it's it's complex. It's it's it's it's complex, but business diversity can just can can really overwhelm you in in your you know, your greatest, resource is your management capacity, and that can get spread pretty thin really quick. You know, trying to emulate that whole stack model enterprise that we were trying to do. So we realized there's a there's a balance between diversity, business diversity, and scale. So I'll I'll say all that to say that we found out within 3 years, we needed to have stronger partnerships with cow calf producers, you know, Ferro, varying operations to buy hogs for, finishing here on our farm. So that kind of started our initial. We need to build a producer network.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:32:02
Which has been a big part of our impact and what we do here because, you know, when we started, our transition into regenerative, we did not have a premium market to go to. So there was that 10 year struggle, and we feel like a big part of our impact now is to be able to take, you know, take away if a farm wants to get into regenerative production, you know, we can, we can really help with that transition by having a premium market for them. You know, it's not all it's not going all the way to the consumer, but we're also taking some of the headaches out of the equation for our producers as well. So, it as like I said, our our impact, when we think about our impact, it is it's bringing, you know, trust back to the consumer. It's it's helping other family farms reduce that learning curve. And and, ultimately, regenerate more soils as we're making that impact.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:32:53
Yeah. That's that's the power of bran. That's what I about a lot of the livestock brands that we have featured is you have to have some degree of scale and aggregation to create those kind of outcomes the family farmer that doesn't wanna do all of the work on the marketing and the branding side. And it's not necessarily that scale and aggregation are bad. It's the way we've done them in the past. That's that's bad. So always like to just flag that of like, yes, that's good. Let's just do it the right way.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:33:13
But any question that's coming up for me is we've done the comparisons of conventional versus regenerative for, I think, almost everything that that y'all grow. So that doesn't feel as as the right question for today's episode as much as what was the hardest livestock operation to do regeneratively or or maybe even still is of all the animals?

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:33:40
I mean, poultry, I feel like. Yeah, specifically meat production, versus versus x. Especially with where we're at, you know, in the, and more northern climate in Indiana. You look at, you know, weather can get pretty rough from October to April here. That's a long window when you're trying to get a customer to purchase year round. So it's the seasonal nature. I feel like poultry's been been the most difficult for us over the years. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:34:08
And that CEO's, like, really price compressed too versus some of the other commodities and market perspective too. Right? So that's an issue.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:34:14
Abs absolutely. Yeah. And processing is just the other bottleneck. Even if you figured out how to do a seasonal supply chain or to produce your round up here in the north, now you've got and I've got processing bottlenecks like crazy. And, yeah, we've we feel like our head was kind of buried for quite a while. Know, it's also very labor intensive to do pasture poultry. Yeah. So it's it's, we don't have all the answers there it's a very I just say it's the trickiest equation right now that we haven't solved, and I think, I think a lot of us in the in our a pasture poultry business are just kinda have our heads buried in the sand that that, we're we're trying to pursue something that has a lot of problems and scale issues. So I mean, I I commend what, what Paul, you know, did with Pastorbird, with that partnership.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:35:00
A lot of people didn't like it in our industry and our our little farming movement, but, those are the types of problems we have to solve, puzzle pieces we have to solve, if something like that's going to move forward. So

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:35:19
Yeah. I agree.

Kyle Krull - 00:35:20
I wanna, like, hone in on why poultry is such a problem because, you know, we had a great example like Cook's Venture who was doing trying to do all the right things. And, you know, maybe it didn't have the perfect equation, but went out of business. You know, so it's very clear that this really is a problem. And is that primarily because I mean, number 1, poultry requires, like, a unique, housing environment. Their lack of ability to forge for the majority calories? Like, what are the key issues with raising them the right way in a regenerative system?

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:35:51
I mean, when we've looked at the economic equation over and over, it's really not we can figure out the production I I think it is important that it takes place in the south, trying to figure out up here in the north 6 months of a supply window and trying to cash flow a year round supply is is. It's not a great recipe. So, you know, we think in order to be a successful passion of culture moving forward, the production needs to take place year round. In the right climate, a warmer climate. And and that can that we can solve that. The the trickier one is scaled processing. When you look at the cost per pound that we end up with for processing. It's just a night and day difference, from from these huge automated plans.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:36:37
Yeah. And that translates all the way down to the consumer, like, what you were saying, Anthony, you know, the price disparity for what someone has to pay for Pasha Boultry. It's all, you know, it's it's quite a bit different than than Crasa beef. You know, you might need to spend, I don't know, you know, double the price for, you know, good grass to beef directly from a farm versus what you can get conventionally at the grocery store, but for poultry, you know, it's

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:37:00
it's 4 or 5 threes. Yeah. It's more than that.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:37:03
Yeah.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:37:04
Yeah. I just

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:37:05
Yeah. So

Kyle Krull - 00:37:05
I mean, kinda really love chicken to pull that up.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:37:08
Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:37:09
Yep. I don't eat that much pull training more. Like, I just literally eat grass fed grass finished beef and bison probably 90% of the time for that reason, unfortunately. You brought processing up twice. I wanted to make sure we touched on this. You got a ton of animals, species, you're sourcing room, different people. What has the processing journey been like? Because we know that usually a big bottleneck. Are you doing some of that yourself? Are you doing all the little partners?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:37:25
You know, what what is that evolution look like?

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:37:35
Yeah. We've we've been very intentional not to get in the processing business, you know, it has it has become it's temp it's been tempting, especially when we Yeah. You know, we're har we're harvesting, you know, close to, probably by the end of the year, 1500 to 2000 beef animals per year. So there Wow. There is a an opportunity to get into that same thing with with hogs. But, no, we've we've that's been part of our our our intentionality is to stay focused, so we've we've steered away from that. So we're we've been very fortunate. We we have a processor, our main core processor is in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the the name of their company is Byron Center Meats, family owned business, but, very fortunate.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:38:07
They're 3 hours from us. So initially making the switch to them was was a little bit hard, logistically. We did that, roughly about 12 to 13 years ago, but they have been our anchor partner without them Yeah. You know, our business, our business just wouldn't have, I don't think, had the the ability to grow and scale because prior to switching to Byron Center meets, we were state inspected. And that's a lot of farms that follow our our our path are doing what we're doing. They're stuck with state inspected. Facilities, which is a real bummer.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:38:42
They can't, you know, expand beyond state lines.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:38:53
And even just from a capability standpoint, it's really important. Like, you know, we say our 3 differentiators that, you know, make us unique as quality, authenticity, and convenience. Well, the quality piece you know, there's obviously, you know, a lot of that goes into the production side of what you're doing to raise a quality product that is consistent. But then a huge piece of it is just the process side. You know, at the end of the day, as consumers were, you know, we really value consistency, and that's not easy to do. From a production standpoint, it's not easy to do from a processing standpoint, as well. So find a processor that has capabilities to get the, you know, the value added products that a customer wants to the packaging, you know, it's gonna hold presentation well, is in a frozen environment direct to consumer. It's a it's a big deal.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:39:39
So that that partnership is huge and something we encourage a lot of new farms getting into this is look at the minute that you feel like you you can swallow, you have enough demand that you can swallow traveling 3 or 4 hours to get to the right process, sir. It'll make a world of difference because you can't scale and do this, without the right processing partnership in place.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:40:01
Well, when you're saying that state state facilities you have to sell that product within the state. Is that what you were saying?

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:40:07
Correct. Yeah. So

Kyle Krull - 00:40:08
you have to go to

Anthony Corsaro - 00:40:08
a USDA inspector facility to be able to sell across state lines.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:40:12
Yep. Wow. Yep.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:40:13
And that was that was the big turning point for us because prior to connecting with the USDA Processor, all of our pickup locations were within state. That was a driving factor

Kyle Krull - 00:40:22
for us

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:40:23
to travel further to a USDA facility. And once that happened, we really started to to grow at scale, but we do. I mean, I encourage other farms Hey. You travel up to 8 hours if you need. You cannot, shortcut that processing component.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:40:38
You can shoot yourself from the foot too because what a lot of farms will end up beside to do. If they don't have great processors in their area, good state inspected processors who aren't doing a consistently good job. You know, the butcher can butcher it literally, a lot of times people will say that in this industry, it's a tough business, you know, what they're doing. So a lot of farms will just make infrastructure investments to do their own custom exempt processing. But now they've invested, you know, into equipment and, a process that as they wanna scale up and start to expand their geographic reach, you know, they came to do that from a regulation standpoint. So they gotta forego all those investments in order to get to a a use state process people can just really get themselves a rock and a hard place, pretty quickly if you don't kind of think longer term earlier on.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:41:22
Yeah. If you think farming's hard, processing is just as hard from what I understand. So it's like stacking stacking trouble on top of trouble in a lot of ways.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:41:31
Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:41:32
I got a question. You know, I really like the the core values there. I think it was a quality, authenticity, convenience. I'm curious to think you you all are doing the authenticity piece really well, and that's key driver for a lot of regenerative brands.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:41:43
Yeah. And I

Kyle Krull - 00:41:44
think it's much easier to do that when you're doing this DTC play than when you're in retail. Right? You'd lose a lot of control. You don't have direct access to your customer. But what can I mean, number 1, how are you doing that? Well, what what do you think is working really well? I love the YouTube example you provided. And number 2, what advice would you give to other regenerative brands in, like, the total ecosystem, not necessarily, you know, meat producers, but, like, What advice would you give other brands who are trying to develop that authenticity relationship with their consumers?

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:42:13
Yeah. You know, I think there's a digital marketing term out there or just a marketing term in general. I don't know who it needs to be attributed to, but, you know, people wanna buy from people they know like and trust. And that's something that we really taken to heart. You know, so for us, authenticity, you know, it really comes down to giving our customers well, not just us being very careful about who we're sourcing from and making sure that we're, you know, giving them the product that they think they're getting, but also it really comes into just putting that extra effort into bringing them into an experience to where they're connecting with actual faces. Behind the brand, behind the business. You know, it's it's pretty easy for, I think, people are getting fatigued with obviously in the retail shelves, you know, you only get a label, to know where your product's coming from. And that's, I think, tough for tough for a lot of people to put their trust into.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:43:00
But even just, you know, as you see, a lot of faceless brands getting into the the DTC world, it's pretty easy just to slap some photos on a website. So the differentiator really comes down to, you know, people really feel like connected to who you are comes down to the who's and the face So, you know, every email newsletter, you know, we say we don't send newsletter blast. We put a lot of effort into tailoring the communication experience to our customers. To make sure that, you know, every email they get comes from a person, and it has an email signature with a face, on it, you know, and lean in into video. Video has really been Yeah. Yeah.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:43:36
And there's an there there's an art to it, you know, that you'll you'll start to develop the muscle over time to start to understand, okay, when it comes to you know, video length and, you know, attention spans that people have online. You'll start to optimize that stuff, but at the end of the day, just gotta you gotta get in front of the camera and get in front of your customers, and give them a face to connect to the brand, not just the logo and and not a corporate experience. I think it's just harder that way.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:44:05
Ma'am, I love that answer.

Kyle Krull - 00:44:06
It's oh, sorry, Blake. Go ahead. I'll I'll explain it afterward.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:44:09
I was gonna translate that even to our, to our eggs that are in whole foods. We do have a little,

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:44:15
a

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:44:15
card that's in each each card. It was a it's a QR code to scan that takes some, like, Brooks to say directly to a video. So we're we're immediately trying to make that connection, but it is it is increasingly difficult at the retail level. And it's, it I think it's part of the reason we we do feel like authenticity and our ability to tell a story, is an unfair advantage we we have. And so we have been intentional about recognizing ecommerce and digital marketing is a is a really strong platform to get that story out there. But you see other brands doing it even at a at a retail level. But you know, we like to say pick your pick your channel. We haven't done a time with social media. We have a social media presence, but that hasn't been our channel.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:44:55
We've really championed, Brooks kinda alluded to it, but email marketing. We've invested a lot in our email marketing platforms. Our automations and, yeah, just making that experience as tailored as possible for our

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:45:15
our customers. And it's important to lead with it too. I think there's a recency factor that people are looking Like, this is what they're looking for when they're out seeking a brand like us. So you know, in the software world, you know, there's a a metric that people like to watch, they call it time to value. So, like, how quickly can we get a new user when they're experiencing a software product to get to an moment? Well, for us in in this business, that moment is feeling like I I'd know who I'm buying from. So we try to, you know, in any environment, like, what I was talking about, even in retail, what the and Whole Foods there. You know, there's a QR code to go to a video. We're looking at that time to value it really.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:45:44
And there's a little we use a a cardboard carton that allows us to print on the site and the inside just to get more real estate to help tell the story before. There's a family photo in there. So, telling your story is important, but, you know, we don't really focus lot of it on social media because a lot of people don't find us through those channels. So when it comes to that, you know, tap it into the recency factor, you know, looking at where do people find you first and making sure that you're putting some intentional effort to help them see a face, as early as possible is important.

Kyle Krull - 00:46:20
Yeah. You know, I I really love these answers for so many reasons.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:46:24
In the last episode, it

Kyle Krull - 00:46:25
was just AC and I. We didn't have an else on it. We're talking about the importance of the in the room human human connection we were able to make in person. And what I love about what I'm learning about Seven Sons is it almost feels like the brand is the conduit to the people. And you're developing that, like, human to human relationship via the brand's Seven Sons, And I think especially in this day and age, like, it's hard to want to market yourself, right, as a brand and there's some risk that goes along with that. But you all seem to be doing that in a very authentic way. And, I mean, the the results speak for themselves. So I think there's a huge lesson to be learned. You know, I've been selling food for decades.

Kyle Krull - 00:46:56
I've seen some brands who focus way too much on the personality and some who don't talk about it nearly enough. And you all seem to have figured out how to walk that line the right way. Maybe the benefit is that there are Seven Sons, and there are that many people who can sort of play that human to human role. Right? So it's not just one person.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:47:16
But I

Kyle Krull - 00:47:16
think it's a key takeaway that, again, every brand listening should really try to figure out how to walk that line.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:47:22
Well, I think to give her a more confidence too is it really is you know, I view it as a little bit of a macro trend. You know, you see there's a huge shift, you know, in the economy where people are leaning on buying from people they trust. So for the whole influencer, you know, and brand ambassador, you know, channel has really developed from is people are buying from not necessarily brands and putting their trust in brands or putting their trust in people and influencers who are who are pushing products. So, you know, that's been a trend. That's just continuing for a while. So if you can do that as the brand, it shows people are buying through trust.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:47:58
Yeah, I'm really happy you brought that up, Brooks, because the what's coming to mind for me is, like, the connection matters more than the content as someone who receives all of y'all's emails, like, It's always blamed at the bottom signing off. And it's not some Yeah. Overthought, over design, crazy coded email with colors and all this other BS. Like, it's literally just a simple message that's important that matters that creates that connection to the brand or the products or whatever kind of the the offer is or whatever it may be. And so know, my my main takeaways from being a recipient of those emails is that don't overthink and don't over design and be biased to action because I clearly see that. And I, like, I think we can look at what we want to be one day or people that are doing something similar. We'd be like, oh, I'm not even gonna do anything because that's that's a 10, and I'm gonna be a 6. And it's like, no. You're missing the point.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:48:41
Like, it's about it's about the connection, not the content.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:48:50
Yeah. Absolutely. And we have to remind ourselves because we're perfection at the end of the day, but we constantly reminded each other's, the same way it says, you know, get comfortable with grade b. If it's grade b, don't do another take. Because those honestly perform better, typically than the times that we've, you know, put a budget together to put together the you know, video that was over produced. And, you know, at the end of the day, I think sometimes you can lose a connection, piece with that. So Yeah. Authenticity, that comes out in in grade b.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:49:10
Right? You know, people know that it's just there's literally a farmer behind his cell phone. On it on the pasture. So I think that is a big component to get momentum because otherwise, if you you think it's gotta be perfect and you're comparing it to brands out there with a huge marketing team, yeah, you're never gonna get started.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:49:37
We've seen that. I mean, we've seen that over and over. Now that we're we've we've the last 2 years, we've really put a lot of effort in paid advertising, both on Google and, and Facebook. And so we've got Greg, on staff full time, who just this job is to manage the advertising, the digital advertising. And it's amazing to see the difference between our produced content and then just off the cuff,

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:50:03
you

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:50:04
know, videos the the the cost per click, the click through rates, and just the cost of acquisition has just been driven down by getting grade B content out there, authentic content. And we've Mhmm. We've basically say goodbye to those overproduced videos. So I think that that translates to any brand. You know, social media is is just It just seems inundated with overproduced advertising.

Kyle Krull - 00:50:32
Mhmm. I totally understand. And this I'm I'm gonna take this a weird direction, and Anthony's gonna hate you for talking about this. I spent I spent most of experts talking about I've been doing this, like, burpee protocol. And I I saw this thing, like, right before the New Year, I was looking for, like, a January fitness challenge and somebody on, like, a calisthenic suburb that was talking about this burpee, like, busy dad training program. So I checked it out. Is this British student named Max His content is terrible. It's like his cell phone has propped up against a rock on a lawn that the car is driving by, can't hear shit, Like, it is so bad, and that's made me, like, this dude is legit. Like, he's not some, like, polished, like, in a in a beautiful gym. He's just a dude out there doing burpees.

Kyle Krull - 00:51:06
And it he's developed this weird cult following just because it's just a guy being who he is. So I the grade b imperfect. Just really resonated with that. I wanted to share that example, which I just think is really cool. Yeah. I also wanna pivot. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:51:28
I was just saying, yeah, relatability. I mean, that's what you get out of a video like that. Right? You can picture yourself being that person, and that's what we want people. We want people to think of us Hey. These guys are farming like, how I would farm. If I was to do it, I'm never going to, but if I was to do, I I would do it like these guys are. But, yeah, go ahead. Continue your thought.

Kyle Krull - 00:51:45
No. I I was gonna say, you know, the so the authenticity piece strikes me as you're hugely important for you all. It feels like retail is a place that you're kinda playing right now and kinda not Originally, I wanna ask, like, why aren't you, but that has become very self apparent. But I'm curious, like, in the future, do you see that as being in a lot to achieve the next stage of growth, or do you plan to continue down DTC track. And if you are planning to navigate retail, like, how do how can you do that in a way where you can still deliver that authentic connection?

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:52:12
It's hard to know what the future looks like, but I would say we are, at this point, we've never been more bullish on focusing on e Commerce and and DTC. You know, we feel really good about the team that's been established that we've kind of just collected on some really key people, you know, over a 7 year period, who's who's stuck it out with us and are finding breakthrough after breakthrough. And that's been hard to assemble that team. You know, we've done it over a long time period. And, you know, in order to, I think, do well in the you know, retail environment, we would have to, you know, do that over again, in a way. And and or else we're splitting the focus that, you know, Blaine and I have you know, in this business that haven't do a little bit of dividing conquer. And anytime we've anytime we've shed in complexity, and sometimes we've done that in big ways.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:52:54
That have been, you know, saying goodbye to sacred cows that have been really tough decisions to make, but every time we've done it, you know, we've we've benefited in a big way through through growth and scale from it. So yeah, we're pretty committed to to DTC And E Commerce. You know, we we really appreciate the wholesale, you know, relationships that we have and that continue to support us. And, you know, we're gonna we're gonna do a good job supporting those people as long as it's a good fit. But as far as the focus for the future, they they really does lie in, the direct to consumer side. So we see there's still a lot of growth potential there, and I don't think there's major factors gonna change that in the near future as as long as you have a team who knows what they're doing, and and we feel pretty good about, you know, where the team is, today.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:53:41
Yeah. Yeah. I think we're we're at a point business where we do have some strong relationships with with a few retailers like Whole Foods. And those are great relationships. But we're we're not planning to expand, our, our retail footprint, at all. So we'll hang on to those, but we're very motivated for direct to consumer. And it's it's difficult to find many brands that do both well. Matter of fact, you don't really see anyone doing both equally well. You you see one, you know, one channel definitely takes,

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:54:14
you

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:54:14
know, the priority. There are synergies that can exist I mean, our our actual retail relationships, say, with Whole Foods or some other, bigger companies that we work with, they really were developed through the awareness of our direct consumer brand. So Wow. So it is interesting to see the synergies between the 2. So I think that's the base question I would have for anyone doing both is what's your strategy for the flywheel between the two brands? And and you really need to pick which one's gonna be your main focus, or else you can you're basically building 2 different businesses. It can drive your team crazy, trying to figure out how to focus on, drive your consumer while trying to build a, you know, a consumer brand.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:54:44
It's they're just entirely different businesses altogether. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:54:57
It seems like so many brands are almost just using it as a marketing channel now. They're actually not expecting profitability out of it, which I find it really interesting, and we love y'all's thoughts. And I don't know how well formed this question is gonna be, but you know, the barriers to entry on DTC are are basically nonexistent. And the information on what you should be looking at, the metrics, how to do it, all these vendors, and outsource services is is a commodity at this point. And you can you can find all of that. Doesn't mean it's gonna work. Doesn't mean it's gonna make money.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:55:20
So, you know, we've heard all this rhetoric around, like, after iOS 14, it's been so hard to to new customer acquisition. I'm just, like, curious, like, what is top of mind as y'all operate that business? And maybe could you dispel some myths that are out there that maybe don't apply to y'alls or just, like, high level macro strategy thoughts on, like, the DTC stuff moving forward. It was not a well formed question, so take it wherever you'd like.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:55:53
I think, like, one thing that we're we have leaned into well over the years, and a lot of creative ways and we'll continue to do it and believe that it has to be a big component of our strategy or else or else it won't scale won't work for us is retention. You know, the the business we're in, you know, being vertically integrated working with with, you know, suppliers and producers who obviously, you need a premium for the, effort that goes in erase in a quality product and putting more into that. You know, margins are tight. So, you know, we our ability to go out there and continue to put fuel you know, on this rocket ship and continue to grow the business gotten there and acquire the next acquire the next customer, it comes down to our ability to keep and we're buying, again and again. So, you know, the main metric we watch is our our team v, we, 12 month value of every customer. So, you know, we've invested a lot in the reporting on that. I mean, it's hard to to get down to numbers like that, actually.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:56:43
But, you know, that's a number we watch religiously to make sure that it's going up because we know, you know, and it tells us, you know, you know, we know that, you know, having an authentic brand getting in front of our customer, we know those things are helping, but it's hard to actually find a metric to know, okay, how well is it helping. Yeah. So

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:57:07
it tells us it gives us good feedback loop

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:57:09
of what we're doing well, and then ultimately tells us how much can we go out? How much do we have to spend to go out and inquire the next customer before this whole thing doesn't work. So getting the numbers in place to do all that was a big breakthrough for us and really gave us the confidence to actually go out and you know, get confident with a a large advertising budget going to, you know, Facebook and Google. Otherwise, we, you know, in the past, we just never did have confidence because we don't have the data to tell us how much can we go out and spend.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:57:37
Yeah. Anytime I'm talking to another brand trying to scale, especially with paid digital advertising, Generally, nobody brings that back to, or has the ability to bring that back to their, their lifetime customer value. And if you can correlate that back, the confidence you end up having, is is pretty strong to start competing, with the the the big guys. And Really, there's been I think there's two ways to make advertising work. You either have to get your cost of goods down. And so you see brands like ButcherBox that have been successfully been able to do that. And they're pretty I think Mike is pretty transparent about the fact that they're importing beef and that's how they built their supply chain, but that has allowed them to be very that that margin has allowed them to be very aggressive with their, you know, with their scaling their advertising where we, you know, we haven't gone that route.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:58:10
We've our cost of goods is is a lot higher. So in a way, I think it's pushed us to be a better business because we knew that if we were going to compete and pay for those advertising dollars, it's not it I mean, We're not we don't have some magical formula that that gets our, our CAC down, our co customer acquisition costs. It's it's still a big investment for us. But knowing that that translates to that higher lifetime value, we have the confidence to to scale and and pay for that customer.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:58:54
How does assortment and adding new products to to boost back basket size impact that? Cause, like, y'all are selling seafood now. You're selling bison, lamb, pork, Yeah. Eggs, poultry.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:59:06
Like

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:59:06
We would we would not we would not want to be doing this if we were just beef or if we were just pork.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:59:11
Yeah.

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:59:11
Or just poultry. At we we've I feel like,

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:59:15
because you can't make

Anthony Corsaro - 00:59:16
the economics work. If you can't drive high enough,

Blaine Hitzfield - 00:59:18
yeah, you

Anthony Corsaro - 00:59:18
know, transaction costs.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:59:19
Yeah. 12 12 month values are, like, North Star but, I mean, we're watching a lot of stuff. So AOV has been something that, you know, average order value is something that we've been watching for a long, long time and You know, there's there's a lot that's gone into, not just the, I mean, you know, there's the big things that help with that is your selection, what what do you have for people to buy from you? And I think the big thing is to get at least the big three figured out beef pork and poultry. You know, we've added seafood to it. We've added, you know, of course, we do turkeys for Thanksgiving and some other things as well. Yeah. But those are the lion's shares before in poultry.

Brooks Hitzfield - 00:59:45
If you can get those things, done well and then just keep it available. I mean, our supply chain team does a heck of a job, working with our producers, you know, as far, you know, far in advance, and getting sophisticated with knowing when do we need to get product at our facility to make sure that you don't run out because that's not only gonna be something that will hurt your AOV, which hurts margin, but it also then is gonna hurt your your value of a customer because they're gonna go have supplement somewhere else. And a lot of times, people just aren't willing to buy

Anthony Corsaro - 01:00:22
some stuff. Skip an order altogether. Okay. I can't get chicken, so I'm just not gonna get, you know, beef and pork this time too.

Kyle Krull - 01:00:29
Hey. You know, the further we go down this podcast, the more I'm realizing you all are essentially serving the purpose of the trusted retailer. You know, people are coming to you to purchase the, you know, the trusted authentic, you know, meets and you're that's that's the service you provided for your partners and your consumers. And you've sort of bridged beyond just being a brand selling grass fed beef into this whole new echelon, which is both awesome, but it makes me hard to figure out, like, obviously not every brand is gonna be able to do that. Right? That's that's it's just a really interesting model, and there's not really a question here. I'm just thinking out loud. So kudos to you all because I really think it's neat. It almost reminds me of, like, Thrive market does that for, like, pantry staples. Alright.

Kyle Krull - 01:01:02
Any dabbling meat here and there. But it seems like you all are doing that as, like, the preeminent DTC meet platform, with that authentic piece, like, unlike ButcherBox, you might focus on convenience and price over authenticity and quality. So that's your that those are your key differentiators.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:01:23
Yeah. You know, it's been interesting. I think it's hard for you know, most of us don't ever get to find the thing that we feel like we're truly good at and truly enjoy. And I feel like just speaking for both Blaine and I, you know, we feel like that is something over the year that we've been able to to figure out the dynamics that, you know, really help a consumer where their food's coming from and then figure out all the many, many. We've talked about a lot of things already, but there's a lot of things we haven't talked about as far as the puzzle pieces that really have to be in place to get them to to buy from you, support you long term. So there's a, yeah, there's a lot of components there, but, you know, We've been in this for a long time. There's a lot of things that we figured out the hard way by doing it wrong. But we do feel like that's the yeah.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:02:02
That's the that's the service that we're able to provide in to be able to drive impact for consumers to help them get, you know, you know, change their health or whatever their driving factor is to to buy from us. But then for farms is to just create an outlet, that we didn't have, you know, 20 years ago, and it's taken a lot of time to get here. And you're right. Not everybody can do this. There's a lot of you know, there's a lot of things that need to be at play. And and also if you wanna do it in a way that you have control over the whole thing along the way, it's gotta happen.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:02:30
Slow, you know, or else you gotta look at, you know, raising some capital in order to get there faster, which just changes the dynamics a little bit, which, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just we've we appreciate, having now where we're at today, Agonna slow path and and just have control over, you know, doing this the way that we wanna do it.

Kyle Krull - 01:02:55
Yeah. I've got a an interesting question. This is more about content, specifically. And I was just thinking to myself the other day, like, from a consumer education perspective there is so much that a consumer needs to try to understand with food, especially today with, like, this regenerative context, right, there is the soil in which the food was grown and or raised on. The quality of the animal and or plants diet, if you will, how that food was picked and or processed, what sort of package is delivered in. It's like there's all these different layers. I'm curious when I could content and authenticity piece for you all, like, which of those angles do you tend to focus on and which do you feel like the consumer is most interested in and resonates most with?

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:03:32
That's a good question. We I feel like, I feel like we can make a note. I know we've made a mistake that, that our customers are equally interested in hearing about the environmental impacts, the regenerative impact, or the ethical impact, or the the health and wellness impact. And the reality is we find that that is not the case. Somebody comes to us by the time they're come they come to us. They're they have one of those primary motivations. It's either the ethical treatment of the animal. It's an environmental impact or it's a health a health impact.

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:03:58
That they're looking for. So, so I think it can get really noisy if you're trying to communicate all those things all at once. And matter of fact, if you if you get on our website, like, everything we do has, you know, backs up to that regenerative component. I mean, that's why my parents started doing what we do is is that soil regeneration. And, really, we're motivated through the because of the health impact. But we had to take a step back recently and realize, as a matter of fact, one of our, I would say, our core customer right now comes to us, as Brooke said, because they've lost trust in one of those three areas that they're looking for value.

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:04:33
They've lost trust among those three areas. But for us, we've noticed that a predominant customer is more is is predominantly concerned about the ethical care of animals. That seems to be the the core customer that we are, that we are serving. And I think just the authenticity, When it comes to the the the ethical caravan animal, now trust gets really important. You can you can tell me you have a certification, but, but trust gives that much more important when you're concerned about the ethical care of an animal. And it's been a great customer for us.

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:05:17
So we've really tried to, drilled that message around that customer, Kyle, recently, just discovering that that's that's a that's a core customer. And we like this that customer because you can, you know, anyone can get pretty motivated about a health kick, you know, New Year's resolutions. And then, you know, you fall off the wagon. You just you're not as disciplined. There's a lot of similarities. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:05:35
Or, you know, you you find a different way to try to make an environmental impact. But when someone's concerned about that as a procurement animal, they never stop caring. They never stop caring. Every time they sit down to cook food, and they're eating something, they just it never leaves them. It's a commitment that never leaves. So we we really feel like that, it is a component that's helped us build a lifetime customer and a customer of higher values focusing on that message.

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:06:02
So I guess my point is is to recognize who who your customer is and really get dialed in on one of those one of those avatars.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:06:18
Yeah. And, you know, even just practically, you know, what that looked like for us is just asking know, we ran surveys on the website, ran surveys out to the customer. And you gotta make it simple. Don't overwhelm people and make them think of original thoughts when it to why am I buying from you? You know, we we did multiple choice because we kinda knew what the main factors were. And but we were surprised the time, we actually were asking the customer that, you know, humane treatment, we knew was important, but we never would have guessed it was the leading, motivating factor for customers that coming to us. And that kinda shifted, you know, what our content, you know, and not in huge ways, but in small ways, it shifted, you know, what your content's gonna be about and what you're kinda touching on in every single video that you do.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:06:46
Another big thing has just been, especially if you're new getting into this, you don't have a huge customer base is, just take the questions that your your customers have. So, like, you know, we just look at our FAQs and what are what are customers asking us? Let's just turn that into content. And you'll you'll find out that generally, they're not asking questions, like, what what's your breeding program like? What what can we get? You know, like, they don't ask you to geek out on that stuff. You know, that we love to geek out on.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:07:17
And sometimes we can go too deep there when people really don't care, and you're gonna you're gonna lose them.

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:07:27
But we always follow-up eventually with that regenerative message. Okay. So you make you you might have come to us because the the ethical care of the animals, but let's talk about holistically how this fits into a a regenerative picture. So I I would say we don't lead with a regenerative message real strong right now. We may change that over time as as awareness builds, but I think the term is still so new at least for the customers that we're serving that, we always say if you confuse, you lose. And I think when people hear regenerative, sometimes there's confused. What is that? What does that mean? We'd rather lead with something that they they're already looking for.

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:07:53
They know what it means, and then we'll, you know, kind of build that other messaging into our email content and our our messaging. Yeah.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:08:07
I I would almost rephrase it the the way

Anthony Corsaro - 01:08:11
that self serving for the way that we phrase it, which is like you are leading with a regenerative message, but it's not regenerative. It's the output of regenerative practices. Right? And so it's like, translating, this is the key thing we always come back to, which is you gotta translate regenerative into the purchasing driver that actually matters.

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:08:26
Will said. Will said. Exactly.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:08:29
Yeah. One thing I really admire about y'all that you've you've brought it multiple times on this this podcast that I think we need a ton more of in this space in general is just your your willingness to help other farmers and other people that have businesses like this. And we are not gonna build better markets for these products without a lot of collaboration. You know, Grace Cart was mentioned once, and I know we don't have a ton of time to talk about it, but y'all basically built a whole another kind of Shopify for DTC livestock, with Grace Cart. So you've you've made some money from helping other people, but I I guarantee you've also done a ton of for free as well in terms of how you've helped other farmers. So I'm just curious, like, what other opportunities do y'all see in that realm in this space. And what has that experience been like?

Anthony Corsaro - 01:09:07
Kind of teaching others and probably applying that knowledge you've learned into your own business.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:09:23
Yeah. I yeah. I think one area I'd start with this is, you know, Grace Cart One was a really rewarding experience for us, just be able to, you know, share what we were learning, you know, to to people who are going through a similar path and hopefully help them not pay as much of the stupid taxes as we had to pay, along the way. But

Kyle Krull - 01:09:45
Yeah.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:09:45
One thing we learned a lot of through that journey of, you know, supplying people with software and and some coaching on on marketing was you know, the the common pain points that people run into when they're trying to, you know, grow a DTC, business. And it actually helped us in a lot of ways unpack what were our breakthroughs? Cause when you have to sit down and teach someone to recreate this, a lot of it, I think it's really easy. And I think you can see this from other family farms who've been doing it for 20 years, like we have. You know, a lot of people use terms like, oh, just you know, get your customer to try your product once they try it, you know, they'll they'll stick with you forever. And, like, that is such an oversimplification what happened that got situated out.

Kyle Krull - 01:10:28
Yeah. Yeah.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:10:29
But it's it's easy to get there and just, you know, kind of passively be going on this journey and be doing long enough that it's hard for you to actually recognize what were your breakthroughs over the years. So I think that was the biggest thing we got back from getting in the software business, helping other farms was, just us sitting down to create a PowerPoint presentation to help people, you know, want to get initial traction and get in front of consumers but also, like, hey. How do you retain that customer, you know, unpacking our subscription program and what's made that such a good fit? And it forces us to dive deeper into the data too to to see where, hey. Let's just not tell people what we feel like worked. Like, let's actually find out in the data what what the data says. So we we got a lot back because in it, what that enables us to do is enables us to then double down and focus on where the breakthroughs were.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:11:10
Can't tell you how many times, Blaine, I've sat down to to build a a marketing presentation for other farms, and we're talking about what we do. And, you know, there's something unique that maybe we had in the customer experience for a long time or, like, explain, like, hey. Are we still, like, including a free gift in all of our customer's boxes? Like, oh, no. We got away from for whatever reason. Like, we we should get back to doing that. You know?

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:11:37
So Yeah. Yeah.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:11:38
It it's given back to us in a lot of big ways. You know, teaching is one of the best ways I think to learn and even just get, you know, better insights to what's working well.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:11:48
Yeah. Yeah.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:11:48
I'm I'm

Anthony Corsaro - 01:11:49
grinning, like, thinking about the implementation fee for this software. Like, like, we're getting sold Oh, confetti. We're gonna install an ERP system. For for those that aren't watching, we just had AI confetti from that from video. It's so funny because, like, the tool is only as good as that implementation. Right? Or that training or whatever, the education around using it effectively, And that's the other big piece is I actually think there's a lot more regenerative supply in the in in the world than we are, like, creating a a market fine tuned for it yet. And so we have to continue to build, like, these picks and shovels that can create those bridges or, you know, whatever analogy we wanna use there.

Kyle Krull - 01:12:31
Yeah. What what I love about the education piece too is it forces you, like you said, works to, like, double check the data, like, what did we do that was success school. There's something about operating or comprehension versus, like, mastery and teaching that it's like a different level up to to force you to, like, look back at your business and really successful to distill out, like, the key focuses, right, so that that education piece is is fantastic that you offer those free services and that you're coaching other people up. It's also inherently good for your business too. You know? So

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:12:58
It's it's just forcing us to an understand our business. And and we we talk about those other farms. One of the simplest pieces of advice that we've ever given farms, and we remind ourselves to do ourselves and with our team is be your own customer. So if, you know, purchase, you know, we don't walk. None of us are allowed. We got rid of this 10 years ago. None of the family members or our team is allowed to walk in the freezer. And buy product that way. No. You have to get online.

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:13:19
You're gonna go through every step, every week. However frequent you wanna get food food from here, So I get I get home deliveries almost every week from our farm. I live three miles down the road, but that order goes through our logistics system. I want to every week, I wanna experience every email, every note location, every change that Brooks and engineers are making to the website, obsess about that. And it when we tell a lot of farms. And when we started doing this, if you force yourself to buy this in the same way that you're making your customers buy, you probably wouldn't buy from your own business.

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:13:50
And you'll just you'll just discover all these breakthroughs after another because this all comes down to convenience. You know, we've got to tell an authentic story, and and we need to have quality. But every farm that's doing what we're doing those are those are already built in. The quality is built in. The authenticity is there. Yes.

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:14:10
You need to get learn how to tell that story, but the big missing link in all of this is convenience. That's why a retail grocery store exists. It's convenience. And so forcing yourself to walk through your buying experiences is sometimes one of the best things you can do. If you're if you're in this type of business.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:14:35
Yeah. And the same thing goes for all of our brands that are focused on retail grocery distribution. Go be your own somewhere there and all the folks that are really hyper focused on making sure the store level of execution is on point. They're usually doing very well. Yes. Alright, gents. This has been really, really, really fun. Let's take it home with this final question here that we ask everybody, which is how do we get regen brands at 50% market share by 2050?

Anthony Corsaro - 01:14:52
So just a small one.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:15:02
Come on. Yeah. I know.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:15:03
Come on.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:15:06
Oh, man. I when

Blaine Hitzfield - 01:15:08
I think about that, I mean, Anthony, you were mentioning that there's there's more supply available than than sometimes demand, but when you're talking about getting the entire supply chain to 50% by 2050, I think there's still a lot of work that needs done on the on the flies slash production side. So, and that's why for Brooks and I, it's still been just a passion to educate. And whether it's educating consumers or sharing with other farms, know, farms, you know, they can't implement what they don't know. So, I think education up at the for the farm level is going to be pretty important. To to meet to meet that kind of a goal. The economics are there, but it takes education to connect the dots, and to start thinking about you know, long term strategies, thinking 3 years at a time, not 1 year at a time.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:15:54
So Yeah. And if we're talking about 50 market share. I mean, I think a lot has to happen, with, I mean, Anthony, you're talking about this, but healthy, scalability the economies of scale, that just aren't there today. Even if, you know, Glenn and I, you know, we talked to a lot of people who are doing what we're doing, you know, selling meat direct to consumer. You know, even there, there's so much fragmentation and duplicate efforts that's happening. And that's something that became really clear to us with the software You know, you mentioned how it, you know, a tool is just a tool. You need to know how to implement it. And when you look at that, you know, it's the consumer shift has been good to small farms if you're willing to do that work to to go and, you know, get product directly to the consumer.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:16:27
But at the same time, you know, we're all basically duplicating the exact same efforts, right, like, you know, we're building out a a marketing team and and hiring to do that, which is hard for a farm to figure out to do. But if you wanna be successful, you gotta go out and do that, right, yourself. You gotta build a separate marketing team than what 7¢ is building over here. So it's super fragmented right now, and I think, there's an opportunity for a couple of people to create some platforms and just some outlets to be able to drive drive more demand and be able to get some some scale there. You know, a healthy scale don't sacrifice the quality. You gotta have your your key boundaries that you're not gonna sacrifice us where I think core values are really important to your business.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:17:12
But at the end of the day, scale's gonna have to be there in order to use 50%. Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 01:17:23
Well, it feels like you all are there, at least step 1, step 2 in developing the aggregation of those partnerships to hopefully reduce some of the duplication of those efforts. Right? But like Anthony said, this has been an incredible episode. We super appreciate everything you're all sharing. I did not mean to diminish farmers and or people from the Midwest, but you all are schooling a lot of our regenerative brands. And the way you're thinking about your business, and your marketing efforts and like that. So just really appreciate you've shared your knowledge.

Kyle Krull - 01:17:42
One will give a shout out or an opportunity for all of our listeners to go to the website. It's 7sons.net So please go there and check it out. I just signed up to to receive the emails. I'm really excited to get plugged in. And thank you both for the time. This has been awesome.

Brooks Hitzfield - 01:18:03
Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks for doing it. You guys are doing it. Yeah. Help create more awareness for this industry. That's, the education come out. We talk about a lot of times is a big piece. So appreciate you guys having us on. Yep. Thank you.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:18:13
Thanks, boss. For show notes, episode transcript and more information on our guests and what we discuss on the show, check out our website, regen-brands.com. That is regen-brands.com. You can also find our regen recaps on the website. Regen recaps take less than 5 minutes to read and cover all the key points of the full hour long conversations. You can check out our YouTube channel, Regen Brands Podcast for all of our episodes with both video and audio. The best way to support our work is to give us a 5 star rating on your favorite podcast platform, subscribe to future episodes, and share the show with your friends. For tuning into The ReGen Brands Podcast brought to you by the Regen Coalition in Outlaw Ventures. We hope you learned something new in this episode, and it empowers you to use your voice.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:19:01
Your time and your dollars to help us build a better and more regenerative food system. Love you guys.