#70 - Briana Buckles @ Yogi Tea

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #70 - Embracing The Complexity In Regenerating Global Tea Supply Chains - (RECAP LINK)

Episode Transcript:

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

Kyle Krull - 00:00:16
Welcome to The ReGen Brands Podcast. This is a place for consumers, operators, and investors to learn about the consumer brands, supporting regenerative agriculture, and how they're changing the world This is your host, Kyle. Joining by my co-host, AC, who's going to take us into the episode.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:00:34
On this episode, we have Briana Buckles, who is the Global Senior Sustainability Manager at Yogi Tea. Yogi Tea is supporting regenerative agriculture with 9 global projects dedicated to increasing regenerative agriculture adoption in the supply chain for their Yogi Tea And Choice Organic brands. Yogi has been around for more than 50 years, produces over 70 SKUs, and sources more than 150 ingredients from over 40 different countries. Plus, their products are stocked across thousands of retailers in North America and Europe. In this episode, Briana shares her 5-year journey trailblazing new regenerative agriculture initiatives at Yogi and how they are increasing regen agadoption through a 3 pronged supply chain visibility, intervention, and expansion approach. Plus, she shares the details on one of their project in Rwanda. With details on how they select farmers to support, partner with local technical assistance providers, and fund the work itself. This was a good one y'all. Let's dive in.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:01:22
What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of The ReGen Brands Podcast. Very excited today to have our friend Briana from Yogi Tea joining us So welcome, Briana.

Briana Buckles - 00:01:42
Yeah. Thanks.

Kyle Krull - 00:01:44
We're super stoked to have you. And this is a question I ask at the beginning of every podcast, and it feels almost silly to ask for our brand as big as Yogi Tea. Know, like, I like to ask, you know, like, for those who are unfamiliar with the brand, it's like, well, for those who have never walked down the grocery store, I'll, you know, I've seen tea, like, who wouldn't know Yogi? But, Just just for the sake of continuity, for those who are not familiar with YogiT, give us a quick like, what is the brand? What sort of products and categories do you play in? I don't know know if we have time just on this podcast to go through every single SKU that you all manufacture, but, you know, give us the high level.

Briana Buckles - 00:02:17
Yeah. Thanks. First of all, I mean, thanks for the hype, for sure. Yogi, gosh, Yogi is a brand that's been around for for over 50 years. So it's it's definitely a a legacy brand in in that way, but, we, our company actually manufactures both the Yogi, Brand of Tea, And Choice, Choice Organic, Brand of Tea. So you'll find it on the the teach health in in North America and just about any, you know, grocery store you walk into. We've got 2 manufacturing locations, actually, we've distributed, across North America in the U. S. And Canada from our manufacturing site in Eugene, Oregon. But we also have a, sort of sister manufacturing site in, in, in, Italy, and they distribute all over Europe.

Briana Buckles - 00:02:53
So it's the, a pretty prominent brand in the European market, as well as the US. We produce, hot tea, beverages, tea in a bag, to, to brew with your, your hot water and your kettle, but we also in North America, in the US, we just launched literally just a couple weeks ago a, like a liquid chai concentrate product. So that's on the shelves now. So a little bit product diversification there. Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:03:26
Nice. It's it's never too late to innovate. You know, as they said.

Briana Buckles - 00:03:30
Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:03:32
That's really cool. I'm I'm super curious. And I don't know if you have a the ability to answer this question because it's like picking your favorite child, but given, like, how many SKUs are in the portfolio and which one is your favorite? And I I know you're drinking some right now. Like, what do you drink to start your day?

Briana Buckles - 00:03:44
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So in in North America and the North American market, we've got, I would say, roughly 70 SKUs, including choice Yogi and the the Yogi, concentrate, new product. I it's about 70 ish SKUs. Asking asking a a favorite flavor is is definitely a challenging question. What what I'm drinking right now is the is the Elderberry lemon balm immune plus stress. When you get that Oh, wow.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:04:14
That is delete. Yeah. Multifunctional.

Briana Buckles - 00:04:19
And look, look, I'm I'm a millennial. This is the type of, you know, easy, like, two functions, one to, like, get it done kind of thing.

Kyle Krull - 00:04:27
So, you

Briana Buckles - 00:04:28
know, this is the type of, consistency we need. Anyways, yeah, Elderberry lemon balm is a great one. On the choice side, actually, we just launched a, apple Mate, which is amazing. It's got a really strong, apple flavor to it, some cinnamon in there. It's it's a delicious product, for sure.

Kyle Krull - 00:04:46
And when you say Mate, that's like an apple, Herba Mate?

Briana Buckles - 00:04:50
Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:04:51
Crazy. Yeah. We're we're gonna dig into supply chain, but I can't even imagine the level of supply chain the employees different ingredients. It's gotta be insane.

Briana Buckles - 00:04:58
Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:04:59
And it's it's a good segue into kind of the table setting commentary as to why we're excited to have Briana on. It's like there's a there's a first for us in a lot of ways. So Briana's the global senior sustainability manager at Yogi. She helped pioneer a lot of their sustainability programs and regenerative agriculture programs. And like she's already alluded to, you know, this is a fifty year old brand. It's multiple brands actually. It's 70 plus SKUs. It's global distribution. It's, I think, you told me on our first call, we're on a 150 plus ingredient.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:05:20
That are being sourced?

Briana Buckles - 00:05:31
Yeah. Over over 150 ingredients from more than 40 countries around the world. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:05:38
Yeah. So, I mean, just a totally different context that you're operating out of to do these regenerative agriculture programs than maybe just someone raising regenerative beef. Or a couple skews that may be our multi ingredient. Right? So really excited to dive into that. Don't wanna spend a ton of time on the origin story just because you know, if that wasn't you, none of us were around for that. But could you could you maybe shed some light on just some of the history of the brand and how it's grown to the point that it has today just to set some context for listeners?

Briana Buckles - 00:06:09
Yeah. Yeah. So I I love actually talking about the original, original Yogi recipe. So, the whole the whole brand is was originally founded around this recipe that had, 5 ingredients. So it's this is this is like a a an internal employee quiz. We have 5 ingredients, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, clove, and black pepper. So the original formulation was actually all of those ingredients were chosen very intentionally for, for different, like, higher vedic, medicinal principles. So it's really kind of this, this balanced blend, right, that that was designed as as a tea together, with intention, right? It's it's it's purposeful, to be kind of a wellness type blend.

Briana Buckles - 00:06:49
And from there to, to really grow to the space that we're we are now with that continued focus on on wellness, to really have leaned into the organic space, over time and, have a lot of those know, those original elements and the original kind of purpose behind the product continue to be that pull through in our brand, to today has been it's it's kind of an an awesome journey to be a part of. I mean, I've been with the company for 5 years now, and so even just the, the kind of evolutions in, in how we do business and how we think about things, just in the last 5 years has been, has been pretty pretty incredible, and it's, like I said, it's it's a really fun journey to be a part of.

Kyle Krull - 00:07:35
That's awesome. And I can't help but think about, like, the 5 ingredients in the play quiz. Like, if Yogi was, like, a really die hard, like, cutthroat culture, which I'm sure it's not, I can just imagine somebody popping out in a hallway, but, like, what are the 5 ingredients like, if you don't know, you get fired like on the spot, you know, like, oh gosh. But number 1, those ingredients sound fantastic. This sound really amazing. Does that skew, like, still exist? Can you buy, like, the OG yogurt flavor?

Briana Buckles - 00:08:02
It it does in Europe. The original recipe exists in Europe. It doesn't, exist in the US anymore, but if you're ever over on the Europe side, you can buy Yogi originals still for And essentially, the the heart of those 5 ingredients are in our, our new product that we just launched, barista chai concentrate product, has, I mean, it's essentially Thai ingredients. So those ingredients are all very present in that new, that new product as well.

Kyle Krull - 00:08:26
Got it. Makes sense. Well, because we're not gonna dive super deep into the OG origin story, let's talk about your origin story. How did you end up working for Yogi? And what is your arc been over the last 5 years working with this this organization? Were you the 1st sustainability individual on the team? Like, what what was that that arc like?

Briana Buckles - 00:08:44
Yeah. Yeah. So I was living in in Eugene, going to grad school. I got my MBA at the the University of Oregon focused in, sustainable business practices. And was just really, you know, nerding out about all all things sustainability in in the world. And, yo, he's right here. It's it's the same town, as University of Oregon. So I got connected with the company and started actually working part time, while I was still a student, and really just started, you know, studying sustainability. So I took on a lot of that sustainability work within the company because, there were no, sustainability employees at the time. And so When I graduated, it was kind of just a natural fit, a natural flow.

Briana Buckles - 00:09:19
I took on a

Kyle Krull - 00:09:25
Hold on. Before we continue on, I need to know what is it to work for a company that old, that big, that complex and just to walk in the doors as, like, an intern, a graduate student would be like, I'm here to talk about sustainability. Like, what what is that like? Cause it seems like it would be a crazy, like, journey.

Briana Buckles - 00:09:41
No. No. I mean, honestly, it was, like, it was amazing. It was, like, such a a welcome space. Right? Like, you know, you you can kinda hear this, this thread in, in the origin, but it's it's a company that has always cared, right? A company that has always cared about doing thing about doing good, about leaning into that space. There just wasn't a formal architecture behind it at the which is which is fine. Like, every company kinda hits that evolution where they're they're really ready to, like, invest in the structure and the architecture behind a a sustainability program. And so to have somebody, somebody walk in the door and be like, yeah, this is, this is some frameworks and some, some, like, tools we can actually start implementing here in, like, a formal way. It was it was a very, like, welcome space to do that because it was I think, you know, the the company, the leadership of the company was really hungry and eager for that, that formality behind the the heart and the intention that had always been there.

Kyle Krull - 00:10:37
That's really cool. I'm glad to hear that. And I'm not at all surprised just based on the very little I know about Yolgi as a brand. Not at all surprised that that was like an an open arm, like, welcome addition to the

Briana Buckles - 00:10:47
team. Yeah. Yeah. And it's been, it's been super fun. Honestly, across the, the past 5 years, like, in those I've been reflecting lately, you know, 5 years is a somewhat big milestone at a company. You know, the early days of, like, me literally physically, like, sorting recycling and, like, dumping compost and, you know, like, spending my time in, like, in the trenches of it. You know, but now, like, to where where my work and where the company has evolved in this space just in that in that 5 year period of time, where we get to have these, like, very direct, like, farm level relationships and, you know, pretty sizable like grant funding amounts that go towards, regenerative agriculture in our supply chain. I get to travel a lot and, and visit a lot of the farms and, just tons of, like, really next level kind of sustainability work that we get to do now and, and just that evolution of the past 5 years has been has been a really fun journey.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:11:41
And we're gonna spend a lot of time on that. So it's it's probably a good segue to go there. I'm in I'm interested to ask one question before we do, Briana, which is kind of like this word regenerative. In in that 5 years, when did that word kind of come into the picture? Did it play sustainability? Was it was it talked about 5 years ago? Is it relatively new? Like, how has regenerative intertwined through that?

Briana Buckles - 00:12:05
Yeah. Yeah. That's a good question. It definitely wasn't something we talked about in in the beginning of of my time at Yogi. It's sort of I would say in the, like, 2020, 2021 kind of time frame, is when we really started, like, doing some research in earnest of, like, trying to to decide, like, what our position, what our strategy, what, you know, how this was gonna integrate into, what what we were gonna do. But also in in 2020 is when we really put our heads together and, like, launched our our official sustainability vision statement, if you will. And while that that vision statement doesn't necessarily have the word regenerative in it, it's it's right in that theme. So when we talk about our sustainability vision, it's it's to create a world that's that's better off because we're in it. And so to, like, genuinely have that, like, Like, if we can't show up as a company in in in the world, right, like, like, we wanna be able to show up as a company in the world that, like, we're not just taking, right? We're not just taking natural resources.

Briana Buckles - 00:13:06
Or having negative impacts on, you know, like human capital type space, we genuinely wanna be able to show up and and have a world that's better off because we're in it And that that vision statement is is kind of the core of the essence of of this whole regenerative movement. So we our heads were in that space. We didn't quite put the word regenerative to it until, probably 2021, 2022 time frame. But, since then, we've we've kind of been all in for sure.

Kyle Krull - 00:13:35
So let's kinda go into some of these projects. Like, you know, when you first start diving into the supply chain, looking at the sustainability and the opportunities, like, How do you go about tackling a supply chain as complicated as 0s is and saying, okay. We wanna focus on regeneration, like, how are we gonna start that project? So help us understand what that whole whole project looked like?

Briana Buckles - 00:13:58
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's honestly, like, it's, it's a behemoth for sure. I mean, when we talk about, a company that's been around for decades. We talk about a supply chain that's 150 ingredients, 40 plus different countries around the world. I mean, literally every corner of the world, like we we get ingredients down. And and a lot of those places are, like, really remote, like, really rural, just like very, very remote parts of the world. And so that that's a big ship to move. Right? If we set the school of, like, we want our supply chain to be, like, fully regenerative.

Briana Buckles - 00:14:25
Like, if if that's what we want to accomplish, like, that is a lot of change that needs to happen. But also not not always like a lot of change that needs to happen, but also, like, there's, there's a lot of farmers and a lot of really, like, cool communities in our supply chains that, like, are already doing that are like having these really great, like, indigenous farming practices that they've been doing for generations, and maybe we just don't know about it. And so there's There's there's a lot here, right? There's a lot to untangle. So when we look at kind of our big picture, regenerative agriculture strategy, we have to come at it from like a few different angles, in in order to, like, actually be successful in making some of these transitions. So we've got, like, a few very specific kind of key points of, like, how, how we're coming at this. So one is is doing a lot of direct investments.

Briana Buckles - 00:15:16
So from the ground up establishing our own regenerative projects, in partnership with with some of our existing farming partners. So establishing those projects that that we do a lot of the funding for the, the training, the education, the, you know, the, the crop diversification seeds or, or, seedlings. So we do a lot of that upfront investment in those kind of really, whole picture, ground up regenerative projects. So that's one piece of it. That's one piece of the puzzle. Another piece is is, like, looking for partners, like, farming partners who are already doing this work, who are already doing, like, really great regenerative practices that aren't part of our supply chain, and finding ways to integrate them into, into our, our, our processes, into our purchasing strategy.

Briana Buckles - 00:15:55
And we've got, like, a few cases where we've done that. We've found really cool partners who are growing, herbal ingredients and, and just, like, brought them on board, helped them become qualified suppliers and, and how we're purchasing from them. And the other thing is, is, you know, kind of how what I alluded to is, is a lot of these things already are in our supply chain. And we just maybe don't know about it, because we don't, you know, we have a lot of very direct farmer relationships, but not with every single, farmer in our supply chain. So, part of our strategy is also, understanding the the current practices across the board, and seeing how we can, kind of elevate and give voice to and give volume to some of those practices that are already happening. So a lot of different ways we have to come about it just because it's such a large complex system that we're working in.

Briana Buckles - 00:16:56
But, it's definitely a a lot of progress in different areas.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:17:06
I I think that's super cool, and we're gonna have tons to talk about for all three of those. It sounds like I my brain, like, understood that as supply chain visibility, supply chain intervention, and supply chain expansion. Which Yeah. That's amazing because if you think about how we are going to have more return of ag across all CPGs, it's gonna be 1, 2, or all three of those things. You know, when when you are articulating kind of the the massive behemoth we're dealing with here, I would also assume, like, there's a ton of, opacity, opacity. However, you say that word, opaqueness is not actually the right word, but, whatever the proper pronunciation is for the adjective of being opaque, because these are old legacy supply chains and like, you know, tea and these tea blends have been drank for a really long time. So there's already farmers that have cooperitized or there's all these middlemen or there's brokers or there's traders.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:17:53
So it seems like probably that visibility was like that first step because y'all might not have even done a lot of direct trade at that point. Like, what what was that that visibility piece like kind of starting with?

Briana Buckles - 00:18:10
Yeah. Yeah. In, 2020, 2021, we really kind of challenged ourselves, and our our sourcing teams, to dig into that, right, to to improve the the transparency that we have in our supply chain. And that that itself was was kind of its its own huge project, right, as

Anthony Corsaro - 00:18:28
I'm sure.

Briana Buckles - 00:18:29
Asking some of these brokers or some of these, suppliers that we've been purchasing from for years years, to say, like, now, actually, we need you to share the the names and location of of the farm where ingredients are coming from. But because we've had, you know, some of those relationships we've had for such a long time that, like, those those business transactions are built on strong relationships. And so when we ask those questions, you know, in some cases, there's there's a negotiation to to get that information sharing. But, you know, for the most part, like, like, we have really good solid partners in that, in that, that space. So we've, we've really increased, I think, the number changes every year, kind of fluctuates where we're at. I think we're at about, like, 94, 95% parentcy to in our in our supply chain. Wow.

Briana Buckles - 00:19:12
Where we have the it's

Anthony Corsaro - 00:19:20
it's been a That's impressive for any company. Let alone

Kyle Krull - 00:19:23
one with a number of ingredients and supply chain complexity that you all have. So kudos.

Briana Buckles - 00:19:27
Yeah. It's it's been a lot of work on on the part of our our sourcing team, to get to that point. But, you know, along the way, like, like, talking with, with some of those traders or those brokers to get that level of transparency, but also at the same time building kind of new and additional relationships with very direct partners. At the end of the day, like, when we purchase ingredients, that's a that's a financial transaction. Right? And so, we our our preference is is for the the money that we're paying for an ingredient to to stay in the country where the ingredient is grown. So where we can find suppliers and partners that can, sell us really directly from, from the farm or from, at least from the country where the ingredient is grown. We've done a lot of work to establish some of those more direct relationship over the past, you know, handful of years as well.

Briana Buckles - 00:20:11
So that, that really helps in some of this work.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:20:19
2, two clarifying questions. All SKUs from both the Yogi Brand and the Choice Organic brand are USDA Organic. Correct?

Briana Buckles - 00:20:27
Not all SKUs. No. We all let me think. All choice skews are organic. All of our European skews are organic. We have, like, a couple of SKUs in the US that are Yogi SKUs that aren't fully organic, but it's only, like, 1 or 2 ingredients that aren't. By volume, we're, like, 99.7 percent. We're dealing with in the US.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:20:49
Okay. Cool. Yeah. Helpful. And I think good context for the listener. The other thing is there's no co packers. You mentioned the 2 manufacturing facilities. You are receiving just raw ingredients at both of those facilities and making finished You guys are not buying finished products from anyone else and then just packaging them. Is that accurate or is that not accurate?

Briana Buckles - 00:21:06
That that's accurate for our our tea in a bag, for our t format. Yeah. Mhmm. T.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:21:15
Got it. Make sense. Which is the majority of us use. Right?

Kyle Krull - 00:21:18
Like,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:21:18
everything besides the couple new guidelines. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:21:22
And it makes sense as to why, you know, that's completely different technology, completely different packaging format.

Briana Buckles - 00:21:26
Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:21:27
It it would be unreasonable to expect right off the rift. Like, hey, we're just gonna switch to this entirely different vertical. Like, here we go. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm curious. You mentioned a word or earlier. You said qualified growers or buyers or or partners. And I really wanna dig in on that because, I mean, obviously, like you mentioned, 99.7 percent by volume organic. So first, the form was like kudos to Yogi for taking a look at the supply chains and, hey, we're doing great, but we still wanna be better.

Kyle Krull - 00:21:46
And I'm curious from your perspective, like, what does qualified regenerative mean? And specifically, because we don't have time to do this for, again, every single ingredient. What does a regenerative t operation look like versus a non regenerative t operation? And how do you all qualify? Like, what are your goals for somebody to be like, reached or on their way to a continual improvement, like, regenerative claim where you always feel comfortable, like, yeah, this is a regenerative operation. What does that What does that mean to Yogi?

Briana Buckles - 00:22:20
Yeah. Yeah. So first, first, I, maybe helpful to clarify, like, when we talk about tea, and this, like, vast majority of ingredients that we have. Tea leaves, like chamellia sinensis, like tea leaves are are a portion of our ingredient portfolio, but, you know, the majority of what we purchase are are herbal ingredients. So we've got everything like flowers, roots, like leaves. Perennials, annuals, like, we've got the full wild harvested versus actual cultivated ingredients, the full range and, and perspective greek pieces that I mean, there's all kinds of stuff that that goes through.

Kyle Krull - 00:22:55
Right. I was trying to simplify the question, and here you are. I just made it more complicated. But I appreciate the perspective.

Briana Buckles - 00:23:05
Yeah. Yeah. So so we can't, you know, from our perspective, we can't necessarily apply, like, one definition of, of regenerative, because we just can't. The ingredients are also different. You know, especially, you know, we get in this whole conversation like, wild harvested versus cultivated ingredients. Roots that that you're pulling up out of the ground. You know, there's we We know that we can't apply one definition of regenerative blanket across the board in our supply chain. But what what we do often when we're going to, gonna go, like, establish a new regenerative agriculture project somewhere in the world is, is really 1st, like, listening, listening to, to the farmers and listening to, like, what, what practices are already known or already practiced, like, in these areas, in these communities. And then when we, you know, usually when we're gonna launch a new project, we bring on a a third party organization, somebody who is, an expert in this area, because I always say I'm not a farmer and I'm not a scientist so I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, like, advise personally, I'm not gonna advise them to, like, on the ground, like, practices for farming or or science related things. But we always bring in, bring in, like, a 3rd party kind of advisor who is an expert in that space.

Briana Buckles - 00:24:16
And so sometimes they're from, like, local universities who know and understand, like, the the, really, the local agriculture space. But, but most of the time, it's, it's someone who has that, like, local connection to the the agriculture, the environment, because we, you know, to add extra complexity, like, like, some of our ingredients come from tropical environments, some come from, like, deserts, and so very, like, arid climates. And so, there's just such a variety that you really have be kind of like listeners in this space and not apply a blanket definition because regenerative is gonna mean something different to every single farmer in our supply chain.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:25:01
How how is all this being tracked? Is this just like the most epic Excel sheet of all time? Are we working, like, within the ERP? We use in Salesforce? Like, I'm so intrigued by like, what the hell tool are y'all using to like actually like get into that granular data on the sourcing stuff?

Briana Buckles - 00:25:16
Yeah. Yeah. So we, there is a massive Excel sheet for sure. We we launched a,

Kyle Krull - 00:25:23
How many rows of date? I'm kidding. We don't Yeah.

Briana Buckles - 00:25:26
There's there's photos integrated in there too. It's it's Oh,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:25:30
intense situation going on. Yeah.

Briana Buckles - 00:25:31
Yeah. Yeah. We launched a sort of regenerative, kind of baseline survey, if you will, with our strategic suppliers a couple years ago, just to collect information on understanding where people are at with their current practices on just even, you know, basic things like, like, tillage and soil coverage and things like that. Just just to understand where people are at so that when we're choosing places to invest in, in projects that, that we wanna, you know, have some consultants, some advisors, and regenerative practices, we know where we can target kind of intentionally. Yeah, that, that all lives in, in a big spreadsheet, and then we we track our our project investments sort of in a different place. It's, you know, there's a lot to keep track of.

Kyle Krull - 00:26:16
Yeah. I I I was really struck by something you just shared, and I'm gonna kinda like make a comment an observation and assumption and then ask a question. So I apologize in in advance for what's going to happen, but I think it was really powerful. And I wrote it down, and I I might not get the quote exactly right, but it's we can't apply one definition of regenerative agriculture to our ingredient portfolio. And if that is true for Yogi Tee, who does have a complex supply chain for a singular brand, how are we as a society or a movement or a planet supposed to have one definition for regeneration. You know what I mean? So Yeah. Number 1, just commend you.

Kyle Krull - 00:26:50
You for having this, open mindedness and this attitude of learning and applying that vision statement you mentioned earlier, like, our goal isn't necessarily to, like, tick the box on regeneration, is to make the planet better, and it almost makes me feel like that mentality gives you more of an opportunity to do more regeneration. Right?

Briana Buckles - 00:27:11
Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:27:11
And so the assumption I'm making is that this feels more like, at least at this stage in the game, like a back burner, not consumer facing initiative, until you all figure out, like, how you're going to make this impact and then message it and market it to consumers. But that's what I wanna check-in on, like, how are how is Yogi focusing on messaging the regenerative efforts to their consumers right now, if at all?

Briana Buckles - 00:27:36
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, your assumption is right. It's it's been a bit back burner for a while because, you know, when we sit in this space of, like, we don't wanna apply, like, one blanket definition. It means it, it makes it challenging to to tell a unified story, in a way that is authentic. And and we wanna be sure that when we do start, like, you know, shouting about this work from the roof rooftops to our consumers that that we're doing it in a very authentic way, that we're not just you know, putting some words on a box that don't have any, like, actual grounded practices behind them. And we do have, you know, some of our, our choice queues now, some of our newer excuse have some romance copy on the box, but it about regenerative agriculture, but it's not implying that that the ingredients in that box are regenerative. The language is really more around, like, like, we as a company are investing and partnering with our farmers, to fund regenerative movements, which is an accurate statement. But beyond that, a statement that's, that's more like kind of high level like that, it's hard to make, like, a, a product level specific claim because even if we have, you know, a, one project for regenerative agriculture for lemongrass, in Rwanda, right?

Briana Buckles - 00:28:35
Like, that's one lemongrass supplier out of, you know, however many lemon, like, 4 probably lemongrass suppliers we have in the world. So, Right.

Kyle Krull - 00:29:01
And then that's only gonna be an a fraction of the skews that are actually on shelf. Right. So, like, your point really

Briana Buckles - 00:29:05
hard to,

Kyle Krull - 00:29:06
like, have this, a continuity story there.

Briana Buckles - 00:29:08
Right. And so one of the one of the places we have been starting to tell our our regenerative stories is in our sustainability report and what I love about actually, our 2023 1 just came out, but our, our 2022 report actually tells a lot of, a lot of kind of the regenerative stories. But what I love about is, is at the end of the day, it's not necessarily ours story to tell. It's the the story of the farmers. Right? They're the ones who are doing the work. They're the ones who are on the ground.

Briana Buckles - 00:29:33
And Our our sustainability report that talks about that work is is mostly direct quotes. It's mostly direct quotes from those farmers who are talking about their experience in this work. Because there's, there's no need for us to be the filter and, and to tell their story for them. It's it's their story. So we just, we wanna give them a platform and kinda step back and, and let them talk about what, what they've been doing.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:30:04
And I think it's really cool that y'all are doing the surveying and the kind of boots on the ground data, to have some sort of verifiable information that's at least somewhat hardcore quantifiable because it takes the, the potential questioning of a more free flowing, less binary approach and puts real transparency and integrity behind it, we need to do. Right? Especially if it's not gonna ever make it to a product level claim. It's like, what actually is the work? Why does it matter? Why is it a positive benefit, why does it deserve some sort of market validation, which I don't think we as an industry have figured out exactly what that that tool or methodology is yet, and that's why we're trying to have these conversations. But, like, it's essential because if you're doing positive work that aids in some way, You should have some sort of validation incentive, reward, whatever for that.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:30:45
But, Brad, I'm curious what is the commercial team sharing with you that the tea consumer or the retailers, like, care about on the sustainability side? Is it farmer livelihoods? Is it you know, GHD, mitigation. Is it, like, what is it? Is it just regen ag, like, broadly the term? Like, I'm just curious are they saying?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:31:06
Like, we want more data and storytelling about from a commercial perspective?

Briana Buckles - 00:31:21
Yeah. It it really depends because one we're we're kind of straddling the the European and the North American market so that the consumer trends and the consumer, like, preferences or what's important on both ends is can be a little bit different. But also same with with retailers. Like, every retailer right now has their own, priorities and sustainability, and, and they're not all the same necessarily. I mean, there's there's a handful of retailers out there that are really prioritizing regenerative agriculture and and are creating space and creating noise. For that discussion, which is really exciting to see. Like, the, the retailers have that kind of, end connection with consumers in a way that, like, brands don't always have.

Briana Buckles - 00:31:51
And so for for retailers to, be that voice for regenerative, I, I think, is, has been an awesome kind of trend to see, but, it's definitely, I mean, it's not all of them. Right? Like, it's not, all retailers and some are still really focused on on carbon footprint or greenhouse gas emissions, and some are focused on food waste, or, you know, everyone has their their kind of priority or or projects, if you will, but, definitely seeing some, some trends towards regenerative agriculture, for sure. At the consumer level, I think we, we all still have some work to do on, on educating consumers around regenerative agriculture for sure. But I think the people who my my personal hypothesis is that the consumers who do know and understand regenerative agriculture are, are like really deeply, like, loyal to the brands that they see are showing up in this space. So it may be a smaller subset of consumers who know and under and the terminology, but it's a valuable subset of consumers because of the loyalty that they bring.

Kyle Krull - 00:33:06
I think you spot on there. You know, I I I wish that was a bigger subset. And, of course, it is growing, and it will continue to grow, but I do think you're, like, you're hardcore. And I know I can speak, you know, for myself, and I know AC is similar, and there are others in our network who are like, once you find a regenerative brand within a specific category, like, you're all in. You know, and you don't you don't buy anybody else. Right?

Briana Buckles - 00:33:28
Right.

Kyle Krull - 00:33:29
But I'm curious from, you know, some when we talk about regeneration, like, what are what are the consumer facing attributes that people might be interested in. You know, we talk a lot about, you know, taste and nutrient density, and I'm curious for a brand like Yogi, you know, you've been around for quite a long time. You have some capital resources that a lot of brands don't have. Have you all done any studies about, like, I guess I wouldn't call it nutrient density for tea but, like, the potency of some of the different functional ingredients that you're using when they're grown in a regenerative system versus a non regenerative system? And if so, like, what do those results yield?

Briana Buckles - 00:34:02
We haven't. No. We haven't done any, sort of nutrient testing at this point. It's a little bit challenging when you're talking about infusions to, you know, really have that, extracting out the medicinal benefits. So we haven't done done any research in that space. No.

Kyle Krull - 00:34:22
The way you answer that made me feel like I asked a silly question.

Briana Buckles - 00:34:24
And No. No. No. No. I want to, I want to get into some research in that space for sure. It just we haven't been able to, to lean into there yet.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:34:33
Got it. The the the better question might have been, is there any, like, interest organizationally in that type of a consumer claim slash, like, marketing approach? And How does that, like, broadly apply to the playbook that you currently use? Cause my my opinion as someone that doesn't drink a lot of tea, but walks down the aisle lot is that the skews almost have a medicinal, like, value proposition. Like, it's like, hey, drink this for immunity, drink this for an upset stomach, drink this for a headache. Like, so maybe that's the the tie in.

Briana Buckles - 00:35:03
Yeah. Yeah. And and, our Yogi brand in, in the US is actually categorized as a categorized as a dietary supplement. Rather than a Wow. Yeah, rather than a food product. And so that's because it's a dietary supplement, and we follow dietary supplement regulations, that's what allows us make those, those very direct claims about, like, immune support or sleep, you know, bedtime, and, you know, digestive support and those things All of those functional benefits of RT are rooted in like scientific research backed, you know, type claims. What would be really awesome is if we could get to a place, in the future where, we can start tying in some of this, research around regenerative agriculture and and benefits, and and does that quality, does that, higher quality product pull through to, like, stronger claims or stronger benefits on the wellness side of things because that's, I mean, that's the whole purpose of our, our Yogi brand is to deliver that, that wellness benefit. In a a flavorful, cup of tea.

Kyle Krull - 00:36:11
I've never before ever heard the term cup of tea use so literally. That was like striking. So let's just wanna Oh, I love you, bro. That was so good.

Briana Buckles - 00:36:31
The world.

Kyle Krull - 00:36:34
Really? I mean, it's it's worth noting. Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:36:38
I would imagine you guys do you have a

Kyle Krull - 00:36:40
list of, like, best puns in, like, liquid written down on the office wall somewhere? Because you should.

Briana Buckles - 00:36:44
Not on the office wall, but there's there's definitely a shared document out there. I'm sure.

Kyle Krull - 00:36:48
Awesome. Oh my god. That was so good. I completely lost track of where I was going with that.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:36:57
I don't know if people are gonna ever learn anything from our They're gonna get some good laughs. I'll tell you that. I I got one if you if you need some more time to remember yours. Which is, Rhonda, let's actually talk about some of these projects. You all are directly investing. It sounds like even through some philanthropic slash grant efforts, I mean, I have a billion questions. How's that set up? How do you pick the projects? Where does the money come from? You know, what what is it actually funding?

Kyle Krull - 00:37:24
So, we'll

Anthony Corsaro - 00:37:25
love for you to break that down in as in in as many actual examples as as you're willing to and Kate?

Briana Buckles - 00:37:30
Yeah. For sure. It it's a really good question. And it's kind of the core of of where we've been out with our regenerative strategy, since the beginning, so it's it's where we've put the most kind of time and effort, is with with our regenerative projects. So right now, we're kind of to date. We've got 9, 9 projects around the world, that cover regenerative agriculture, agroforestry concepts in, in some way or another. So typically when we're setting out to start a new project, we we want we want to make sure that we have a really solid, like, engaged, supplier partner, someone who's either is the farm themselves. They're a vertically integrated supplier that owns the farm or has a very direct relationship with with the farm. Farmers.

Briana Buckles - 00:38:10
That's that's kind of a a critical starting point is is someone who has that that buy in from the start and that engagement. But then, you know, as as I talked about before, we we always bring in, like, a third party and outside kind of expert in the, in the regenerative space, who can advise them on, sort of the local agricultural nuances that are gonna lend to a project being, more regenerative. And, and usually they serve as, as kind of a, project implementer, like, on the ground kind of day to day, support for implementing the project. So a really good example is is one of our very first regenerative projects that we started, is with some some small holder farmers in Rwanda. So really, really small holder farmers. So, like, we're talking

Kyle Krull - 00:39:03
about it. Sorry, sorry to interrupt. But, like, where can t just be grown anywhere? Tea. Where where where where's the geographical reach of tea?

Briana Buckles - 00:39:14
Yeah. So, tea chemilius and Ncest tea leaves, grow in in a handful of countries around the world in in pretty specific climates. So, like, in Africa, like Kenya Rwanda are pretty popular tea growing, countries, but also, tea in in India, China, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, are kind of the primary, I guess a bit in South America too, Argentina, grow some tea. So tea leaves themselves, have a a pretty specific climate that they, they grow in, but it's it can happen in a lot of places around the world.

Kyle Krull - 00:39:48
Okay. That that makes more sense. Was originally like, I had associated most tea being grown in, like, the Asian area. And when you said Africa, I was like, well, hold on. I need to check this here. So I appreciate, the elaboration and continue on, please, with the story of Rwanda, and I apologize for the interruption.

Briana Buckles - 00:40:02
No. Totally fine. Yeah. So we've got a partner in Rwanda who works with, small holder tea farmers. And so the, these tea farmers were talking like an acre or 2 acres of land, maybe, that a farmer owns and is, is, growing tea, traditional chamellia sinensis tea leaves. And so a few kind of interesting nuances, right, is is in Rwanda, where the tea grows is typically on these really steep hillsides. And so you've got the small plot of land, steep hillsides, and tea traditionally has grown essentially as as just a giant monocrop. Right? It's It's, a bush that's roots always stay in the ground for, literally, in some cases, like, over a 100 years.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:40:49
Wow.

Briana Buckles - 00:40:50
And so the, the, it's just that that's the only thing that's grown there. And it's, it's harvested, depending on where in the world it is, that the amount of harvest that happened per year, but in this case, these, these farmers in Rwanda, that's, that's their only crop, on their land is, is tea. And so, between the rows of these, these tea bushes is just exposed soil. So when you have these steep hillsides, exposed soil it's prone to a lot of soil erosion. So that's not good. And then also it's, like I said, it's basically a giant monocrop. So you don't have a lot of biodiversity that actually happens, in these spaces.

Briana Buckles - 00:41:21
So when we wanted to look at a regenerative agriculture project, we wanted to address some of those challenges from the environmental side of things. But what's really cool is is what and one one of the things I love about regenerative agriculture is, like, there's also a lot of opportunities for, like, economic benefit. When we look at, you know, a lot of the developing parts of the world or economically disadvantaged parts of the world that, that the majority of our ingredients come from. So small holder tea farmers, they have one crop. So they don't have a diversified income, an income that's dependent on, on a commodity crop that's prices driven by, you know, world market trends at any given time. But no other, no other opportunities for income off of that land in, in the, in that sort current condition or current, state when, when we started this project.

Briana Buckles - 00:42:09
So, what we wanted to do because we have our, our choice tea brand, the, the brand of, of choice is really focused on, more traditional tea, products. So you've got, like, Real Gray, English breakfast, Jasmine Green, is really focused on, on the tea leaf, like, the, the chamellia sinensis products themselves so we were buying tea from these, these farmers for the, the choice brand, black tea that goes into into those products. But when we were looking at how can we, like, intercrop in these, in these, tea farms, with additional ingredients. Like, we have this entire Yogi brand that has, like, a, a pretty diversified portfolio of ingredients, and what we landed on was was lemongrass. So between the rows of all these tea bushes, we started a pilot with 65 farmers to plant lemongrass. Between all of these, these tea bushes.

Briana Buckles - 00:43:03
And so, part of our funding for that project, part of our funding went towards actually purchasing the, the, the slips, the, the little baby lemon grasses that were gonna be planted between the, between the rows. Like, we funded the actual initial, seed links for that, that planting. We funded the, the education support, the training support for how to, like, plant and harvest them. We funded some infrastructure and training around, composting and having compost assets to be added, to that, that system so now the, that first initial, like, pilot fees, started in 2021, And so it's been successful enough to this point that, like, the farmers have had their first few harvests of lemongrass, which means they have an additional income source. And a different, a diversified income source. And it's, it's been exciting.

Briana Buckles - 00:44:03
Like, the farmers are excited enough about this project and having this additional different income source with some of these added environmental benefits, that it's generated like enough excitement in the community that in that we're, like, ready to scale this project out to 100 additional farmers. And so, to me, it's just, it's one of those, like, really cool, well rounded, like, projects and opportunities because, because it hits really, really well on some of those environmental benefits, but also on, on the sort of social economic side of things, we're seeing some pretty good wins there as well.

Kyle Krull - 00:44:40
I love that story for so many reasons. Sorry, AC. But I just wanna touch on, I mean, Number 1, like, the physical benefits of having, you know, the soil cover. Right? And I was trying to look up as you're telling the story, like, how many acres or hectares of land are used to grow tea every single year. And I can't find the answer. I did find that there's 3,390,000 hectares in China. So just trying to alone, like, imagine that that that hillside you described, you know, Steve Hillside bear soil, like, if we can get that cover crop of lemongrass or or not cover crop, but I guess middle crop, of lemongrass between do to cover the soil, that's huge, you know, and that can have a a massive impact on reducing the amount of soil erosion that takes place every single year.

Kyle Krull - 00:45:04
So, really, really cool. And I may have, and I apologize, missed the part of the story while I was googling that you all are purchasing the lemongrass from these farmers as well. Correct?

Briana Buckles - 00:45:36
Yes. Yeah. So that's that's the plan, right, is is, the tea leaves were purchasing for our choice brand, and and had been. But because, you know, Yogi is is a bigger brand than choice and has a a broader ingredient portfolio, we wanted to make sure it was intentionally like something that we could use on on, in our portfolio as well. So we we pretty much put up the the upfront guarantee that, like, if if you grow it, we're gonna buy it. And so, We've had, the first few harvests of, of the lemongrass kind of come through already. And so, yeah, it's it's kind of a, a really cool symbiotic project in, in that way as well, that we get to leverage both of our brands to, have this, this kind of market pulled through as well.

Kyle Krull - 00:46:17
Totally. And correct me if I'm wrong, but lemongrass is also perennial. You plant it the one time. You make that one time investment, and then it just continues to grow there forever.

Briana Buckles - 00:46:25
Yeah. The the roots stay in the ground, the the tops get get harvested off. And we've definitely had some challenges. Right? There's there's it's not easy to plant and grow a new crop. We've, we've had a lot of, a lot of crop fatalities, along the way, just different droughts and timings and, and just learning, right? Lemongrass isn't something that's been traditionally grown So, learning about that, that harvesting process and the growing process, it's there's there's been some, some bumps along the way for sure, but Yeah. In the, in the long run, it's, it's a perennial crop that, just gets harvested and comes right back.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:46:59
I have 2 very tactical questions. Yeah. 1 is like, how the hell do you find the technical assistance provider in these geographies where, like, you know, How is YogiT dropping into Rwanda and finding the person that can help these farmers grow lemongrass? 1, and 2, I don't know if you can share or you would be privy to this, Briana, but like, I'm super curious about how the financial piece works. Like, is it a separate foundation that then grants the money out? Is it just out of the out of a specific fund that sits an operating company. Like, don't know what you can share there, but super, super interested how that flows.

Briana Buckles - 00:47:32
Yeah. Yeah. So, finding a technical advisor, when we we just have like a pretty strong network of of people around the world, which is, you know, where members of, of organizations like the ethical tea partnership and the sustainable spices initiative, the sustainable herbs program. And so, generally speaking, like, if if there's a part of the world and and we need a a technical advisor where, you know, I I can call someone, and someone knows someone, to say, you know,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:48:04
that's good. That's a good answer. I love that. We're also human beings. Like, that's cool.

Briana Buckles - 00:48:07
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and so, a tangible example actually is, we were getting ready to launch a project in Sri Lanka. And, and I don't know, it, I'm trying to remember if you've had the guys from Doctor. Browners on your show or not, but they've done so much work in Sri Lanka. So I was like, let me call them and see who they know. And, and they're like, yeah, we, we've got, we've got a guy. And so, you know, we got connected with a technical advisor who, like, you know, we trust to have kind of the right mindset, when implementing a regenerative project, for sure. So it's all some networks and connections and people and, and just really engaged in the community in the space. Nice. Yeah.

Briana Buckles - 00:48:39
And then and then on the the funding side of things, we do have a company foundation. So there is a a Yogi foundation that was started in 2021. So the foundation currently does, most of the funding for these types of projects. But in the early days, we, before our foundation was fully established, a lot of this funding came straight out of our sustainability, like, operational budget. Sometimes we still balance, like, a little bit of both. It depends on the type project and, and, you know, what parts of things we're investing in.

Briana Buckles - 00:49:12
Yeah, sometimes it comes from our sustainability budget. Sometimes it comes from our foundation budget. So we've got a few different avenues, levers we can pull.

Kyle Krull - 00:49:30
Nice. I really love that Lemongrass story example, and I'm curious, like, from your position, when you go to set up for, like, what the next project is gonna be, are you focusing on, like, okay, what ingredients am I using the most of or what's going to, like, where where could I come up with a program that makes the most sense based on the acreage that we already have with existing relationships how does that system work for, like, the new project implementation?

Briana Buckles - 00:49:54
Yes. So when we're looking for a new project, typically we would do it with with one of our our large ingredients. So we have, a process where we categorize our supplier into, like, strategic suppliers, preferred suppliers and sort of transactional suppliers. So we'll look First, we'll look to our strategic suppliers. The ones who we have maybe long term contracts in place with, the ones who who you know, we feel really confident in their sustainability practices. They've been categorized in that way for a reason that they're gonna be our long term partners. So we'll look at our strategic strategic supplier, base, and we'll look at kind of where, like you said, what are high volume ingredients that maybe we don't have any projects in place on yet. And that, that tends to be a, a pretty strong guiding, principle behind, like, where and how we choose our next projects, but also, a little bit influenced as well by that, regenerative agriculture survey that we So once we did that survey to see and understand existing practices, in our supply chain, we look at kind of where there's maybe some hotspots or some opportunities for for improvement and lean into those spaces as well.

Kyle Krull - 00:51:10
Got it. Makes sense. And so it's not as simple as, and I this is what I expected. Just gonna do this and see what happens. You know, it's like, it's it's very there's different data sources coming from different places, and that's how we need to determine, like, what's gonna be the most feasible with the right most engaged partner on the ground. And so on and so forth. So that totally makes sense.

Briana Buckles - 00:51:27
Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:51:29
Briana, I would love for you to just talk a little bit about certifications. We know because of the massive behemoth that this supply chain is, that that's challenging from a complexity standpoint. And I think you also mentioned to me on the previous call, like, you're asking even more of people that already have a lot of certs and a lot of administrative demands and a lot of costs associated with that. So I think We're good at talking about those things at a high level in the space. We would

Kyle Krull - 00:51:52
love for

Anthony Corsaro - 00:51:52
you to bring like some specific examples or color to that in terms of what does that look like for for y'all in your supply chain.

Briana Buckles - 00:51:58
Yeah. Yeah. So what's interesting about this, this conversation on certifications is, you know, organics is is pretty pretty ubiquitous and pretty easy to to, work through easy, relatively to to work through or to find or to integrate into our supply chain, because that's a That's a unified certification that exists, globally. When we look at kind of our our next year or our next wave of of certification, conversation within our company. We spent a lot of time actually looking at, I'll get to regenerative. I promise. We we spent a lot of time looking at, social certifications. So because our, you know, because a lot of our ingredients come from, you know, developing parts of the world, we wanted to look at strategy for, social certifications in our supply chain.

Briana Buckles - 00:52:35
So things that, certifications that align to the international labor organization, standards for for good labor practices. So things like Fairtrade, Fairful Life, Fairwild, Rein Force Alliance, UABT, all of these things align to those standards and we wanna integrate that into into our supply chain as as sort of a, a layer of, like, insurance policy of of what what's actually happening in the labor sector. When we went to do that initial kind of evaluation of that certification landscape, because, you know, we're we're different than than, like, chocolate coffee, or even just traditional tea in that we have so many different herbal ingredients, and all of these different parts of the herbal supply chains have approached those certifications in different ways. So some parts of the world have prioritized maybe Rainforest Alliance while other parts of the world or other types of ingredients have prioritized fair trade or fair for life or fair wild, just depending on the type of ingredient or where they are or the supplier, And so, when we looked at that certification strategy, we felt pretty strongly. It was unreasonable of us to go out and say, we want out all of our suppliers to have fair trade, for example. Because a lot of them were already, like, really entrenched in, and had really good practices. It was just they just happened to have a different certification.

Briana Buckles - 00:54:04
And so in, in that vein, in that sort of strategy, what we did is, is we basically created this basket of acceptable standards. And behind the scenes, over 70% of our, our supply chain holds 1 of those certifications. We just don't label it on our packaging because it's not a unified certification in our supply. Right. So when we look at our, our regenerative, our regenerative strategy, our regenerative approach, in terms of certifications. We haven't really made a decision on, on what our long term strategy is gonna be, because it's we're gonna come up against that same, you know, that same sort of fractured, supply chain where maybe we've got a supplier who's already got organic, and they have, a fair for life certification.

Briana Buckles - 00:54:44
And now we'll ask them to get maybe 1 more certification and it, and I know that, like, you know, ROC is designed really to, to work in, in sync with a lot of those existing certifications, but we just have to, you know, it's always a balance, right, of, of what we ask of our suppliers and, and where we put our own versus too, because it's, it's a heavy lift to ask for a certification, which, you know, in this sort of a, a fractured supply chain, dynamic. We, we just have to be really intentional. So we just, we haven't made a decision yet on, on what our, future strategy is gonna be there.

Kyle Krull - 00:55:40
I really love that answer, AC. Great question. And I'm struck by a couple things. Like, number 1, I love the lack of what I'm gonna call, like, certification imperialism, and that's that's essentially quoting Heather Terry where you you picture, like, you know, in in this is definitely not what's happening, but provide a visual reference. Like, the the OBT star shift coming over new lands and saying, like, you have to have this certification or you won't laugh. You know, you know, in your meeting farmers where they are, And it's it's so dogmatic, like, the way our food system works is like, hey, suppliers, you have to do this because we need to put this sticker on this box, whether it works for you or it does This is what the retailers are asking for. This is what the consumers have been trained to look for. And what I love about your answer is, like, That's not the right approach, and that doesn't align with our vision statement of leaving the world better than we found it. Right? Or I I totally butchered it, but we get the intent and the intention there.

Kyle Krull - 00:56:27
The other thing I love about what about what you said was the basket of acceptable standards. And this, like, directly aligns with ACI's theory of change for regenerative is, like, Yeah. There are different certifications for different crop types, different parts of the world, and we should honor all of the great work that these various organizations are doing rather than trying to homogenize a single standard, which is the antithesis of regeneration to begin with. You know, so I love that, like, this conversation is so interesting. It's almost like a microcosm of, like, the total regenerative movement within Yogi. And it's just really cool to kinda, like, pluck these nuggets of wisdom out apply them to the greater landscape. So really appreciate the share.

Briana Buckles - 00:57:12
Yeah. Yeah. I think, the the the plight of the sustainability professional is, like, we wanna have these, like, reporting and metrics and standards and frameworks and, validation and behind the work that we're doing. But a lot of that, it takes a lot of work and a lot of time and a lot of resources towards reporting verification and metrics. And, and as a sustainability professional, like, my, my sort of self check all the time is, like, what percent of my work is that taking up? Like, if my job suddenly becomes, like, 60, 70 percent, like, administrative processes towards measuring and verifying and, and all of that, then, like, you know, well, then only 30% of my work is the actual, like, doing good part. And so, you know, our, our, theory a lot at, at Yogi just tends to be like, as long as we know we're doing the right thing, as long as we know we're, we're doing the good parts, keep doing that. And, like, the, the measuring verification, all of those other pieces, you know, they'll fall into places.

Briana Buckles - 00:58:06
They fall into place, but don't let that become the overwhelming majority of where we're spending these versus in time and effort and energy because, you know, we it would be really easy to get caught up in a lot of that stuff.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:58:24
Yeah. I was I was gonna make a similar comment as an observer, and it's like y'all are doing a an amazing job from what I've gathered from this conversation of really just focusing on the work and supporting the work versus needing some hardcore commercial outcome short term from the work or making it super rigid in terms of what it has to look like. But also having enough data and admin to support it to show it's credible. Like, hey, we are not making everyone convert to 1 fair labor cert, but we know 70% of our supply chain is at least one of these 4 that we accept. Like, that's great. Right? And I think brands like Yogi, we need y'all to do that kind of work.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:58:53
And we also need to understand that if it's a sub $10,000,000 brand, that's a single hair ingredient that's, like, totally regen to the on teeth and certified. They need to be certified and get the cool recognition that they get for that. Both theories of change are supportive of our our overall goals together.

Briana Buckles - 00:59:18
Yeah. Yeah. And and actually, you know, I'd love to talk about, like, we talk about commercial benefit of regenerative agriculture, you know, for a smaller up and coming brand, like, the, the commercial or the business benefit of, of regenerative agriculture very much sits on that, like, sales consumer kind of marketing end of things. But for a company like us, there there is that benefit, right, that that, that the storytelling side of of generative agriculture, that business benefit there. But also, like, a huge part of, like, how we frame this discussion internal in our company is there's a huge business benefit in, like, supply chain longevity. There's a huge business benefit in, in risk mitigation of what we're doing. You know, we look at, like, like, herbal, you know, supply chains, tea, supply chains around the world, over and over and over farmers communities are telling us young people don't want to be farmers. Young people, are leading this industry, generational knowledge of, like, how to grow a specific crop or a specific ingredient, is leaving and, and this, this kind of urban migration, you know, people who have seen their, their parents grow up in, in extreme poverty as farmers are, are leaving and going to the city to become a taxi driver or something.

Briana Buckles - 01:00:18
And that's a huge risk to our supply chain. Right? Like, that's, that's a if we wanna be a business that that's around for the next 50 years, the next 50 years, it's it's not gonna happen if if urban migration, if, all of that as a result of of poverty in in supply chains and herbal supply chains, continues to exist. So if we can use, regenerative practices to have crop diversification income diversification, more value for the crops that, that people are growing, higher yields for the crops that they're growing, less risk in the crops that they're growing. That's gonna make people want to be farmers longer, which matters, matters to our business and in long term planning. Right? And so We talk about business benefits.

Briana Buckles - 01:01:13
There's, like I said, there's, there's plenty of storytelling, like, fun marketing business benefits, but on the back end of things, if we're thinking about the next 50 years of our company, we kinda need this. We kinda need to be investing in this space. Climate change is impacting the ability to grow ingredients in certain areas because of extreme, drought and monsoon cycles and and things that. So the more, resilient our crops can be to those, those dramatic weather changes through regenerative practices. It's If, if you can, like, pause and take a 10 year review of things, it's pretty easy to make the, the business case, the commercial benefit case, you know, getting people to join you in that that 10 year vision?

Anthony Corsaro - 01:02:03
There's there's so much dogma in this space, and I feel like we all are silver bullet seekers and we all wanna say, oh, we figured out that this one thing is like the way we're gonna fix everything. And I don't know if there's actually one thing that everyone in the space agrees on more than the fact that Ultimately, farmer profitability is always going to win. Right? So we can talk about educating the consumer and building the markets, which are obviously huge advocates for and think is legit. I do think it's relatively limited. But what's unlimited and what's always gonna move the needle is if you can show the the person that's stewarding the land, hey, this is better for your business. That seems like I I love that that's underpinning the strategies y'all are taking on because I think that's a winning strategy.

Briana Buckles - 01:02:42
Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 01:02:43
I agree. And I really love the fact that you made a business case for regenerative agriculture, and it's emblematic of how you is approaching this. Right? It's not a heavy consumer facing push. You all are doing this for for not only the vision statement, but because it's the best thing to do to keep your business viable for decades in the future. And I think that's a unique purview. A brand like Yogi can take because you've been around for 50 years. You know, we talk about a lot. I'm just as guilty as anybody seeing, like, hey. It's the right thing to do for the planet. Like, you know, it's it's like this ultra or altruistic mentality.

Kyle Krull - 01:03:04
Like, we need to support this. But, really, at the end of the day, like, if we don't have soil, we can't grow anything, you know, and it's it's like human survival. It's business survival. And I just really appreciate the way you you kind of spelled that out so so well. And I don't know what else to say, and I'm just super pumped. I lost my train of thought, to be honest. It's fun. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:03:35
He was thinking of more cup of tea pugs.

Kyle Krull - 01:03:38
I was you know, it's it's like it was a that my Scott. He's like, sometimes I start a sentence, and I don't even know where it's gonna end. You know? Like, it was that moment.

Briana Buckles - 01:03:47
I love that Michael Scott came into this podcast. Thank you.

Kyle Krull - 01:03:50
Thank Yeah. You're welcome. That's why I'm here.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:03:55
Kyle was probably about to ask you what the future looks like for Yoguchi, which a question he usually asked around this part of the episode. So, I'll I'll take that from him and say, Briana, what what does the future look like in y'all's work? In your work specifically, anything to share there that we haven't talked about yet?

Briana Buckles - 01:04:11
Yeah. You know, I think, As we continue looking forward, you know, in our in our company's journey and in our sustainability in our regenerative agriculture journey. You know, we're just gonna continue doubling down on on the work that we're doing. You know, when we, you know, I I I feel very fortunate that, like, the leadership of our company, the kind of strategic visionaries of our company, feel really like grounded and and supportive and behind this work. You know, when when our leadership team comes out with the, the 5 year strategy for our business, Regenerative Agriculture is is in there as as an important metric as an important, staple and and anchor in in what we're doing as a business right alongside the the financial numbers and the, whatever, you know, innovation growth numbers, plans we have for the next 5 years, regenerative agriculture is, is in that 5 year strategy. And so, you know, every day I feel, I feel incredibly fortunate to be in a company where you know, the, the leadership team season supports the vision of, like, why this matters and how this, is, is important to the future of our business in, in all these different ways. You know, when we come out, like, like, each year for the past, like, couple of years, like, my, personal, like, performance targets, are tied to, like, how many new regenerative projects have we launched. And so, like, this year, like, I'm tasked with launching 3 new regenerative projects somewhere in the world.

Briana Buckles - 01:05:38
So we've got 9 that are out there right now, but I've got you know, 3 more in the pipeline that are, gonna be established, signed off funded, this year. And it'll, it'll probably be the same for the next you know, few years to come. So, it's very real intangible that, like, this, this is, this is the work that we're doing, and, and we're gonna keep keep plugging along because there's a 150 ingredients worth of work to do here.

Kyle Krull - 01:06:09
Yeah. That's amazing. And, you know, if there's anything I can I wanna, like, challenge Yogi a little bit, not to say that you aren't doing enough, but I think it's really important for a brand with your level of credibility, intentionality, and the work that you're doing, to have this conversation candidly with retailers like, Hey, this is why we're not seeking certification? Yeah. This is why this is so hard because it I think there's this false expectation that, like, resources can sit just get the certification. You know, just just do it. And then then then you can make these claims. But when you really dive in and under stand the complexity and the nuance of why it's so challenging.

Kyle Krull - 01:06:37
I just don't feel like that story has been told enough, and it would benefit the entire movement. So I don't know how that happens. But I I think we need to hear more of this in, like, the b to b side of this. You know, obviously, a consumer facing narrative would be extremely challenging at the moment, but that that B2B relationship, I think it needs to happen. So just food for

Briana Buckles - 01:07:05
Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. And but I also, like, I, I totally see, like, the the retailers' perspective or, or even a lot of brands' perspective on wanting to pursue certification, and and like I said, we haven't decided on our own certification strategy at this point, but, you know, when when we're the consumer facing brand, the the brand and the retailer is also a consumer facing brand, the the consumer facing entity holds a lot of risk of of the greenwashing sort of, attacks, if you will. And so, while kind of more upstream in the supply chain, is maybe where there's a little bit more resistance to certification, but it's it's they're also not the ones that hold that consumer facing risk of being accused of inauthentic messaging or or things like that. And so, yeah, certification feels like the the sort of easy button if you will to, like, mitigate some of that, that greenwashing claims kind of risk. And so I totally understand and see where retailers are coming from and in wanting to prioritize that certification because of where sit, in that facing space with consumers, but, it's it's a nuanced conversation that that could be its own, you know, our long conversation as well. This this whole certification space, it's it's a challenging thing to come up against for sure.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:08:22
No doubt. Yeah. And somewhere along the way, we just have got to figure out how to make the economics more of an incentive versus a taxation. Because right now, everyone doing the best work is basically paying a bunch more money to track, implement, show, prove validate. Well, everyone doing the bad stuff actually getting subsidized through the bad stuff. I mean, over generalization and simplification, but, like, relatively true. So good good segue into our final question, which is the big macro question, Briana, that we ask everybody, which is how do we get regen brands, 50% market share by 20 you?

Briana Buckles - 01:08:55
Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think every stage in the value chain, every link in the value chain needs to like see and, and actually be able to tangibly realize the the benefits of regenerative agriculture. I think the farmers at the farm level at the supplier level, at the brand level, retail level, and consumer level, every one of those links needs to be able to see and realize the tangible benefits of this work. And I think, you know, from from where I sit from, like, my kind of perspective in, in the industry and the world, I think The brands are there. I think there's not a, there's not a food and beverage sustainability manager out there that you talk to that isn't working on their regenerative agricultural strategy in some way. I think, I think the brands are there. Some of the retailers are there.

Briana Buckles - 01:09:46
I think there's some retailers who are, are definitely seeing the value and, and are putting kind of time and space into it. And I think, you know, those those links are, are getting there. Those those pieces are getting there. The consumer side of things, the consumer education side of is is a little bit missing still because that's gonna be that final pull through of the the sort of financial benefit is is when the consumer starts or wants to pay more. All that full trickle down of, of that, financial benefit will come through. And, and farms, farmers, you know, who who I interact with or who I talk with, visit with on a regular basis.

Briana Buckles - 01:10:17
I think, conceptually, a lot of a lot of farmers are there, but again, it's it's when when they can start seeing that, like, you know, financial market benefit, of the work that they're doing is, when when people are willing to take on that risk. So, I think we'll get there, but, it just it's gonna take every kind of every link in the supply chain doing their piece to really see that that end value.

Kyle Krull - 01:10:52
I can spot on. I think and it's an answer. I don't think we've heard at least articulated that clearly that every single piece of the value chain needs to experience the benefit of this transition with this different model of agriculture. I think you're spot on. And I think to your point, like, it's almost like this domino effect, like, until the consumer domino falls, it's gonna be really hard to prove that value to every other step in that chain. So, I think it was a great answer.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:11:16
Yeah. And I it's making me really think about distributors, retailers, consumers. Like, that's where the lion's share of our work is or at least maybe just translating the work already being done by the farmers and the brands to that because it seems like that's the bottleneck is this? Like, we we've now done 60s, 9, 70 episodes of this podcast. I'm like, we got plenty of farmer and brand stories. I have a lot less distributor retailer consumer stories. So Yeah. Yeah. What is the programmatic way to attack that to amplify that, to expand that?

Anthony Corsaro - 01:11:34
You know, because that seems to be like where the momentum is dying. Right now.

Kyle Krull - 01:11:47
Well, I I'd go even further down the chain to aggregators and infrastructure to house regenerative identity preserved different crop types, especially for commodities. You know? So, like, I think AC are spot on, and there's additional complexity that we don't really talk about in in part of this value chain that just gets really really hairy and nitty gritty and not sexy and fun to talk about.

Briana Buckles - 01:12:07
Yeah. Yeah. And and the consumer education side of things is is just so challenging. Right? This is such a topic, and and the attention span that you have of of the average consumer on the shelf is is seconds, on your company newsletter or on your company's social media is is maybe a few more seconds, but to be able to to translate such a complex topic and the benefits of such a complex topic to consumers in those sort of short attention span spaces is is the is the link. I don't think anyone has really solved yet, but, that's, to me, that's one of the the big challenges is how how do we effectively educate consumers in the attention span that we get from them.

Kyle Krull - 01:12:49
To use your words earlier, that's another hours long podcast. We could really dive into. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:12:55
But But you you've done that in spades on this episode, Briana, for me, like, the amount of see that you have distilled down into simple, tangible takeaways and explanations is, like, so helpful and, like, we just need more people like this in this fight to do that and basically, like, take chess and communicate checkers, and and we will get there.

Briana Buckles - 01:13:15
Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 01:13:16
But Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:13:16
That's that's my big takeaway. Just thank you for showing up in that capacity and your articulation because learned so much, and it was really easy to absorb a very complex set of topics. And ideas.

Briana Buckles - 01:13:25
Yeah. Thank you.

Kyle Krull - 01:13:26
Totally agree. This this is also the part of the, the podcast episode. I typically drive people to the website. You know, everybody, you can get yoga t everywhere. Literally. But the website is super cool. Yogiproducts.com. They've got this awesome on, like, the all shop thing where you can choose, like, your flavor, what it supports and the type, whether it's caffeine free or not, did you just, like, click these boxes? Like, I can click herbaceous immunity caffeine free. And the specific tees that meet those needs pop up. So I think that's a really cool, like, shopper tool.

Kyle Krull - 01:13:45
I wish there was a way you could do that in stores and, like, a spotlight goes on the right tees. You know, maybe sometime in the future, but, super appreciate the time. Thank you so much for joining us and teaching us so much about a very complex supply chain that is strangely representative of, like, the total regenerative movement. So, again, really appreciate the time.

Briana Buckles - 01:14:13
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:14:15
Yeah. Thanks for joining us.

3 - 01:14:20
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